Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner (18 page)

When my girlfriends and I spent a long weekend at the beach last year, I was the only one wearing a regular one piece. Everyone else had on cute tank tops with flippy little tennis-skirt-type bottoms. [
Except for Blackbird who was in a bikini. As she’s someone who’ll happily visit a nude beach, she has no say in this discussion.
] And you know what? They were adorable. In the past, skirted suits have had a Ziegfeld Follies/1920s Miss America Pageant vibe, but now they’re sporty and really not an object of shame. It’s like manufacturers
want
to bring in a clientele who can’t remember where they were when Kennedy was shot.

As my friends explained, the skirt’s not about hip and thigh concerns. They’ve opted for extra coverage because of the new and, frankly, unrealistic, hair-removal demands. As they see it they can go skirt, or go Brazilian. They’ve chosen the route that doesn’t involve having your lady parts manhandled by bossy Russian waxers.

While we were at the beach, I admired how they could go straight from the water to walk without having to find a sarong or pull dry shorts on over a damp suit.

I was intrigued by the skirt, yet somehow the act of buying one seemed like defeat. For me the idea of the skirt always felt the first step down the slippery slope of socks and Birkenstocks, four thirty p.m. dinners, and sending angry letters to the editor.

When it came time to buy suits for this year, I opt for my usual—a black Miracle Suit tank with underwire and pink color-blocking on the top for swimming, and a lower-cut black tank with side shirring for tanning. They joined the collection of ten suits I already own in the exact same cuts and colors, each its own degree of chlorine-ravaged. I receive them and I wear them and I like them, yet there’s a tiny part of me that wonders,
What if…

Maybe it’s because of the suit sale, maybe it’s due to the Ambien, or maybe I, too, am weary of maintaining unrealistic standards of grooming, but when I see the darling blue-and-green-dotted swim dress on
LLBean.com
, I take the plunge.

When it arrives a few days later, I make a big production of showing it to Fletch, waving that dotted Lycra flag like I’ve just been liberated.

He nods and says, “It’s very nice.”

I guess
some people
don’t recognize the beginnings of a revolution.

For me, I feel like I’ve entered a new phase as I throw off my clothes and slip into my skirted suit. This suit represents the Next Big Step in my life. The skirt embodies everything about who I’m going to be. Women who wear skirted swimsuits are mature and regal and they do cool stuff like patronize the arts. [
Does that sound right? I don’t mean they mock the arts.
] They know who they are and what they’re about and they’re not afraid to tell the world exactly what they think.

You know who wears skirted swimsuits? Serious women. Important women. Women who rule. I bet you anything that both Margaret Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth embrace the swim dress. You think Golda Meir or Indira Gandhi ran around in tankinis? Think again.

I admire myself in the mirror, noting how even though the skirt only skims the very top of my thighs, the dress conceals a variety of ills. I mentally kick myself, wondering why I resisted its siren song for so long.

Yes.

I’ll say it.

The swim dress is genius.

The swim dress is full of win.

I head outside with my book, planning to bask in the sun until I get hot enough to want to dive in; it doesn’t take long.

As I ease into the water, I notice the skirt doing something… odd. There’s a whole underlining that hugs my body like a regular suit, but the dress part has separate material that starts at my bust line. The longer I’m in the water, the more the suit seems to expand. The fabric around me begins to swell and bloom, as though I were clad in a giant tampon that is currently sucking up all the blue pool water.

The entire time I’m in the water, I’m enveloped by wads and wads of superfluous cloth. It’s… disconcerting and I feel waterlogged. While I swim, I have the distinct impression that my bathing suit is trying to drown me.

When I get out, the sodden suit material now reaches my knees and is so heavy that I have to hoist myself up the steps, staggering under its excess weight.

Then as I settle into my chair, I’m swaddled in mounds and
mounds of damp bathing suit. Within minutes, I’m shivering despite the eighty-degree temperature because I feel like I’m trapped under a load of drenched sheets.

I last another five minutes before I go inside, step out of this soaking wet albatross, and step back into one of my unliberating, unforgiving, thigh-revealing tank suits.

And I have to wonder if the great ladies in history couldn’t have accomplished a little bit more if they weren’t weighed down in thirty pounds of swim skirt.

My girlfriends have come to my house for our annual long weekend. I’m here in my thigh-revealing tank suit and they’re all done up in their adorable, flippy swim skirts. I watch as their suits engorge around them, and they’re suddenly surrounded by circles of sodden Spandex.

When we get out of the pool to eat lunch, the complaints begin in earnest.

“Jesus Christ, it’s freaking cold out here,”
says Angie.

“I feel like I’m wearing a wet diaper,”
says Wendy.

“There’s just so much fabric, I can’t seem to dry off,”
says Poppy.

One by one, they peel off to put on regular clothes to finish their lunches.

And there I sit in my girlish one-piece, smug as a bug in a rug.

Oh, tank suit… I shall never forsake you again.

“Y
ou know I feel so dirty when they start cooking cute; I want to tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot.”

I finish dicing the last of the celery for the mirepoix while I wait for the pancetta to finish browning. Oh, crispy pork fat, you’re the most delicious pork fat of them all.

As I survey the rest of my
mise en place
ingredients, I’m overcome with a sense of satisfaction. A couple of years ago, I was content just to shove a couple of naked pork chops under the broiler, splash on some preservative-laden barbecue sauce, and call it a meal. But now? I’m creating a culinary masterpiece, slowly building flavor one layer at a time. In two hours, this is going to be the most beautiful Bolognese sauce anyone has ever seen, and that is not an exaggeration.

“’Cause she’s watching him with mirepoix!”

