since i was seventeen /
don’t matter if step on the scene /
or sneak away to the phillipines /
they’re still gonna put pictures of my derriere /
in the magazine /
you want a piece of me? /
you want a piece of me?”
- Britney Spears, “Piece of Me”
I always use a condom — the entire time. I no longer get dinner at Burger King. I incorporated a business. I own investment property. I got a graduate degree. I started a retirement account, and I contribute to it regularly. I stopped buying thongs because I felt they were impractical. I quit smoking.
But today, I made arguably the most adult decision I’ve ever made in my entire life.
I purchased a Dyson.
Sick and tired of clumsy $40 vacuums that quit on me after three months, I went to Best Buy, planning to shell out around $150 for a very awesome vacuum. I have four animals — three cats and a dog — and they’re pretty regularly dragging dirt and small sticks and dead leaves and other assorted ecosystems into my home and throughout my carpet. It’s a nightmare trying to clean this stuff up with a $40 vacuum and a Dust Buster. I needed something hardcore.
Once in the vacuum aisle of Best Buy, the sales guy wouldn’t shut up about how amazing the Dysons were. He showed me the vacuums in the $150 range, and I asked what the difference was between those and the Dysons. He shook his head and emphatically announced that there was no comparison, the way I might if someone asked me to explain the difference between Audrina Patridge and Meryl Streep. I told him I had pets. He told me the Dyson would rock my world. He told me there was a five-year warranty. He told me that they were currently selling at a discounted price. My head was whirling.
I never thought of myself as someone who would own a Dyson. I’d seen them in the vacuum aisles time and time again, marveling at the possibility that someone might spend $400 on a vacuum cleaner as I hoisted my latest $40 vacuum into my cart. Who was that kind of person? What did she wear? Where did she live? Did she have kids? A husband? What kind of car did she drive? Did she wear lipstick or gloss? Or nothing? Nail polish? The Dyson owner was a mythical and mystical creature to me, the unicorn of domestic life.
And there, in the Best Buy, under the fluorescent lights, I realized that I now had an opportunity to stand at the pinnacle of carpet cleanliness with the other unicorns. I could become a Dyson owner. Nay — I would become a Dyson owner.
I purchased my Dyson (on credit) and proudly carried it out to my car. I drove it home, into the garage of my apartment complex. People stared at me as I carried it out of the car, into the lobby and to the elevator. “Well, what do we have here?” asked one man, nodding approvingly.
An older lady in the elevator asked me if I had pets. I told her I did. “It’s going to change your life,” she said, employing what I can only describe as solemnity. “Have fun with it,” she called out as my Dyson and I disembarked on the third floor. And I know what it feels like, now, to bring a newborn child home from the hospital.
I took the Dyson out of the box and plugged it in. Per usual, while I’d been gone all day, the cat had torn up a roll of toilet paper and distributed it across the living room floor, and the dog brought the better half of a potted plant in from the patio. I should discipline them, I know, but I have to tell you — it’s much easier to just buy a Dyson.
I turned it on and got to work. The experience was something I can only describe as orgasmic. The suction power was remarkable and relentless. The soil from the potted plant was gone — without a trace — in ten seconds. The toilet paper was a walk in the park. The whole carpet was spotless in five minutes. I couldn’t wait to move to the bedroom.
A guy I’m dating invited me to go to a club tonight. I passed, because I’d promised myself that I was going to stay home and get my apartment cleaned and my laundry done and my dishes washed. And I’d been a little bummed to miss out on the date, but, as I watched the Dyson working its magic across the carpet of my apartment, it occurred to me that I would rather be doing this than drinking and dancing at a nightclub. I wanted to break out my digital camera and record this process and upload it to YouTube and email it to my entire mailing list. “Look what it did to the soil my dog dragged in!” I would write. “And how effortlessly it collects the cat hair!” I wanted to call my friends and invite them to come over and watch. Vacuuming with the Dyson was satisfying to me in a way that sex hasn’t been in a very, very long time.
Is this what it is to be a grown-up?
I imagine someone explaining to 21-year-old me that, in less than five years, she will prefer to stay home and vacuum her carpet than hit the clubs with a boy. Twenty-one-year-old me laughs, orders another shot of tequila, and assumes this person is hitting on her. Partially because the story feels so implausible, and partially because 21-year-old me assumes anything that walks is hitting on her. “Vacuuming sucks,” she quips, and then she throws back the shot, scrunches her face from the burn and coughs. “Get it?”
She’ll leave her car at the club tonight and hitch a ride back with the bartender. She’ll wake up in his bed at 4 am, get her bearings, grab her purse and tiptoe out. She can’t find her shoes and her toes are freezing against the hardwood floors. They creak. Once outside, she calls a cab, and rides silently in the back seat as the cabbie chats on his radio, buzzed words in a language she doesn’t speak, along deserted stretches of 4 am road back to her dorm room. She unlocks the door and wakes her roommate, who groans and falls back asleep. She has a headache and her tongue is bloated. She crawls into her own bed. It creaks, too. She coughs violently as she lays her head down.
A Friday night spent vacuuming, I’d tell her — even with a Dyson — doesn’t suck the way that this does.
is online delivery ordering from Pizza Hut.
One moment, I’m just fine with the basil chicken and veggies I heated up for dinner, and, before I know what hit me, there’s a large pepperoni pizza and Hershey’s dipping sticks hurtling through time and space toward my apartment, and I didn’t have to interact with a single living creature to initiate this disastrous sequence of events.
We need to legislate a waiting period.
Anna: wow, you blended statutory rape and analogy notation
me: i’m a really good writer
Andrew dives for the volleyball but he misses by an inch; it drops to the sand, hard and half a foot in-bounds.
He doesn’t get up, and at first we’re afraid he’s injured, but he’s rubbing at his eyes. “I forgot to close them!” he shouts. “Hang on!” He stumbles off the court, pulls a small travel bottle of contact solution from his shorts (”Were you a Boy Scout?”) and tries to wash off his contact lens, which he’s just removed from his eyeball.
He’s still got sand in his eye. He’s rubbing at it furiously. His face is covered in sand. His eye is growing redder and redder.
I hand him a bottle of water, and he washes his hands with it, then douses his face. He tries cleaning the contact again. He puts it in. It still hurts. He takes it out. His eye hurts badly now. He paces away from us, rubs at it some more, and eventually comes back.
Alicia offers him the cap to her water bottle. “Wanna put it in here?” she asks.
Andrew drops his contact lens into the cap and drips some more solution in.
The opposing team has begun bumping the ball amongst themselves as they wait for us to resolve our ocular emergency.
Andrew’s intently scrubbing at the contact lens. Both his eyes are watering now. The bottom half of his face is still covered in sand.
“You should get LASIK,” suggests Alicia casually.
Andrew stops what he’s doing and looks at her in disbelief. “Now?”
I laugh so hard my stomach hurts.
1) Mom throws the ball.
2) I chase after the ball.
3) I place the ball somewhere entirely inaccessible by Mom.
4) Again! Again!
