Dating Big Bird by Laura Zigman

something I’d felt compelled to do ever since I was a child, and I’d never outgrown it. If I ever had children of my own, I vowed I would never make them feel judged. How predictable.
    “I’m not disappointed. I’m just wondering if we’re ever going to meet your friend.”
    “What friend?”
    “Malcolm.”
    Malcolm?
    “Now’s not a very good time.”
    “Will there ever be a good time?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “I mean, you’ve been seeing him for a while now, and we still haven’t met him. We were just thinking that it would be nice if he came for Thanksgiving, that’s all.”
    “Yes, it would be nice.” And I had to admit, I would have loved for him to meet my sister and my Pickle.
    “So will you ask him?”
    “Sure, I’ll ask him.”
    But I didn’t have to. I knew he wouldn’t come.
    Like every other normal person in the world, Amy was dreading the holidays. Since I was too, especially after the previous evening’s conversation with my parents, we felt we needed to talk each other down off of our respective ledges. Friday night after work, she came over to my apartment, and we ordered dinner in. When our sushi arrived, we sat on the floor in the living room on opposite sides of the coffee table and ate like pigs.
    “I hate them,” she said.
    “I know. Me, too.”
    “Does anyone like them?”
    “I don’t know. Probably not.”
    “There must be some people, somewhere, who like them.”
    “You think?” I went into the kitchen and returned with a flask of sake I’d heated up and two small ceramic cups.
    “There has to be. People who are normal. Who aren’t depressed. People for whom Thanksgiving and Christmas are just pleasant painless meals to be shared with family.”
    “You mean, like people for whom a cigar is just a cigar?”
    “And a holiday is just a holiday.”
    I tried to picture who would fit her description, but I kept coming up with the same visual: Teletubby-type aliens with those metal antennae on springy metal coils attached to their heads.
    Amy eyeballed me, as if she were waiting for an actual answer. “Maybe people in the South like the holidays. Or people in the Midwest.”
    “People who wear fleece, you mean.”
    “Don’t start in on that again.”
    “Sorry.”
    “I’m serious. I mean, why can’t we be like that?”
    “Be like what?”
    “The kind of people who like holidays.”
    The same visual as before appeared in my mind—only this time she and I were the Teletubby aliens with the boinging antennae. “Because we’re not.”
    “But why can’t we be?”
    “Because. We’re not wired like that. We’re too …”
    “Too what?”
    “Too
complex
,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm.
    “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes I think that’s bullshit. Like we just overcomplicate everything.”
    “You mean, that we choose to be miserable?”
    “Yes. And that we could, just as easily, choose not to be miserable.”
    I thought a minute. “Positivity,” I said, feeling quite clever about having thought of this new word, “instead of negativity.”
    “Exactly. Positivity.”
    I moved my empty containers away and pushed back from the coffee table to lean up against the couch. “Well, feel free to pursue positivity if you want to, but I’m going to stick with negativity. It’s worked just fine for me so far.”
    “No, it hasn’t.”
    “Yes, it has.”
    “What’s it gotten you?”
    “Who says I’ve wanted anything?”
    She looked away, and when she did, I knew it was time for me to ask her what this whole preamble was leading up to.
    “I’m just dreading going to Chicago to meet Will’s family.”
    “So why are you going?”
    “Because he invited me. And because I’m supposed to be grateful that after a year and a half, he’s finally letting me meet them. Or letting them meet me. At least you don’t have to deal with this shit.”
    “Oh,
right
,” I said, and laughed. “One of the many benefits of being involved with someone whose