JANE IS BEYOND DISAPPOINTED WHEN I RETURN TO HER room. “Why would I want to read your childhood diary?” she asks, wiping the cover of the notebook with an antibacterial wipe. I forgot that I may have been the last generation to be raised with secrets; Jane and her friends broadcast their feelings and insecurities on social media. My friends and I stuffed them into notebooks we hid from our mothers, and in intricately folded notes we passed to one another in the hallways.
I crack open the notebook and start to read aloud, doing my best to decipher the bubbly cursive.
“September 7. I swear to God I am the only person in my class who has any ambition. The other kids just don’t understand me. They’re perfectly happy to spend their days paging through the Delia’s catalog or Frenching their Jonathan Taylor Thomas posters. Well, excuse me if I have dreams for myself, Kristen!!!! Excuse me if I know where I’m going in life and what I want! They don’t understand the value of having a vision. I know exactly what I want out of life. I’m going to go to Mizzou and major in journalism. Then I will move to New York and live in a fancy apartment. I will not have a husband because I will need to fully focus on my career as a news anchor. I will have two Pomeranians.”
I close the notebook, prematurely satisfied with the life lesson I am imparting on my offspring. Jane is already on her laptop, editing her presentation.
“Jane.”
“Mom.”
“Sound like anyone you know?”
“Not really. Those aren’t SMART goals. Those are just dreams. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable—”
“I know what a SMART goal is, Jane. But do you know how much of my sixth-grade life plan came true?”
Jane gives me the same look I give people when they’re trying to force me to answer a rhetorical question.
“None of it,” I answer. “No Mizzou. No New York City. No fancy apartment. Two kids. Zero Pomeranians. One husband—and it’s not even Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Jane rolls her eyes so hard I’m afraid they might dislocate.
“I get it, Mom.” She sighs. “You didn’t achieve your dreams. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t.”
Well. That went poorly.
“The point I was trying to make, honey, is that my dreams changed. I have everything I never dreamed of, because my dreams when I was in sixth grade were just ideas of who I could be, not who I definitely for sure would be.”
Jane gives me the same skeptical look she was born with.
“What I’m trying to say, Janer, is that there are many paths you can take in life. And most of them aren’t even on your radar yet. If you’re too attached to one idea of what a good life looks like, you run the risk of missing out on what a good life is. The things I couldn’t imagine—you and Dylan! A dog that is basically the opposite of a Pomeranian! Those are the things I can’t imagine living without. Just . . . keep your options open, honey. You don’t have to have it all figured out in middle school.”
Jane gives me a tight smile and closes out her presentation. It’s time for me to tag Mike into this conversation.
LET ME BE CLEAR: I HATE THE PHRASE “MAN CAVE.” IT’S proof that toxic masculinity has seeped into every aspect of life: How could a guy possibly have just an office or a room to himself? Could a den possibly suffice? A study? No. The modern man requires a room that is so manly it can only be described as a cave to which he drags his kill. Or, in Mike’s case, takes conference calls and plays Call of Duty with our college friends. His office isn’t off-limits to any of us, but there aren’t many reasons to go in there unless you like the smell of old coffee and stale farts.
Whatever he prefers to call it, I call it Mike’s home office. But it’s more like a dorm room than anything else. Which is why he should have put a fucking sock on the door.
LOOK, WE’VE BEEN MARRIED SINCE BEFORE WE WERE OLD enough to rent a car. I’ve seen the guy masturbate. But there’s something extremely unsexy about seeing your husband sitting in an Aeron chair jerking off in front of a computer screen.
“Oh, shit!” he shouts when I walk into the room. He’s pulling up his sweatpants, scrambling to act like nothing is happening.
We’re both embarrassed. But because I grew up reading women’s magazines that beat it into my head that it was my job to keep a man interested in me, I quickly do the mental gymnastics necessary to turn something embarrassing into something . . . sexy and embarrassing?
“Sooooo,” I whisper—why am I whispering??—“what are you watching?” I’ll admit that it’s really hard for me to watch porn. I’m not a prude, it’s just that there’s never enough plot, and I’ve had enough sex to know that there is never a reason to scream that loud. Also, what happened to pubic hair? It’s there for a reason! It’s hygienic! It protects your vagina from stuff!
Mike looks like he’s witnessing a car wreck. There’s no sound coming from his computer, so maybe he’s just looking at pictures? Would that be weird? I remember my brother always disappearing to his bedroom with the JC Penney catalog, but that’s only because we grew up in the dark ages when our family Internet access was limited to the number of free minutes provided by the free AOL CDs that showed up in the mail.
By the time I do my sexiest walk (are walks sexy?) over to Mike’s desk, his boner is safely tucked back into his Wisconsin sweatpants, and he is frantically clicking around, trying to close the window.
It didn’t work. On the computer, I can see a plain, halfheartedly decorated bedroom and a tall blond woman who exists only in the dreams of straight men and—“Oh my god, that’s a huge bush!” I blurt out. Apparently I’m wrong about pubic hair. This woman clearly has Sasquatch in her bloodline.
“What’s going on?” the woman responds, leaning into her camera.
Oh my god. Holy shit. “Is this . . . live?”
Mike stammers.
“Hi!” the woman says, running her hands over her body in a way that I have to admit is pretty sexy, “do you want to watch, too?”
The gears in my head click into place, and my rage machine is ON. My head swivels 180 degrees and lasers shoot from my eyeballs.
“Mike.”
“Amy, it’s not cheating.”
“Wow, great opener. It’s not cheating. So what is it?”
“We just . . .”
From onscreen, that pleasant voice chimes in, “We just . . . chat. We just . . . we watch each other. We talk.”
“You TALK? What the fuck do you talk about?”
Mike is frozen, but his girlfriend isn’t. “Oh, everything! Our hopes, our lives, our families . . .”
A gear pops. My head spins. More lasers shoot from my eyes. He talks about his family with this woman? His family? Our family?
“Mike, you need to say something now. I don’t know what this is, but it’s not okay. Is this . . . do you have feelings for her?”
Mike looks down.
Onscreen, I can see the answer in the way this woman’s slight and beautiful shoulders deflate at his nonresponse.
He does have feelings for her.
You know how you always hear about how if her kids are in danger, a mom could easily deadlift a minivan if she needed to? Well, if her marriage is in danger, she can clear a desktop computer, a flat-screen monitor, and piles of paperwork off a desk with her bare hands.