Everything's Trash, But It's Okay - Softcover

Phoebe Robinson is a multi-talented stand-up comedian, New York Times best-selling writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-star of the hit podcast turned TV show 2 Dope Queens, which aired eight hour-long specials on HBO in February 2018 & 2019. On her second WNYC Studios podcast, the critically-acclaimed talk show Sooo Many White Guys, Phoebe interviews today’s biggest stars and ground breakers such as Tom Hanks, Issa Rae, Abbi Jacobson, and many more. Phoebe is also making her presence known in publishing as she is the author of The New York Times best seller You Can’t Touch My Hair & Other Things I Still Have To Explain, a collection of essays about race, gender and pop culture. Phoebe made her feature film debut as one of the stars of the Netflix comedy Ibiza and followed that up by acting alongside Taraji P. Henson in the Paramount film What Men Want. She was also a staff writer on MTV’s hit talking head show, Girl Code and IFC’s Portlandia, as well as was a consultant on season three of Broad City.

Introduction

In summary: The world is currently one big “Previously on Homeland” recap that plays on repeat. Nothing but a bunch of dumpster fires and Claire Danes ugly-cries.

Despite a few glorious things—Beyoncé’s historic Coachella performance and Solange’s A Seat at the Table, Pamplemousse LaCroix, sitting in the window seat on a flight with an empty middle seat next to you—the world is en fuego, boo-boos (and has been for a while, to be honest), and I have the receipts to prove it. I mean, Brexit happened. And some of the people who voted for it were like, “Oops, J/K,” and the Legal System responded, “Lol. Wut? This is literally how voting works. The thing with the most votes wins. I don’t have time for your #Jokes-NotJokesButForRealWeHighKeyJokesLife, so please pack your bags.” Then there was the De-Peening of 2017 aka very powerful men such as award-winning actor Kevin Spacey, legendary journalist Charlie Rose, comedian/auteur Louis C.K. watching their lives and careers implode following the uncovering of their sometimes decades-long sexual-deviant behavior, which ranged from harassment to sexual assault. And let’s not forget the murder of Harambe, the gorilla, at the Cincinnati Zoo; Apple removing the headphone jack from their iPhones because this company is hell-bent on being the Nurse Ratched of our time; or the first black bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, incorrectly choosing Bryan over Peter, thus denying the world some cocoa, gap-teefed babies. Oh! And remember a few years ago when a dude in the US legit had Ebola and went bowling and ate chicken wings with friends instead of quarantining himself because #WhiteNonsense? Say it with me: Dumpster. Fire. But far and away, the most telling sign that the world is in dire straits is the fact that in the past few years, the universe started killing off everyone who mattered in my childhood.

There was Carrie Fisher (White Jesus, why?), Prince (Black Jesus, why?), George Michael (Levi Jeans Jesus, I can’t), and David Bowie (Alien Jesus aka the feathers from Björk’s swan dress at the 2001 Oscar ceremony, <squawk, blergh, blop>—because y’all know Björk and anything in Björk’s universe only communicates through sound). Oof. I don’t know about you, but I was overcome with emotion at seeing so many pop culture icons pass. Utterly devastated. Heartbroken and beside myself. So I mourned like we all did. Appropriately. Okay, I didn’t, but I tried. Well, I tried the way I do when the heater in my apartment is too high and instead of getting up to adjust the thermostat, I say to no one, “It’s too hot,” and then unzip my onesie down to my hips so that I end up looking like a caterpillar taking a cigarette break mid-metamorph-morph aka metamorphosis. #IgnorantAbbrev #SorryForWastingYourTime. Anyhoo, I did not try very hard not to be utterly inappropriate mere days after Bowie’s death.

When he passed, I fell down the usual internet rabbit hole many of us are wont to do when someone famous dies. I read think pieces, bought any albums I didn’t already own, watched old performances on YouTube. After about forty-eight hours of this, I became an unofficial truther of Bowie’s personal life, hoping that in my quest to unearth all the last unknown details about him, this busywork would distract me from the reality that we’re all going to die. And since this mission was rooted in earnest and profound love for the dead, I felt like Doogie Howser at the end of Doogie Howser, M.D., just writing smart bon mots about what I’d learned. But I wasn’t. My good intentions were quickly replaced by my just-below-the-surface hot-mess tendencies.
About three days after Bowie died and amid a particularly wide-eyed-and-awake-at-four-in-the-morning internet hunt, I typed this into Google:

Did David Bowie have a big penis?

