Samantha Irby: Why I’d Rather Live Alone

I tell anyone who is interested that my ideal long-term romantic relationship is one in which my manfriend and I have separate apartments in the same building. Or in buildings across the street from each other. Or buildings on opposite sides of town. Or opposite sides of the state. I have very little interest in joint cohabitation. Seriously, almost none, save for the fact that if a dude had a big TV and was willing to pay for premium cable and give me 70-30 ownership of the remote, THEN I would maybe consider it. I mean, come on. His and Hers houses?! TOTAL JAM.

I don’t know, man. I’m just not big on spending every waking minute with someone you show your privates to. People are boring. I’m fucking boring. My funny runs out; my cute runs out; my smart sometimes hiccups; my sexy wakes up with uncontrollable diarrhea. I have a fucking attitude. And a sharp, nasty edge. I’m impatient. I like the whole fucking bed. I hate anyone touching and moving my artfully disheveled possessions all the time. I’m a downright terrible sharer, and I can’t guarantee that I won’t write my name on something in the refrigerator I don’t want you to eat.

I have neither the time nor patience to fix 30-plus years of all my gross shit. My snoring, my shitting all the time, my only flushing the toilet after I’ve peed in it a bunch of times, my irregular mopping, my gross litter box, my dinner in bed, my counter covered with pill bottles, my cat food everywhere, my cat hair everywhere, my piles of filthy laundry, my dozens of dirty-ass Birkenstocks scattered all over. Sometimes Helen gets maxi pads out of the bathroom trash and chews them. Sometimes I let food go bad and take way too long to throw it out. Sometimes I drink out of the same water glass for, like, three days without washing it. BARF.

I want to still have time to sit staring at the wall for hours with both my headphones and the television on, zoning. I want to watch porn by myself, because a dude just won’t let you take five minutes to masturbate without his dick thinking it’s an invitation, and then that five minutes becomes 25 minutes (if you’re lucky) of heat and sweat and effed-up hair and having to remake the bed and being late for work and even then, after all that grunting and shoving and groaning, you might STILL have to get your vibrator out while this motherfucker passes out on top of the shirt you’d taken out to wear to the office.

I stand in my kitchen with an open container of Nutella and an open container of honey-roasted Skippy peanut butter, and I dip a butter knife first in one and then the other, then I try to lick it off in such a way that each glob is a 50-50 mixture of each. I can’t do that horrifying shit if I live with some foxy dude. I mean really, do you think he’s going to lie there looking all hot and awesome and still want to rip me out of my chonies after watching that? The answer is no. No, he will not. But I still want to do it. So that means no living together. Because I can keep my apartment clean and safe and inviting for a night, for a weekend, for maybe even a week, but that day-to-day shit ain’t happening. I am obviously going to die alone, in giant panties that come up to my chin, with crumbs under my tits, and a half-eaten cat face.

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From Meaty. Used with permission of Vintage. Copyright © 2018 by Samantha Irby.