Wow, No Thank You.: Essays

This essay is structured as a list of proverbial observations, each of which begins with the question, “Sure, sex is fun, but have you ever […]” (129). As the title of the essay implies, each of the questions presents an experience that might interrupt or otherwise get in the way of a sexual encounter between Irby and her wife. At the same time, the identical opening language of the questions implies that these experiences may be as much or even more fun than sex. Irby uses her characteristic Self-Deprecation here to advance a deceptively optimistic insight. On the one hand, maybe it’s because she’s become a run-of-the-mill middle-aged suburbanite that she takes joy from something as simple as having exact change. On the other hand, there really is joy to be found there.

Some of the questions seem touching or thought provoking: “[H]ave you ever cried inconsolably at one of those ASPCA commercials” (119), “have you ever had flowers bloom on a plant you thought you'd killed” (125), or “have you ever been to couples therapy” (129). Some describe events that yield pleasure out of scale with their apparent triviality: “[H]ave you ever found a really good hand cream” (120), “have you ever had exact change” (131), or “have you ever spent an entire afternoon looking for a misplaced library book only to realize you returned it two days ago” (121). Some describe humorous situations: “[H]ave you ever lit four different kinds of incense at the same time” (122), “have you ever successfully hidden a tub of ice cream from your wife” (125), or “have you ever bent down to ask a dog its name” (130).

As with several other essays, this chapter is essentially a list, though not with bullet points. Here, Irby gives a breakdown of body care, starting with the hair atop one’s head and proceeding to the soles of one’s feet. The essay essentially serves the dual purpose of describing current practices and products used to maintain the youthful well-being of the human body and allowing the author to give a guided tour of her own body, of which she holds a decidedly negative view. The author’s cynicism extends to today’s regimens of treatment. Current health and beauty products offer promises of restoration about which Irby voices skepticism. There are, she says, simply too many procedures to follow and too many products to purchase. She writes, “at last count, I had no fewer than 42 lip balms between my bedside table, tote bag, office, and car, and for what” (140).

The discord that characterizes the exterior of her body, the author claims, is representative of what is happening on the inside as well. Acknowledging that her vitamin deficiency is in part responsible for her “extreme depression,” Irby lists the multitude of vitamins, minerals, and health foods she has been told she needs to consume. She buys vitamins online, then does not take them. Despite having many of the health care supplements recommended for her, Irby admits, “All I could muster the energy for today was two sips of green tea juice (haha jk it was Diet Coke) and some accidental SPF” (150).

This essay details three crises faced by the author as she moves from Chicago, her lifelong comfort zone, to Kalamazoo to take up residency with her wife and two children. The first crisis, as Irby explains, occurs when she realizes that being married means having to relocate to where her wife has an established homeplace. This move, the author says, is an aspect of spousal compromise, something, she learns, that is an expected part of matrimony. The magnitude of her shift from completely urban to midwestern small city only dawns upon Irby as she drives through rural, very conservative central Michigan on her way to Kalamazoo.

The second crisis emerges once Irby arrives in Kalamazoo, a locale, she notes, where pizza is not available after 9:00pm and where there are no late-night clubs with patrons standing outside at midnight waiting to get in. More than this, as she elaborates in her essay “A Guide to Simple Home Repairs,” Irby is now the person responsible for maintaining every aspect of a home. She confesses to having no idea how toilets work. Nothing in her upbringing, schooling, or personal experience has prepared her to be a homeowner in Kalamazoo.

The third and genuinely frightening crisis for the author is the recognition that she is not only a “fish out of water” but that the water is infested with potentially hostile creatures. She writes, “I am a black lady with a white wife in a Red state, and I can't be sure that bro with the backward visor (LOL, ’HY?) isn't about to start some shit with me just because I have the nerve to show my face in public” (157).

This essay is not a list in itself but contains eight separate lists. Most of these lists relate to home maintenance and repair that is a totally new experience for the author. Her ignorance of basic home maintenance leads to a reluctance to address issues that might need attention. She writes, “can I just step around the squeaky chair when I'm coming down or is that the kind of thing that eventually needs to get looked at” (161).

The new, vast set of quandaries she faces summons Irby to look backward at her brief childhood experience in the home owned by her parents. She notes that neither her dad nor mom showed any inclination to improving or even maintaining the structure of the house. When her father had to break through the bathroom door to rescue Irby, he never repaired it. Irby writes wistfully of the multiple residences she lived in after her parents divorced. Interspersed with her reminiscences, she returns to her growing list of questions about maintaining her new home. In one list, she asks, “should I set traps for these mice or just burn the fucking house down” (171).

For Irby, the epitome of an ideal residence was the apartment complex she lived in with a super named Joe she never met. Ghostlike, he entered her apartment whenever she left to make the needed repairs she requested. She realizes that, in that setting, she could see all her worldly possession contained within 450 square feet. Now, in a much larger domicile that demands attention, Irby feels overwhelmed.

Soon after euthanizing her cat Helen, Irby decides to rescue another pet. She expresses the perception that Helen’s ghost haunts their house. Irby says she believes in ghosts to an extent and does not fear them.

This leads to a seemingly unrelated story about the haunting of her Chicago apartment. Years before, she felt her bedroom shake silently at around the same time in the middle of every night. Determining that a haunting must be the source of the motion, she consults a spiritualist who tells her to firmly but politely demand that the spirit leave her premises. One night, Irby follows the spiritualist’s advice—first demanding politely, then shouting. To her surprise, the shaking stops. Soon after, her upstairs neighbor reveals that the motion came not from a ghost but the vibrations of his amplifiers in his soundproofed apartment.

Returning to the story of her search for a pet to replace Helen, Irby and her wife decide to adopt a dog as a change of pace. The rescue animal they settle on is too fearful to come to them. Irby concluded, “If I wanted to be rejected, I would just get another evil cat” (193). True to form, Irby and her wife, Kirsten, adopted a hostile kitten, whose first act is to draw blood from the author’s finger.

Just as she does not feel competent to relate to rural Michigan or home repair, so Irby confesses an inability to interact helpfully with her stepchildren. Awed by their mental acuity—and overwhelmed by their homework assignments—Irby makes a list of the things she might actually be able to teach a child. These include the best hangover remedy, the best cat litter, and the best dining facility in Chicago.

The irrelevancy of her list convinces Irby that she has precious little of value to offer her stepchildren. She relates this back to her own upbringing, which not only did not prepare her to successfully enter the world at 18 years old but did not impart a moral vision, a set of guiding principles, or the ability to be a role model to children. Thus, Irby decides she must come up with some tangible things she can offer them. The first of these is a cheeseburger macaroni casserole. She laboriously spells out the recipe for the readers and adds cooking instructions as she describes her past experiences with the dish. The second tangible thing she shares with her stepchildren is the purchase of a used Honda CR-V. Her intention is to keep the car—the most expensive thing she has ever paid for apart from some medical procedures—spotlessly clean. Yet, upon bringing the car home from the dealership, her wife immediately begins loading it with the essentials of motherhood. In this way the car becomes a symbol of the tension underlying this essay: between the impossible spotlessness of ideals and the messiness of reality.

Irby makes clear that building her relationship with her stepchildren is a work in progress.