Kitabı oku: «The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo»

On Being New Money

The term “nouveau riche” is a fancy way of saying you’re a rich person who acquired your wealth on your own. You didn’t inherit it all from your great-grandfather. You worked for it. Either that or you bought that lottery ticket fair and square. But I actually prefer the term “New Money” because it’s a way of saying, “Yes, I am trash and I’m embracing it!”

I am New Money.

I feel lucky to live in America – where people will treat someone like me (trash) as if they come from bloodlines with Benjamins streaming through them. In England, they are not as impressed with people who have made their own dough within their lifetime. New Money is considered gaudy there. But in America New Money is celebrated more than Old, because it was earned in some way or another. We use our new money for stupid shit like spa treatments where eels eat the dead skin off of our toes or baby seal fat is injected into our assholes so we look young again. (A lot of marine life is utilized for some reason.) People applaud us. Go ahead, start a charity and give back a little and no one in the States gives a hot damn how you got it. You were knocked up by a basketball player and took him for all you could? Great, here is your own television show. You made a sex tape with a mediocre rapper? Here is the key to a billion-dollar corporation. Or in my case, hey, you told dick jokes to drunk people in small rooms at places called the Giggle Bone and the Banana Hammock? Would you like a movie deal?!

Looking back, I realize this is technically my second time to fall into the New Money category. My parents were living the textbook New Money lifestyle during my childhood … until they slipped into the No Money lifestyle just in time for my delicate preteen years. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I was born a precious little half Jew in Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side and sailed the five blocks home to our huge duplex apartment in a limo. Dad’s idea. To unbury the lede, my parents were rich. They were rolling in it. I mean, I thought they were. They’d take a private jet to the Bahamas at a moment’s notice, and they thought the high life was going to last forever. It didn’t.

My dad owned a company called Lewis of London, a baby furniture business that imported cribs and such from Italy. I don’t remember why they named it “Lewis of London” but if they were looking for a fancy name that only New Money people would use in order to make something sound high-end and international, they knocked it out of the park. At the time, no one else was selling fine foreign baby furniture, so rich Manhattan parents sought out my father’s store, where they could pick up the fanciest tiny infant prisons that money could buy.

I had some extravagant, rich-person things as a little kid. We moved out of the city to a nice suburb on Long Island when I was five, where we would eat lobster once a week and smoked fish for Sunday breakfast. Or as we called it, Jewing out hard! On lobster nights, Mom would bring the live ones home from the grocery store and put them on the kitchen floor for my brother, sister, and me to play with. At the time, I thought it was just a fun thing we did before boiling the tasty crustaceans, but in retrospect, I realize that we were playing with our future food in a Little-Mermaid-eating-Sebastian way that was very uncool. Couldn’t they have just gotten us a pet goldfish? All the other kids were outside riding bikes and we were making our lobsters race each other like gladiators. Sick. Either way, when I remember what it was like to grow up in a wealthy household, the food we ate stands out the most. Come to think of it, that’s mostly what I remember about any event or moment in life – the food that was there. A couple years ago, before I had “real” money, I asked Judd Apatow if it was fun being rich, and he explained to me that once you become rich you find out all the good things in life are free. He said you can buy a house, good sushi, and CDs, but that’s about it. Still, as someone who waited a lot of tables and ate off people’s plates on the way back to the kitchen, fancy sushi sounded pretty good to me.

Anyway, Lewis of London cornered the market – until other stores started selling European baby furniture and my parents lost it all. Which happened, incidentally, during the onset of my father’s multiple sclerosis. Cool timing, Universe!!! I don’t remember how it felt to lose everything, but I do remember men coming to take my dad’s car when I was ten. I watched him standing expressionless in the driveway as it was pulled away. My mom claims she didn’t know what was happening financially, but if this were an episode of MTV’s True Life: Squandering That Chedda they would say, “She blew his millions on furs and homes.” And if it were a Lifetime movie, they would say, “She was a victim whose life changed drastically in a split second.” I don’t know which is true. Probably neither. All I know is that my mom stayed in the house denying reality like it was her job when those men came to take away the black Porsche convertible.

I didn’t generally notice the loss, but I did notice a change in the quality of my birthday parties. That’s probably where I felt the biggest shift in my family’s financial situation. When I turned nine and we still had money, my parents threw me a “farm party” at our beautiful home on Surrey Lane, a quiet street in Rockville Centre. Early that morning, a box with holes in it was placed in the garage. When I removed the lid, a gaggle of baby ducks looked up at me. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I remember believing in my heart that I was the little girl in Charlotte’s Web. I was so in love with those little creatures that I could have sat there and petted them all day, and died happy.

Since we could afford the whole kit and caboodle, real-life farmers carted real-life farm animals to our house in shifts throughout the day. Bring on the donkeys! We had a pony; we had goats; we had chickens. If you’re a kid from Iowa and you’re reading this, you’re like, who cares? A couple of animals in your yard sounds like a Tuesday. But trust me, if you’re from New York and you have a cow in your driveway, you’re rich – and the most popular kid in school for a year. All of my little friends dressed up in overalls and played in a pile of hay and went fucking crazy. It’s gross when you see it for what it really was: a bunch of well-off kids whose idea of a great time was to slum it like poor farm children. I’ve also been to a food-fight birthday party. Can you imagine starving kids in Syria watching us waste food like that? It makes me shudder.

Don’t worry, the irony came back to bite me in the ass soon after. Life got less and less comfortable for us after my parents lost all their money. We began moving into smaller and smaller homes until it felt like we were all sleeping in a pile – and not a fun pile like the monsters in Where the Wild Things Are. A sad, poor pile like the grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Amy, do you ever reference adult books? No!) By the time I was in college, my mom had moved us into a basement apartment where my sister, Kim, who is four years younger than me, had the one bedroom, and I had to share a bed with my mom. (Quick tip: Do not try to ditch a cab when you are blackout drunk and then get in bed naked with your mother. The cabdriver will follow you home and knock on your door, and then your mother will have to apologize to him and give him cash while you lie giggling and nude under the sheets, where you are experiencing the bed spins … I heard from a friend.)

But to be honest, I never felt poor, even when we were. I always had enough money for lunch and to go on field trips with my class. I was always well provided for. We would go to the occasional Broadway show or take a road trip to somewhere with trees and a lake or pond, or a sizable puddle when the going got really tough. We were living above our means, just not Real Housewives of New Jersey level. It was more like the staff at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant. (Yes, I only speak in Bravo metaphors; thank God for Andy Cohen.) Luckily, all of my friends dressed bad and never had any interest in designer clothes or other material things. I’ve never worn jewelry (or spelled “jewelry” correctly on a first attempt) or name brands. My friends cared a little more than me but it wasn’t too noticeable. We would buy shirts from Bebe, but we could only afford the actual T-shirts that read “Bebe.” Those shirts were always on sale – and for good reason.

