I Can Barely Take Care of Myself by Jen Kirkman Page A

who under the supervision of owner George Steinbrennerwere forbidden to wear their hair long or have facial hair below the lip. (In baseball this is called “discipline.” But when a woman suggests that her boyfriend cut the hair on his scalp and chin area, that’s known as “This controlling chick is telling me what to do.”)
    In case you didn’t know because you’ve been living in a vacuum-sealed hut off the coast of New Zealand or are a Goth teenager,the Red Sox hadn’t won a World Series since 1918 and were known as having an eighty-six-year-old “curse” on their heads. The superstition started after the Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in the off-season of 1919–1920. Before the sale of “the Bambino” the Red Sox had been a successful baseball franchise. The 2004 Red Sox referred to themselves as “the Idiots”—an almost Zen declarationthat the game they played was one of camaraderie, hope, and joy. It was to be played one pitch at a time and it didn’t matter whether there was a curse or how many RBIs (whatever those are) a guy had.
    Most people from Massachusetts know a little bit about the ride of Paul Revere but “a lot a bit” about the curse of the Boston Red Sox. It served as a metaphor for all of our lives on an as-neededbasis. If something didn’t go right in your life, you could remember that nothing was going right for the Red Sox either. The entire state was cursed. The entire state was an underdog. Sometimes things don’t work out and maybe we’re working against a punishing power higher than ourselves that doesn’t want us to win. That kind of “I’m the piece of shit that the world revolves around” attitude isunique to Massachusetts and I think it’s why so many comedians are from Boston, and why most people in Boston are sarcastic, angry, and wicked drunk.
    WHEN I TURNED thirty a few weeks later I was still single and threw myself one of those parties that is no longer appropriate past the age of thirty—the type where you send out an Evite and ask everyone to meet you at a bar and pay for their owndrinks. I heard that Matt showed up that night, although I didn’t see him. I was busy flirting with an artist who, according to my friend, thought I was cute. I think the only reason he thought I was cute was because we had met months earlier at a party and I completely ignored him. Not on purpose. I just didn’t know he was there.
    If I like a guy, I can’t ignore him. I can only try to own andoccupy him like a celebrity does a small island. I followed the Artist back to his house in a drunken stupor after my party. I slept over. We made out. I fell asleep halfway through our fooling around so I really did only “sleep” with him. The next morning, the sunlight streaming through his window and onto his bed made me self-conscious. Who knows what kind of cellulite could have developed overnightas I transitioned from age twenty-nine to thirty? I left and hoped that he would call me. He didn’t call me. I called him. A lot. A week later, I invited him to see Manhattan at a revival theater. (He had told me on my birthday that it was his favorite movie.) He said he couldn’t go. But why would he not want to see it with me after he told me it was his favorite movie? It couldn’t be becauseI had called him fifty times since we had first met, right? At least I didn’t drop a special-edition DVD of Manhattan on his doorstep—only because I couldn’t remember where he lived.
    September rolled around and I hadn’t run into Nice Matt from Boston anywhere. I decided that it was time to invite him to my regular Sunday-night karaoke party. I’d never once actually corralled a group of peopletogether for a Sunday-night karaoke party, but Matt wouldn’t know that. Besides, I’d always wanted to be the type of girl who has a regular Sunday-night karaoke gathering. I sent out an e-mail to a bunch of friends—including Matt—and said, “It’s a Sunday Night Karaoke