Category: Essays // Writing

Lessons in body positivity from an unexpected source

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

Last week I was very sick courtesy some cute lil germies in my tum courtesy my cute lil nieces and nephews who had the same lil germies in their tums the week before.

It sucked. Especially since I had spent the week before that with a head cold. Sick and tired of being sick and tired, or something like that.

As I lay nausea-stricken on a bed of applesauce-soaked crackers and a mountainous pile of unread emails, I considered how sick I’ve gotten this past year. It feels like it’s been more frequent than ever before? Is that right? Is my immune system caving? Or am I just paying more attention to my body than ever before? Both?

That, of course, rendered me helpless to do nothing but steer down a rabbit hole toward the dimly lit Hall of Fame Of All My Other Major Sicknesses. My 32nd birthday is this week and, with that time marker in sight, I remembered the stomach flu I had had a week before my 29th birthday.

Aw, poor poopy birthday girl!

Between bathroom bouts I made promises to my body to take better care of it as soon as it felt better. I acknowledged my sins against it and recognized that though I don’t put it through the ringer anymore with alcohol, I still fall into some traps that are the opposite of that totally-having-a-moment”idea of self-care, which is ultimately all about slowing down to take better care of your mind and, thus, body.

For example, I don’t eat well and sometimes I don’t eat at all. I’ll get so focused on a task I forget to eat. Or I’ll be weird about what to eat — because I’m trying to be either a) healthier, ironically enough, or b) a guilt-ridden veg and not a health-positive one. And when that happens, I don’t get enough calories that a body I’m making go-go-go all the time needs. I follow the same extreme patterns with sleep. It’s a deadly combination. Or, well, one that leaves me, I think, more vulnerable to catching any cool ass looking germs that fly my way.

This meme making the rounds is too real.

 

At one point in my sickness boredom last week (you can only spend so much time on Pinterest), I started combing through body positivity apps, of which there seem to be about two, to download on to my phone.

I’ve never gotten too into the body positivity movements. Not because I don’t care. It’s just that one only has so many hours in a day.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned in sober recovery, it’s that help can come from the strangest sources and you have to just go with it. I used to listen to motivational speeches for weight lifters to get myself in a good headspace to go to a brunch sober. Ha!

All these things are tools and, like a castaway trying to make it on a lonely island, you gotta use that shit in whatever way you need to survive. Start thinking of your phone as your Wilson Volleyball, ya dig?

“Stop crying and take some Pepto, biatch!”

I downloaded the free Rise Up app, which is for self-monitoring eating disorder recovery. I know I don’t have an eating disorder, but Rise Up is more about offering friendly reminders to check in with yourself and how you’re thinking about food. I just want to make sure I eat breakfast more often instead of waiting until 2 pm to finally eat something–and Rise Up’s meal tracking helps me do that. The app’s “911” and stress management tools have actually been super helpful as I get nicotine cravings.

I love how technology has made independent recovery like this possible. You can cobble together tools from all over the place, for whatever it is you’re struggling with, from big problems to tiny-tummy-flu-induced self-awareness about something you’d finally like to address.

And the more you do that hodgepodging of skill sets, the more likely you are to find positive coping techniques in the strangest places.

Like… the wrestling ring…

Swoggle vs. Craig Mitchell!

I love watching Chicago’s Freelance Wrestling matches. It’s like watching sweaty, sophisticated choreography but with a lot of grunting and cool intro music. We went to Saturday’s event in Logan Square Auditorium and it didn’t disappoint.

I’m not naïve enough to think that any industry based in physicality, especially pro wrestling, isn’t without pressures to conform to a certain body standard. But there’s certainly some atypical beauty about something that’s part theater, part sport — it just wouldn’t be as fun if everyone looked the same.

The Freelance lineup last weekend included bodies of all shapes, sizes, abilities and genders. Watching Gregory Allen, AKA Iron Curtain, AKA an awesome wrestler who also has cerebral palsy, dominate in the ring was magic. Cleveland, Ohio, represent!

But the best part is that they’re all running around in their skivvies. And if not their skivvies, super tight pants, brah. It’s excellent eye candy, sure, but I appreciate that so many bodies are on full display, in all their glory, without that being the main issue.

We didn’t have to take a moment to pause about how brave some of them were being for bearing all nearly 300 pounds of themselves. We paused for how brave they were for willingly flippity-belly-flopping onto a hard surface.

The main issue is some made up, stupidly delicious story line. (And, for fair-weathered fans like me, if Stevie Fierce is wearing a shirt or not.)

And that’s it.

In wrestling, the body love doesn’t necessarily rely on what that body looks like. It matters what it can do.

