I Was Told There'd Be Cake by Sloane Crosley

I put a lot of thought into various "what-if" scenarios--especially morbid, what-happens-if-I'm-hit-by-a-bus-today ones. (Not that this stops me from leaving my bed unmade some mornings, or stuffing yet another bag of junk in my closet.) I like to think it's part of my unique charm. So imagine the intrigue when I started reading Sloane Crosley's new collection of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, and was greeted with the following sentences:

Back in the apartment I never should have left, the bed has gone unmade and the dishes unwashed. The day I get shot in a bodega (buying cigarettes, naturally) will in all likelihood be the day before laundry Sunday and the day after I decided to clean out my closet, got bored halfway through, and opted to watch sitcoms in my prom dress instead.

I was hit by three simultaneous thoughts:

1. I could have written this.
2. I did not write this. Curse you, procrastination!
3. Sloane Crosley and I should probably be neurotic BFFs.

Every so often, a book or magazine piece comes along and reminds me that I spent a lot of money on a quasi MFA, and haven't written anything since. But on the bright side, someone's keeping it real for all the urban twentysomething navel-gazers. Crosley's book is a hilarious collection of suburban childhood trauma (or what passes for trauma in happy Westchester kids) and highlights of Generation Y adulthood.

A giant blurb on the front cover has Jonathan Lethem proclaiming that Crosley is from the "realm of Sedaris and Vowell." And while that's technically true, it gives everyone involved some short shrift. Crosley is witty like Sedaris. Except female. And straight. And young. The overlap with Vowell is even more narrow: both are female and funny. Picking the two most popular humor essayists may be a good sales hook, but it's getting old. Why not just throw in Augusten Burroughs, too, for the memoir trifecta?

For the most part, Crosley lives up to the blurb. The essays are self-deprecating and merciless. She moves pretty smoothly between the childish (summer camp) and adult (wanting to have a one-night stand because it always seemed so glamorous), so that it's all one big post-adolescent blur.

So rather than grumble about someone else writing the book I was too lazy to write, I suppose I should show some love for the many parts I liked:

"Suburbia is too close to the country to have anything real to do and too close to the city to admit you have nothing real to do. Its purpose is to make it so you can identify with everything. We obviously grew up identifying with nothing. Then one day you look in the rearview mirror of your existence and realize that you can see clear down the hill-less and curveless and bridgeless road of your life, straight to the maternity ward where you were born. And then you go to college. Where your bland past meekly follows, sluggishly scraping its feet on the floor."

"I'm not exactly sure how the ponies happened. Though I have an inkling: 'Can I get you anything?' I'll say, getting up from a dinner table, 'Coffee, tea, a pony?' People rarely laugh at this, especially if they've heard it before. 'This party's supposed to be fun,' a friend will say. 'Really?' I'll respond, 'Will there be pony rides?' It's a nervous tic and a cheap joke, cheapened further by the frequency with which I use it. For that same reason, it's hard to weed out of my speech--most of the time I don't even realize I'm saying it. There are little elements in a person's life, minor fibers that become unintentionally tangled with our personality. Sometimes it's a patent phrase, sometimes it's a perfume, sometimes it's a wristwatch. For me, it is the constant referencing of ponies.

I don't even like ponies."