Quietly Hostile

by Samantha Irby

But the thing about romance is that in general it’s a bad idea,

Anytime you hear a French fucking horn?????? Babe, you are being wooed.

Little Miss Allergies and Bowel Disease is gonna survive on a road diet of gas station snacks and no prescriptions?! In what world?!

We gotta normalize the idea that people who live together and work near each other and know all the same people are eventually gonna run out of shit to say to each other and acknowledge that that’s natural and healthy.

want to push back against this idea that it’s not real love if you’re not passionately chattering at each other all the time, that it’s just as valid (and romantic!) to know instinctively when to shut the fuck up.

if you eat on camera that invites the person you’re talking to to inquire about what was so goddamn irresistible that you had to be shoveling it into your mouth right in their fucking face.

love dip dinner. It’s my favorite of all the novelty meals, mostly because I don’t know anyone who isn’t downright delighted when presented with a steaming bowl of cheese-mixed-with-other-shit-but-pretty-much-just-cheese to dunk a sturdy chip in.

QUIETLY HOSTILE is how I would describe my public personality; I am mild-mannered and super polite, but just beneath the surface of my skin, my blood is electrified and I am one inconsiderate driver away from a full Falling Down–style emotional collapse. I don’t know how to teach a child not to seethe and instead to develop a healthy coping and communication style, because I do not know how to do that for myself.

Even at nine years old I knew there was no way I was gonna ruin my chance to fill my adult life with overpriced candles and designer lip balms by giving birth to a baby with a bad personality whose needs I’d be legally required to place above my own for eighteen-plus interminable years.

I was born strangling myself with the cord; I continue passively trying to kill myself to this day.

Who is out here ironing their crotchless beaded thong?!

have you ever just sat and thought about how there is an animal as big as a city bus and we’re alive at the same time as them,

“Maybe if your nails are tidy and dark and shiny, they will distract from the fact that the rest of you looks like a melted pillar candle.”

“Well I walked by a slice of cold pizza someone left on the counter and took a bite without asking what was in it; then I drank a glass of water with lemon that had been on my desk for either two hours or two days, I don’t remember; my knee was hurting so I took a pain pill that I found loose in my bag that I hope was tramadol; I had seventeen stale M&M’s; then for dinner we had a stew made from milk, eggs, soy, tree nuts, shellfish, wheat, and peanut butter, and afterward I let a bunch of bees sting me.”

many other unscented, uninspiring products with labels that have phrases like “sensitive skin” and “for adult babies who might die from smelling a flower.”

Can I keep talking on my cell phone in the restroom? WHY DO PEOPLE DO THIS?! Who in the world are you talking to who doesn’t immediately clap their flip phone shut the minute they hear your voice echoing off the metal stalls of a public bathroom? What do you have to say that can’t wait thirty seconds, or thirty minutes? Is a child lost? Has a dam broken? Did your car burst into flames? Have two celebrities whose happiness you are deeply invested in decided to get married?! Please tell me, what is the emergency that is so fucking dire you must subject a lady who is just trying to have discreet burrito diarrhea in a shopping mall to a conversation you could easily resume after you’ve done your business? I don’t want to talk to you while you’re sitting very still in a dark, air-conditioned room where no one’s privates are exposed, let alone when there is a chorus of other people’s farts providing musical accompaniment.

Is it rude to squat over a toilet so my precious butt cheeks don’t have to make contact with the seat? Yes, it’s rude, and you know it’s fucking rude because you’ve turned around to flush, with your filthy shoe, I presume, and noticed that the toilet other people have to use looks like it’s been run through a fucking car wash. No one with piss control does this, it’s always the person with a deluge sprinkler installed where their urinary system should be splattering every available hard surface with droplets of pee. It’s especially galling when they’ve covered the seat with toilet paper ostensibly as a protective measure, proceeded to liberally spray-paint said toilet paper ring with Pantone #FFF9B3 Portofino, then walk out without cleaning up any of the actively dissolving pissed-soaked tissue clumps.

have a friend who does this, constructs an elaborate toilet theater in every public bathroom stall into which she enters, and what kills me is I have seen this bitch eat food with her unwashed hands after handling bus poles and gas pumps and revolving doors. There’s more shit particulate on your phone right now than on a toilet at the bus station, just sit the fuck down already, we live in a society!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a sucker for branding, and those shitting Charmin bears are very good salesmen. Nothing is worse than having toilet paper disintegrate in your hand as you’re scrubbing around in your asshole. Second worst? Having to unwind ten feet of re-recycled paper that turns into pulp the second it comes into contact with even one drop of moisture.

Middle-aged people get ragged on for our clothes, and, yes, it’s funny, but also: What can you do? If you try to wear youthful outfits, you look like a fucking asshole, and if you wear what you actually want to wear (e.g., the matching pastel pink sweatshirt and -pants with iron-on kitten decals I saw somebody’s grandmother rocking during the Olive Garden lunch rush last week), your friends will put you in a home.

So, no, I don’t want to go into H&M so you can try to find me “a different shirt that’s cooler.” My rayon tunic and I are just fine eating our Sbarro in the food court.

in my current life as the Reanimated Corpse of Al Bundy

No easier way to look like a fucking Son of Anarchy than to cover yourself in skulls and tombstones and other garbage that makes you look like you don’t care if you live or die, which, I’m sorry, babe, automatically makes you cool as hell.

Have you ever met some uptight bozo but then found out that they have some ugly, moronic tattoo, and that makes you want to be their best friend? That’s the power of randomly picking a piece of shitty body art off a wall and having it stabbed into your skin, where it will remain for the rest of your life: you can make friends, terrify your enemies, and one day overhear a seventh grader say, “She won’t make eye contact with me or listen when I talk, but she looks really scary and cool.”