And how strong it can handle the blows thrown at it.

Now there’s a lesson, punks.

Coming to The Book Stall near you, Chicago!

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

You’re Being Ridiculous

7 p.m. Thursday, March 8

The Book Stall

Join me and eight other You’re Being Ridiculous storytellers at Winnetka’s The Book Stall, an independent bookstore located on Chicago’s north shore (a block away from the UP-North Winnetka Metra station, so no excuses).

High five to The Book Stall for regularly presenting a variety of book-related and author events. Recent guests include some girl crush mainstays, like Tavi Gevinson and The HRC.

I’ll be telling a story about the time I terrified a strapping young farmhand after my grandmother’s funeral! Sound like a downer?

Neeeeigggh!

And there’s, like any good story, a cat involved.

Tickets are here ($12) and spaces are limited so save your seat today! Here’s the list of all the performers:

Ellen Barish
Mike Blumberg
Claire Zulkey & Steve Delahoyde
Sherry & Steve Fine
Elizabeth Gomez
Jackie Mantey
Jeremy Owens

See you soon!

A very Otis Valentine’s Day

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

There are many sad, tragic and/or ironic endings bespotting the relatively short history of pop music. But one that, ahem, flies under the radar is the story of Otis Redding’s death.

It came a mere days after he recorded what would be his most famous hit, “Sittin’ On The Dock of The Bay.”

A stormy night. A plane crash. Dead at 26 years old.

It’s so sad to me that he didn’t get to see how soothing this song would be to so many people. It’s a hit, sure, but it is my favorite kind — a sad song wrapped in a melody that makes you feel good, that reminds you why you keep going.

I’ve been thinking about this story lately. Mostly because I am amazed at how young Otis Redding was when he died. It makes me worry that I’m not doing enough. Accomplishing enough. Am I wasting my time on things that may not really matter? I worry that I spent my twenties to fast. I know I didn’t, technically, but I worry about it as I start to settle in a new, greater sense of self-awareness.

“Where have I been this whole time?” I wonder. “Because I finally feel like I have arrived in this body, this life.”

While the back of my brain was gnawing on this yesterday,”Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay” came on my playlist. At first my anxiety deepened because, damn, he died right after he recorded his most famous song — a song about wasting time! How many people have missed their opportunities like that because of timing?

Mmmm… That song though… I couldn’t stay in a state of panic too long if I tried… Not with Otis crooning his cathartic beachy blues…

I could look at this the other way, I thought: It’s a miracle he even recorded this song when death was so close. So many things nipped on the heels of people like Otis, but he made it, even if things were cut short. Every moment is a miracle, really. Whether we spend it sitting by the bay or knee deep in dream making. Worrying about it all is the ultimate waste.

After all, this is my first Valentine’s Day as a wife, something I became after walking down the aisle to another Otis song. However it all turns out, I have a lot of moments to be thankful for.

Show announcement! Saturday at Lifeline Theatre

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I’m super excited and honored to make my Chicago debut of solo live-lit storytelling at this weekend’s stacked Fillet of Solo Festival.

Here are the details and where to get tickets for my appearance with You’re Being Ridiculous at 8:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 27. I hope you make it out to some of these other events throughout the weekend too.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll fume. You’ll hate life and love it in the same breath. Basically, you’ll experience the daily ~*emotional roller*~ coaster experienced by all your creative friends! See you soon.

[sic]

TFW you realize you’ve been on Facebook for 13 years

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, Justin and I went out to a show with some friends, but first we hit up Replay, a bar in Lincoln Park that has nostalgia on tap. Retro arcade games, pinball machines and Skee-Ball tourneys await after you’ve grabbed a drink at the bar.

I don’t drink anymore, but I can still appreciate reading a loaded menu of throwback craft cocktails spiked with a pun. Try, for example, the Salt-N-Pepa: House made strawberry and jalapeño infused tequila and lime with a chili lime salt rim.

Justin, earning the pinball wiz-ard title (you’re not the only one who can do puns here, barkeep), had to pee out his nostalgia cocktails an unusual amount of times. So we’d put our KISS pinball competition on pause, and I’d saddle up to a table and watch the video playing on the big screen while I waited.

They show old music videos, action flicks, Christmas movies. I hope old TRL episodes make the rotation. Remember when you had to wait for TRL to come on to watch a music video? Dark ages.

This night, though, they were showing WWE footage from the late ‘90s/ early Aughts, particularly matches that featured The Rock as a buffed and polished 20-something.

Uh waaaay back! (You think that fanny is nice, wait until you see what the one in back is packing.)

