Phoebe Robinson - Please Dont Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays

You Cant Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

Everythings Trash, But Its Okay

2020 Was Gonna Be My Year! (LOL)

A year after Mad Men ended, I started watching it, which is very in line with my brand of refusing to participate in cultural phenomena so as to not do what everyone else is doing even though Id probably enjoy the very thing Im missing out on. Some of you might be thinking, Being left out seems like a curious brand, to which I respond, Well, we cant all be goop. Anyway, once I started watching, I was hooked. The show is such a master class in fashion, screenwriting, and acting that I didnt mind that it was no longer the topic of watercooler conversation. In fact, everyone moving on to more current shows made me feel as though Men and its numerous iconic moments were just for me. And one scene, in particular, towers above the rest in my opinion: The Time Betty Draper Jd Off.

I know, I know. The show has won Emmys, Golden Globes, and a Peabody Award. Made stars of Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, and January Jones. Helped define the era of Prestige TV and here I am writing about a masturbation scene, but hear me out, yall. In the 1960s, Betty (sad, lonely trash) is married to an unfaithful Don (hot, tortured trash). On top of the stress from a fractured marriage, Betty is run-down due to raising their two kids by herself, cooking all the meals, and ensuring her hair is always on point. Sure, shes a white woman with easy-to-manage straight hair, so the struggle shouldnt be real, right? Wrong. Hair is hard no matter the texture, and seeing as I can barely make a tuna melt without sweating out a professionally done hairstyle thats been sprayed and pinned into place, I feel Bettys pain of ensuring the pot roast and her curls are poppin. Moving on.

By the end of the first season, Betty was becoming increasingly depressed and horny. In the eleventh episode, a fine-ass door-to-door salesman showed up, talking about measuring her upstairs windows. Betty knew better than to risk it all for casual sex, so she asked him to leave. Then she started fantasizing about the salesman and jd off by rubbing up against her vibrating Whirlpool washer machine. I immediately had two thoughts:

1. Damn, the 1960s were rooooooooough. I mean, obviously, because of the Civil Rights Movement, Womens Lib, and all that jazz. But we all forget that vibrator technology back then was most likely terrible, since getting intimate with a giant home appliance was best-case scenar. Like, what else were women doing? A Bruce Lee standing split kick against a belt massager while watching The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, just to feel something?

2. Is this what I have to look forward to if Im ever in a long-term relationship again? I could feel that lonely and unsatisfied even if my partner is there when I wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night?

Suffice it to say, I was very single when I watched this Mad Men episode, and this sad housewife story line only reinforced my feelings of not wanting to be in a relationship. Cut to a year later. It was 2017. I met British Baekoff (my bfs code name because hes British and likes to bake), and everything I said priorIll never date someone younger than me, Ill never date someone in a creative field, Ill never be in a long-distance relationshipwent out the window. Here was this super interesting, handsome, charming, quick-witted, funny, infinitely talented British guy who was four years younger than me, a former drummer turned tour manager who traveled around the world with bands three hundred days a year and called Portland, Oregon, home when not on the road. More important, like me, he knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life. The goal was to tour for twenty years (we met eleven years into his career) then settle down in life off the road.

All of which was fine and dandy with me because I wanted to be extremely single. Im talking no relationship, no to even the occasional date just to spend a couple of hours with someone new, and definitely no to a situationship. When I entered my prev long-term relaysh, I was twenty-seven, and when it ended, I was thirty-one. I needed to get acquainted with the thirties version of Phoebe and find out who I was without a partner by my side.

Still, when theres a spark, one ought to investigate it, so I did, cautiously. And lo and behold, a month after meeting BB, we were in a long-distance relationship. Not ideal, but I knew what to expect thanks to movies. Or at least I thought I did: a combination of drama-filled fights, missed phone calls, and romantic getaways. Of course, there was some of that with Baekoff and me, but mostly? It was just a lot of... scheduling. Just two people looking at their Gcals and trying to make love work. As hard as long-distance dating was, we did it for a year, then moved in together, hoping the pain of being apart would lessen. And guess what?!

Aint nothing changed! I mean, he was still gone eight to ten weeks at a time, working eighteen-hour days. The majority of our contact continued to be stolen moments via texts or me staying up until three or four a.m. so we could FaceTime when he was done working. And when we both toured, we were often in different time zones, which meant that we couldnt check in every day. Then there was the booking of flights to see each other, which was followed by the unbooking of those flights because one of our schedules changed. Missing each others important work and family events. Us not being able to hug each other when we had exciting news to share or needed our spirits liftedor simply because a little physical contact would have been the perfect way to put a button on a disagreement we resolvedwas a bummer. Thankfully, so much of the time he was home was lovely and romantic, and deepened our bond. As a result, I cried harder every time one of us had to leave because the longer we dated, the harder being apart became.