I drove a shitty car, but at least I had a car. Twizzie was a very used station wagon that smelled like a stable but could turn on a dime. I loved doing donuts in that car and would drive as many people home from school as I could fit. I would shout, “Pick ’em up!” (I think it was a Dumb and Dumber reference) as I made the parking lot rounds. If Twizzie went above thirty miles per hour everyone in the car felt like they were holding Shake Weights. But, still, it was a car! I didn’t feel like a low-income kid. I remember loving my prom dress so much that I wore it to the prom twice – when I went junior year and also for my own prom, senior year. I can’t remember ever wishing for something that I couldn’t afford. I was very lucky.

It wasn’t until college that I began to take note of the fact that I had to work a little harder than the average student to get by. I was living on my meal plan, stealing food from the student union, and scamming drinks off guys when necessary – which wasn’t easy because freshman year, I looked like a blond Babadook. I got a job teaching group exercise classes at my college and those classes were my main source of legal income. (I sold a little weed and shoplifted from department stores too … oops. Shhh. That doesn’t leave this book.) Anyway, I was the worst drug dealer ever. I would run out of baggies and have to use entire Hefty garbage bags for the smallest amount of weed. I’d give a gift along with it, like a baked potato or whatever I had lying around the apartment. And every summer when I came home from college, my sister and I would bartend at the only bar in Long Beach, where we served beer and wine and food fried within an inch of its gross life. We would work sixteen-hour days, returning home covered in ten layers of film from the fryer, our feet swelling out of our sensible shoes and aprons filled with dollars. We’d lay our tips out on the bed and count them, some days totaling as much as five hundred bucks, and we thought we were sultans. We’d fall asleep smiling and wake up at eight a.m. to do it again the next day.

When I graduated college I was B to the R to the O to the K to the E, broke broke. Vanilla Ice broke, before HGTV Ice. I made enough money waiting tables to pay rent and eat nothing but cheap dumplings every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And snack. And brunch. I lived in a closet-sized studio apartment with a Craigslist roommate. One night a bunch of comics were going to get sushi and I couldn’t go because I’d spent my last few dollars paying for my five minutes of stage time that night (an investment well worth it, since I bombed in front of all seven disgruntled stand-ups in the audience). Sushi in New York costs more than a blood diamond, so it was out of the question for me. But one of the comics, Lorie S., kindly bought me a California roll. I was so grateful and felt really embarrassed that I needed her to get it for me.

But I worked really hard, and soon enough, instead of buying stage time at open mics and going home hungry, I started making a couple hundred dollars a weekend doing stand-up. And then about four years ago, I started making a couple thousand a weekend. The first very very big check I got was for a college performance where I was paid $800 for one hour. I ran around my apartment screaming for joy.

When I made my first real chunk of change doing the Last Comic Standing tour, I took Kim to Europe. Instead of sharing a cot in a filthy youth hostel, we got to stay in real hotel rooms with private bathrooms and everything. They weren’t fancy, but we felt like the Rockefellers. Or if you’re a millennial, the CEO of Roc-A-Fella Records.

But the thing about Old Money (Rockefellers) vs. New Money (Roc-A-Fellas) is that both still have M-O-N-E-Y. I don’t care if the Old Money folks look down on me for being New Money. I will happily clink glasses with them sitting up front on an airplane. What an amazing privilege it is to fly first class! I don’t take that for granted. I still recall the first time I stepped foot on a private jet. The first time for anything having to do with money is the best. I was doing a show headlined by Louis CK, Sarah Silverman, and Aziz he-doesn’t-need-a-last-name. The show was only in Connecticut so the trip home wasn’t far, but when Louis asked if I wanted a lift I said, “Fuck yeah!” People with money feel guilty about having it in front of people who don’t, and they don’t want to say the words that make others hate them. He didn’t say, “Amy, would you like to fly on a private jet I have paid for to travel the mere twenty minutes it takes to get home?” No. He said, “Do you want a lift?” as if we were in an old movie and I was a distressed damsel waiting for a streetcar on a rainy night.

It is awful how wonderful it is to fly private. Just disgusting. I recommend you treat this paragraph like a Choose Your Own Adventure book and skip ahead, so you don’t hate me and your life. When you fly private, a car drives you right up to the runway at the exact time your flight takes off. You want to take off at 9:00 p.m., your car drops you there at 8:55 p.m.! No standing in a crowded terminal (which is the right word for that, because it feels like death), no fluorescent-ass airport lighting, no long bathroom lines, no waiting in line for security with frantic people who left too late for their flight. No endlessly long lines to pay ten dollars for a water and gum you don’t even like, because they didn’t have your favorite. You just get out of your car and walk onto the plane, and you’re in the air in about fifteen minutes. There is a car waiting at the other end, right when you get off the plane; they hand you your bag and you go on your merry motherfucking way. I have been on a couple of jets that were fancy hip-hop-video-looking ones and some that were old and dirty. But it doesn’t matter. You are alone on there!!!! All of this is to say I feel crazy lucky to be in a position to even set foot on a private jet. I appreciate every second of it. Just like a New Money person should.

I stay in nice hotels, I Uber instead of hailing a taxi … even during pricing surges. I can get expensive meals when I want and that’s what I do for myself. I’m not going to bullshit you: it feels great to know I could send my niece to any school she wants even though she is already a genius at two and will get a full ride for her grades or a scholarship when she becomes a Division I volleyball player. It’s relaxing to know I can pay for my dad to be in a better facility and make sure he sees the best MS specialist in America. I also know how unfair it is that not everyone can do these things. I’m New Money, not an asshole. That’s a lie. I haven’t lied to you yet in this book, and I don’t want to start now. I am an asshole.

The best part about having money is that you get to be an asshole and burn money on stupid shit. If one of my friends is working at a comedy club, I will sometimes pay to have their greenroom filled to the brim with ridiculous bouquets of flowers, like a hip-hop artist’s funeral, with wreaths and the whole nine. One of the writers on our TV show made the mistake of telling me he had booked a very small guest role on the TV show Veep. Naturally, I had an insane amount of roses delivered to his dressing room to weird out the rest of the cast and embarrass him. I can afford to buy expensive fake astronaut suits in the gift shop at the Museum of Natural History for my sister and me so we can walk around in them all day just to be dickheads and never wear them again. I can hire a private chef to cook for me and my family, without needing it to be a special occasion.