I chewed on my straw and tried to figure out what was bothering me about this imagery—beyond Jake the Snake’s super amazing man tights and desperate flopping. (I like to think of older era Jake the Snake more as Jake the Lovable Lost Sea Turtle.)

Something was off here. Something I needed to notice.

This happens to me sometimes. My visual intuition knows something is different and I can’t leave until I figure out what it is. I blame all those “Spot the Difference” game on menus I played as a kid, back before parents had, you know, cell phones to distract us.

I once spent a dumb amount of time in front of a black and white photograph at a tractor machinery museum trying to figure out what about it, exactly, was scratching the back of my mind. The photo showed a row of stern looking men in suits sitting in a dusty office. They were the executive leaders of some machinery factory in the early half of last century. Looking. Scanning. Taking in their creviced faces with mine, a mere century and a few inches away.

I caught it eventually: Despite their fancy mustaches and serious-looking jackets, they were all wearing beaten up boots, covered in dirt and dust. Quite different from the imagery of CEOs and executive leadership you see today. You don’t expect to see genuine evidence of their presence in the actual plants like their workers.

I knew it was something similar with this wrestling match. It was something other than the glitter and spandex and jacked bodies.

Boom.

There it was: In the audience.

Every single person in the stands was watching with rapt attention. These people were actually watching what was going on in front of them! In real time!

I watched for a cell phone in front of someone’s face. I watched for a smartphone hoisted in the air to snap a photo. I looked for a head down, typing on a tiny screen. But while I watched them, they watched the action in the ring. The whole time. Their whole selves invested in just one thing.

IT WAS SO BIZZARE. It was almost too intimate. I kind of felt like I needed to look away.

During another Justin pee break, I watched two burly wrestlers body slam past the ropes and throw themselves into the audience. Dear GoogleGod! Can you imagine if something like this happened today? No one would actually be watching the action right in front of them. Instead it’d be seen, witnessed, through the screen of their smartphone. But during this late ’90s romp, not a cell phone was in sight. It was charming, actually, to see the crowd physically interact with the wrestlers, undistracted. They patted their guy on the back, yelled at their foe. The closest it got to anything like you’d see now was one woman in mom jeans squaring up to take a flash photo on a film camera.

Guys, this was barely 20 years ago!

I watched in shock. Compare this scene to that of Kendrick Lamar’s recent halftime performance at the National Championship. So many people were on their cell phones, they looked bored. The camera operators eventually stopped panning to the audience because it kind of looked bad when you’re going for a jubilant reaction shot to see someone typing on their phone, likely sharing a photo of themselves or Kendrick on stage.

It’s no wonder some performers and musicians have started barring cell phones from their performances.

Oy. And this not a post meant to judge these people. I AM these people. I do the exact same thing. That’s why watching people *not* doing this felt so foreign to me. That’s why watching people *not* doing this was more fascinating than The Rock twirling a man in underpants above his head.

I bought the dress I wore to the New Year’s Eve polka party we attended SPECIFICALLY because I thought it would look hot in an Instagram photo. It did. But… maaaaan, is that who I am now?

I never turn my phone off. I check my email 24/7. This is a choice I’ve made after a lot of thought—a choice that makes my freelance worklife possible, a freelance life that comes with a LOT of freedom—but how many people do not have this luxury? I can feel the difference of personal attention I get electronically—or lack there of—since I joined Facebook 13 years ago. (Yes, 13 years ago. They sent me a Faceversary notification the fall day it happened.)

Yikes. Untag.

People I email are so slammed with added responsibility, expectations and, ironically, emails, they don’t respond as quickly or as diligently as they used to. Just writing emails for others is now, literally, a full time job you can get out of college. It’s no wonder direct mail (read: mail mail aka paper mail aka snail mail) is making a comeback. I, too, am more likely to trust and actually read paper mail than the seemingly worthless junk that shows up in my Gmail “Promotions” folder. Deleting it before I even read the subject line feels like an accomplishment.

I’m 100% pro technology. It can equalize our society in ways never possible before. Hell, it already has! But we have to take personal responsibility for how we let it affect our own lives. There is a social media mental health crisis looming and we’re responsible for protecting ourselves while it goes down.

Does your opinion matter if it’s not liked a hundred times on Twitter?

Does one really run if said run is not recorded during run into a running app?

Does the patriarchy truly fall if no one hears it in the streets at a Women’s March?

Speaking of the Women’s March, I didn’t attend this year because I had a nasty head cold and wave of the blues, but I did try to spend my time doing something more productive than posting photos and fighting about it on Facebook, which was super tempting.

Instead, I worked on a short story that I originally started from the viewpoint of a female character… then changed to the male character’s point of view… then changed back again to being told by the female character. That’s because I realized my own internalized misogyny in thinking that a male’s POV on a subject was more believable than a female’s instead of trusting my gut.

