If at Birth You Don't Succeed (23 page)

Relieved that I'd finally picked up a cue, she said, “I'd love to spend a day with you in New York, if we can make it work.”

We were both forcing the stars to align in our favor, setting the scene so that two leads could come together in a way that felt plausible and satisfying, though even I'll admit there was some pretty heavy-handed writing going on to make the story work. With the dates set, I booked a four-star hotel on Madison Avenue called The New York Palace—a single room with a king-size bed that felt like a sufficiently grand stage for my long-overdue initiation into the world of the sexually active. I didn't discuss any of this with Stephanie, but I was pretty sure it was implied by one of the emojis I'd sent.

With the details and the sheets ironed out, I shifted my focus to the all-important business of preparing myself mentally and physically for my new role as heartthrob. I'd be playing against type, but if Tom Cruise can be an action movie star at like four foot three and Arnold Schwarzenegger can be a governor, then I was pretty sure I could convincingly play the part of a man who was confident in the bedroom. As Dave Phillips would have put it back in our Cindy Crawford days, I just had to “prepare to be doable.” While no one could give me concrete steps or a manual on how to make my presumed deflowering go smoothly, everyone agreed that
something
should be smoother.

“You're gonna have to shave your pubes and your balls. No way around it,” insisted Aaron.

To back up a second: there's an unwritten law among my friends that if you've known me for more than two weeks, you've seen me naked. Cerebral palsy forces you to be naked a lot in front of your friends, whether you're changing, getting ready for a shower, or simply propositioning them for a sensuous massage, so letting it all hang out is the only option.
1
So, depending on your perspective, I was in either the fortunate or the extremely unfortunate position of everyone I know having seen my undercarriage or, as I like to call it, Fangorn Forest.

“You're gonna have to trim it back
at least
,” Josh added.

Even I could suppose that few women would be turned on by a crotch that resembles a mini Gene Shalit. In fact, I think from time to time in this story, I'll refer to that whole situation as “Gene.” Even my best friend, Andrew, who always tried to quell my concerns by telling me that different women like different things and that I should just do what's easiest and most comfortable, conceded that a little manscaping would probably be a good idea.

The thought of taking a razor to Gene was unnerving. You're talking to a man whose dexterity is so poor that he has spilled almost every cup of coffee he's ever been handed and, when gesticulating, regularly pokes himself in the eye with his own finger.

There were, of course, more professional options. I mean, I could go and get a Brazilian—although that presented its own hairiness.

I once tried to get my eyebrows waxed so that I could look younger and pass as a high schooler for an audition. But each time the very patient Chinese lady pressed the Popsicle stick of hot wax to my face, I involuntarily flinched, spasming backward like Frankenstein's monster recoiling from fire. If it had just been my face that moved, I would have stuck with it, but my arms flung back and my legs tensed up, kicking the barber's chair in front of me. My whole body did not want to get my eyebrows waxed and, after five attempts, I gave up. It was terrifying to consider having wax applied to an even more sensitive and important area of my body. I decided that self-improvement, however risky, might be the lesser of two maimings.

The intimate nature of my mom's house in Buffalo prevented me from having any privacy in which to attempt this massive deforestation project. So, with little to no forethought of what this might mean for my day in Manhattan, I put The Scouring of The Shire off and decided to wait until I was in the hotel. I didn't know it then, but some things are way more important than privacy.

As I slid into my most flattering and form-fitting oxford shirt and my mom loaded up my bags in the car, I went down an exhaustive mental checklist of the tools I needed to become a sexy beast who was a little less beastly.

Sugarfree Orbit gum—
check!

Q-tips—
check!

Deodorant (NOT body spray because I was going to a hotel, not a CrossFit gym in New Jersey)—
check!

Newly acquired basic knowledge of female anatomy—
check!
(Thanks, Google image search!)

Norelco Bodygroom Pro—
check!

