Truthfully, I was feeling depressed and broke, two things I was not really entitled to feel, but which nonetheless had become dominant emotional presences in my life. I dealt with these feelings by buying dumb garbage I didn’t need and not looking at my bank balance, ever. Other than the online shopping, I was not doing anything that was not 100 percent necessary to keep myself alive and my rent paid. The days of meditation and self-improvement efforts were over. I walked everywhere with sunglasses and a pair of big wireless headphones on, though they played no music; I had lost the charging cable months ago. I could no longer bear to stop and talk to people, give them the cheery CliffsNotes of my life, smile and promise I was doing great—really good, actually—then carry on, to eat soup and cut my toenails and watch TV in a basement, alone.
This was probably better for everyone, as I was awful to hang out with. All I wanted to do was dissect my breakup, on some days the worst thing that had ever happened to me and on others the very best, a blessing straight from god that would surely lead to all kinds of positive developments I could not quite yet imagine. I knew if I saw my friends I would have to care about their lives in return, and I simply . . . did not. What I wanted was to spend my time monologuing about love and tragedy and whether the size of my calves had anything to do with my being now divorced.
The only person I saw with any regularity was Simon, because he loved to talk about his breakup too, and we could go on and on together about where it had all gone wrong, absolving each other of our various relational mistakes, then eat some food or share a bottle of wine and have sex. My doubts from the diner ebbed and flowed. I could usually overwrite them with a few beers or a solid orgasm. Also, I had clogged my shower drain and now could not use it for more than five minutes without nasty gray water pooling at my ankles. Simon had a lovely shower.
Occasionally I would meet up with someone from one of the apps, so I could do first date makeup and tell my best anecdotes and ask my most interesting questions to someone I would never see again. Seeking connection was lovely in theory, but mostly it felt better to sing the hits for a dazzled new audience, to kiss outside a bar and part ways, to leave them wanting more.
Although I was shunning them, I still wanted my friends to invite me to things. Eventually they stopped, carrying on as though I had moved away or had a baby. So one overcast February afternoon, after a few too many Instagram Stories of everyone hanging out without me, I took out exactly forty dollars, selected “no receipt,” and texted my friends that I missed them, and would they please join me at a trivia night we sometimes went to, hosted by a man we were absolutely certain was the worst person alive but who had a genuinely impressive store of general knowledge.
They agreed, and a reunion was scheduled, with a plan to combine our intellects in pursuit of a free bar tab （or one craft beer–branded tote bag split five ways, results pending）。 On the day of the quiz—running thirty minutes behind for absolutely no reason—I texted Amy, who I also hadn’t seen in a while, to tell her to come along. When I got to the table, the group chat was fully assembled, and I was overcome with a wave of affection for my funny, stylish, oddball friends. I hugged them all and told them that Amy would be joining us.
“Oh,” said Amirah, sounding not particularly pleased. “That’s fun . . . We’ve never really hung out outside of work.”
I told Amirah I hadn’t known this and in fact had assumed they were close based on how highly Amy spoke of her.
“Amy speaks highly of everyone,” said Amirah. “She’d find something nice to say about Stalin.”
“That’s not hard,” said Clive. “Have you seen that picture of him when he was younger? Step on me, comrade.”
Everyone pulled out their phones, something that would shortly be disallowed by the rules of the quiz. It was agreed that the picture of young Stalin could get it, but that it was obviously a more complicated moral quandary to have sex or not with the man himself. Lauren suggested Stalin between 1897 and 1901 was “the sweet spot” and that she would do it with him during those years only. I proposed an elaborate time travel scenario wherein my powers of fellatio caused a young Joseph to abandon his political ambitions and devote himself to gardening. We caught Emotional Lauren with her phone under the table, googling what did Stalin do.
Amy rocked up as Amirah was telling us about a dog she and Tom had fallen in love with on an adoption website. “What are we talking about?” she asked, sliding in between me and Clive with an out-of-character bottle of IPA.
“Amirah and her boyfriend are getting a starter baby,” I said. “Guess it’s pretty serious.”
“It’s not that serious,” Amirah said, rolling her eyes and turning to Amy. “But look at him! What were we supposed to do?” She held out her iPhone, which displayed the adoption page for a tiny puggle called Jeremy.
Amy yelped. “That’s the cutest fucking dog I’ve ever fucking seen,” she said. “You have to get him, oh my god.”
“I think it’s a bad idea,” I said. “What if you break up?”
Amirah made a face like she’d tasted bad milk. “With Tom? No.”
“Well,” I said, “you never know. You said yourself it’s not that serious. Plus, I think I changed my mind on the concept of pets in general. A puppy is basically a down payment on a future dog funeral.”
Amirah put her phone in her pocket and went quiet. I nudged my chair closer to hers as Amy cheerily introduced herself to the rest of the table, shaking hands with Clive and Lauren and reaching awkwardly across the table to meet Emotional Lauren’s outstretched arms. Next to us, a team registered loudly as “Les Quizerables,” then looked around to see if anyone was jealous.
The first round of questions was themed around “Nineties Names”—the cloned sheep （Dolly）， Phoebe’s twin sister on Friends （Ursula）， the Princess Diana memorial Beanie Baby （somehow, incredibly, “Princess”）。 Our interest had started to wane by the music round; Les Quizerables was being annoyingly hard-core, and their furtive huddles and loud, urgent calls for clarification took the casual shine off the evening, revealing us to be engaged once again in Adult Hobbies.
“This is how I know we’re getting old,” said Lauren, as the Quizerables captain pulled his group in for yet another showy consultation. “Genuinely fun people do not need someone to organize fun for them.”
Amirah agreed, pointing out that we were probably the youngest people in the bar—a bad sign.
“I don’t know,” said Amy. “I wouldn’t want to be in my early twenties now. I have a few young gals on my floor, and they are stressed as hell.”
Lauren asked what they were stressed about.
“Everything,” she said. “They get anxiety about literally everything. This one girl, Kitty, she had to turn in a report to our floor manager last week, and she straight up . . . didn’t do it. When I asked her about it, she said, and I quote, ‘Deadlines give me anxiety.’”
The rest of the table was unsure how to respond. On the one hand, it was probably very annoying to have to do someone else’s report. On the other hand, anxiety is a real and often serious mental disorder affecting millions of people every day. On some third, more embarrassing but most important hand, nobody wanted to sound old for complaining about this stuff. We were about to turn thirty, not fifty-seven.