Like most women who are single, have no money, and haven’t achieved many goals outside of having gotten really good at Beer Pong, the closer I got to thirty, the more I started to freak out. It was similar to when I turned twenty-five but much, much more similar to a nervous breakdown.
My career was still moving forward, but it was a slow progression. I didn’t want to give up on my dream, but I couldn’t figure out what the trick was to making it happen. I worked hard at getting auditions, at performing, at trying to figure it all out. I was getting some work, but at night I still clocked in at the bar. I was going on twelve years in the restaurant business and my head was about to explode.
There should be a support group for people in the restaurant service industry. Food and cocktail ordering brings out the worst in people, and I’m not talking about the ones doing the serving.
Although I never talked much about marriage, I thought I wanted to do it one day.
I didn’t think I wanted kids, but I did close my eyes sometimes and think about my wedding day, just like every other asshole does. As happens to most women at that age, my friends started getting married.
Jen Stewart was a girl I’d known for years. She became roommates with Tilley after she and I had moved out of our two-bedroom. She was a ton of fun. I spent many nights drinking with her and Tilley at a hole in the wall across the street from their place called the Starlight Room. Jen and I were terrible influences on each other. We both liked to try new drinks, so we’d always have at least three different types of liquor a night. I’d forgotten my own rule of not mixing. When I finally figured out that that was why we kept waking up with headaches, we opted to stick to our new favorite drink: the White Russian. That phase also ended when one day Jen and I were complaining about our weight gain and Tilley piped up.
“Maybe it’s because you’re drinking heavy cream every night, assholes.”
We both switched to vodka and soda and never looked back.
Jen also worked at Formosa. She was probably how I got the job, which I didn’t figure out until later, when she told me that she was secretly dating the owner, Vince.
Jen had kept her relationship with Vince quiet so that nobody would know why she had the better shifts. Up until she finally told us, everyone at work had just assumed that she had the better shifts because she and Vince were secretly dating.
Jen and Vince got married the fall that I was turning thirty. The wedding was in Santa Barbara, and since I didn’t have a “plus one,” I opted to share a hotel room with another good friend from work, Joanna. She had just turned thirty, and was also handling it terribly. She was the perfect person to go to a wedding dateless with.
Vince had a really hot friend named Scotty. He was ridiculous-looking, one of those guys that you look at and just think, Well done, God. Well done. I think he wanted to be an actor, but it wasn’t working out. He was getting some modeling work, but he’d gotten sick of trying and had moved to Florida to become a firefighter. I know. Now that’s what a firefighter is supposed to look like, I thought when I heard he had become one. I imagine that women all over Orlando were committing arson just to get an in-home visit from him.
I joked to Joanna that I was going to have dirty, dirty sex with Scotty at the wedding. I guess I’d joked about it so much that I manifested it, because the night of the wedding I had dirty, dirty sex with Scotty.
I had borrowed a dress from Joanna. I’m not going to lie, I looked fucking good. Scotty told me the second he saw me that he couldn’t believe how beautiful I looked.
Perfect. He wants to hook up with me. He’s already throwing bad lines at me.
I didn’t own any thongs yet—I found them highly uncomfortable—but the dress called for one so Joanna was kind enough to lend me a pair of her underwear. Halfway through the night I drunkenly stumbled to the bathroom. I managed to get my dress up high enough to use the restroom, then halfway through peeing I realized that I still had the underwear on. Those thongs are tricky, you forget they’re there. I didn’t feel like walking around in wet underwear, and I was too old to tell anybody that I’d peed on myself. So I wiggled out of the thong and threw it away.
I stumbled back out to the reception and found Joanna.
“Have you seen Scotty?” I asked her.
“Yeah, he’s over there dancing with his sunglasses on.”
“Great. I’m going to go tell him I’m not wearing panties and see if that can speed up him putting it in me.”
“What do you mean you aren’t wearing panties?”
“Oh, so funny. I peed on them, so I had to throw them away. Don’t tell anybody!”
“Sarah, those were my underwear.”
“Oh, shit.”
“Don’t worry,” she laughed. “I wasn’t going to accept them back from you anyway. I saw you doing the electric slide earlier. I decided then that I’d never, ever want to wear them again.”
I wandered over to Scotty to try to tell him that I wasn’t wearing underwear. He was involved in a pretty unwatchable version of the chicken dance, so I walked back to find Joanna. I figured the panty conversation could wait.
