Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl: A Memoir

by Carrie Brownstein

I felt the confidence of my younger self slipping away. But that didn’t matter to their moms. And I imagine it was they who kept me on invite lists to birthday parties, weekend ski trips, and after-school mall excursions. After all, who else among their kids’ friends was mature enough to understand the nuanced joys of a recently procured coffee-table book on the Kennedys or the acquisition of a delicious chocolate fondue recipe? Plus, I was their number-one source for scene-by-scene summaries of films they were too harried to see. I stood next to them in the kitchen while they unloaded the dishwasher, sipping lemonade, casually leaning against the counter or sitting atop it, retelling the plots of Clue and Romancing the Stone from title sequence to end credits. Meanwhile, my friend worked on homework or chatted on the phone in the other room. That was child’s play. I felt adult, important. When a friend’s father died of Lou Gehrig’s disease, her mother counted me among the first to be notified. I was getting ready for school when I received the call; I took the news like a pro. No tears. When was the funeral? Did they need anything? Later, in the school bathroom during lunch, I delivered the story to our other friends with the gravity and stoicism of a nightly-news anchor. Here were the facts. They wept streams of turquoise mascara while I stood near the paper towel dispenser and let them know that this was just how things were. This was life. Tough it out. But the reality...