I know, I know, I know! And it’s not like I pulled up Googs’s “incognito window,” which wouldn’t have recorded this question in my browser’s history. I typed this question in the broad-as-the-Alaskan-daylight-during-midnight-sun season aka Google’s regular search window, where anyone could track what I’d done. To which, Google basically responded à la Danny Glover from the Lethal Weapon franchise, “I’m too old for this shit,” and then set about unsuccessfully trying to save me from my trifling ways. I started with “Did David Bowie,” and before I could continue, Google countered with this auto- complete:

Did David Bowie wrote “My Way”

What in the hell kind of poor-grammar-of-a-troubled-youth-from-Dangerous-Minds voodoo is this? Can’t lie, I admire the tactic, but this search engine knew not who they were messing with. In my twenties, I once had a girls’ sleepover and made us watch Showgirls. Then we went to bed, and when we woke up, I convinced them to watch Showgirls again. Clearly, my ignorance is only matched by my determination. Googs sounding like the “Cash Me Outside, How ‘Bout Dat” girl was cute, but no way was that stopping me.

So next Google tried to attract me with honey:

Did David Bowie Have Pets

Suggesting there might be pictures of pets at the end of this search is the visual equivalent of a coworker telling you there are cookies in the break room. I’m intrigued, but I’m a grown-ass woman and can literally get cookies any time I want. Plus, I have an “in case of emergency” photo album on my phone called “Chocolate Puggle Puppies.” I’m good, Google.

Starting to feel defeated and tired, Googs began throwing haymakers, but it didn’t have the strength, and as soon as I typed “a,” I was met with this:

Did David Bowie Have Any Siblings

Lmao.com/WhenSearchEnginesGiveUpAndStartSoundingLikeAOneNightStandStrugglingToMakeConversationOverBreakfast.

And then when I hit the space bar after the letter “a” and typed “big,” Google knew it couldn’t save me from myself, probably did the sign of the cross, and mumbled under its breath, “Maya Angelou, I know you didn’t work this hard so Phoebe could do this bullshit, yet here we are.” I typed “penis.” And pressed enter.

Yes. This. Is. Trash. And. I. Am. Not. Proud. But like I stated earlier, I’m a truther, and somewhere along the way of reading copious amounts of articles and learning the basic deets—why his eyes were two different colors (they weren’t; they were both blue—it’s just that one had a permanently dilated pupil after he got in a fight with a good friend whose fingernail sliced into his eye), the name of his first band (the Konrads), and checking out his and Freddie Mercury’s isolated vocals on “Under Pressure” (if you haven’t, please listen ASAP)—I stumbled across an old interview with one of his exes, who “casually” mentioned that Bowie was packing down below.

Three things:

1. LOL for the rest of my life over his ex “happening” to provide a State of the Naysh about his peen. It is wack to kiss and tell about someone, especially if the person in question has moved on (Bowie married the love of his life, Iman), but more importantly, peen size never casually comes up in conversation. It’s not like some dude is chilling at a house party, shooting the breeze about the latest home renovation he’s working on, and goes, “Speaking of wood, the other day, I chubbed twice and measured once and whaddya know? I have a big dick.” Real talk, discussing peen size in the press is an IHOP (Intentional Hijack Of convo vis-à-vis Peen) triple stack. She knew this was going to get her attention, so she did it.

2. I’m not even a size queen! Just like a nation hosting a hundred-plus countries at the Summer Olympics, after the countries proved your athleticism, if you qualify as sauseege, I’m giving you a thumbs-up, a team windbreaker, and a Target-sponsored sports bottle. I welcome all even if you have no chance of making the podium. ANYWAY. What I’m getting at here is that I didn’t truly care what the answer was going to be re: Bowie’s peen.

3. If a dude had Googled about Zsa Zsa Gabor’s tatas after she passed away (RIP, boo-boo), I would have hollered to the heavens in the key of “Hell to the naw, to the naw, naw, naw,” which is one key below Mary J. Blige’s “I’m on my period, at Walgreens, and they’re out of Toblerones, so I can’t get my chocolate fix” key. In short, I would have been livid and grossed out.
Yet there I was, trying to Lester Holt my way to the truth. Why? Because I am a trash person living in a trash world.

To be clear, I’m not calling myself “trash” because I’m fishing for a compliment. I’m saying this because I love myself. And you know what they say: Only with the people and things you love can you be truly, and sometimes brutally, honest. As funny, smart, kind, thoughtful, pretty, warm, and talented as I can be, I am also a ludicrous trash fire like the kind you see on Naked and Afraid when people sign up to be in the wilderness when they’re barely capable of troubleshooting Mozilla Firefox, let alone making an actual fire from scratch, so they end up with fire that’s the length, width, and height of just the hair part of a troll doll. Real talk though, if my allergic-to-manual-labor-with-the-upper-body-strength-of-an-eight-year-old self could find a dude who could make a fire as big as an entire troll doll (if not bigger), I would say adios to “spray and pray” life and yes to “leave it in and let our new lineage begin” life. (Mom and Dad, I literally do not engage in spray and pray; this is just jokes.) MOVING ON! What I’m getting at is that I can be a nightmare, but in case you don’t believe me, here’s a sampling of my trash from the past couple of months:

· I’ve walked into several stores mere minutes before closing and took my sweet-ass time shopping.