My agent is my friend and he is a young guy who is incredibly shy and does not like attention called to him. Unfortunately, I think it’s hilarious to humiliate him, so I have, on several occasions, hired a clown to show up at his office while he is in a meeting and make him balloon animals and sing to him. I’ve rented Ferraris just to drive them for an hour with friends. I’ve chartered a boat simply because it’s sunny outside. I am like a rapper, but a manageable one. I don’t buy the Ferrari or the boat; I rent them and purchase all the insurance. I don’t load up on Cristal for the ride. I buy a moderately priced sparkling wine and I only drink half a glass because it gives me a headache and I have writing to do. I’m like a conservative, reasonable rookie athlete. Or a lottery winner with a financial adviser and a sick sense of humor. I am NEWWWW Money.

It’s weird to be treated differently all of a sudden just because you have been on TV or have some cash. I am not special just because I’m famous right now. I won’t be famous forever – not even much longer actually, which is fine with me because it doesn’t feel good to have people be nicer to you because of your money. My favorite people in the world still give me shit and treat me like the Long Island trash receptacle that I am. I want to be treated the same way I treat people. One thing I will say for myself is that I am cool about money. Anyone who comes out of the rags-to-riches experience and isn’t cool about money is a douchebag. I try to remember where I came from. I remember when a 30 percent tip changed my day, or sometimes even my week. I remember when I had to sell my clothes to secondhand stores so I could do an open mic. I remember when I almost donated my eggs because I didn’t know what else to do to make a buck (and besides, I’m Jewish and my eggs go for double the price!). I remember when I went to the Penny Arcade coin-counting machine at TD Bank so I could take my boyfriend out to dinner at TGI Fridays for his birthday.

And now I can take my girlfriends on vacation and buy a California roll for everyone! I’ve definitely spread the wealth – whether through leaving good tips or helping out worthy causes, friends, and family. This should be standard practice for wealthy people. I get paid a lot for what I do. That is the nature of show business. If you are someone who can sell tickets and get people to see you live, you are overpaid. So there is no excuse not to hook people up. When I left the bartenders a $1,000 tip at the Broadway musical Hamilton, I found it odd that it became a viral news story. Doesn’t this sort of thing happen fairly often at THE most popular musical in a city where tons of rich people live? If I make a bonus at shows, I pass it on to my openers and to the people who did my hair and makeup. I’ve given most of my amazing best friends six-figure checks to make their lives a little easier, and I donated the majority of my salary for the fourth season of my TV show to the crew, all of whom have worked with Inside Amy Schumer anywhere between two and four years. Every dollar I made shooting the movie Thank You for Your Service went to the families of PTSD victims and charities for military families.

It’s fun to give money away! I still remember the first time like it was yesterday because it was something I had always dreamed of doing. After getting paid a large sum, I wrote my sister a check for ten thousand dollars and handed it to her in my living room. She looked down at it and said, “Shut the fuck up. No. No. Really? No.” She was excited about the money, but mostly she was just so happy for me, knowing how great it must have felt to be able to share. We walked around Chelsea Piers looking at the check and smiling. We ate lobster rolls and cake bites and felt like we were floating. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in my life. But more than being fun, giving is important! However, my business managers have told me to slow my roll, and my sister has warned me several times not to Giving Tree myself to the point where I am a stump with everyone’s names carved onto me. But I’m happier being generous, because even though I know what it feels like to have a surplus of money, I haven’t forgotten what it feels like to truly need it. People have had it way worse than me, of course, but I know what it is to depend completely on yourself in life.

THE YEAR AFTER my parents lost it all, my birthday party was much different than the barnyard fantasy experience I had during the rich years. The theme was the Lionel Richie song “Dancing on the Ceiling.” My dad put a light fixture on the rug in the middle of the living room and the seven kids in attendance danced around it as the song played, over and over again. My dad filmed it with his camera upside down, and then we all watched the recording and ate pizza.

I actually remember it being a great time. It was, and still is, a great song, and the kids didn’t care. We didn’t need a bounce castle or someone dressed as Rainbow Brite to have a good time – give us some pizza and a disco ball, and there’s a party. I didn’t even realize we were out of money; I just thought my parents were confused about my level of affection for Lionel Richie.

Today, I’m just as happy as I was when I was waiting tables at a diner or collecting unemployment after getting fired. I don’t believe that money changes your level of happiness. But things do get easier, and I feel great in the moments when I can help someone. I still mostly stay home and order Chinese food or sushi. I still get drunk and binge-eat late at night. But now it’s just on more expensive wine instead of the boxes of Carlo Rossi that got me through more than half of my life. I’m glad I struggled. I think I’d be an asshole if my money were anything other than the “new” kind. And for the record, when my niece asks me for a car in thirteen years, I will say “Of course” and treat her to a very shiny station wagon that turns on a dime and shakes what its mama gave it any time it goes over thirty miles per hour when she’s going to buy her friends forties.

An Introduction to My Stuffed Animals

For some reason I’ve always been drawn to these old, nightmarish stuffed animals. This started early on in my childhood. I never really liked the new, plush, cute animals – the kind with rainbows and hearts that they always market to little girls. You would never see my favorites crowded together in a toy store display. No. I liked these horrifying, broke-down creatures from yesteryear.

I’d like to introduce you to them – in no particular order. (I don’t want them to think I have any favorites. Even though, of course, I do.) At some point, I plan to put out a request on Twitter where I ask people to post photos of their childhood stuffed animals that they still have and love. Let me clarify that if you still sleep with these animals, and you are a woman in your midthirties, you are weird. I absolutely do NOT do that every night. I don’t. So shut up.

I got Mouser when I was about ten years old at my friend’s garage sale on Long Island. I had helped set up the goods they were selling, and I was eyeing him all morning. He just had a good vibe and we clicked. There was debate about whether he is a mouse or a bear, but I always felt he is clearly a mouse. Another confusing fact about his identity is that he is made of felt and velour but he is somehow covered in rust.

Bunny came into my life when I was about seven years old. She was the only one among my stuffed animals who was very new and freshly store-bought when I got her. This particular puppet style of flat rabbit was kind of hot at the time. Despite her being the most corporate of the gang with her mass appeal, I love Bunny, no question. I am calling Bunny a girl but I just now realized that I never actually assigned a gender to any of my stuffed friends.

I got Panda when I was eight years old. She too was kind of on the new side, but because she is so soft, she’s gotten the most play out of me. I tattered her up right quick. Again, never thought of Panda as a girl or a guy. Just a panda.

I saw Penny at an antique store when I was seven. We have shared the most forbidden love story of all. I loved her so much, so fast. While my mom shopped around, I held on to this little felt panda puppet with a hard head full of straw and soulful googly eyes. I was heartbroken when my mom refused to buy her for me because she cost forty dollars. But a couple weeks later, we were reunited when my mom surprised me by bringing her home to me. Upon seeing her, I yelled, “Penny!!” My mom was very moved that I’d named a creature who wasn’t yet mine. I once lost Penny for a year, only to find out she was at this chick Rachel’s house. Rachel said she thought I’d given her Penny, and I explained to her that she was nuts because I would never part with precious little Penny. This second reunion with Penny was especially sweet. I think Penny is a girl but that never defined her. She’s a little warrior.