Saturday, I also read a great article in the February issue of Writer’s Digest about how to subvert your characters that are actually really destructive romantic tropes, like the Manic Pixie Dream Girl or the Sensitive Intelligent Alpha Male. This is where I think our power in making change lies—in our everyday actions and internal examinations beyond the screen. As a feminist writer, I can change how a little girl or boy thinks romance, consent or dating works, just through a story. I have more power to change the world there than on a Facebook post trying to get likes.

TLDR: I feel totally drained by social media. Scrolling through Facebook feels emotionally violent, right? The news is all alarming. No one is listening to each other. We’re too quick to break each other down, rather than the opposing argument. I don’t long for the late ’90s or the mom jeans or the film cameras. But I do think there’s something beautiful about not being on your phone all the time — visually and intra- and interpersonally beautiful.

I really want to put an effort into taking more time off my phone this year. Time to to put my cell phone away. Time spent IRL, paying attention to just one thing.

Join me won’t you?

I think we could all make this world a better place if we gave ourselves more time to stop and smell, well, what The Rock is cooking.

A spell, prayer, meditation to ward off sickness coming, of course, on the first day back to work

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

Dear baby Jesus,

I know your newborn nubbers be but as bitty and tender as an earlobe, but please pause that Little Drummer Boy mixtape and see to this, my latest request.

Please, oh heavens, please… do not let this little throat tickle and creeping-up cough be the first sands of many to tinkle through the hourglass of time to be spent recovering from a cold. Bedridden, miserable and relentlessly unproductive/ therefore unAmerican (destined to be older you’s least admired trait, OK?).

May the golden nectar of this Airborne dissolved in tap water have the healing power of a Eucharist washed down with wine on your fave day. May this shimmering orange liquid ensconced in a DayQuil pill behold the power of holy water disinfectant.  

Through the marble gates where your cousin goddesses reside, babble to them my wish to be as whole and bright as their Supermoon. Turn on that otherworldly, childish charm to which they so easily succumb and convince them to grant your wish, widdle baby savior of the world!

Next, spirit up to St. Blaise and, like, just humor his conspiracy theories. You don’t have to stay long; I know your swaddled clothes always stink when you leave. When he hits the holy pipe for the third time and the clock strikes three and he starts talking about aliens, ask him to send healing waves down to my earthly throat and lungs, his specialty. (Also, if possible, the burner number to reach “his guy.”)

Finally, coo to your mother, who always knows how to make everything better when the world feels shitty–from the chicken noodle soup to the tea with honey to you, young prince.

Amen. XOXO. Thanks.

A review of our roadtrip out west

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Chicago to Lawrence, Kansas, to Denver to Las Vegas to Phoenix to El Paso to San Antonio to Austin to Memphis to Indianapolis to Chicago.

Whew.

We drove all that in two weeks, with the main purpose of spending Thanksgiving in Vegas wearing matching velour tracksuits and hitting the 24-hour Thanksgiving dinner casino buffet tour.

One of the most memorable moments happened somewhere in Utah, though. Can you tell me the shape of Utah off the top of your head? No cheating! I couldn’t either. (Answer: Utah is shaped like a square with a cute little shelf in the northeast corner. For storing bibles and guns, presumably.) But here we were, making an overnight drive through the state beloved by Edward Abbey, when nature called.

I pulled off into a rest stop area, checked the time—11 pm—and ran into the women’s restroom. Yes, ran, because by nature, I mean I had to, as they say out here, numero dos. Ten minutes pass. I’m humming. I hear a mother and her son come into the restroom. I go mute, as is polite.

My main concern is that it stinks and I feel the familiar poop shame we all share when we do it in a public restroom. This mother’s main concern, though, quickly became me.

Well, not necessarily me as me, but me as what she imagined I was, a conclusion drawn (again, presumably) from my beefy Doc Martens and black pants and the fact that the rest stop seemed completely empty at this time of night because we had parked off to the side and this poor woman with her child thought I was some hoodlum or drug dealer or creepo looking for a beej.

A creepo? Sure. Looking for a beej? Nah.

“Hurry up,” she whispered to her son in the handicap stall. “Stopping here maybe wasn’t a good idea.”

At this point I’m still oblivious, gently humming inside my head. I wonder, “Oh no, why?!”

The handicap stall opens. The child exits. I see his small white shoes make their way to the sink.

“No no,” the mom says, quickly. “We don’t need to wash our hands. We need to go go go.”

That’s weird, I thought. Does it smell that bad?

When I left the restroom ~five minutes later, I asked Justin if he saw a mom and kid leaving the women’s restroom.

