In Which We Figure Out Where Exactly To Exist

Very Connected

by JESSICA RIONERO

If I do not exist on the internet. Do I exist at all? It was straightforward and took a second really. It hurt a bit. Then it was over. I deleted my Facebook. Something that seems trivial. But the truth is. I used it every day. I would wake up and check it on my phone. Then on my computer. Then when I was bored in between conversation. I wanted to see people I knew all the time. I wanted to feel connected. And I was. Very connected.

However, I felt I had fewer real relationships since I dedicated most of my time to the internet. I would go out less and stay in more. Sarcasm went through the door. Tones were misconstrued. I wanted real contact.

So I ripped the band-aid off and was ready to face this world without my virtual social security number. Besides, Sophia Loren did not have a Facebook, why should I?

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I went on a job interview later that week. I was a sure fit. College graduate from a private school. Technical skills? Sure I got them! People person? I've worked customer service at a retail chain in Long Island. Bring it on.

"Everything looks great except there is one caveat. We did a background check and couldn't find you on Facebook." said my interviewer.

"Come again?" I was surprised.

"Well, do you have an alias you go by on the internet?" the interviewer reasoned.

"No, none at all. I actually just deleted mine…Wanted to keep this professional." Oh. Did that sound bad?

"Well this is a media company and a lot of marketing plans include Facebook advertising. We need someone savvy in this area. If you don't fit that requirement, I don't see a reason to continue this interview."

At first, this seemed absurd, but it was entirely reasonable. Maybe a media advertising job wasn't right for me after all.

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I had a date that night that a friend set up with a guy named Mark. It would have made exceptional small talk. The first half of the date he shared pictures of a recent vacation he was just on. A self proclaimed avid traveler. I never quite traveled, so we ran out of topics of conversation while waiting for drinks.

"I have to admit," he says. My eyes perked up. I cleared my throat. Nervous, I said, "Yes?"

"I usually google my dates prior to the first one."

I smile, almost relieved. " What was an exception this time? Are you trying a new thing?"

"Oh no. I still googled you. Nothing came up though. Not even..."

"A Facebook? Yes, I deleted mine."

He continued to quote things from his page and things he's seen on others' walls. He acted like a guy making out with a frozen margarita in front of an alcoholic. He felt guilty every time he mentioned it but just couldn't stop himself.

Soon after that, he just checked out. It's like if I'm barren and can't have kids what's the point of having a second date? What's the point if we couldn't write in a relationship somewhere?

Late that night we still went through the motions. We headed to a bar downtown of his choice. I mean at least, we could still get drunk and hook up, right? The doorman stopped us at the door. I took out my ID. He had a scanner and swiped mine through. He took out an iPad and typed in my name. "You didn't respond online to the invite."

Mark was embarrassed. "I was going to invite you, but you said you deleted your account."

The bouncer shook his head. "Not tonight kid." Mark kissed me on the cheek and said he had friends waiting inside. He continued in, and I was left by myself. I decided to walk home. Reflecting if I made the right decision. I saw a friend of mine named Bridget, she looked kind of different. I hadn't seen her in years actually. We went to high school together, and both moved to New York after school. But never kept in touch. Definitely were Facebook friends. Liked a few statuses. Commented on some pictures. Clicked a few maybe attendings.

I waved to her. She barely noticed me. She squinted her eyes to deal with this déjà vu. We barely had anything to talk about. She was explaining this campaign she had online for her acting troupe. She needed a certain amount of likes on a video; she didn't get enough. I said I would have liked it if I had seen it...but I didn't. I told her that, I still use e-mail but, she was disinterested. We left with old, "Well, I'll see you when I see you... I guess."

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Maybe I wasn't a certain type of person. I didn't want to be savvy in something that was intangible. I went home back to the suburbs. I figured I'd surprise my parents. I walked from the train station to my childhood home. Both cars were in the driveway. It was around dinner time. Perfect. I knocked on the door.

My mom answered, surprised. Maybe worried there wasn't enough food and I said it was fine, that I wasn't actually hungry. I walked in, and my dad and brother were already at the table. In their hands were phones logged into Facebook. They were unable to give me proper hugs and kisses. My brother was scrolling his news feed and my dad was posting something sweet on my mom's wall about their anniversary. They asked a me a few questions about my life. There wasn't terribly much to say. My mother sat down and offered me some of her greens. I reminded her that I was okay and just took in the awkward silence with my blood relatives.

I sighed and wanted to give them their space. I walked away and decided to kill time in our living room. I entered to see just my dog Simon. He was sitting in the middle of the room in front of the television set. He only glanced at me for a second and resumed his focus on the images. I ignored the television and headed for the window that looked over the street I grew up on.