The MVP has gotta be the lady in the photo at the end of this chapter: Pokey. Pokey was my mom’s when she was a little girl so I’ve had her since I was born. She has, without fail, scared the shit out of every single boyfriend I’ve brought around. When I was a little girl, I was not invited to sleepover parties unless I promised to leave Pokey at home. She’s been described as the bride of Chucky and also a nightmare machine. But I don’t see her that way. I love her and still put her arm around my neck when I need comfort, just like I did when I was a little girl. Also I’m not sure Pokey is a chick but I do know that I have stained her with enough tears to change her color. She – or he, or it – has gotten me through it all. Pokey is filled with the same hard straw material as Penny’s head, and despite my very fluid interpretations of her gender, I did choose to have her re-covered in pink fabric and white lace when I took her to the doll doctor (which is a thing). I have never been one to pay much attention to gender identification. We had – well, we still have – a cat named Penelope who lives with my mom, but she has both paws in the grave at this point. I named her Penelope before we learned she was actually a boy, but we didn’t change her name and we still refer to her as a “her” to this day.

Other stuffed animals have come and gone over the years. I have a two-headed bear that I never named. It was a gift from an ex-­boyfriend. It was a pretty perfect gift. Soft and disturbing, which is how I would describe myself. I still have it. It’s too perfect, which is also how he would describe himself. I’ve gotten a lot of stuffed animals from boyfriends over the years. I’m someone who likes to erase all record of an ex as soon as we break up. I try to Eternal Sunshine them from my life. I erase all pictures from my cell phone and throw away all gifts. I save printed pictures, but in a box in the closet.

The same ex who gave me the two-headed bear gave me a huge – and I mean huge – stuffed gorilla for Valentine’s Day. We named him Carlos. And don’t look into that for some racial undertones. I just liked the name Carlos. We’d joke about how he got me huge gifts even though I had a tiny apartment. He’d buy me giant things that didn’t fit in it, sometimes on purpose. Once he got me a huge plant, more like a tree, which made my apartment look like a place Jane Goodall would want to hang out. I had to drag it to the backyard area, which in New York City is really just a frightening alley for rats to frolic in and eat whatever you’re storing out there – in my case, boogie boards.

The last stuffed toy I got from a boyfriend is a little stuffed horse. When my two-year-old niece first saw him, she started to call him “Neigh,” which is the sound a horse makes, in case you grew up in a city. She now sleeps with Neigh and I have to play the waiting game until she moves on from him, but they’ve been going strong for a while now. I hope she isn’t like that with dudes when she grows up. Or chicks. Or maybe she won’t identify as female. Whatever she does will be fine. Or he. Damn, it’s hard to write a book and not get yelled at.

I know you just started reading this book so you are still getting to know me, and maybe you are questioning my commitment to these animals. You think I’m writing a fanciful flight about these odd and amusing creatures. But I am 100 percent genuine in my devotion to them. Where does my obsession with them end? Not in a disgusting New York City garbage can where I once made a boyfriend rescue them after we discovered the movers had made a terrible mistake and thrown them all away. (To be fair to the movers, Pokey does look like she belongs in a dark alley in a war-torn village and not in a nice grown-ass woman’s bedroom.) You might be thinking of asking me, Amy, did you commission Tilda Swinton’s life partner, Sandro, to paint a portrait of your stuffed animals to commemorate them forever and ever? No, that would be taking it too far – oh wait, no, I mean fuck YES I did that.

They’re worth it. Each one of them is a ratty, pilled pile of fabric sewn together precariously, but I love them more than most of my family.

Dad

When I was fourteen my dad shit himself at an amusement park.

It all went down one fine summer morning when he took Kim and me to Adventureland, which is exactly what it sounds like: an amusement park filled with adventure, as long as you’ve never been on an actual adventure or to an actual amusement park. I’d fantasized about the trip the whole week, dreaming about my two favorite rides: the pirate ship and the swings. Granted, they were two of the tamer rides at the park, but for me, they were at the absolute outer limit of my comfort zone. I liked the rides that gave you that feeling of weightlessness that shot from your stomach right down to your vagina when the ride dropped, but I’d never enjoyed a ride that went upside down or spun around until I puked, and I still don’t. I guess you could say I have a low tolerance for fear in general.

The movie Clue terrified me beyond belief as a child. I slept with a pillow on my back because the chef in that movie was stabbed in the back with a huge kitchen knife. Not gonna happen to this gal; just try to get a knife through this pillow, I thought. As if a murderer would enter my bedroom at night intent on stabbing me in the back, see that there was a pillow there, and cancel his plans. I used a similar tactic after hearing about (but not seeing) the movie Misery. I slept with pillows covering my legs in case Kathy Bates got a late-night urge to drive out to Long Island, break into my home, and beat my legs with a mallet. Maybe this is why I always slept with (still sleep with) all my scary-looking horror-show stuffed animals. For protection.

Suffice it to say, I was a major scaredy-cat. In fourth grade, I had a talk with the school psychologist about all the things that actively terrified me. I wasn’t sent to see him by a concerned teacher, I actually asked to see him. I was probably the only nine-year-old in history who requested time with a shrink. After our session, he handed my mom a list of all my fears. This list included earthquakes and tapeworms, which didn’t usually come up much where I lived, but my brother was learning about them in school and he couldn’t resist the urge to convince me I was nothing more than a sitting duck who was 100 percent going to get eaten alive from the inside by a worm. Highest (and most memorable) on the list, however, was the specific fear that I’d accidentally churn myself into butter. This was inspired by a creepy antique children’s book called Little Black Sambo, which is one of those stories from the simpler, more racist times of yore when people wrote frightening, insulting tales to help children fall asleep at night. It was highly popular back in the day and has since been rightly banned or taken out of circulation. But my mom had a copy lying around. It’s about a boy who goes on an adventure and ends up getting chased by tigers, who circle and circle around a tree so fast that they churn themselves into a pool of butter, which the boy then takes home for his mother to use to make pancakes. Like ya do. Anyway, I was always riddled with fear that I’d somehow be transformed into melted butter, which now doesn’t really sound like that much of a bummer. It sounds more like how I’d like to spend my last twenty-four hours on this earth.

Anywhoozle, the morning my dad was going to take us to Adventureland, I woke up and got dressed in denim shorts that stopped just above the knee (crazy flattering) and a long T-shirt with the Tasmanian Devil on it, to let people know what was up. The shirt had to be knotted at the side because it was the early nineties and that’s how you rocked out then.