“Yeah, they looked terrified,” he said. “They were running. I almost went in to check on you. They looked Mormon maybe? I figured they just were scared because this rest stop is scary.”

When I was finally able to stop laughing, I explained my theory of why they were afraid–it was me and my big boots. They seemed fine until she had time to judge that there was a weirdo in the stall next door. I thought I looked country-punk-chic. They thought I looked like a gang member from “A Clockwork Orange,” thirsting to drink their innocent blood under the bright Moab moon.

If only they had seen me–a small woman with just a smile and a tune on her lips, y’all! A kind person who just likes badass-looking boots and who just had to sit and shit for a long time.

It was apropos. Fear unwarranted and breaking through it. That was the whole point of this trip after all–besides Vegas buffets. Here’s how it went down.

This is somewhere in Arizona. I swear I saw new colors on this trip. Or at least I saw colors I’ve known my whole life organized in totally new ways.

San Antonio Riverwalk.

San Antonio was warm. In a lot of ways.

Kansas. Basically.

More Texas. There’s a lot of Texas.

In Vegas, even the trees seem unnatural.

THIS IS A REAL PHOTO NO FILTER. !!!

Our drive through the Rockies was one I’ll never forget. No wonder people outside the midwest wonder how we can live in a place so flat. It’d be hard to have this drama dominating your view every day and then try to find majesty in a cornfield.

Vogueing at Nevada’s Red Rock Canyon, as one does.

Yes, hi, I’d like to recommend the one-way scenic drive through Red Rock Canyon at sunset. Justin rented us a convertible for the day for two reasons. 1) So he could go from 0 to 80 in seconds on the highway. 2) So we could see this with the top down. Saying it was majestic is cliche, as is saying I cried as we witnessed a mountain tucking in our sun for bedtime. But I don’t give a damn–both are true.

New color inspiration.

Here we are taking photos at Red Rock Canyon and trying not to fall lest we unwittingly become “those people.”

Justin: Comedian, trip planner, BFF. America is for lovers.

Also for lovers? The jungle room at Bonnie Springs Ranch Motel right by Red Rock Canyon. Rawr! We didn’t request this room but they couldn’t have put us in a better one. It even had a velvet painting of a jaguar on the wall.

“Heeeeeeyyy.”

Speaking of velvet paintings, look at this dream boat in velour. We wore matching tracksuits on Thanksgiving Day in Vegas. A hilarious sartorial choice indeed, but also a strategic move. When one can hit up all the casino buffets with their 24-hour all-access pass and eat a lot of pumpkin pie, turkey, lobster and the ever decadent ham and green bean platter, one needs a waist band with leeway. 

A survivor at the Bonnie Springs petting zoo.

Also, ghosts at Bonnie Springs Motel.

But you can’t never leave!

Part of the beauty of doing this trip as full-time artists/ freelance writers, we got to see a lot of touristy things on days not frequented by tourists. Because all tourists except for us suck.

For example, the Briscoe Art Museum along the San Antonio Riverwalk offers free admission on Tuesdays. AND WE WERE THERE ON A TUESDAY.

Taco spots are always busy though. We ate a LOT of tacos on this trip. Are tacos the new hot dogs? The new American staple food? I see nothing wrong with that. I’d rather have a taco at a baseball game than a hot dog, you know? We’re in that weird mid-paradigm shift where what it means to be an American is as varied as the people living in it–and the people who used to…

As we traveled, I recognized that significance of traveling on land some people stole from another people during a holiday where we celebrated and reimagined that theft.

It was best addressed–meaning unflinchingly and truthfully–in San Antonio. The cathedral light show didn’t keep the truth in the dark, and the art museum, where there was a painting titled, no joke, “Last of His Race” honored the cultures that were either squandered or lost to time–black, brown and white alike.

I found this interesting and chalked up points for SA as one of my favorite spots during the trip because it’s also located in Texas, home to The Alamo, no less, and Texas is good at, I don’t know, ignoring the bigger picture unless they’re the star of it. Or at least that’s what I assumed.

Vegas “medicine man.” Yikes. Was there ever a better–and by better I mean worse–visual metaphor for what was done to the Native Americans?

OK, maybe this. No teepees. No tents.

I sent postcards from every state we visited to my niece and nephew of reading age. Of course I tried to subtly express the urgency of my opinions without being an asshole (PLZ HELP ME FIND A BALANCE, BABY JEZUS). I found postcards that showed cowboys and Indians communicating, sharing, bartering. I loved this orange postcard below that listed the symbols some tribes used to write and what each symbol meant (with an Auntie-drawn frown face by the swastika). 🙁

These postcards made me muse on how much has changed since the first Thanksgiving, like the way we talk, how we talk, the words–and sometimes symbols–that are and are not OK in 2017. It’s pretty incredible, the scope of those changes.

