I Know What I'm Doing -- and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction - Hardcover

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Jen Kirkman is a world-touring stand-up comedian and the author of the New York Times bestseller I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales of a Happy Life Without Kids and I Know What I’m Doing—And Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction. Her Netflix original comedy special I'm Gonna Die Alone and I Feel Fine streams worldwide, and she has released two comedy albums, Self Help and Hail to the Freaks (which hit #13 on the Billboard charts). She was a longtime writer and panelist on the E! Network’s Chelsea Lately and the narrator of many episodes in the award-winning TV show Drunk History on Comedy Central.

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I Know What I’m Doing -- and Other Lies I Tell Myself

INTRODUCTION

Ugh, my parents are going to read this.

I know that I’m forty years old (and even older by the time this book is in your hands), and I shouldn’t care. Just be a grown-up and don’t be afraid to speak your truth, Jen! And you know, funny person Bob Odenkirk once said that people should make their art, whatever it is, “as though their parents were dead.” Why am I starting this book with sentiments about dead parents? Look, you know what I mean (or he means). My parents will have to handle the information in this book in their own way, whether it’s calling to yell at me or just bursting into tears at the sight of me next Thanksgiving. They created another human being and that human being went on to live her own life, make her own mistakes, have her own sex, and oh, God. It’s not just my parents. YOU’RE going to read this.

For a stand-up comedian who talks about her life onstage, I’m weirdly, fiercely private. (By the way, I’ve also tried to respect the privacy of some people I’ve written about in this book by giving them aliases, including my sister Gail, who insisted that I call her Violet—not because she has anything to hide but she always wished that was her name.) I’m so afraid of being judged. And yet, I won’t even know if you’re judging me because you’re reading this and I’m not there. I can’t see your looks of disapproval.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never talked publicly about my secret on-again, off-again Friend With Benefits of twenty years. My ex-husband has no idea that while we were still married, I almost embarked on an affair with a new man I felt emotionally bonded to. (A different guy from Mr. Friends With Benefits.) It’s new to me to reveal that, yeah, I get really lonely sometimes and I think of myself as the surrogate girlfriend for my male friends who date twenty-six-year-olds but come to me for conversation. Oh, God, please don’t pity me. It’s worse than judgment.

I really want you to know how much I’ve learned from my less than perfect experiences. I hope I don’t make it seem like this short-lived boyfriend I had was just some idiot with abs—he also had a really great design aesthetic! And I promise, I really, really do not have hep C. (You’ll read about that . . .) My editor said I don’t need to include a picture of the lab paperwork. And if you know anyone in Dublin, please, again, apologize that I called their city a “bunch of cunts”—and I can’t believe that I just wrote “cunt” in my intro, to a book. This thing could be in a library someday.

So why did I write all of this down, then? Because Simon & Schuster paid me to? Partly. But I begged them to. I wanted to write this book. I think that people, not just women, will relate. I know I’m not Ernest Hemingway, although I do agree with him that my only regret in life is probably going to be that I did not “drink more wine.” (I’m not totally positive that Hemingway actually said that but according to some drink coasters I purchased at a museum gift shop he did. The quote is printed right on them.) My job isn’t to win Pulitzer Prizes and stuff like that, but to provide a voice in your head, other than your own, that sounds like you. My voice is here to say, “Hey, I have those same thoughts and do those same stupid things and am generally awesome despite what people might think about my lifestyle choices.” And I’m also here for your voyeuristic pleasure. I’m happy to show you what it’s like for a single-and-not-so-good-at-the-mingle woman of forty.

The thing is, the other stories that make up who I am—devoted friend and family member—just aren’t that funny. This is supposed to be a funny book written by a funny person. I’m not going to tell the story of how I stayed home one Friday night to do laundry and return e-mails. There’s no funny story about how much I love my best girlfriends and how many times we got misty-eyed over a bottle of a blended wine and Trader Joe’s Camembert Cheese and Cranberry Sauce Fillo Bites about how lucky we are to have one another. Or my male friends who are like the brothers I never had. The kind of guys I can text late at night and they listen to me instead of sending me pictures of their dicks.

There’s nothing funny about the fact that about seven months after my divorce, I met Jake. I was afraid that getting involved so quickly after a marriage ended wasn’t smart. I felt that I should play it safe, keep my options open, see other people. I wouldn’t commit. Eventually, because I decided to stay open to every other possibility but a committed future with him, after two years he told me that he had to end our “friendship.” I spent a year of my life not speaking with him. Luckily, I had this book to write.

Since then we’ve both had relationships, careers ups and downs, and lots of therapy. We put our past resentments to rest and now—we have an actual, normal, friend-ship, not some ambiguous, co-dependent bowl of crap. Things always change if we let them. We don’t have to be freaked out by change, says the woman who is freaked out by all kinds of change—including pennies. Seriously, Congress, ban them.

There’s nothing funny about the fact that I mention “Fish N Chips” and cheese often in this book, but over the two years it took to finish, I renounced my pescatarian ways and went back to being a full vegan. I just couldn’t ignore the fact that red meat was easy to give up—I never liked it. But the dairy and fish industries are just as bad for the environment. See? I can see you not laughing. I can feel you not laughing at my plant-based existence.

There’s nothing funny about the time that my dad hit his head, his brain swelled up, and he could have died but for the quick decisions of my family members who still live near him and surgeons who saved his life. I flew to Boston to be by his side before the operation and after. He couldn’t speak and there was nothing behind his eyes except a childlike fear. We used to go to Disney World every year together so I bought him a Mickey Mouse stuffed animal at the airport. He loves Mickey. But see, that isn’t funny. It’s sad. I guess the one funny part was when his mean, lazy nurse was loudly placing a phone order to Dunkin’ Donuts instead of changing his bedpan and I went over to her, in what I call my Mark Wahlberg moment, and whispered in a thick Boston accent, “Yah gettin’ some cahffee fah yahself? That’s nice. My fathah needs his fahckin’ bedpan changed. Now.”

My mother was mortified that the daughter she had been bragging about, the one from television, just put on a fake Boston accent and then called the nurse an asshole. That’s a little funny, I guess.

But this book also isn’t about me being a hero or a shero. This book is about what a confused jackass I can be, have been, and will continue to be—though hopefully the ways in which I am a jackass will keep changing—just to keep things interesting. For example, did you know this is not my first book? It’s not. That one was a New York Times Best Seller called I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids.

While I was writing I Can Barely Take Care of Myself (and do you mind if I call it ICBTCOM? Thanks. It’s a lot to type.), my life was going crazy. I was going through a divorce—one that my...