It was not usual for my dad to take us on fun outings, but our parents had recently divorced, so we’d started spending solo time with him. This way, we could sneak in some fun, and he could sneak in feeling like a parent. He picked us up in his little red convertible around ten a.m. (even after he lost everything, he still always drove a convertible). I sat in the front because the back was too windy, and I convinced Kim that she’d like it better. It was about a forty-­minute drive from our house, but it felt like four hundred because of the anticipation: the dozen or so rides, the limitless Sour Powers, and the arcade games just inside the park!

My dad always made me feel super loved and did the best he possibly could, but when I was a kid, his identity confused me. He wasn’t the golf-playing, beer-drinking family man I saw on TV or in my friends’ kitchens. He wasn’t so easily labeled – or so easily understood. When he was younger, he’d been a wealthy bachelor living in 1970s New York City – when it was also in its prime. He’d shared a penthouse with his best friend, Josh, who was a well-known actor at the time. He did drugs and slept with girls and enjoyed every moment of his life. When he met my mom, he said good-bye to that lifestyle. Kind of.

Throughout my childhood, he was always in shape – tanned and well-dressed. He was an international businessman, frequently traveling to France, Italy, Prague, and I’d know he’d returned home from a trip before I saw or heard him as his smell was so potent and gorgeous. I thought it was a mixture of expensive European cologne, a faint smell of cigarettes, and something else I didn’t yet recognize but later discovered was alcohol.

I never knew my dad to be a big drinker. I never saw him and thought he was even a little buzzed. If you don’t know the signs, then they can’t be there. I remember coming home from school and seeing him passed out naked on the floor, but not putting two and two together. I remember that he once apologized to me for missing a volleyball game that he was at, but I just thought, Oh, forgetful Dad! I knew he smelled like scotch, but I thought nothing of it. (To this day when a guy I’m with is really hungover or drunk, the smell reminds me of my dad, as I warmly cuddle him closer. When I tell the guy, he laughs, thinking I’m joking.)

I only later found out that my dad was as serious an alcoholic as they came. He needed to go to detox several times when we were children. To his credit, he was clever with his addiction. He only drank when he traveled or when we slept, so … all the time and every night. The only thing that slowed down his drinking was multiple sclerosis.

He was diagnosed when I was about ten and was soon in the hospital for a while since the disease hit like a tidal wave. It started with a tingle in his feet and fingers and grew to complete numbness and pain in his legs. When he finally got out of the hospital, he kind of went back to normal. I didn’t think about his illness and no one brought it up again. I loved my dad, but like any self-obsessed teen, I wasn’t worried with his mortality. Even though I saw him lying in the hospital bed in pain, I still thought of him as invincible. The morning he picked us up to go to Adventureland, I had pirate ship rides on the brain and can’t say I was too concerned about his health.

When we pulled up to the gates of the park, we ran to the high-flying swings and got in line. It was a little chilly, so it wasn’t too busy, which meant that we got to go on the ride two or three times in a row before moving on. I loved those swings because I could pretend I was fearless and twist my chair around and around before they shot up in the air to begin the ride, spinning me high in the sky.

I wanted to beeline to the pirate ship, but Kim wanted to go on the big scary roller coaster. We had all day, so I said fine, even though roller coasters brought me zero joy. Being jolted around and the yelling and the possibility of dying didn’t – and still doesn’t – do it for me. I hated creeping up the hill at a painfully slow pace only to shoot down and hear the screams of all the people filled with regret for coming aboard. But Kim liked them. And I liked Kim. And since I was the big sister, I wanted her to always think I was brave, so I pretended it was no big deal and got in line.

But to be honest, I also wanted to wow my dad. He knew I was a complete chickenshit, and I thought he might notice and say something like “Hey, Amy … you going on that ride was very cool and interesting.” He loved things like skydiving, which I eventually did when I was older, also to try to impress him, even though I hated every single second of it. So there we stood in a long line that felt like it was moving too fast. I hunched over a bit, hoping I wouldn’t meet the height requirement for the ride, but no such luck. I continued to hope that the roller coaster would close down for the day right before we got up to the front, or that there would be a lockdown on the park for a missing kid. There were thousands of kids there. Couldn’t just one of them get lost? But alas, no, we were next.

“Do you want to sit in the front car?” the six-year-old-looking kid operating the ride asked us.

“YES!” Kim yelled.

I looked at my dad, who was giving me a most-likely-sarcastic thumbs-up. “Yeah,” I added, even though Kim had already hopped in the front.

“I’ll be watching you girls!” he said ecstatically.

We waved to my dad as we started creeping up Suicide Mountain, or whatever the roller coaster was called.

I don’t remember much of the next two minutes, but finally the car stopped and I opened my eyes. The only silver lining was that I didn’t get physically hurt, and it was a great way to practice ­dissociating – something my siblings and I all perfected by our early teen years. We climbed off, and Kim was thrilled. She’d had the time of her life.

I can’t speak for the other maniacs on that ride, but for me, the roller coaster was traumatic. When I walked down that ramp I felt as though the president should have been at the bottom waiting to give me a medal for valor. But there was no medal; just my dad, smiling at us.

“There’s no line!” Kim shouted. “Let’s go again!”

And so we went, and we went and we went. Each time my dad cheered us on from the bottom. We must have ridden that thing five times when we reached the end of the ride and he wasn’t there.

“Where’s Dad?” Kim asked.

I told her, “He’s probably getting us candy or something.”

While we waited for him, we rode the ride again and again and again. After the twelfth go I was feeling real ready to get on that pirate ship, which was the main adventure I wanted to have in this land. Kim was raring to go again, but I had to stop. I thought it might be nice to take a break and maybe have kids someday, and I was sure Dad would meet us when he was done doing … What was he doing?

At that point in time, I hadn’t yet realized how funny my dad is. Most of the things he did or said flew right over my head, and everyone else’s for that matter. His sense of humor was so dry that days would pass before people realized he’d insulted them. He threw out perfect one-liners under his breath while talking to waiters or bankers or my mom – and no one heard them but me. Once my grandma was talking to him, and she said, “If I die …,” and he corrected her slyly: “When …” He was even dark with us as children. I remember walking into the kitchen one time and seeing him pretending that I had just caught him in the act of putting our dog, Muffin, in the microwave. He had a way about him that made it seem like nothing could ruffle his feathers or surprise him.

So that day while Kim and I sat on a bench and waited for my father, I saw a new side of him. We waited and waited. I put stupid braids in Kim’s hair and made her give me a hand massage until he finally reappeared. When he walked up to us, the first thing I noticed was his expression; he was panicked and defeated at the same time. The second thing I noticed was that he didn’t have pants on.

Kim didn’t observe any of this because she immediately asked, “Can we get fudge?!”