My street looked lovely. It wasn't a Norman Rockwell painting, but it was enough for me. There were a few kids playing outside. I stepped into the cold. I didn't even tell my family. Didn't want to disrupt them. I wasn't nervous. Why wouldn't they want to play with me? I went up to one girl. She had to be around five or six and actually reminded me of myself at that age. I asked if I could play with her and her friends. She seemed confused. Like no one has ever asked her to do this before.

The other kids noticed and asked, "Who are you talking to?"

She didn't know what to say, "Amey you're weird," they proclaimed as they walked away and left me alone with her. I felt guilty. I heard them talk about going home to play video games.

"Hey Amey, are you going to go with them and play video games?"

She shook her head. I said she didn't need those guys. She took to me right away and even invited me over for a tea party. I looked back at my house for a moment. Through the window, I saw my living room. With the flicker of the screen, I didn't feel like I was missing out back home and they probably felt the same about me.

We went to her backyard and had a grand old time. Her parents even made us cookies. They were so happy and polite to me. They didn't think I was real at all though. They were just joyous that Amey found an imaginary friend to occupy her time with. At first, I wanted to protest but then I figured why? We had a real interaction, who cared if no one else would see it? We were living it. Maybe I did find my true calling. Well, until she gets a MacBook Pro.

Jessica Rionero is a contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Williamsburg. You can find her website here. You can find her twitter here.

"Use Your Ghost" - The Lake and the Lion (mp3)

"All You Ever Wanted" - The Lake and the Lion (mp3)

In Which We Only Have Sex In Montage

The Boyfriend Experience

by JESSICA RIONERO

Friends With Benefits
dir. Will Gluck
109 minutes

I used to think men and women could be friends. Growing up, I thought I was a tomboy because I had lots of boy friends. Not boyfriends but friends that were boys. Looking back, I ended up hooking up with half of them and the other half came out gay after we hooked up. This is obviously a pressing issue since two films were released this year on the subject: Ivan Reitman's No Strings Attached and now Friends With Benefits directed by Will Gluck (Easy A).

Jezebel was where I read that Easy A could be the next Mean Girls. I enjoyed the literary allusion to The Scarlet Letter as well as the parallel storyline this film shared with 1987's Can’t Buy Me Love, a movie about a teenage nerd who pays a girl to make him seem cool and they fall in love. Mr. McDreamy, Patrick Dempsey, played the lead.

When I see the charming posters for these films I can’t help to think, "but they get together in the end!" Any pre-adolescent sixth grader can tell you that. At the end of the movie, they are going to fall in love and live happily ever after. That’s not my only beef with these movies. These people are also way too good-looking to need fuck buddies. If you took the female leads from both of these films and put them in an Oscar worthy drama they would still hook up.

This is all actually a sensitive subject for me; I am a recovering fuck buddy. I actually had two friends with benefits scenarios. I am a bit embarrassed to admit all of this. Maybe that one year of Catholic school really did screw me up. Fast-forward 12 years later to the booty call and 4th wave feminism, add a shot of Maker’s Mark and we are up to speed.

So there was…let’s call him Boy A. Not Andrew Garfield, just my good friend from college, Boy A. Boy A and I became single at the same time and found ourselves equally horny. We figured we would do it a few times until we found real people to date/sleep with. In our social circles, we urged to keep this quiet. Especially since, okay not proud of this either, he dated a dear girl friend of mine. I was never this kind of girl. I actually had this happen to me once and I was devastated and here I was, repeating the cliché. It’s physically possible, just generally frowned upon. But we didn’t care; he would compare us to a Dave Eggers short story as if we were a literary novelty.

We got more intense. When we hung out it felt like dates. People started finding out, even his ex-girlfriend and my now ex-friend. He told me he loved me and that he wanted to make me his girlfriend. I just did not feel the same way. Everything went sour from there. We were no longer friends. We tried to make one another jealous and fought all the time. He said I was like Summer, rejecting him, fearful that I would probably fall in love before he was able to move on.

This is coming from the guy who took me to go see Meek’s Cutoff at Film Forum. Not only did he admit that he saw (500) Days of Summer but he equated himself with JGL.

We ultimately decided we would never work and that we actually needed to stop talking to one another. No sex and no friendship. Nothing. We haven't spoke since. I was fine! Thinking, "I don’t need a boyfriend! What for? Dates? Oh so we can hit it off, become sexually compatible, date, meet each other’s parents, make it facebook official, move in together, get married, have kids, grow old, and die.” Yeah not for me. But jeez, Ian Curtis wasn’t messing around when he said, "love will tear us apart again" because low and behold, there came Boy B.

Boy B was a new co-worker. He became the talk around the office cooler. All the girls wanted him and I had no idea why. He was good looking but completely not my type. Maybe my initial disinterest was the appeal to him. He wanted me. Me? The same girl who had braces two years ago.