Eventually Joanna and I took off to a bar with Scotty and another friend of Vince’s. We were pretty intoxicated already, got more intoxicated at the bar, and decided to go back to our hotel to get in the hot tub. Joanna and the other guy excused themselves from said hot tub when it became pretty apparent that Scotty and I were going to have sex in it.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never felt so proud of having sex with someone I didn’t know that well. When I woke up in the morning and he was in my hotel bed, I thought to myself: Well done, Sarah. Well done.
Scotty was supposed to go back to Florida the day after the wedding, but some sort of hurricane emergency kept him in L.A. He asked me if he could stay at my place for a couple of days, until he could get home. I casually said, “Sure,” then called and made an appointment for a bikini wax.
I was very much enjoying having Scotty as a sleepover guest. We had lots of sex, and in the morning I’d wake up to find him doing crunches on my living room floor. Makes sense, I thought to myself.
The only time we had a tiff in our four-day romance was when he was on the phone with Vince and told him that he was at my place.
“What were you thinking!” I yelled after he hung up. “I don’t want him to know we’re doing it! Gross!”
“Uh, he’s my best friend. He knew we did it the night of his wedding.”
“Oh my God, he’s my BOSS! Did you tell him about the hot tub?”
“Yes, and the elevator.”
“Oh my GOD. This is so humiliating. How can I ever look at him again?”
“He thinks it’s awesome. He loves you,” Scotty said nonchalantly.
“Oh, that’s really …” I stopped talking, grabbed his hand, and took him right back to my bedroom.
The night before he was going to get to go back to Florida was his birthday. He had plans with some guys, but before he left for the night I surprised him with a cake that I had made. Yes, I am a horrible cook, but I was feeling very sweet that week, probably because I’d been getting laid every hour on the hour. He cut himself a piece and ate it like it was the greatest thing in the world. Right after he left I tried a piece. It was repulsive.
Scotty went back to his normal life and I went back to mine. I was sad I didn’t have any pictures of him to show people who would never get a chance to see him, like Michele. One day I was in a Verizon store and noticed that he was on the brochure. A little something left over from his modeling days. I took about twenty and mailed them out to girlfriends with a little note that said, “Yep. I hit that.” I also kept one for myself.
I was still panicked about my upcoming birthday, and it was starting to get me down. When you aren’t feeling great about yourself, you make poor choices in men. I have definitely made some poor choices even when feeling good about myself, but the ones I made the last couple of years of my twenties were certainly the worst.
Jackie had left Mirabelle before me. In between us getting other jobs, we had a brief stint working together at another bar. The owner was the best. He was one of the funniest people I’d ever met. He could make me laugh like nobody else, which is probably why I was crazy about him. We became pretty close friends. And we all know how good I am at not falling for a close friend.
I can’t say for sure that Patrick had a drinking problem, but I can say for sure that he used to mix vodka with Pedialyte so that he would automatically rehydrate as he got drunk. Bad sign? Maybe. Genius? Definitely.
I didn’t date Patrick when I worked at his bar. I loved hanging out with him, but he had an intense love for strip bars and the girls who worked in them. He later claimed that he liked me then but had a strict rule about not dating employees. That may have been true, but if I had been an employee who also gave lap dances, my guess is he would have made an exception.
A few weeks after I quit working for him, we went out for drinks. Since I was no longer his employee, we had sex that night—or something similar to sex. We were both pretty drunk. I was now feeling very much like I wanted a boyfriend, and since he was in absolutely no place or condition to offer me that, I tried to make it happen.
Patrick and I always had a blast together. For the most part, we just got drunk, stayed up late singing country songs to each other, and repeatedly watched our mutual favorite movie, Arthur. If you think I’m talking about the Russell Brand remake, shame on you.
I can’t call what we had a “relationship.” I guess it wasn’t much different than it was with Nico. If I tried to move it toward anything else, it didn’t take. One day I realized we had never even been on a date. So I suggested that we go have a nice day at the beach, maybe even stay for a romantic dinner, like a real couple might do. He told me we could just get Bloody Marys, he’d throw celery salt at me, and that I could pretend it was sand. It made me laugh, but it also left me feeling pretty shitty. I pretended to be fine with where we were and what we were doing, but I wasn’t. I was falling for him.
Patick had a dog that was really, really mean. Anytime he had company she had to be put in another room so that she wouldn’t attack. Apparently she wasn’t always like that, but as she got older she got bitter, just like a human.
One night at his apartment, he was in bed and I was up watching SoapNet, which I couldn’t afford to have at my own place. Once General Hospital ended, I decided to go to bed. I stripped down, thinking it would be a real turn-on to Patrick if I sauntered into his bedroom fully nude and ready for action. As usual when at his place, I wasn’t completely sober. Unfortunately I forgot to knock first so that he could put his dog in the bathroom. The second I opened the door, I heard a loud growl and the sound of angry paws rushing me. Then I felt myself being knocked down to the ground. A few seconds later, the lights came on and the dog was nowhere in sight.