“Sure,” my dad answered.

He and I looked at each other. I was speechless. His T-shirt, which was soaking wet along the bottom half, was long enough to cover his underwear, but his pants were long gone.

“We need to go, Aim,” he told me very calmly.

I thought about asking something reasonable, like “Where are your pants, Dad?” But he looked in my eyes and communicated that I shouldn’t ask any questions. I went into the country-store-themed shop and got Kim her fudge, and then we all walked briskly to the car. I didn’t look to see if anyone was staring. I only watched ten-year-old Kim, who was fully enthralled by every bite of her treat. Does she really not see that he’s pantsless? I know it’s called Adventureland but I don’t think those adventures involve men over forty dressing like Winnie the Pooh after a wet T-shirt contest.

We’d just gotten very close to the car when a breeze hit and sent the smell my way. It was shit. Human shit.

It was then I realized, Oh, my dad shit his pants. Okay. I quickly leveraged this opportunity to look like a selfless and charitable sister. “You can get shotgun this time, Kimmy!” I was quick on my feet.

“Really?!” she answered. She was so excited to get this privilege that it kind of broke my heart. Amusement park fudge AND shotgun? She couldn’t believe her luck. Little did she know she wouldn’t be able to enjoy eating that fudge for much longer, or possibly ever again.

We climbed in the car, me in the back, Kim up front with my dad. As he put down the top, I looked in the side mirror and saw Kim’s nostrils start to flare. She’d picked up the scent. The most silent car ride of my life began. The fudge sat in Kim’s lap for the rest of the ride and her head slowly crept further and further in the direction away from my dad. The entire top was down on the car, but she still felt the need to hang her little head out the side. She looked like a golden retriever by the time my dad pulled up to our house to drop us off.

I was so impressed with her for not saying anything. What a good girl, I thought. She kissed my dad on the cheek and thanked him and ran into the house, her face the same exact hue as Kermit the Frog. I hopped out and held my breath to kiss him. I started to walk up our driveway when he called to me.

“Aim!”

I turned and answered, “Yeah?”

He took a breath and said, “Please don’t tell your mom.” I nodded.

The saddest realization I’ve had in my life is that my parents are people. Sad, human people. I aged a decade in that moment.

THE SECOND TIME my dad shit himself in my presence, I didn’t have a roller coaster to keep me from witnessing it. It was right in front of me. Well, more to the side of me.

It was four years later, the summer before I left for college, right before I got on a plane to Montana to stay with my older brother, Jason, for a couple weeks. I worshipped Jason and was always trying to hang out with him. He is almost four years older than me, and as far as I was concerned, he should have won People magazine’s most intriguing person of the year, every year. He was a basketball prodigy in his early teens but suddenly quit in high school because he didn’t want to live up to other people’s expectations anymore. He was curious about things like time and space, and genuinely considered living in a cave for months and being nocturnal. He became an accomplished musician without telling anyone. He didn’t go to his senior year of high school, choosing instead to earn the credits needed for graduation by driving cross-country and writing about it – somehow convincing the principal of our high school and our mother that this was a great idea. I know this is sounding like that Dos Equis ad that glorifies the eccentric old guy with a beard, but the point is I have been crazy about Jason since I was born and I always wanted to be a part of whatever unusual existence he was living. So I went to hang out with him any chance I had.

At this particular time, my dad was on a kick of wanting to do “dad stuff” for me, so he asked if he could drive me to the airport. When you have MS “dad stuff” becomes playing bingo or giving you rides places. It was midafternoon when he picked me up to head to JFK.

When we got there, I pulled my giant suitcase out of the trunk of his car and navigated the airport entrance without his help. This must have looked strange to other people, seeing this strapping man watch his eighteen-year-old daughter lift and tote her giant suitcase all by herself, but they didn’t know he was sick. I didn’t really understand the symptoms of the disease, but I did know that it slowed him down, that even if he looked normal he could still be in a lot of pain, unable to do the small physical acts he used to do with ease.

My dad accompanied me as I juggled my bags and checked in, and everything seemed fine. It was pre-9/11 so he could walk me to the gate, and that’s exactly what he wanted to do. He kept saying, “I’m going to walk you to the gate.” I think it was a big deal for him, because he never did stuff like that for me. That was a mom-type job. But I was glad for his company, because even though my list of fears had definitely gotten smaller by this point in my life, I was still pretty terrified of flying.

We both went through security, shoes on – the good ol’ days – and started walking down the long hall to my gate. That particular terminal was under heavy construction at the time, so we had to be careful where we walked. We still had a ways to go when my dad took a sharp right turn and beelined it to the side of the hall. I stopped walking and turned to see what he was doing. He shot me a pained look, pulled his pants down, and peed shit out of his ass for about thirty seconds. Thirty seconds is an eternity, by the way, when you’re watching your dad volcanically erupt from his behind. Think about it now. One Mississippi. That’s just one.

People quickly walked past, horrified. One woman shielded her child’s eyes. They stared. I yelled at one chick passing by, “WHAT?! Keep it moving!”

After he had finished, my dad stood up straight and said, “Aim, do you have any shorts in your bag?”

I opened my suitcase and grabbed a pair of lacrosse shorts. I handed them over, thinking, Damn, those were my favorite. He threw his pants in the trash and put the shorts on. I went in for a top-body hug good-bye. I didn’t cry, I didn’t laugh, I just smiled and said, “I love you, Dad. I won’t tell Mom.”

I started to walk away from the whole scene when I heard, “I said I’d walk you to the gate!”

I turned around to see if he was joking; he was not. To the gate we walked. I was mouth breathing and shooting dirty looks at anyone who dared to stare at him. Once we got to the very last gate in the goddamn terminal, at the end of a very long hall, he kissed me good-bye and left.

Normally when I would board a plane, the first thing I would do was worry about how scary takeoff would be and try to think of ways to distract myself from the anxiety. But that day, I sat on the plane thinking about nothing. My mind went blank. It was too painful. I didn’t think about my fearless father, who was dealing with a mysterious disease. He used to breeze through the airport in a cloud of expensive cologne and flashy watches, and now he’d been transformed into this anonymous, helpless guy who lost control of his bowels in the airport while his teenage daughter watched. He didn’t wince or let me see him sweat even once. I mean, he was drenched in sweat. Physically he was being taken over by MS, yet on the inside he was still as brazen as ever. But I didn’t think about any of that. I just stared out the window for five hours, fully numb, until I got off the plane in Montana and hugged my brother longer than he would have liked.

