I'm Only Here for the WiFi (12 page)

So why do we stay with Irvings when they are clearly terrible, and we could certainly do so much better? When we could go online and, within a twenty-four-hour period, have a dozen new potential Loves of Our Lives who are “matched” to us with some insane percentage like ninety-two. (How is that even possible? That seems absurd.) What is the motivation to settle for something that is definitely not mutually beneficial, or even enjoyable? I find it hard to believe that we have some tiny chip lodged in all our brains that says, when we are blown off for the third evening in a row, “This is marriage material right here. Mate with this. Reproduce with this. Put more of this into the world.” I just can't believe we are this self-defeating. But I think there is some truth to the notion that, because we are all having a tough time
establishing ourselves and finding a real pathway to success, independence, and fulfillment, it is hard to demand that kind of self-assurance from someone else.

Our mothers would not have considered getting serious with someone at twenty-five who wasn't interested in the long term, who wasn't able, willing, or working toward being able to provide for a family and set up a home somewhere. Those were basics, and the respect that came along with those basics was essential. But today we have no individual pressure to make big decisions (or, at least, no one is surprised when it isn't possible), so we are willing to accept relationships that linger on in the not-so-serious stage for years on end. Years. Literal years.

I know people personally who have moved in with their significant others of several years, with no real plans for the future and no real feeling that their relationship is a priority in the SO's life. When I ask them what they want, they usually respond marriage, kids, a house somewhere, being a real family—pretty standard things. And even though it is clearly not in the cards right now for this couple, my friends are happy to stay and prolong the whole “We're just kind of casually seeing each other” process, moving in unceremoniously solely because it saves money. This is not what they want, but they assume that there is nothing better out there or that it would be unfair to ask for more. Somewhere along the line, the idea that you should only be investing in people who ultimately want the same things as you went completely out the
window—likely around the time bath bombs became popular.

But someone doesn't have to be rich or even financially comfortable to be moving toward the goals of one day establishing himself. At the end of the day, the defining factor in whether or not someone is going to be a good match is how he treats you and how he makes you feel about yourself. When you're not a priority for someone else, you can feel it, and there is no reason to actively put yourself through the daily confidence beating that comes from being with someone who is indifferent to your existence. Seriously, it is incredibly humiliating to be clearly more into someone than he is into you. It's the emotional equivalent of walking around all day with a square of toilet paper stuck to your shoe and no one telling you; you just look like a fool, and everyone kind of silently pities you.

We know that we can do better. We know that there are kind Petes, there are empathetic Sammies, and there are legions of underrated Harries. We have options, endless options, and there is no reason not to pursue them. It doesn't matter if we're not going to be in the white-picket-fenced house with 2.5 children and a Shetland Sheepdog by the time we're thirty-one; it just matters that we're moving in that direction and treating each other with respect and love. You can go to the bar and drunkenly tell someone how much you love him within the first ten minutes of meeting him. You can reach out to a friend who has always interested you, but with whom you never really wanted to risk the friend
dynamic. You can suck it up and go on OkCupid, and realize that there is only, like, a 3:10 skeezeball ratio overall on that website.

And if you don't want to get married or have kids—or even have a long-term relationship—congratulations, you no longer have to. Whether or not you're going to hit thirty and suddenly throw it into reverse, like a heavily abused rental car, and decide that you do want to start something concrete with someone, it doesn't matter now. We are lucky enough to have been born into time when we are not all universally expected to be impregnating/impregnated by the time we reach twenty-five with no real future outside of living vicariously through our children for the rest of our lives. I think it's easy to forget how amazing it is when someone reminds you, in your twenties, how “young” you are, and how you have “so much time” to be looking for what exactly you want out of life. That is such a huge step forward from pretty much every other point in history.

I admit that I am biased, in that I've known pretty much since I was aware of my surroundings that I one day want to get a ring put on my finger and start spawning, but I have nothing but respect for people who don't want that. And, to be frank, the world is kind of your oyster at this point if you're not wed to the notion of finding something serious. So many people out there right now are just looking to date casually, and are totally open about it. Hell, you can even mosey on over to Seeking Arrangement and get yourself a brand-new tacky Lexus while you work
on your career or your studies. You have free rein to do so, and innumerable websites with which to locate singles in your area who are looking for a similar ratio of sex–to–actual feelings.

The point is that it's the fucking twenty-first century, and there's no excuse for any of us—no matter what we're looking for—to be stuck in a situation that isn't what we want. We can literally meet people from across the globe who can put in a concise little paragraph under a picture of themselves exactly what they want out of the next few years of their life. If you are making excuses as to why you are waiting it out with someone who will magically morph overnight into something you are actually interested in, you are wasting your time in the most painful way. You are never going to be this sexy, this energetic, this free of responsibility again in your life. Now is the time, if there ever was one, to be experimenting and going on dates and only getting serious when you feel like it—or remaining completely romance-free for a while, if that floats your be-vibrator'd boat. We have Grindr now; we are officially in the future we always dreamed of. There is no reason not to be yourself.