“She’s in the bathroom. I have quick reflexes,” Patrick explained.
Apparently when he heard the growl he shot out of bed and grabbed the dog. In the process he had also hip-checked me to the ground in order to save me. I looked up at him, naked, drunk, and in a ball on the floor. At least I’m not wearing a choker.
“I was trying to be sexy. Did it work?”
He laughed, scooped me up, and we went to sleep.
I don’t know if the naked humiliation, the fact that I couldn’t get along with his dog, or the fact that I could tell I was on my way to getting my heart ripped out was the tipping point, but things fizzled out between us. His lack of reaction to me not coming around anymore pretty much sealed my suspicion that I made the right call. I continued to carry a torch for a while, but that’s nothing out of the ordinary.
For a few months after that I dated a guy who had a teenage son. He lived with the mother of his child but they were just friends. He explained it was best for the son that they all three live together. I’m sure that probably is best for a kid if you’re hoping he’ll one day rack up a huge bill with a therapist.
Adam was nice. He seemed to have a good job and some stability, if I didn’t count his living situation. He was running some construction company and had the biceps to go with it. I liked the idea of being with someone who was not at all trying to be in the entertainment industry. A construction guy with a grown child was about as far off the mark of who I had dated in the past as I could get.
Adam had a steel plate in his mouth but I never really got the story as to why. He told me a couple of times, but it was so long and boring that I tuned out halfway through and just said things like “ouch, sounds awful” to give the illusion that I gave a shit. Unfortunately, as we dated, his real state of living started to reveal itself. The economy was taking its toll on his company. He always stayed at my apartment since I didn’t want to stay at his house with his fucked-up family. He snored like an animal, which he said had something to do with the steel plate. He was impossible to wake up. Once while I was in Vegas working on the hidden-camera show, he fell asleep on my couch, directly on the remote control. He somehow managed to get his head to lay perfectly on the volume button and my TV went up so loud that my neighbor had to go into the basement and turn off the electricity to my entire apartment building so that she could get a decent night’s sleep.
One day Adam suggested that we take his son to Magic Mountain. I tried everything I could think of to get out of it. I had my period, I felt a cold coming on, I shouldn’t get on a roller coaster in case I was pregnant. Nothing got me out of it; it’s not easy to win an argument with a man who lives every day sporting a metal jaw. I reluctantly agreed to the amusement park but forced my friend Casey to come with me. Her nephew was visiting her from out of town, and I figured two teenagers were better than one. I was wrong.
I hadn’t met Adam’s son yet so I tried to be open to the whole thing. I was pretty sure the relationship was going nowhere, but for some reason I still thought I needed to give it more effort. I was glad I had dragged Casey with me, but now I was with two teenagers at Magic Mountain. Did I mention it was July? I don’t know if it was the heat or just the reality of the situation, but it was extremely unpleasant. I don’t even like amusement parks in the first place. And I really don’t like teenagers. (Note to my nephew, Nicholas: I’m not talking about you. I like you.) That day pretty much sealed the fate of my relationship with Adam, along with my desire to ever procreate.
Single again, I decided to touch base with Tilley. I hadn’t seen her much over the last year or so and I decided that I should fix that. She was also about to turn thirty. I hadn’t ever been on a real vacation, and now was the time. I called her and we plotted a getaway to Cancún.
We stayed at a resort, one of those that give you bracelets and tell you to go nuts on the alcoholic beverages. I’ve never been fooled by those places—they don’t put enough booze in the drinks and you just end up tired and bloated from the overconsumption of blended fruit. I warned Tilley of the scam so we stocked our room with real alcohol. I started to wonder if my Cancún trip was going to mirror my Cabo trip, which in some ways worried me. In other ways, like how I might get to fuck a hot guy with an accent, it made me hopeful.
For the most part, we lay around in hammocks all day and went to bars at night. It was fun, relaxing, and it got my mind off turning thirty, until one day when we went to rent a car and one of the guys working there asked if Tilley was my daughter. I wondered if Shirley’s plastic surgery suggestion was something I should start to consider.
The final morning of our trip I woke up to the sound of the hotel phone ringing. Eyes still closed, I reached for it and put it to my ear.
“Hello?”
“Sarah?”
“Uh-huh. Who is this?”
“Ees Paco,” the voice said.
“Paco?” Tilley heard me and shot up straight in bed.
“Oh, hold on,” I said. “Must be the other Sarah.”