I tried to talk about these two shitting incidents onstage. So many parts of these stories are so disturbing that they make me laugh – because it’s too much to digest any other way. The image of Kim’s head leaning out of the car, the image of me standing next to my pantsless father and the trolley that carted people around Adventureland. I look at the saddest things in life and laugh at how awful they are, because they are hilarious and it’s all we can do with moments that are painful. My dad is the same way. He’s always laughed at the things that are too dark for other people to laugh at. Even now, when his memory and mental functioning have been severely impaired by his MS, I’ll tell him his mind is a pile of scrambled eggs and he will still laugh hysterically and say, “Too true, too true!”

My dad never shows any sign that he pities himself. He never has. He’s not afraid to look dead-on at the grim facts of his life. I hope I’ve inherited this quality of his. I’ve only seen him cry once about his disease, and that was very recently – when he learned he’d be getting stem cell treatments that would help him feel a lot better, and maybe even help him walk again. That day, he sobbed like a baby. But never before.

I have wonderful early memories of spending time with him at the beach. We were beach bums, and he was a sun worshipper. If it was January and the sun was shining, he’d douse himself in baby oil and sit outside in a lawn chair. He was tan year-round. And if it was summer, we’d get in the ocean early in the morning and get out after the sun went down. We’d body-surf together; that was our thing. All I wanted to do was take a wave in further than him, but it never happened. I even cheated, standing up and running a little to catch up, but no, he always won.

The most joy I remember feeling as a kid was when a storm was coming and the waves were big. Other people were scared and stayed out of the water, but not us. Not even when the ocean was angry and pulling us sideways. We would have to get out and walk half a football field on the beach before it swept us all the way down the shore again. We swam out against the current and caught the best waves of the day. Nothing kept us out – not rain, not my mom yelling, nothing. I can still picture him looking young and healthy and strong, with his bronzed skin and his black hair soaking. For some reason, I wasn’t afraid. Maybe it was because I was with him. Next to him, I was invincible.

Excerpt from My Journal in 1994 (Age Thirteen) with Footnotes from 2016

I’ve decided to get a journal because some things you just can’t say out loud.1 I’m 13 years old, and I have several problems. My brother Jason is a senior in high school. He’s my half brother, meaning we have the same mother, but his dad died when he was 11. When Jason was two years old our mom married my dad. My dad didn’t like my brother, and as a matter of fact, he wished Jason wasn’t a part of our family.2 I never noticed, but my Dad actually never went on our “family trips.”3 My mom just recently pointed all of this out to me. She said she tried to keep everyone happy by having my dad go in one car and me and my brother and sister go in the other car with her.4

Jason’s dad was a very big part of his life. My mom informed me that when he died, my dad made no effort to become Jason’s stepfather.5 They seemed to be acquaintances. This left my mom a single parent, basically, with no help from my father. I’m so glad she pointed this out to me, because I never knew. She allowed Jason to withdraw from our family,6 which is no longer a family.

My sister Kim is nine years old and in fourth grade. She is very mature for her age. I think she’s so mature because I don’t permit her to act her age. In her grade there are a few girls who are total &*&*.7 They treat her like dirt. It doesn’t help that Kim is extremely sensitive. These girls do horrible things to her, like one day they were all sitting at the lunch table, and when Kim sat down, they all got up and left. When my mom told me about it, tears started streaming down my cheeks before she even finished her sentence. My heart broke for Kim. So I hopped on my bike and road straight to those #$#$’s8 houses and yelled at them. And told them to leave my sister alone OR ELSE!9

Kim sometimes acts really phony.10 She’ll act so innocent and fragile,11 and I’ll get really mad at her and treat her like crap. My mom tells her to just express herself when someone at school hurts her feelings. I say, “No way. You have to be tough and don’t show them they hurt you.”12

About 8 weeks ago I found out that my parents were getting a divorce.13 My dad travels a lot, so I wasn’t majorly depressed. My sister was, though. After the first five years that my parents were married my mom realized she wasn’t in love and never had been.14 But she stayed with my dad another five years because of me and Jay and Kim, and also because my dad developed a condition with -osis at the end of the word.15 Anyone who knows my mom will tell you she’s the nicest person you’ll ever meet.16 But they’re getting a divorce.

I’m going to see a psychologist this Thursday. I don’t want to, but I know it’s necessary.17

I have another problem: my friends. Lauren, Becky, and Kate. I guess you can say we’re the athletic, smart, pretty girls of our grade.18 Becky is sort of slow; she has a moon shaped face with light freckles and pin straight, shoulder length, dirty blonde hair. She’s as tall as me but a little slimmer. She thinks she’s totally gorgeous and wishes she was Lauren. She’s also a snob.19 Then there’s Jen; she’s excellent at soccer and totally dedicated, but she’s also a ditz and always the last to know what we’re talking about. She’s 5 foot 3ish and has mousy brown hair and looks very Irish. Everyone does, I guess.20

I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned my other best friend, Mark. His hair is chin length and he’s always showered and clean. He’s a really good soccer player, and he’s an excellent drummer. I met him in 5th grade. He started a band this summer, and I was interested in being the lead singer. When it was just me and Mark in the band I was fine, but when it became a real thing I backed away. I strive to be more like Mark.21 I think I care too much about how people feel about me. Mark isn’t like that at all. If I wasn’t friends with him, I wouldn’t be half as happy. Now that I think about it, he may be my only real friend.22

Now about boys.23There are several boys I like, but the two I’m concentrated on are Kevin Williams and Joshua Walsch. Kevin is shy, funny, and cool. He has shaggy brown hair and is over six feet tall. He has gorgeous blue cat eyes and a mouth like the joker. I told him that once in biology and he smirked and said he knew. Joshua is a year younger than me, but he’s so sweet and adorable. He has black hair and a smaller frame than me, but he’s strong and has porcelain skin covered in freckles. He looks like he just hopped off the boat from Ireland.24

Both boys have little speech impediments, I’ve noticed. Joshua has a speech impediment that makes him sound like the Kennedys. The real ones!25 And Kevin has a gap in his front teeth and a lisp. Uhhh soo cute.26

I’ve gotten to first base, which is French Kissing, but I think I’m ready for 2nd.27

1 I obviously don’t subscribe to this advice anymore, as someone who onstage has gone into great detail about an encounter with an unexpected uncircumcised penis.

2 Yikes, was that true? There is a lot of heavy brainwashing from good ol’ mom in this entry. I don’t think my dad particularly cared for my brother, but it wasn’t personal. He just only liked children that at one point were shot out from his own penis.

3 I don’t know why “family trips” is in quotes. They were just family trips; this sounds like my mom was using us to mule drugs. We would go to Florida or Lake George or our farmhouse. I never once held a balloon filled with heroin.

4 You know that old saying … the family that drives separately, crumbles and shatters soon after.

5 This was true, but maybe pointing this out to a tween isn’t the best move from a parent.

6 As I previously mentioned, Jason talked his way out of his senior year of high school and got to leave home and roam the country.

