Taylor Tomlinson: Quarter-Life Crisis

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Taylor Tomlinson.

Wow! I hope my ex sees this. Thank you.

Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for coming.

This is amazing. How are you? Good?

Okay, I'm sorry. That was so aggressive.

There's so many people. I did not need to single you out that way.

I would hate that if someone did it to me.

I'm an introvert. Is anyone else an introvert?

All right. That was a test, and you failed. Uh...

No introvert's ever gone "woo!" at any decibel.

Real introverts are parked outside going,

"Is it even worth it? I don't know who she is."

Here's how much of an introvert I am. Recently, I read a statistic that said,

in 80% of homicide cases,

the killer was someone the victim knew.

When I read that, I was relieved.

Like, thank God. I don't want to get murdered and meet somebody.

That's a lot for a Friday,

getting stabbed and acquainted.

Just dump me in the river. Don't introduce yourself, Jeff.

So glad you guys are doing well.

I'm doing okay.

I am halfway through my 20s, and I am done with this shit.

Oh, my God! I'm sick of my 20s.

I'm so sick of people telling me to enjoy them.

They're not fun. They are ten years of asking yourself,

"Will I outgrow this, or is it a problem?"

Like, is this a phase or a demon? I just need to know.

Like, am I fun, or should I go to a meeting?

Someone help me.

And people get upset when I complain about being young.

I had a woman come up to me after a show furious. She's like,

"You should appreciate this time of your life

'cause someday you're gonna have a family like me,

and you're really gonna miss it."

I'm like, "Where are your kids buried? Holy shit."

I'm just trying to get to my car, Ghost of Christmas Future.

If you're sitting there going, "Taylor, you should be grateful. I miss my 20s."

No, you don't. What you miss is a time in your life where you didn't have

a lot of responsibilities because nobody expected anything from you.

But do you remember why nobody expected anything from you?

Because you sucked.

That's what everybody forgets about your 20s. You were garbage.

Thinner garbage, but you were garbage.

You have no intuition, no instincts. You can't make decisions, only mistakes.

That's why you're thin in your 20s.

You don't have a gut to listen to yet.

There's no mystic bad feeling under your ribs going,

"Hey, maybe don't date a DJ...

again."

Nobody expects me to do shit right.

I'm like, "What can I bring to the potluck, Nana?"

She's like, "Napkins. Can you handle that?

Dry ones this time.

And if they say Starbucks on them, I swear to God, Taylor...

Go to a Dollar Tree. Stop ruining Easter."

I've been doing a lot of work on myself.

You have to work on yourself in your 20s 'cause if you don't, then you'll turn 30,

and all the shitty parts of your personality will solidify,

and that'll just be who you are now.

Your 20s are an opportunity to fish trash out of the lake before it freezes over.

It's like, ooh, what's that? Codependency?

Daddy issues? All right. Better get all that out of there

'cause winter is coming.

I've done so much work on myself in the last five years.

I quit dating losers. That took a minute.

Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you.

There's no rehab for that, only sponsors.

Uh...

Losers are hard to quit. Losers are a lot like cigarettes.

You have one in your mouth, you feel pretty cool, but everyone is like,

"Ew! We're sad for you.

Don't do that around my kids."

All my friends are like, "You need a guy with a car and a job."

And I'm like, "But then I've got to deal with his wife. It's a whole thing."

I'm trying to be a better partner too. I haven't always been a great partner.

I dated one guy, on again, off again, for four years.

I would dump him, get back together, dump him, get together.

I was the girl you couldn't bring home for holidays

'cause what are you going to say at that point? Like, "Mom, Dad,

this is my lesson that I can't seem to learn.

Don't get attached."

He and I broke up because he cheated on me.

In my head, and I could not...

Sorry, if you love me, you wouldn't even do it up here. Like...

You wouldn't even put yourself in that situation.

I read too many of those "signs he's cheating" articles.

Have you read those? They're all the same. Like,

"Oh, did he buy you flowers?

He feels guilty.

Oh, did he call you 'babe'?

He doesn't know your name.

Was he nice to your family?

He slept with your mom."

He never cheated on me, but he did do this weird thing

where he would let me know any time other women hit on him.

He'd go out of his way to be like, "Babe, I just want to let you know,

girl at Starbucks tried to give me her number, so..."

