Wow, No Thank You - Samantha Irby Page 0,32

even if you see a girl on the street who looks like she climbed right out of the most whimsical page in the plus-size section of ModCloth, eating a whole pizza with a well-loved copy of Bastard Out of Carolina tucked under her arm, what are you supposed to do? Can you just go up and introduce yourself and ask her to do a friend thing with you? “Um, excuse me, miss, would you like to sit around and vape sativa with me and eat Trader Joe’s Cubano wraps while MSNBC plays on a continuous loop in the background?” Or, “Hey, stranger, would you like to skim the extensive collection of sad memes saved on my hard drive to see the kind of shit I will regularly be texting you at three in the morning?”

Have you ever considered what a friendship is, or what any of your current friendships are, and thought about how to present that to a prospective new friend? You know, like how you are going to eventually be sending them selfies of you trying on twelve similar-yet-slightly-different pairs of glasses in your ophthalmologist’s waiting room while your garbage insurance is being processed? How do you convince a stranger to give you their real e-mail when you are definitely going to litter their gmail dot com with dumb nonsense. Scrolling through my phone to find recent examples of what I text my stupid-ass friends has yielded this treasure trove of idiocy:

jenny (12:09 a.m.): “AT ELEVEN AT NIGHT?? wow mom *devil horns emoji*”

cara (2:22 a.m.): “lmao i mean great i hope they feel good, but you gotta be gross AND show tits”

megan (9:39 a.m.): “it’s nothing, just capitalizing on the love being sent my way”

Michael (10:43 a.m.): “hey this is really important” *posts link to a Twitter profile*

Jessie (1:11 p.m.): “we’re thinking about adopting this orange cat from the shelter and his name is reginald but i want an orange cat named pumpkin so what do you think if i call him ‘reginald pumpkin’ aka ‘little reggie pumps’ that’s a cool name right!”

john (1:12 p.m.): *mo’nique meme: “see when you do clownery, the clown comes back to bite”*

abbi (2:13 p.m.): “i just don’t like that i can feel my organs working, you know? like my gallbladder burns and that makes me terrified that it is going to burst out of my body.”

jenn (3:12 p.m.): “i am too humble and ashamed, i had guilt throwing out a face wash i hated”

helen (4:11 p.m.): “BEETS ARE DISGUSTING”

Fernando (4:17 p.m.): “do you think i could go to urgent care to get tested for stress shingles?”

keely (9:06 p.m.): “i’m glad it’s finally spring, because i always thought i hated it as a season but i’ve actually missed the sun!! i even bought a sad lamp wtf”

A few years ago (before I moved to Michigan and joined my wife’s community of backyard composters and travel-soccer chauffeurs), my lady and I went to her friend’s costume wedding and—I know you already know this, but let me just say it for anyone who is new or still has a shred of hopefulness in their heart—I did not wear a costume. The last time I wore a Halloween costume was in the second-grade costume parade at Lincoln Elementary School in 1986 (go, dolphins), and the only costume I could come up with was “housewife,” a concept I didn’t fully understand but thought I could approximate with my mom’s tattered old robe, a half-melted spatula, and the satin cap she slept in the nights after a fresh press ’n’ curl. Because I was a Very Large Son, everyone just thought I had worn my shitty pajamas to school. I think I can speak for anyone who has ever been mistaken for their friend’s mom, that any kind of childhood dress-up situation is precarious at best.

Anyway, my wife and I were at this wedding where I knew a few people well enough to say “Hi” but not well enough to say “Hi, ____,” and as we’re sitting in our assigned dinner seats I’m looking around the room, taking it all in, wondering who