7 If I wrote this now I would use the word “cunts.”

8 CUNTS!

9 We recently Googled the girl who was the meanest to my sister. We found her on Facebook. She’s now a Pilates instructor, of course, and if I had her current address, I’d ride my bike to her house again and tell her she’s still a worthless mean girl in my mind.

10 Wow, I was just saying how great she was.

11 Innocent and fragile? Dude, she was nine … What did I expect her to act like? Slutty and hardened?

12 I stand by this. Never let those cunts see you sweat, which is good advice and a good name for an eighties hip-hop album.

13 Whaaaaat? But Mom kept us all happy by having us drive in separate cars!

14 Again, damn, Mom, lot to lay on a kid who’s still in middle school, but okay.

15 It was multiple sclerosis. You couldn’t look stuff up on your phone back then, so I just left it at -osis … makes sense.

16 “Brainnnnnwasssshhhhh, at the brainwash yeah” (singing this to the tune of “Car Wash” …).

17 I still say this exact same thing every single week.

18 Guess I wasn’t afraid of feelin’ myself.

19 Never too young to talk shit about your friends.

20 Jen is a nurse with three kids now, and we’re still close.

21 I was in love with him.

22 Mark is now the drummer in the band Taking Back Sunday.

23 Sorry, Mark!

24 I was real obsessed with the Irish. Pretty sure I’d either just done a book report on them or watched Far and Away at a slumber party.

25 As opposed to those hack, bullshit, fake Kennedys?

26 I have always been turned on by a good impediment, like a baby arm or a stutter.

27 I wasn’t.

Officially a Woman

Everyone says you become a woman when you start your period or lose your virginity. In Judaism, you’re deemed a woman when you have your bat mitzvah. I of course saw this ceremony as an opportunity not only to chant my Torah portion but also to make my big stage debut in the temple. I’d been doing musicals since I was five, and I was ready to steal the show. I’m gonna show these Jews what I’m made of, I thought in an unracist way. All eyes were on me – just the way I liked it – as I looked out into the crowd from the bimah. My mom was crying tears of joy next to my dad, who was absolutely bursting with pride. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they gave me a standing O before I finished. I was nailing it.

I sang those Hebrew words like the little half-Jew angel that I was – without the slightest idea what I was saying. I could have been chanting a call to action to continue apartheid. In Hebrew school they taught us two things: how to read Hebrew and how to read Hebrew. A year before my bat mitzvah I was in class with my teacher, Mr. Fischer, a frightening, expressionless man, the kind who would look the same sleeping or in an earthquake. I was sitting in the first row, and Mr. Fischer called on me to read aloud from the Torah. After about three minutes, I stopped and asked, “What does this mean?” For the first time ever, he showed emotion. He slammed his catcher’s-mitt-like hand onto his desk right next to my head and shouted, “Go to the principal’s office!” I never asked again.

I’m sure this wasn’t the first time I got in trouble for asking a question, and it certainly wasn’t the last. In school we were encouraged to ask questions, but sometimes when we did, we were accused of being provocative or rude. Now that I’m out of school and there’s no threat of a principal’s office looming down the hall, I ask whatever the fuck questions I want. It feels pretty good. Pretty womanly, too.

But none of that mattered on my big day. I didn’t care what I was singing; I just wanted to blow everyone’s socks off. I belted out the last couple lines of my portion – move over, cast of Fiddler on the Roof, your jobs are all in jeopardy – and on my final note, I let loose with all my might. That was when my dream turned into my nightmare. My voice cracked. I William Hunged my last note. My heart started to pound too quickly, and I could feel my face turning into a beet the way it loved to do. Silence filled the room, and I thought I might cry.

Then came the first laugh. Then another. And the rest. I looked out at the people in the seats, and they were all laughing – and looking at me with adoration. I saw Kim nervously giggling, waiting to see how I’d react. I realized that even though it was an accident, I’d made everyone happy, and I wanted to let Kim know that it was okay to laugh, so I joined in. I laughed hard. I was laughing at myself. We were all laughing together – a real laugh that went on for a while.

I’m pretty sure that’s why I officially became a woman that day. Not because of the dumb ancient ceremony where children are gifted bonds they can’t cash until they’re twenty-five (by which time they have lost them). No, I became a woman because I turned a solemn, quiet room into a place filled with unexpected laughter. I became a woman because I did, for the first time, what I was supposed to be doing for the rest of my life. I may not have had that exact thought in the moment, but in retrospect it is so clear to me.

There are lots of “firsts” like this in life, little flashpoints here and there when you’re unknowingly becoming a woman. And it’s not the clichéd shit, like when you have your first kiss or drive your first car. You become a woman the first time you stand up for yourself when they get your order wrong at a diner, or when you first realize your parents are full of shit. You become a woman the first time you get fitted for a bra and realize you’ve been wearing a very wrong size your whole fucking life. You become a woman the first time you fart in front of a boyfriend. The first time your heart breaks. The first time you break someone else’s heart. The first time someone you love dies. The first time you lie and make yourself look bad so a friend you love can look better. And less dramatic things are meaningful too, like the first time a guy tries to put a finger in your ass. The first time you express the reality that you don’t want that finger in your ass. That you really don’t want anything in your ass at all. Or to have any creative, adventurous sex for that matter. That you just want to be fucked missionary sometimes and without any nonsense. You will remember all these moments later as the moments that made you the woman you are. Everyone tells you it happens when you get your first period, but really it happens when you insert your first tampon and teach your best friend to do the same.

Speaking of menstrual blood, let’s get back to becoming a woman in the temple. After I brought the house down by dropping the ball on my Torah portion, it was time for the rabbi to walk over and speak to me in front of everyone – not unlike a sermon, but tailored to me. I’d been told that most people hated this kind of attention, but I thought, Bring it on. Let the compliments begin.

Rabbi Shlomo was a tall man, and he had to reach down to put his hands on both of my shoulders. I gazed up at him and prepared to look humble. He began, “Amy …,” and that’s the last thing I heard. His breath was so bad, I literally couldn’t listen to a word. It took all my strength not to pass out from the stench he was sending my way. I figured out quickly that I needed to gasp for breath while he was inhaling. He was giving me heartfelt words of wisdom and I was doing Lamaze. What did he eat for breakfast? I thought. An adult diaper? A cadaver?

The speech went on for hours. It was probably only five minutes, but when you’re in the panic room of someone’s dragon mouth the clock really stops. Just as I was getting dizzy from lack of oxygen, I could tell from his body language that he was wrapping it up. Everyone applauded. I turned away, filled my lungs with fresh air, and smiled out into oblivion. It was official: I was a woman.

Now I could have a short luncheon with smoked fish and bagels and take my closest friends to Medieval Times in New Jersey. Just as God and Golda Meir intended.