I had everything I needed to make sure this evening went off without a hitch or a stray hair. After today, when my family doctor asked me during my annual exam if I was sexually active, I could finally answer with a knowing wink and a “Yes!” rather than my go-to response of “I wish.” It was all smooth sailing from here—baby smooth!

But in remembering all my toiletries and trimmers, I'd forgotten to bring any personal identification to the airport. This mistake cost me two hours while I waited for the next flight to JFK. Still, it was better to get the bumps over with early; I'd padded the schedule in case of a close shave anyway.

During the flight, I was less concerned about the physical preparation of my crotch than preparing myself mentally to embark on virgin territory. As the captain called over the PA system to let us know that we had begun our initial descent into New York City, I felt like I was cramming for an exam in a language I'd neither heard nor spoken. Now, all of a sudden, after sleeping through the entire semester, it was the morning of the final. I had so little knowledge of what was supposed to happen that, in the weeks leading up to this day, my friends had fielded questions as relentless and random as a bumblebee darting back and forth between ice cream cones at a fair.

“If she's on the bed and I'm in the chair, how do I kiss her?”

“What's the best way to give oral sex on a woman?”

“How do you tell which condoms are the smallest?”

“What do I do if she starts laughing?”

“How far open should my mouth be when I kiss this girl and in what quadrant of her mouth should my tongue be? Do I hold my tongue back?”

“How the hell do I explain why this has taken so long?”

Did I even know why this had taken so long? The lie that I always told myself was that things would happen naturally when the time was right. But as I got older, nothing about life in my body felt natural. After a while it wasn't the lack of experience or opportunity that stunted my sexual development, but rather the fear of having to explain my lack of experience to someone. There were not enough
GQ
magazine tips in the world to make me feel comfortable in my own skin.

Out of all my friends' suggestions, Andrew gave me the best advice: that communication and honesty were the most important things.

I thought that was bullshit. “That just means that I'll be honestly communicating what a loser I've been while I'm trying to be sexy in front of this girl. Everyone says, ‘Be yourself,' but I've been myself for twenty-seven years and that's how I got into this mess! I think I should try being
anybody
else.” Technically, I said this as a joke. But it was a joke I took as gospel.

However this night went down, I knew I had a whole team of people who were eagerly waiting to hear about it and assess how things went. I'd raised the stakes and now people were counting on me to lose my virginity. Aaron and Andrew had had meetings about this that I wasn't even invited to. Whatever happened behind the door of that hotel room, I wouldn't be able to hide it from my friends.

Just as I was about to let my imagination get the better of me, the landing gear hit the runway and the lights came up in the cabin. The captain informed us that it was a sunny seventy-two degrees in New York City. I thought to myself,
It's a beautiful day and you've landed safely, so just take it one step at a time.

But as it turned out, the next several steps were stumbles. Due to construction, only one lane into the city was open, so what would have been a forty-minute drive turned into an hour-and-a-half-long slog. I got to the hotel just in time for my
What's Trending
appearance, which had thankfully gotten a late start. The interview went off without a hitch but it still ate up a half hour of time I no longer had to spare. Nothing else could go wrong in the next two hours. I still had to shave, shower, and buy condoms.

My phone buzzed and I saw a text from Stephanie:
Hey, are you here yet? We're going to the zoo, if you wanna join!
Feeling the pressure of time bearing down on me, I quickly tapped back,
Got a late start, but maybe in a bit? Have fun!
I tossed the phone aside and then, with great precision and purpose, pulled my Norelco Bodygroom Pro from the outside pocket of my laptop case. I stared at it curiously, thinking to myself,
I know when I packed this, there was an attachment where I could choose the length of the trim, and now there's just a bare blade.
I looked at the other side of the device, thinking that I might be able to just use the electric razor part, only to find that it too was missing. I combed through every pocket of my luggage, finding nothing.

