Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never by Lancaster, Jen (e books free to read .txt) 📕

the washroom reading a George R. R. Martin novel because it’s the biggest book you can find outside of the dictionary, cursing Wilford Brimley for being the only man on earth who has the time or inclination to process that much fiber? And at some point you’re all, Sweet Baby Ray, I just want a nice steak?

That’s how I felt about the unfettered access to gossipy-type information. Much as I used to enjoy sneaking glimpses of people’s lives, this was too much. I wanted three cookies, not ALL the cookies.

I was exposed to so many intimate details of our neighbors’ lives that it made me squirmy, primarily when it came to the husband’s viewing habits. This guy was on nekkid sites ALL NIGHT, EVERY NIGHT. I figured that every time I climbed the stairs to come face to l-a-b-i-a, that was my Greek-tragedy-style punishment for having been nosy.

My life became an inadvertent version of Rear Window (minus the wheelchair and telescope) and I began to make my way to the second floor with my eyes clamped shut, muttering, “We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms!”

On top of all the deeply scarring nudity, the wife’s mommylust couldn’t have been more obvious and clearly no one was in the business of making babies because the guy never left his damn Aeron chair to go to bed already. His habits were tearing them apart and I wanted to help fix them. I wanted to post a sign begging him to PLEASE GET OFF THE INTERNET AND ON YOUR WIFE because I thought it might help. [Fletch said no because he hates to be helpful.]

And even though we were experiencing the most beautiful spring on record, I started keeping all my windows closed on their side of the house because, inevitably, they began to spiral downward as a couple. Their marriage—which had seemed so fresh and shiny and happy when we moved in—hit more than just a rough patch; it slammed into a bridge abutment going eighty miles an hour in a Smart Car.

As I’d sit in my office trying to organize my notes for my next book, I’d hear the wife screaming at the husband and I’d inadvertently start rocking and murmuring, “I hate when Mom and Dad fight.”

Every day the hostility got more intense. Although no one ever threw a punch or a vase, the accusations they’d hurl at each other seemed equally damaging. Like it or not, I had a front-row seat to an unraveling marriage. I felt like I was watching a Chekhov play against my will.

When Gladys Kravitz witnessed the occasional confirmation of her suspicions of the Stevens family, she was triumphant. She knew there was funny business afoot in that household! Whereas I liked to giggle and speculate about the antics of the amateur Larry Flynt next door, I didn’t actually want any of my ridiculous theories to be true. Addiction isn’t funny.

Every day when they came home from work and the fighting began in earnest, I felt like they were a horrible accident by the side of the highway and the last thing I wanted to see was the carnage. I wish I’d never taken that route in the first place but I had no choice but to drive past.

When they’d start in on each other, I’d head to the farthest point in my house away from them but their words seemed to follow me. I stopped sitting on my deck entirely and took to blasting talk radio on our house’s intercom system.

I’d fallen down a rabbit hole and the only way out was to move away.

Fortunately, I won a brief reprieve in May when I had to tour for My Fair Lazy. Normally I dread going on the road, not because I don’t love meeting fans and doing live events and media, but because I get so homesick. I hate being away from Fletch and the dogs and, to a lesser extent, the cats. I miss them so much when I’m not there. Plus, I’m the kind of person who isn’t happy unless I’m sleeping in my bed with my blankets and my decades-old down pillow. [Yes, it’s as gross as you’d imagine, or would be if I weren’t buying fresh pillowcases for it all the time. At this point, the feathers are just little sticks, so it feels a lot like buckwheat. I know it’s weird. I know. Listen, don’t worry about it. If you ever sleep over, I’ll put a new pillow in your room, okay?] I’m so weird about being away that I even bring my own toilet paper because no hotel ever stocks the aloe stuff that I like.

But this year?

All I wanted was to get the hell out of Dodge.

Even on the road, I couldn’t escape the drama of their lives. On my first night away, Fletch called to tell me the following news.

“The husband quit his job.”

“Wait, are you spying now?” I asked. I am the worst influence ever.

“Wasn’t eavesdropping. Ran into him in the backyard with Pippen. He was very excited to tell me that he’d quit his job.”

“In this economy? To do what?” My hope was that he actually was starting a porn site if for no reason other than to justify his extracurricular activities.

Fletch exhaled long and hard before he told me. “He quit his job to pursue his dream. Says he wants to be an actor.”

“He was a mechanical engineer!” I protested.

“And now he’s not.”

“Oh, God, this is not going to end well,” I said.

“Yeah. That’s why I bought new headphones.”

By the time I returned from book tour, the wife had moved out and the husband had done some redecorating. Specifically, he’d taken sheets and used them to cover all his windows, securing them up to the ledge of the transoms with two-liter bottles of generic diet cola. We never heard anything after that, and thank God, we never saw anything else either. If this guy was so cavalier about what he looked at with an