I thanked every star under the big, azure Arizona sky for living in a time when I, a woman!, could work and write from the road. With a hot spot connection, G-Suite toolkit and awesome team of understanding colleagues back in Chicago, I worked my dream profession (writing) while exploring America. What’s the native symbol for Fuck Yeah This Is Awesome?

A virgin pina colada on the Riverwalk.

Non-virgin marijuana in Denver. Grape Kush = 10/10, man.

Some very Texas memorabilia. People are different. People are all the same.

We accidentally stopped at this family owned gas station and it was perfect. Although, we did get a couple  comments about being from Chicago where “everyone gets shot.” <eyeroll> Southerners stereotyped us just as much as we did them.

But I did get the BEST coffee-infused blackberry jam here. They put the word “organic” all over the label, which I thought was cute. Not because they thought it would sell urbanites on buying the $8 jar of jam–but that it would, in fact, sell urbanites on buying the $8 jar of jam.

Because Americans of all stripes are nothing if not predictable. But they’re mine. And I am theirs. It’s difficult to face the truth of our country’s past and the flesh and bone it cut its teeth on, but like the grandiosity of the Rocky Mountains or the sheer scope of the Red Rock Canyon–it’s better to face the sprawling perspective, reconcile the violence and beauty, and acknowledge the overwhelming depths head on. In person. Side by side. I don’t want to ever be afraid of this place and I want to make it better so others feel safer here too.

TLDR: Can I get this jacket in size Adult?

The emotional salve of a return to Target

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

This gross and gray Chicago weather has had me in a F-U-N-K the past few weeks. Then Monday, work was weird. Not bad, but not good, and I came home needing a comforting something. More than just a hug and “What Would Beyonce Do?” pat on the bottom.

So instead, Justin offered Target.

Well, he needed an ink cartridge and he was heading to Target and, “Hey would you like to come with me so we can hang out?”

“YES, I HAVEN’T BEEN TO A TARGET IN A FOREVER AMOUNT OF TIME!”

“Whoa, OK. I guess I shoulda known. You haven’t bought any new mugs in the past few months and I haven’t come home to cute but impractical $1 bunting lately.”

“Don’t get it twisted. I make my own decorative bunting like any self-respecting girl from the country who no longer has time to sew real things but needs to feel like she’s not part of humanity’s free-for-all into robot domination, a sad and destructive future state of affairs in which humans have, in their foggy technological distraction, lost all earned survival knowledge and now must wrestle the planet back from the robots’ cold, undead hands.”

“OK. Also we need milk.”

Does Target have milk?

Ha! Um, do the Koch brothers have pointy ended tails?

Target has everything.

Literally everything.

It was a fact I forgot until we’d parked and my mind started to salivate as I stared up at the big beige building, a buzzy neon sign glowing red and white like a Christmas tree star on stucco.

Pavlov’s dogs had their bell. I have my bull’s-eye.

So much for hanging out together. As soon as I got in the door, smelled the stale popcorn, heard A Very Taylor Swift Christmas, Mothafuckas overhead, landed my eyes on a whole rack devoted to brightly colored shaggy faux fur vests, I was gone.

“Bye. Find me later.”

“Why don’t you just come with me? I don’t have to get much?”

“Dear god, Justin! They have dresses printed with elves! How much does it cost to live here?”

“OK. I’m out. Meet at that Aquafina and Children’s Tears vending machine in 10.”

It’s not that I wanted to buy all these things. I just forgot. Forgot that a place like Target exists. Living without a car in Chicago has forced me to be more selective about trips to places where I usually go to buy a lot of nonsense stuff.

Like velvet covered dream journals.

I don’t want to carry a lamp home on the bus and I don’t want to pay for a rideshare to take home a lamp so I don’t have to ride the bus and Justin’s working so I can’t get a ride from him and so I guess I don’t really want a lamp–or I can just buy it online and have USPS do the heavy lift.

Those big box stores are less available to me now. At first, I was giddy with this one’s brightness, its welcoming obliviousness to the outside world and all its accompanying annoyingness. Target brought me some much needed distraction, that perfectly feng-shuied-for-sales perspective that there’s a lot more out there than my tiny world so no need to feel down!  

I couldn’t be a Grinch.

Target came correct with packages, boxes and bags!

Yellow Kitchen-Aid mixers, mugs with sweaters, and a whole section of rags!

A wall of chokers!

Glitter glue in every hue!

A liquor section!

A wine room!

Screwdrivers and baseball bats of every size!