I started to hand Tilley the phone and she shook her head. “Nope. That’s for you.”
Confused, I listened as Paco rambled on about how it was nice to meet me and maybe he’d be able to catch up with me in L.A. “Maybe I visit soon and I has you cellphone number. Talk to you later!”
I hung up and looked at Tilley. “He has my cellphone number?”
“He does,” she said. “But don’t look at me. You gave it to him.”
“I did?” Why didn’t I remember this? I mean, I knew I had a knack for meeting guys on vacation but this was embarrassing.
Then a sudden memory flashed through my mind. “Oh … Paco …”
Paco had been cleaning off the tables at the last bar we were hanging out in (that’s my subtle way of saying that he was a busboy). I decided that he was cute and that busboys probably didn’t get enough attention, so I flirted with him and gave him my phone number—hotel and cell, just to cover all the bases. I also tipped him everything that I had in my wallet when I told him about the car rental incident and he said there was no way I looked old enough to be Tilley’s mom. He called me for about six months after that. I could hear the sounds of cars behind him and knew that he was calling from a pay phone. After a few attempts at talking I decided that when I saw an “unknown” number pop up I should always let it go to voice mail. I know I’m a good time, but the only reason a guy would be that persistent after meeting me for one night and not even having gotten sex out of it was that he needed a green card. I wasn’t that desperate yet.
When I got back home I decided that I needed to have another mini-vacation for my thirtieth birthday. Why not keep the ball rolling. Joanna had also just turned thirty. She owned an apartment in New York that she rented out. Her tenants would be gone for the holidays and she thought it would be great if we spent my actual birthday there.
Joanna didn’t mention to me that her apartment was the size of a litter box. I never knew what people were talking about when they said that the apartments in New York were tiny until I saw her place. The living room was the bedroom and the bedroom was the closet. The bathroom was so small that my knees stuck out of the door when I sat on the toilet and the kitchen was just big enough to turn on the stove and gas yourself to death in.
Her tenants left us a note that they had changed the sheets in the bunk beds and for us to make ourselves comfortable. Since that wasn’t really possible, I took the bottom bunk.
Like me, Joanna is a big baseball fan. She loves the Yankees almost as much as she loved her dog Stevie, who had passed away just prior to our visit to the city. She had had him cremated and we decided that during our trip to New York we would take him to the Yankee Stadium tour and spread him on the field. Since this was probably frowned upon, we divided Stevie up and snuck him in—in ziplock bags. I’d never been to Yankee Stadium so I thought the whole tour was great. Joanna reminded me that we were there for a purpose, and that I needed to focus.
When they took us into the dugouts and we sat on the players’ benches, I discreetly wriggled my bag of Stevie out of my coat pocket. I got it into the palm of my hand and began trying to unzip the bag. It was freezing and I was wearing gloves. I pulled a little too hard and ripped the bag open, which made the ashes sail all over the place, including onto the coat of the woman sitting next to me. She was paying too much attention to what our tour guide was saying to realize that I had just gotten cremated dog all over her, which I was grateful for. I cleared my throat until Joanna looked up and made eye contact with me. I nodded my head in the direction of the woman’s ashy coat and made an “I’m so sorry face.” She couldn’t quite tell what I was trying to say, so I whispered to her:
“Stevie’s on that lady’s coat.”
I patiently waited, dreading her reaction.
Joanna took a minute to process what I said, but eventually put it together. Her eyes welled up with tears. I thought she was going to lose it. She started laughing. “Hopefully she’s visiting from Europe,” Joanna replied. “Stevie always wanted to see Paris.”
Chelsea was also in New York that week, performing at Caroline’s Comedy Club, so Joanna and I decided to go see her on the night of my birthday. The show was really fun but I was still feeling restless. I was nervous that I was thirty and I wasn’t sure how to shake it.
We all went out after the show, and ran into some other comics whom Chelsea seemed to know. One was kind of cute. Actually he wasn’t, but I was drunk and he was flirting with me.
He told me that his name was Ryan. That reminded me that I was supposed to try to meet up with another guy named Ryan while I was in New York. I had met him in L.A. when he came in to Formosa with some friends of mine. You’d think after Nico I’d be turned off from dating customers, but in case you haven’t noticed, I always make the same mistakes at least twice. Ryan Friend of Friend had told me he was going to be in New York at the same time I was and thought maybe we could get together. I quickly went to the bathroom, texted him, then went back to the bar and flirted with Ryan Comic.