F
ew things seem more intimidating to a young adult
who has gone through his entire life without having to contemplate money in a concrete sense than the prospect of having to manage an entire budget by himself. Both sides of the equation—from consistently bringing ever-increasing sums of income into your bank account, to keeping the spending at a reasonable and sustainable pace—seem unrealistic to keep up for an entire life. Unfortunately, though, money just seems to become more necessary, more complicated, and more tightly wound up with other people as you get older. The days when your money was entirely yours to do with what you like (which mostly just entailed buying a staggering amount of Fruit Roll-Ups when taken to a grocery store) are gone forever. (Sidenote: I have not bought nearly the amount of soda and cake that I anticipated I would when I had complete control over my own money. Adulthood blows.)

Money management, aside from being a profession relegated to obese men with monocles and pinstriped suits, is just not fun. Strangely enough, no matter what kind of money you're earning, you'll still find a way to spend a disproportionate amount, which leaves you frustrated and/or nervous at the end of the month. As anyone who has gone from an $8-per-hour gig to earning real-ish money (and possibly back again) can attest, there is no amount of money you can earn that will just be “enough” and allow you to live whatever lifestyle you want without having to be concerned about your bills. I mean, technically, you could be a billionaire, but I'm
gonna go out on a limb here and guess that twentysomething socialites aren't hanging on every word of my financial advice.

Personally speaking, I have only in recent times come into a certain kind of coherence with money. For most of my life, even when I was being forced by my parents to save my after-school job money, my life's purpose seemed to be to indiscriminately drain my checking account until I was in tears, looking at the teller like an abandoned puppy, as though she were going to be able to do anything about my negative balance and merry-go-round of overdraft fees. I often come across things I purchased in the financial fugue state that was my life between sixteen and twenty-one, and I am overwhelmed with self-loathing. I went through a significant Lilly Pulitzer phase, convinced that buying $300 dresses when I was making minimum-ish wage and was still a student was a positive move for my future. Aside from looking like someone's tragic, WASP-y stepmom who gets white-wine drunk and hates her life (no one should ever wear a pink dress with a mint-green cardigan, and yet, how many times I did just that), I was burning through everything I'd saved with no thought to the moment when I would actually need it.

Despite how much useless information we absorb during K–12 education, we never take a class that is just like, “Hey, shitheads. This is what a checking account looks like. This is what a budget is. This is what taxes are.” I would exchange my entire mathematical education for a weeklong workshop on how to set up a 401K.
I'm not going to say that no one tried to instill proper financial protocol in my thick skull—I can hear my parents yelling right now about how all they did was try to convince me that I was wasting my precious, precious savings—but I was just not trying to learn. Perhaps if it were something we all had to learn and had a grade that depended on really comprehending the material, I would have taken it in more. (Though probably not.)

In any case, money is something that most of us kind of have to learn about through trial by fire. Many of us are going to reach a point at which, all of a sudden, we're just like, “Oh, fuck. I have, like, no money. I really need to get my shit together, because I can't be dancing around thirty and still eating bread with a slice of American cheese put in the microwave as two out of my three daily meals.” There's no shame in struggling—this is coming from a person who, on more than one occasion, rolled up to the gas station with a wobbly stack of pennies, ready to see exactly how much that could get me. I shook that gas nozzle to the very last drop, eager to get every single millicent's worth of my fuel. We are all going to reach palpable lows in our financial lives that leave us at best, humiliated, at worst, considering selling our internal organs on the Internet. The idea is to work consistently toward clawing your way out of said pits of monetary quicksand, always thinking of what you can do better or spend less on in order to make everyday life less painful. Though it is not always easy to identify where the money is disappearing to, there are
some universal things that abscond with our discretionary funds almost universally.

But sometimes everyday life and personal habits can ruthlessly undermine even the most budget-conscious mind. It seems innocuous enough, but transportation can be one of the most efficient ways of burning through unintended amounts of money every month—often while getting nothing tangible in return. There are cars, of course, which are more aptly described as money-burning kilns with wheels attached. There's the actual cost of the car (whether bought outright or paid for over a series of painstakingly expensive months), the insurance, the gas, the maintenance, the repairs, the tolls. Even parking spaces themselves can be a source of never-ending money absorption. I think that, to this day, I owe the city of D.C. about $500 in unpaid parking tickets. (I'm getting to that, you guys, I promise.) But how many times can you circle a block when you are late to pick up something from a dry cleaner before you just kinda go “Fuck it,” and park directly in front of a fire hydrant? We think that leaving our hazards on will save us, but, oh, it will not.

Sure, we could take public transportation—and we often do—but how feasible is that in many midsize cities that, for some reason, have decided that giving their citizens an affordable, efficient, environmentally friendly way to move around would be nowhere near the top of their priority list? And even if you do get your monthly bus or metro pass, what do you do after a long
night of imbibing sweet liqueurs, when all your transport options have been exhausted? You do what many of us do: You take a taxi. (Can we just officially rename the act of “taking a cab” as “taking a $20 bill out of your pocket and burning it as you cackle maniacally”?) When I think of all the money I have lost to unnecessary cab rides, my entire being shudders with the cold, drifting winds of my exhausted checking account.