And I'm like, "Cool.

What do you want me to say? You want me to fist-bump you?

Like, 'Nice, bro. Get it.' Like...

You want me to get jealous? Turn into Batman?

Like, 'Where is she?' Like, what?"

He's like, "No, I'm trying to be honest with you 'cause I love you.

That's what I'm doing. I'm being honest with you."

I'm like, "No, you're not.

You want me to know that you turned down the option of other people today.

You want points for not cheating on me."

Like I'm supposed to swoon or something, like,

"Oh, my God, babe.

You honored the most basic term of our agreement?"

"I'm so lucky. This is like a fairy tale.

I never understood Taylor Swift songs before, and now I do. Like...

I thank you so much. I know you have a lot of options..."

I turned into Southwest Airlines. "I know you have a lot of options when you fly.

Thank you for choosing us. Can we get you anything else?"

I was so pissed. "Do you have any idea how easy it would be for me

to cheat on you? Do you know how many holes I have in me?

I take this slice of Swiss cheese for a walk around the block,

it's over for you, dude."

Yeah.

"I don't even have to try that hard. I've just got to raise my hand

in a Walmart or uncross my legs in a Denny's

and we are open for business, all right?"

Just like, "Boom! Got your Grand Slam right here, fellas.

Line it up.

Mama has a point to make."

The real reason he and I broke up is the reason everybody breaks up.

We were no longer having the amount of sex you need to have

in order to ignore everything that's wrong with each other.

Yeah, love is blind.

Lust is Helen Keller. So...

We weren't there anymore, and it got tough

because I have a fairly high sex drive.

Not crazy high. Not like "I'mma catch something at the bus station" high.

But if I love you,

diarrhea doesn't deter me.

We're...

We're in that zone, you know? It's like,

"Your stomach hurts? Push through it. I want to feel close to you."

Mentally push, not physically. Don't make a mess.

That joke makes me sound so much cooler than I am. I'm not that cool.

I've had sex with two people, four if you're Christian.

Like, I'm not a good time.

I'm not.

I don't like casual sex. My friends are like,

"You don't know if you like it. You've never tried it."

I've also never tried cottage cheese, and I know that shit looks nasty.

It's all wet and bumpy. I don't trust it, okay?

I had a friend try to convince me with this argument:

"You have to try it, Taylor, because there is nothing as empowering

as just banging some guy and leaving." I'm like,

"That sounds good, but I don't know.

Have you ever tried to make a dude's mom

love you more than him?"

That is power.

I still talk to Sheila, so...

Haven't heard from him in eight years,

but every Christmas she's like, "I miss you."

I was very sheltered growing up.

I was terrified of sex. I thought I would be bad at it.

Now that I'm older, it's so easy to be good at sex, isn't it?

All you have to do is approach it with the enthusiasm of a child.

Just put everything in your mouth. Like...

If you can reach it and it fits, that's where it goes.

Uh...

Pretend you're four and your partner's made of LEGOs. It's not...

It's not complicated.

I grew up very religious,

so I was encouraged to abstain from drugs and alcohol and sex and enjoyment...

and uh...

Yeah, being abstinent is when you wait until marriage to have sex.

They used to tell us, "The safest sex is no sex."

Which is a lot like saying, "The safest travel is books."

When I have a daughter,

I'm going to make sure she's abstinent in high school

and probably before that, while we're at it, because...

When I was younger and I was abstinent, I was not having sex,

but I was having other things done to me, and I don't know if you know this,

but "other things" are kind of the best part of sex for ladies.

So while my friends were having sex, I was the only one having orgasms.

Yeah.

I could not believe it when I found out.

My friends are like, "Yeah, me and Chad have had sex,

but I've never, you know..." And I'm like,

"You're going to hell and you didn't even finish?

I'll pray for you."

First time I tried to lose my virginity, I missed.

That happen to anybody else in here?

Not physically. I wasn't stupid. I wasn't like,

"It's like trying to put a straw in a Capri Sun." It wasn't like that.

What happened was...

I was waiting until marriage, or until Jesus came back,

'cause I'm like, "My dad will like him, right?" And...

I waited, waited, waited.

And then, finally, I tried to lose it to my boyfriend in college who said,

"No, thank you."

Uh, which was a bit of a curve ball.

Nobody...