If I used this thing, my tender romantic comedy would be in very real danger of becoming the next movie in the Saw series. My only consolation was that Andrew would be arriving soon. Surely, he would be able to make the trip to the Duane Reade and buy condoms and a new ball shaver for me. That was well within the boundaries of what anyone would do for a best friend, right? We were on the same team, after all, and this de-virginizing was nothing if not a group effort. Then, another text came in. It was Andrew.

Train's delayed. Won't be in until around 9:00 p.m. Sorry man, call Kevin if you need anything.

This was grim news. Kevin hadn't planned on joining us until later, and he was in Queens, well over an hour away by public transportation. I had to think and move fast. I raced down to the lobby and found the bellman.

“Where's the closest place I can buy an electric razor? One that has the attachments for beard trimming?”

I wonder what crossed through this man's mind as he looked at my daylong stubble that was barely a five o'clock shadow. But maybe it's a bellman's code that you just don't ask questions like that.

“You turn right and head two blocks up and there'll be a Duane Reade across the street. They should have somethin',” he advised.

“Thank you so much!” I said, and then bolted out the door and took a left.

I didn't realize my mistake until I was five minutes down the block, then backtracked, shouting, “EXCUSE ME!” at any pedestrian in my path, snappy even by New Yorker standards. Peeling into the Duane Reade, I headed straight for the cash register, blurting out, “Could you tell me where the electric razors, the condoms, and the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups are?”

She must have heard this combination before because, without skipping a beat, she said, “The razors are along the wall, the condoms are upstairs, and the candy's in aisle four.”

“Thanks!” I said, rushing to take inventory of their personal grooming options, and as luck would have it, they did have a razor with every attachment and setting I'd need. Or at least, they had an empty spot on the shelf where it would have been if it were in stock.

“You got any more of these trimmer things in the back?” I called to the cashier.

“If it's not there, we don't have it,” she said.

My heart sank when I realized what this meant. Either Gene would be tagging along for the date, which was not an option, or I'd be left to make do with the only part of my Norelco Bodygroom Pro that was still at my disposal—the bare-toothed blade. I couldn't let fear take over. I still had candy and condoms to buy. I took the elevator upstairs and was daunted by the number of prophylactic options. So I took out my phone and had a private conversation with Andrew at full volume in the middle of the aisle.

“How the hell do I know which of these condoms to get? What does ribbed mean? These ones say they add heat AND ice—and are any of these flavored ones any good? I have no clue. Not a single one of these boxes has a sizing chart on it!”

Going into full medical professional mode, Andrew said, “You probably don't want to get anything that's super lubricated or flavored, and I wouldn't go with the ribbed or the lambskin ones. And Lifestyles are the smallest, just so you know.”

So I did what any twenty-seven-year-old who had never tried on or even touched a condom before would do. I looked for the box with the largest quantity, because I knew that half would be wasted just trying to figure out how to get them on. As I was reading the back of the jumbo pack of thirty-two Trojans, I heard a voice coming from down the aisle.

“Excuse me, I'm sorry to bother you, but aren't you that boy from the Oprah show?”

I looked up to see an African American woman in her mid-fifties smiling at me. As I'm fairly certain that I'm the only person who looks remotely like me in the public eye, I had no choice but to respond, “Yup, that's me!”

“Whatever happened with that show?”

“It was canceled.” I shrugged, still holding the giant box of condoms.

“Oh, that's too bad,” she consoled. “What are you doing now?”

Right now?
I thought to myself.
Well right now, I'm drowning in embarrassment.
But I replied, “I've got a new travel show!”

“Well, that's wonderful! It was so nice to meet you!”

“You too!” I lied.

Stopping in the candy aisle on the way out, I grabbed the biggest bag of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups I could find, because Stephanie had told me that they were her favorite, and checked out. I zoomed back to The Palace and barricaded myself in my room. It was already 4:30 p.m. I texted Stephanie to let her know that I definitely would not be able to meet her at the zoo.