I giggle and toss the celery in the pot.

“
And she’s lovin’ him with that carrot, I just know it!”

There go the carrots.

“And he’s sautéing golden brown late, late at night!”

And finally, the onions. I grab my spatula-microphone to belt out the next verse.
“I wish that I had Bo-lo-gnese! I want Bo-lo-gnese! Where can I find a fresh sauce like that?”
[
What, you don’t change the words when you sing?
]

My interest in cooking neatly coincided with buying my first iPod. Turns out I don’t get so bored with all the scrubby-peely-choppy tedium if there’s music involved. Yeah, we have a decent stereo, but Fletch has a tendency to overcomplicate home electronics, so the path from “off” to “The Smiths” requires a master’s degree in sound engineering. Also, I’m far too impatient to listen to a whole CD at a time and I tend to go all MC JazzyJen, [
My DJ name.
] and having to switch artists every three and a half minutes is exhausting. Cooking’s one of the few situations in which I can multitask [
Notable failures include driving while talking to passengers, swimming while cocktailing, and running while breathing.
] and I’m totally over eating cereal for dinner, so it’s all worked out nicely.

As I stir and shimmy and slaughter the lyrics, I feel a presence. I glance up to find Fletch frowning in the doorway.

“What’s up?” I ask, removing my snappy new replacement earbud.

(Libby ate the last set.)

(Libby, bless her heart, is kind of an asshole.)

He looks grim. “Did you know Rick Springfield is dead?”

What? No! Noooooo! Not Rick Springfield! Rick, also known as Dr. Noah Drake to
General Hospital
fans, was my first real musical love. Before he came along with his velvet-revolver voice,
feathered hair, and stunning assortment of Members Only jackets, my interest in music was strictly secondhand, an offshoot of my brother’s esoteric band du jour. [
With a brief but intense dalliance with Andy Gibb. But I was only in fourth grade back then. No one really understands true love until middle school.
] Much as I tolerated the Marshall Tucker Band and Jethro Tull, nothing about their songs really spoke to me. [
The flute doesn’t rock as hard as one may think.
]

Rick Springfield’s one-two punch of talent and good looks had me smitten. I’d sit in my bedroom, tape recorder at hand, listening to Kasey Kasem’s
American Top 40
, ready to hit
RECORD
the second I heard the opening notes of his melodic stylings. And every week, I’d buy
Tiger Beat
or
Teen Beat,
basing my purchase decision on whichever magazine featured more pictures of him, and, please, Jesus? Let him be shirtless.

I found out recently one of my friends harbored the same kind of crush on our boy Rick. Except she grew up in Beverly Hills and she and her wealthy friends would pool their allowance to hire a limo driver to cruise past his house whenever they could. To this day, she can recite his old license plate number. I thought I was a committed fan when I framed his
Working Class Dog
album cover, but clearly not. Also? I suspect her allowance was higher than mine.

“Jessie’s Girl” was one of the first videos I ever, saw, too, and Rick tore out a piece of my tender thirteen-year-old heart every time he smashed the mirror with his guitar neck in utter frustration.
No, Rick, no!
I’d shout.
Not Jessie’s Girl! You don’t want Jessie’s Girl! You wish that you had Jen-ni-fer! You want Jen-ni-fer! As I’m only thirteen, I don’t have a real concept of what
statutory rape entails, but that’s not the point;
I
should be your girl. You should spray-paint
MY
name on that brick wall. My parents won’t mind.

The pinnacle of my young life was when my friend’s dad drove a carload of freshmen girls up to South Bend to see Rick perform at our first concert ever. [
My friend Poppy’s first concert was the Rolling Stones and Blackbird’s was Led Zeppelin. Yet when I told them mine, they were jealous.
] Of course the minute I discovered a recording artist who was sure to return my love [
George Michael, of course.
] I was totes over Rick, but for a brief moment in time he was my pink heart, yellow moon, orange star, and green clover. To this day, every time I see a bull terrier wearing a short-sleeve dress shirt and a skinny tie, my heart beats a tiny bit faster.

“I can’t believe it! He was fine last week—I mean, I just saw an interview with him about
Late, Late at Night
. [
Kudos for whomever titled his memoir.
] What happened?”

Fletch’s lips get all white and puckered. “Your singing killed him.”

Nice. I swat at him with a saucy spatula but he manages to dodge me. “If you’re going to come in here and be all critical while I’m slaving over this gorgeous Bolognese sauce,
you
can have Lucky Charms for dinner.”

“Jen, I could hear you over the sound of my power tools. In the basement. At first I thought the ungodly screeching was one of the cats caught in the drill press, but then when I really listened, I realized they wouldn’t howl to the tune of ‘Jessie’s Girl.’”

After an (insincere) apology and a promise to tackle the dishes, I grudgingly allow Fletch to have my Bolognese for dinner and it
is
spectacular. The trick is adding a quarter pound of diced mortadella
(with the inset pistachios if you can find ’em) and slow heat for maximum flavor concentration. And don’t even get me started on the importance of using San Marzano tomatoes!

While we’re eating, I reflect on my first concert experience. Now that I’m an adult, I have a whole new appreciation for how much bourbon it must have taken Mr. Moon, my girlfriend’s poor father, to wash the sound of a station wagon full of shrieking freshmen (and the stench of Aqua Net and Love’s Baby Soft) out of his head. Yet here I am thirty years later and the night’s as vivid in my memory now as it was then and so I’m thankful he afforded us the experience.

“Hey,” I say, the kernel of an idea forming, “we should take Joanna’s daughter to her first concert. How fun would that be?”

Fletch deliberately sets down his fork. “By ‘we’ you mean you and Joanna, right?”