We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

by Samantha Irby

By this point in our nascent relationship, Mavis and I had figured out how to mash our moist and sweaty sex parts together with marginally enjoyable results, suffered through awkward introductory meals with each other’s closest friends/families (including a surprise birthday party I totally almost ruined by being a pouty asshole), and gone in on a family cell phone plan: IT WAS TIME FOR US TO PLAN OUR FIRST JOINT VACATION. Thoughtful romantic that I am, I texted, “Hey, instead of flying first-class to Jamaica to drink rum out of coconuts and risk skin cancer roasting under the sun, how would you feel about instead spending nine hours wedged into a rented car with my dead dad’s ashes to go to Nashville and eat biscuits and gravy and listen to terrible country music for a week?” In hindsight I realize that that is a heavy fucking thing to ask a normal person with actual human feelings to accompany you to do. In my mind it was like Weekend at Bernie’s, but in real life she has a mom she talks to on the phone once or twice a week and isn’t used to my whole LOL I KILLED MY MOM shtick. This could be an emotional minefield.