After several hours of drinking, I found myself sitting on a curb eating a huge slice of pizza while Joanna and Chelsea hailed a cab. When one finally pulled over, we all piled in the back then looked up to see that Ryan Comic had gotten in the front seat. Joanna and Chelsea looked at me. I shrugged and sighed, “It’s my birthday.” I had to make out with someone so unless one of them was up for the challenge, it looked like it was going to be Ryan Comic.
I had forgotten how small Joanna’s place was until we got back and saw it through Chelsea’s eyes. When we walked in, she looked around like she’d been taken hostage.
“Well, this is stupid,” she said. “I’m sleeping on the top bunk since it’s as far away from all of you as I can get.” With that she hopped in bed.
Joanna crawled onto the bottom bunk, so Ryan Comic and I were left to tangle up on the world’s smallest couch. We made out for about ten seconds before I decided that I wasn’t interested in him and fake passed out. He tried to wake me, but luckily I’m so good at fake passing out that I wound up passing out.
When we all woke up the next morning, Ryan Comic was gone. I checked my phone to see if Ryan Friend of Friend had called me back but he hadn’t. I felt a pang of disappointment. Chelsea and Joanna woke up and immediately started making fun of me for allowing Ryan Comic to come back with us.
“He was like thirty-eight,” Chelsea said.
“Really?” Joanna asked. “I thought he was forty-eight. The bald spot must have mixed me up.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” I conceded. “But at least I didn’t do anything with him. And it could have been worse; I could have brought back the German wrestler we met at that one bar.”
“Good point,” Chelsea added. “Weren’t you supposed to leave at nine for your flight?”
“Yes,” I said. “What time is it?”
“Nine forty-five.”
I was flying out of Long Island and had completely missed the train I was supposed to take. There was barely enough time to make it, but if I took a cab I might be fine. Chelsea had to lend me a hundred dollars in order to get me to the airport. I was really starting off my thirties on the right foot. I’m also pretty sure I never paid her back. Chelsea, if you’re reading this, I owe you a hundred bucks.
When I got back to Los Angeles, I heard back from Ryan Friend of Friend. He said that he had been pretty busy while he was in New York and was sorry that we didn’t get a chance to meet up. He wondered if I’d like to go see a movie or something. I said yes.
The first date I went on with Ryan Friend of Friend was the best first date I’ve ever been on. Nothing special happened; we saw Ocean’s Twelve and went out to dinner. He scored points right off the bat by taking me to the movie first. I like it that way, because then you have something to talk about at dinner, although there isn’t a ton to dissect in a George Clooney sequel. He probably just figured if we had dinner last, when he took me home I’d still have a buzz from the nice wine he ordered, and we could fool around. He was correct.
We went to this little French place in Hollywood that I love. It’s got great food, a patio, and a good wine selection. When the bill came he opened it and said, “What the fuck did you have?” which made me laugh. I decided for that I’d let him touch my boobs.
Ryan really wasn’t my “type.” He always dressed like he was about to go on a hike, you know, like a lesbian. He loved to buy clothes at REI, which is where people shop when they are about to go on a camping trip or need bug spray for a weekend in Costa Rica. He also loved to talk about how the shirt he was wearing also repelled water or how his shoes could be worn in a lake.
“Well, are you going to a lake?” I’d ask.
“No.”
“Then why can’t you just wear land shoes?”
Regardless, it was crazy to me how much I wanted to hump him.
That hadn’t been the case when we’d first met. He’d come up to me when I was working one night to tell me that he’d been in the bar a few months before and I’d given him back the wrong credit card at the end of the night. Apparently it made a trip to Vegas a real hassle for him and he wanted to tell me all about it.
“So a few months ago I mixed up your credit card and you came in here on a Saturday night at eleven P.M. to let me know?” I asked. I was really busy, and really annoyed.
“I play softball with Mike Gould. He told me you’d think it was funny. I was mad about it all this time, but he insisted that you’re really cool. So I thought I’d just—”
“Sorry about your credit card. Can I get back to work now?” I walked off. Who is this dick?
He came back up to me later to try to explain again his motivation for telling me his story. “Hey, I wasn’t trying to bother you earlier when I told you that story. I just thought—”
“It’s not personal. I’m just really busy.”
“Okay, good. So it’s your problem,” he snapped. Then he walked away.
I told Mike later that night how annoying his friend was. He laughed. “He said the same thing about you.”
A few weeks later Ryan came back into the bar, and I wasn’t as busy. I was talking to some other customers and he overheard that I did stand-up. Then he realized he’d seen me perform before.
“You’re really funny. I saw you at the Improv a couple of months ago. I just put it together that it was you,” he told me.
That’s when I softened on him. After all, he thought I was funny.