A study in social discomfort and expensive toast, with explanatory footnotes, to be read at the end
Tonight I went to “Moms’ Night Out” at a pseudo-posh bar in Santa Monica. This was an extra-curricular event through my daughter’s preschool, organized by Sam, a mother who is far more involved and organized than I am. I’m not an un-involved mom, but when I have time to myself, away from the task of keeping another human alive, my first thought is towards my work or a hobby, like running screaming out into the night.2 I went to prove to the other moms, and to myself, that I can be a person.
In the Lyft, I ruminated on my discomfort about social events. I just don’t know HOW to people. What do people talk about?3 On stage, life makes sense. I know where and when things are supposed to happen. I guess my point is, after getting past “Hello fellow human female. I see you have spawned as well. Yes, we all drink more now,” what do I talk to a bunch of effectively random women about? But still, I wanted to give it a chance.
My Lyft pulled up to the curb. I got out. I went into the bar.
Inside the bar, it was dim, but not sinister-dim, like sex-den dim. You know. A heavy, dark, toile curtain hung close to the entrance, obscuring half my view. I took two steps toward the toile, then panned left to right: a table with two women I did not recognize, two women and a man at the bar, also foreign to me, some empty couches and low accent tables, and then there was Sam, the classroom rep and event organizer. I see Sam every week when she volunteers to set up lunch for the teachers, and/or to do other devoted tasks. Sam has three children and does all this. Did I mention she’s also skinny and beautiful? I am automatically a disheveled, out-of-shape, one-kid-having wuss in her presence. Not that she projects that—she’s actually lovely—this is all in my head. Loudly. In my head.
Sam hadn’t seen me yet; she was checking her phone. Seemed confused. She was the only one on the couch. I turned on my mental “extrovert app,” and the mask appeared.
“Hi Sam!”
“Oh hiiiiii!”
She had a half-empty glass of sparkling wine. I sat down on a dark blue, velveteen, tufted couchlet. I didn’t see anyone else I recognized.
Fucking hell. I was the first one there.
We both made sounds at each other, reflecting the situation. We recounted the facts, as if we were reminiscing about the events of five minutes ago. Almost nostalgic for a distant past, ten minutes ago, back when it was Schrodinger’s Party in our minds, both alive and dead.4
The waiter came by to ask if we’d like to look at the menu. We said yes. We required new activity and stimulation.
Sam said the food at this bar was actually very good, and she put in an order for sliders. I went for the avocado toast. The waiter was patient while we decided how many orders of each we should get. I also ordered an Old Fashioned.
We did mom talk, while the waiter took our orders to the kitchen. Nap strategies, bedtime routines, what do they eat, finding “me time,” and teaching small humans where to poop. My Old Fashioned arrived. I stopped midway to my sip, catching sight of the artisanal-looking orange rind, which set off an overall tangerine effect in the glass. It looked like Dayquil.
Then, Sam asked the introvert’s nuclear question. “How are you?”
It sends me into existential paralysis. How are you physically? Emotionally? How are you finding this incarnation on this plane of existence?10
I told her about my recording project, my album. That’s a thing.
“Mmmm,” she said, and raised her eyebrows, like the information tasted good. There was full eye contact, without a side-glance, and I know that means a human is engaged. Good so far. I told her my husband had been out of town and would be most of the month.
“Mmmmm,” again, but this time with furrowed brow, indicating recognition of the potential hardship of the situation. That’s an empathic facial response. Even if faked, she took the trouble to make it.
I paused, searching for another “thing.” I got distracted because her eyebrows were impeccable. I started wondering about her skin-care regimen. Side-glance. Shit, I’d waited too long to say a thing, and now my presence had become burdensome. She checked her phone. Oh God, I’m an alien. An alien she’s having to babysit, alone, in a bar.
Our conversation was in syndication now, pure re-runs. She had already told me when her kids went to sleep, but I asked again, as if I needed clarification about the specific meaning of 6:30pm. She asked what I was recording. I told her, “my album.” She repeated her face. She apologized about the confusion and tapped on her phone. We alternated head swivels towards the entrance whenever somebody new came in. We repeated the conversation where we told each other what time it was, and how we thought people would’ve been here 30 minutes ago. We confirmed for each other that it was now five minutes later than the last time we checked.