A 10-ounce jar of our favorite peanut butter that our neighborhood grocery store frequently runs out of!

We bought that peanut butter!

Plus an ink cartridge that was made of recycled material because we’d never seen that during our online shopping!

Plus a big bag of chocolate chips!

My first trip around the Target was like one around the sun. Just beautiful. Mesmerizing. So into it. Look but don’t touch.

By round three I was ready to leave. It’d done it’s job. Target had made me feel better, reminded me of home, made my brain go numb, let me worry about nothing but the color of the lipgloss I would want, and dream of a fancy party to which I would wear it and befriend the well-heeled-but-hiding-so-many-secrets hostess in the lady’s room.

All by way of a fluorescent lit hug and photos of an ornery brand dog dangling from the ceiling. Yo quiero Target, amIrite?

But then it was too much, too muchtoomuch. If I buy one brass elephant paper clip/ hair tie holder for my desk, I buy them all. And trust, there are 10 more types of manufactured desk personality pieces to buy waiting patiently on that shelf behind the first one.

When we came home, I ate so many chocolate chips that I got a stomach ache.

But I went to bed smiling.

Settling in to a not-forever home

Jackie Mantey

Somewhere deep in a landfill, or draped around the tip of a mountain of trash, like a pig wearing costume pearls, there is a garland of construction paper candy corn, crafted to decorate my apartment several Halloween moons ago.

Presumably nearby:

  • A mini Christmas tree with pine needle ends that alight in LED technicolor.
  • A cornafauxpia made to overflow with plastic fruits and vegetables, the waxy purple grapes soft from wear and punctured, thanks to fingers that liked to squish and a cat that liked to gnaw on their spongy exteriors.
  • A Valentine’s Day Cupid window dressage, whose silhouetted sharpened arrow may have seemed menacing from the second floor if not for that cute little bump of an angel baby bottom. If we count Cupid, we’ve been blaming a child for our relationships for a long time. A threatening, flying child whom we’ve given a weapon.

Throughout my young adult years of living along, my holiday decor has been nothing short of Pinterest worthy. In fact, I hold Pinterest accountable for my former highly held expectations of a home stunningly outfitted for the season. That, and holiday movies of every rank.

Similar to how SATC tricked Millennial girls, fledgling in life outside the nest, into thinking a one-bedroom apartment and closet full of Manolos was possible for any woman in NYC not in finance or with a trust fund (let alone as a sometimes-freelance columnist, not even a freelance reporter, gah!), holiday movies have made it appear that affording an entire dining table worth of golden turkey embroidered napkins, squash-scented pillar candles and salad forks would, like, totally be possible on the average 20-something’s salary!

That’s about as real as the families that smile from your newly purchased picture frames.

It is time we held pinned Pottery Barn catalogs accountable for the monsters they truly are.

For nearly 10 years and nine apartments I’ve hauled plastic tubs full of stockings and feathers and firework centerpieces and light-up reindeer, then tried to find room for all of it in closets the size of a Christmas card.

For my cross-state move, however, I trashed it all. Gave the best pieces away to Salvation Army. Washed my hands of all that glitter and gold and never looked back.

I did save a few of my favorite pieces that I’ve had since my first year as a post-graduate. I’m still a weepy sentimental softie, just more economical, hardened by the reality of how much moving sucks, as does finding storage space for things you don’t really need after you’ve taken the luxuriously large U-Haul back.

I’ve purged a lot of my everyday decor, too, much to the relief of my now-husband, who, no exaggeration, will straighten my things into parallel lines when I’m not looking. I’ll return to notebooks, shoes, half-eaten snacks I’ve mindlessly strewn about and find them perfectly aligned and laying at attention. Good little soldiers, keeping his demons away. The whereabouts of my hair ties are no longer a mystery with a non-debilitating-OCD dude as my roommate.

The thing about tchotchkes is this: They’re all well and good in a home that you’ve bought and will be paying off (ie. living in) for the rest of your life. But I was tired of them clogging up my apartments. They created pressure. If I bought a cute vase for my fireplace mantle, I’d have to then get cute matching bookends for the books I have up there. Oh! And maybe a few new books to showcase a variety of topics I can pretend I’ve read about.

You know, that age old “the more you have, the more you want” chase that never seems to end. Happiness and satisfaction never achieved by way of “stuff.” Plus, everything from big boxes to drug stores to mom and pop-style gas stations now have an inventory of something fucking adorable tempting me to buy and hang at my house. I was starting to feel suffocated by my options. NO MORE. I HAVE TOO MUCH. TOO MUCH. TOO MUCH.

