If at Birth You Don't Succeed (24 page)

Aw, that's too bad
, she texted back.
I saw a snow leopard!

Having bought myself some time, I had to prepare for what could very easily turn into self-mutilation. But then, how bad could it possibly be? After all, this device had been designed expressly for the purpose of managing unwanted body hair, so surely they wouldn't equip it with a tool that could castrate a man. I'd gone through ALL the reviews on Amazon and none of them had said, “Stay away, I lost a ball! One star.” I wasn't exactly sure if the blade was ever meant to touch exposed skin or if the trimmer attachment was designed to be removable for cleaning purposes only. In retrospect, the latter seemed more likely.

I stripped naked in the bathroom and told myself that I had no other choice. I sprawled out on the floor and tried to position myself over a towel. But who was I kidding? I couldn't have kept that room clean if I had wrapped it wall-to-wall in cellophane. I would just do what needed to be done and worry about the mess later. The key, I theorized, was to be as delicate as possible so that if I did find myself facing unimaginable pain, I could stop before Gene looked like he had alopecia. I didn't even pause to consider that it might be a problem that, from my angle on the floor, I couldn't check the mirror to keep tabs on how the hairdo was coming along.

I grabbed the razor and tilted the blade toward my manhood, hearing the rattle of the motor as it came closer and closer. Then came the first snip. It was a familiar sound that I'd heard a thousand times before while shaving my face, except it was less of a buzz and more of a metallic scraping. But for all the fuss the motor made, it didn't seem to make a dent in Gene's formidable forelock.

Damn it!
I thought.
If I'm gonna get anything done, I've gotta commit to this!
So I plunged the Bodygroom deep into the wilderness, and the sharp teeth grazed my sensitive exposed skin with all the delicacy of a forklift moving scrap metal. I wouldn't describe the feeling as pain so much as a piercing anguish that caused every cell in my body to retreat. My survival instincts kicked in, and I yanked the razor out of range. There was no way in hell I would ever let that thing near my pubic hair again. I didn't care what Stephanie thought, and I reasoned that while unkempt hair was probably a turnoff, it wouldn't be as much of a red flag as bleeding, which might prompt her to cry out, “Oh my God, what war was your penis just in? We need to get you to a cockspital!”

I lay there, now sweating, wondering if I could apply little toilet paper pieces to stop the bleeding like you do when you nick your chin shaving. At least I knew I hadn't done irreversible harm and I hoped that my body could heal in time. I surveyed the damage. I had definitely broken the skin. But for all that effort, it didn't look as though I'd actually trimmed anything.

Then I rolled over.

A sizeable clump fell to the floor and I saw the heinous crime I'd committed. Somehow I'd managed to shave down the middle—and
just
the middle. With one ill-advised swoop, I had turned Gene Shalit into Danny DeVito. This looked neither deliberate nor healthy. I flinched instinctively as I heard a buzzing sound and was relieved when I realized it was just Stephanie texting again.

Hey, um, my friends and I are wrapping up at the zoo. Should we head toward your hotel?

It was now 5:30 p.m. Panicked, I texted back,
It'll be a little while. Still doing some interview stuff!
and by “interview stuff” I meant crying, both from physical agony and from feeling overwhelmed. How in God's name was I gonna bounce back from this one? I lay there on the floor feeling defeated—no matter how hard I tried, everything always ended up in disaster. Even the normal things that seemed to come as second nature to everyone else in the world were insurmountable hurdles to me. Maybe I was never destined to be a romantic lead after all.

I heard the vibration of my phone against the cold tile again, and I gingerly rolled over, sure it would be Stephanie saying she'd decided to turn in early and call off dinner. But instead, I saw three familiar words from Andrew:

Chew bubble gum.

Those words were more inspirational than any long-winded speech that Denzel Washington or Al Pacino ever could have delivered at the end of some sappy sports movie. I couldn't give up. I was going to make this date, even if I'd be limping and bleeding all the way through it. The first thing I had to do was finish shaving.

I pressed the button, reengaged the motor on the jaws of death, then held my breath and shut my eyes. I wish I could describe exactly what followed, but I've mostly blocked it from memory. Until I've gone through some extensive therapy I won't be able to cope with it. But over the course of the next excruciating hour, I became as smooth as a gorilla who had shaved himself in the dark. My phone pulsed again.