· I ordered and ate a small Papa John’s personal pan pizza because I didn’t feel like washing a Granny Smith apple that was straight chilling in my crisper.

· I misspelled my own name.

· I attempted to cancel my own going-away party one hour before it was supposed to start because it was raining. Not like disaster-movie rain, but what Seattle would call “Every day.”

· Instead of telling my masseuse that I needed a moment, I eked out a fart in segments like it was a seven-course tasting menu at Spago. Oy. A fart is still a fart no matter how you try and dole it out over time to lessen its effects. I think the Dalai Lams said that.

· I rented The Counselor on iTunes even though it only has a 35 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes just so I could look at Michael Fassbender’s hotness. The movie—dis is where they fuq’d up—put his sex scene as the film’s opening scene, so then I just watched that and turned the film off. Rude? Yes. A waste of my money? Of course. But also, everyone knows when you make a lame-ass movie, you put the sex scene like forty-three minutes in so the viewer will be too invested to peace out. So really, it was the filmmakers’ fault for putting the sex scene up top, giving me time to abort mish and still catch the monologue on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

· I made my ringtone the “Somebody!” part from Smash Mouth’s “All Star.”

· I skipped going to Equinox because I didn’t feel like walking the flight and a half of stairs to get inside the gym. Like I don’t want to have to work out before working out. That’s too much working out.

· I snuck a burrito bowl from Chipotle into the movie theater and made it everyone’s responsibility during Creed to be a lookout in an after-school special and make sure I didn’t get busted by one of the ushers.

· When I was behind on my student loans and the American Student Assistance would call me, I’d say, “Now’s not a good time to chat.” They’d ask when they could call back and I’d pretend to be earnest and give them a time, knowing damn well I wasn’t going to pick up my phone at 4:45 p.m.

· Even though The Bachelor and The Bachelorette burn my toast with their antifeminist ignorance, I watched The Bachelorette when they cast their first black bachelorette, Rachel Lindsay, and I thought, Ooooooh, this must’ve been what some white women went through when they chose race over gender and voted for Trump. Literally. Not. The. Same. Thing.

· I had my sister-in-law, who lives in Cleveland, buy and mail me “rosé all day” white slip-on flats from DSW that I barely wear because white shoes are a mofo to keep clean.

· When I started my period while on a working vacation on Vieques Island and only had two pads, I called Olga, my hotel’s concierge, and she told me they only had tampons, which I’ve never used because I’m scared of getting toxic shock syndrome after leaving the tamp-tamp inside me for too long. Anyway, she offered to call me a cab to take me to a convenience store about fifteen minutes away. I hard-passed on this suggestion and thought to myself, Well, I guess I’ll give this free-bleed thing a spin. Free bleeding is generally considered a feminist move, but in my case, it was just unbridled laziness. I didn’t feel like going through the trouble of putting on pants, which makes me wonder: Is this what parenthood is? Something inconvenient happens with your kid and you must fight all urges to be like, “Peace out, dawg,” and instead help them? Like if my kid came to me and said, “Mom, I need new shoes for school and the mall closes in thirty minutes,” I can’t respond with, “Okay, but I need to read this InStyle magazine profile about some white lady in Marrakesh—YOU KNOW, A PLACE I CAN’T AFFORD TO VISIT BECAUSE I HAD YOUR ASS—doing a fashion diary and posing next to elephants that are like, ‘Bish, why you have that goofy AF smile on your face when the back of my knees are like ashy celery?’” Point is, because I didn’t want to leave my hotel room, I free-bled for two days, which were my super light days, so it was less a typical menstruation sitch and more like a few drops from a glass of V8 Splash spilling on a kitchen counter. Then on day three, I called Olga, she gave me one from her personal stash, and I went to the convenience store.

· THE FACT THAT I MADE THAT STUPID “SPRAY AND PRAY” SEX COMMENT WHEN I KNOW MY PARENTS ARE GOING TO READ THIS BOOK BECAUSE I WAS HOPING THE JOKE WOULD MAKE READERS LAF (TYPO, BUT I’M LEAVING IT, THUS MAKING THIS TRASH WITHIN TRASH. #INCEPTION).

See? I can be garbage! And it’s okay. Because guess what? Everyone is garbage. Everyone. I don’t care how great or altruistic or insanely talented a person is, there is something (or, if we’re being honest here, some things) absolutely ridiculous that they do, think, feel, or say. Repeat after me: No one on this planet can completely rid themselves of their trash ways. Meaning you, me, your parents, the local nun, J. R. R. Tolkien, Selena (both Quintanilla-Pérez and Gomez), Langston Hughes, your auntie, all your cousins (but you already knew that tho), the entire bobsled team from Cool Runnings, the lunch waitstaff at Mae Mae Café who told me after I asked for the egg on my avocado toast to be scrambled instead of fried that they can only scramble eggs in the morning (so ig), Galileo Galilei, your boyfriend o...