MEN TELL ME THINGS: INFINITE JEST (and some other maybe-important stuff?)
I didn’t know that David Foster Wallace was man-garbage. I know that you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but why not? Is he going to haunt me? DFW already haunted me in the form of “well-meaning” dudes who insisted that I just had to read Infinite Jest.
You’ll get it, they insisted, you just have to commit.
(Like they ever were able to commit past seven weeks of off-brand whiskey and mediocre sex.)
(Why couldn’t I fast forward through my twenties?)
I did pick up a copy, once. It was the days before Kindles (shut up!) and just purchasing the 1,079 page book was a commitment in itself. Any time I saw another woman reading it in public, we shared a guilty look.
Your five-week boyfriend wore you down, too?
Without fail, I would get 100 pages into the book and decide to break up with whomever I had granted entry to my personal space. Because it was easier than slogging through another 917 pages to get to the point. I figured by that time in my life, I had spent way too much time listening to men talk about things that only interested them. I didn’t need to read a two-and-a-half-pound book to remind me of my poor life decisions. I could experience that personally on a daily basis! And at least with the guy, there was sex. And maybe it didn’t seem so mediocre because at least I was promised thirteen David-Foster-Wallace-free minutes. (Give or take.)
Maybe their personal litmus test was a woman who read Infinite Jest. But thankfully, it helped me develop my own personal litmus test, which is that you can miss me with that bullshit. I'm really appreciating those Murtaugh moments. I'm too old for this shit. The benefit of age is having the confidence to say: fuck that noise.
I just wish I could have gotten there sooner.
Of course, men still tell me things:
It's just that I've figured out who's worth listening to. And they all agree: fuck Infinite Jest.
(Everyone knows this is the only way to consume Infinite Jest.)
Other items of note this week:
I almost got killed by my sports bra.
My sick-day TV recs.
DJ Khaled doesn’t eat pussy. We don’t have that in common. (Hi, I’m Nina and I’m bisexual.)*
Will has a similar tale.* (It's #42.)
*(Yeah, I buried the lede.)