Then silence.
Sam ordered a margarita.
Sam’s margarita arrived, salted.
The table was an embarrassment of sharp-cut, Himalayan salt-crystalled, conically wrapped French fries. In baskets. We ate the sliders and avocado toast. So there we were: two jilted, awkward, skinny-pants-wearing moms-in-a-bar, drinking and scarfing fries, because what the fuck at this point.
If we had chosen, intentionally, to hang out alone together, it wouldn’t have been as awkward. It was only because we had expected a night of perfunctory chit chat, with many people, that we ended up unprepared for genuine social interaction.
Sam looked with concern towards the kitchen. This is when I found out that she’d told the establishment to expect 20 people, and to reserve seating and staff appropriately. This was the social-let-down motherload—when the people you invited aren’t there, and the people you paid to be there are pissed off and glaring.
8:30pm rolled around, and Sam asked how long I had planned to stay. It was clear that truly, nobody else was showing up. I made words about the babysitter. I suggested we have plans with our husbands sometime, maybe a playdate, something intentional.
“Yeah totally!”
“Yeah we totally should!”11
Because the rules are that you must reverse an unintentionally awkward evening with an intentionally awkward one.
So that was Moms’ Night Out—which seemed like a very specific and reductive title, now that the night had passed in the way it did.
So, did I learn anything about how to be a person? Did I prove to myself that I’m a person?13 I learned that sometimes the discomfort goes deeper than me. And sometimes the most prepared, together, responsible folks can still get tapped by the wand of the awkward fairy.14
Footnotes:
2 For the record, “running screaming into the night” is not my hobby. My hobbies are: free-floating anxiety and delusions of grandeur. And watercolor.
3 Aside from Steely Dan, Dark Matter, good/bad use of crash cymbal, Dark Energy, sex, the dishes, more sex, why my software isn’t working, The Singularity, politics, “are changes in emotion metric modulations?”, weird sex, Black people stuff, “where are my earbuds?” Jewish people stuff, Fminor6/9, guys wearing eyeliner, “what are those tiny red spiders called?”, and Star Trek.
I may have digressed.
4 “Schrödinger’s cat” is a thought experiment devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition. As the story goes,5 there is a cat in a box in the room next to you.6 You do not know how long the cat has been in the box, if the box is ventilated, if the cat has been fed, if the cat has been listening to Joe’s Garage7 or the Best of Celine Dion.8 Any of these variables could render the cat living or dead. Some more than others.9 Until you enter the room and open the box, in your mind, the cat is both alive and dead. Like the party. Before I got there. Get it?
5 Basically.
6 With soundproofing.
7 A three-part rock opera recorded by American musician Frank Zappa in 1979.
8 Please refer to 9
9 Please refer to 8
10 Fine. Needs salt.
11 Scientists estimate that people who suggest “making plans” in Los Angeles have, statistically, a 10 percent chance of actually seeing those plans become reality. Experts theorize that this behavior is due to several common circumstances, such as:
1) Some shit I’ve got to do.
2) “My girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse is sick/a dick/a bitch/in town/out of town/imaginary”
3) Plans with more professionally important people.
4) “Oh, shit I forgot!”
5) Something to do with kids.
6) Having to drive from West side to East side and vice versa, but usually the prior.
7) Having to drive between the hours of 2pm-7pm.
Recent studies have shown that Los Angeles people making good on “we should hang out” is less likely than the 405 receiving a hovercraft lane, or a frozen daiquiri blizzard naturally occurring over the Grand Canyon. Though there are differing opinions on how to deal with this social epidemic, 95 percent of experts12 agree that the situation is totally bullshit.
12) The other 5 percent of experts were not available for comment because they “Had a thing, but totally want to get together soon.”
13) No.
14) Different from the Absinthe Fairy, which is a story for another time.
Raya Yarbrough is a writer and singer-songwriter best known for singing the opening song of the TV series Outlander. Her creative nonfiction has been published in Frazzled and MUTHA Magazine. Raya is finishing a humorous memoir about being a parent in a multiracial family while also being a working artist.
THE CITY KEY 