I was in over my head. Texting, "yeah you can come over but you can’t stay over." At first, it was so carefree. I am pretty much nocturnal and he worked late. I was doing my best to keep up and was enjoying doing so physically. Mentally it was excruciating. It was one late night/early morning drunken mess after another and to top it all off, we were co-workers. He finally laid down the law: "I think of you as a friend, you’re hot and we have amazing sex together. That’s it." And that’s when I said, "I can’t anymore." Which meant ignoring texts, five a.m. phone calls and ultimately leaving my job.

With all this free time not working and not fucking, I was able to do some research. I watched a lot of Sex and the City. In the wee early seasons of the franchise, there was an episode titled "The Fuck Buddy." This was worth the 72-minute wait on megaupload. In the episode, Carrie mentions Edith Wharton and Henry James as she romanticizes New York City. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: "Your tits look really great in that thing." I recognized Carrie’s go-to fuck buddy right away. It was Dennis Duffy from 30 Rock.

My story came full circle when Friends with Benefits came out last weekend. See, I have been completely single for a few months now. With no hook-ups or drunken make-outs. Not even a real date with a guy, like where he pays and I shave my legs. I decided to see the movie all by myself.

I was mildly embarrassed seeing groups of young girls and perky couples walk in. I barely was able to spit out, "One for Friends With Benefits." As I finished a tweet about the uneventful fall line up for movies this year, a young woman sat down right next to me. There were other seats in the theater. Maybe she was embarrassed to be alone. She seemed pretty and normal. I wondered why she didn’t have a group of friends or a significant other. No woman is an island after all!

In Friends With Benefits, Mila Kunis is so New York and Justin Timberlake is so L.A. They are so opposite, how will this ever work! Within the first twenty minutes, Kunis’ character exclaims how she will show her leading man "the real New York," not the tourist stuff. So she shows him the Brooklyn Bridge, a view of the Empire State building, and Times Square. I would have taken him to a rave in Bushwick, spun the cube at Astor Place, and probably split a forty at the closest Papaya King.

Friends With Benefits contains homages to to Nora Ephron, Nicholas Sparks, Pretty Woman and of course Katherine Heigl of The Ugly Truth. I was very impressed with the opening to the film, wherein both Kunis and Timberlake share similar relationship woes as they are dumped by Emma Stone and Andy Samberg. Emma Stone’s caricature breaks up with JT because he was late to a John Mayer concert, thus missing "Your Body Is A Wonderland." But if you are going go to a John Mayer concert in the first place, you go to hear "Your Body Is A Wonderland." It’s like going to the Louvre, you must see the Mona Lisa or in L.A., you must go to an In-N-Out Burger. Is it a reason to break up with someone?

No Strings Attached and Friends With Benefits share identical moments. Alcohol fuels an ill-fated relationship. Rules need to be laid down. Something like: thou shall not cuddle for too long. Thou shall not look each other in the eyes, thou shall not have time when you hang out and not have sex, e.g. meals together, movies, you know normal people stuff.

The film teases the idea of JT as a workaholic and Mila Kunis as the quirky girl that will show him a good time. But a lot of these things get lost in a cute but provocative sex montage. It was very similar to No Strings Attached’s sex montage, in that both lacked a doggy-style position.

Friends With Benefits contains a ridiculous amount of exposition, throwaway characters, and pivotal plot points abruptly dropped. But who cares! Better yet, there is a fake romantic comedy that the couple notes stars Rashida Jones and Jason Segel. They make fun of the production value and the stereotypical dialogue. As cheesy as the faux rom-com seems, it serves as the blueprint for JT to win Kunis’ heart.

A great supporting cast eases the pain. NSA: Mindy Kaling, Kevin Kline, Greta Gerwig, and Ludacris! FWB: Patricia Clarkson, Woody Harrelson, and Bryan Greenberg. However, the film did leave out the whole false pregnancy scene and the adderall inspired threesome but seriously who’s counting? And more importantly, spoiler alert: they all get together in the end and live yet again, happily ever after.

As for me? Two fuck buddies and no, I did not end up with either of them. Through my experience and a few pretty bad romantic comedies, I have realized you do not need sex. I looked into it and lack of sex will not cause cancer. Next time around, I am going to have to do this all from scratch. Let’s say I am on a real first date in the near future.

Guy of my dreams: Oh yeah, I mean, I was on again off again with this one chick but then I met you. What about you? Ex-boyfriends?

Me: Funny you should bring that up because I’ve never had a boyfriend before. I’ve never even liked anyone. I’m a virgin and I’m actually saving myself for marriage.

Think he'll buy it?

Jessica Rionero is a contributor to This Recording. This is her first appearance in these pages. She is a writer and comedian living in New York. You can find her website here. She tumbls here and twitters here.

photo by drew kaufman

"Vanishing of Time" - Vivian Girls (mp3)

"Lake House" - Vivian Girls (mp3)

"Death" - Vivian Girls (mp3)