Our now minimalist apartment style can be attributed to a reaction against all of the above. A husband who gets itchy over disorganization and an exhaustive fatigue courtesy a tireless consumerist culture and decade of moving unnecessary items that I don’t even like that much, just feel like I need to have or keep.

But can a house (a one-bedroom apartment house, but still) become a home without this stuff?

Can touches of personality come simply by way of a cute bedspread and matching curtain?

Can I miss having a place of my own to decorate and pattern mix and generally make a delicious mockery of class and sophistication but at the same time grow increasingly satisfied with having little of worth or heart-value in here except a flesh and blood person, my greatest accessory yet?

We know we won’t be here long (I mean we won’t be here long in this apartment but you could read that sentence as something more metaphorical about life). We’re tramps born to run and eat vending machine cheese sandwiches on the road, after all. Acknowledging this has not only saved us (me) a lot of money on flash sales at Target and Michael’s, but also imbued a sense of peace and focus into our relationship.

For each life choice you tick off the list of choices that life — and its no-nonsense, objective passage of time — forces you to make, the easier your life becomes.

We will decorate a house together someday, but for now, why worry? All we have to do is be with each other. Be ourselves, stripped of pretense and a perfunctory going-through of life’s motions. Enjoy each other’s company.

Which, when I consider it, is what all that holiday decor was supposed to inspire in the first place.

In which sometimes the universe helps you say yes

Jackie Mantey Leave a comment

The thing I’ve basked in most since moving to Chicago from Columbus is the anonymity I have here. No one knows me in Chicago. I’m just one person in a crowd of many. One ant in the army, a pretzel in the party mix.

I know that’s unusual to say; don’t you want to be where everybody knows your name?

Well, therein lies our answer. I liked that no one knew me in Chicago because it made getting sober a lot easier. There were no expectations for who I was and how I would act.

No one in Ohio made me drink, of course, but it was hard to say no to “just one” when I had created the habit and reputation of being a party girl. I didn’t want to let anyone down, and you convince yourself you will by not drinking. At least when you’re a drunk. Codependency comes so easily for us!

I recognize that none of that matters and I what I needed to break through was why I had convinced myself I was Good Time Gina and couldn’t break free from that self-perpetuating idea. Nonetheless, moving to a new city was a relatively easy way to stack up some months of sobriety and then use them as the foundation for strength to even claw my way to that realization.

In Chicago, I didn’t care if anyone liked me. My move there wasn’t about them. It was about rehabbing a love and rehabbing myself.

Nearly a year and a half later, both of those things have come to fruition. No regrets, clearly, but I do find myself thinking sometimes, “Oh wow, I don’t really know anyone here except the person I came here for and the friends I met at work.”

That happens naturally as you get older. You settle in. Find one or two people who are worth your time and mostly just stick to them.

But I ain’t dead yet. And now that I know how and trust myself to hang out without wanting to drink, I’m ready to do it!

Getting myself to do that has proven difficult though. I think I’m an introvert who’s excellent at playing an extrovert. Which means, I make a lot of plans and never follow through. Then there’s that pesky monthly wave of depression.

Oh, and also, not being drunk means drunk conversations now bore the shit out of me. I want to talk the good stuff. Not share party stories. I’m so bad at small talk now.

Me at your kegger.

So imagine our surprise and, really, glee, when last Saturday Justin and I went out for an all-you-can-eat sushi date (gross in theory, delicious in reality) and found that a pair of our friends already had the same idea.

While we put our name in for a table, we heard our names being called from another one. We’d been “planning” double dates with this pair for as long as I’ve been living in Chicago, but we had yet to make it happen.

“Come sit with us!” they waved.

I think our first instinct was to politely decline and say something about not wanting to interrupt their date–or ours. I’m glad we did nothing of the sort. For the first time since I’ve moved here, it was really nice to not feel anonymous.

There was wine and gin on the table, BYOB, but I didn’t want any of it. I didn’t even think about it being there until we were out the door and on our separate ways, enveloped by the Chicago night. Alcohol finally appears to me in the way I think healthy drinkers see it: As secondary to the party as the food. It’s awesome when it’s there, but it’s not necessary.

Is this what coming out of a self-imposed hibernation feels like? I’m finally warming up to the city’s flesh and bone inhabitants, de-thawing into a wonderfully vulnerable little puddle that wants people to come and play.

As we shared dinner, sushi and stories, we discovered both of our date nights had been stalled in various ways to put us here, in the same obscure restaurant, at the same strange time, in a city where more than 2.7 million people could be roaming about.

What are the chances?

Here’s to no longer asking questions like that.

And saying yes more often with follow-through, no matter how shaky I feel.

Thanks for the kick in the pants, universe. And also for the sushi.