We've grabbed some coffee but are getting pretty hungry. Can we meet at your hotel?

Yeah, sure
, I replied,
head on over!
and I reluctantly let Stephanie know the name of my hotel without giving the room number. It was now quarter to seven.

I took a shower and started trying to clean up the evidence. While I was on all fours naked on the floor with a persistent pain in my groin, I received another text.

Hey, so we're downstairs in your hotel. What room are you in?

It was clear that the universe was not going to be giving me any breaks today. I texted,
I'll be down in ten, still changing!
and then did my best to clean the bathroom floor with a towel before shoving it into the darkest recess under the sink, and began transporting stray pubic hairs into the trash can one by one. In all honesty, even Amelia Bedelia wouldn't have made such a cock-up of the whole thing. But I finished erasing the evidence of my crimes, got dressed, fastened my Velcro shoes, and rode the elevator down to the lobby, ready to pull off the mother of all comebacks.

So what if nobody in human history had ever lost their virginity in shoes that were meant to be worn on a beach in conjunction with a metal detector, a straw hat, and a nose covered in zinc? And so what if I'd just nearly turned myself into a eunuch? Stephanie didn't know that, and I was hopeful that if the night went well enough, I could tell her the whole story and maybe even get an “A for effort.”

When I saw Stephanie, she was sitting on a couch in the lobby in a cute tank top with two friends in tow. Everyone was laughing about the day's events at the zoo.

“Hey!” she said warmly as I rolled around the corner. “We're starving. There's this restaurant called The Standard that's not too far from here and it's supposed to be really good.”

“Sure!” I said. “I'm game for anything!”—not mentioning that “anything” didn't include fish, cheese, or things that I would have to cut with a knife and fork.

“The lobby of your hotel looks pretty magical, by the way.”

“Yeah, that's the vibe I was going for.”

“These are my friends, Tim and Sarah. We've been hanging out all day.”

“That's cool, my buddies Kevin and Andrew might join us.”

“Great!” she said.

As we headed out the door, my attentive bellman interjected, “Hey! Did you find that razor you were looking for?”

“No, they were all out!” I said.

“All out of razors?” He lifted his eyebrows, confused.

“Yeah, well, see ya later!”

As we made our way to the restaurant, Stephanie's friends struck me as a couple who were perfectly at ease with each other. They were finishing each other's sentences and trading laughs back and forth. I wondered how long it would take to feel that comfortable with Stephanie. By my estimation, we had about four hours. While we were both very excited to see each other, there was still that awkward transition between the digital world we'd been flirting in and the real world. As we walked along, making idle chatter about all the friends she was seeing before she left for Australia and how her mother was taking the move, I remembered the bag of Reese's stuffed in the back of my wheelchair.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, presenting them to her. “I got these for you!”

“Thanks!” she said, delighted. “These are my favorite!”

“I know, I remembered.” I smiled.

This sentimental exchange prompted an “Awww!” from Sarah. I took this as a sign that I was doing well, because Sarah was probably in place to be the barometer as to whether I was a decent guy or a piece of trash.

For all the tenderness on display, we had barely touched, and so when Stephanie mentioned how she'd been walking around the city all day, I instinctively offered, “Well, you could just ride on my chair if you want.”

She gleefully accepted and sat on my lap, tossing her legs over the side of the chair as I started out slow and then kicked into high gear, running over the crosswalk. Stephanie giggled the whole time. I was enjoying myself enough to ignore the discomfort that a person's body weight brought to my still extremely sensitive groin. Despite all my earlier stumbles, I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of being romantic.

As we got settled in at the restaurant, I was feeling more optimistic than I'd ever allowed myself to feel about women. I approached the menu at The Standard the same way I approach any menu: by asking myself,
What can I actually eat here without a) looking like a baby or b) worrying about my stomach?

“They have a cookie platter!” I said. “I think I'm gonna have to try that!” So I ordered cookies and meatballs. As the night progressed, I got to hear all the stories from the day that I had missed while trying to get into the city, learning about condoms, and brutalizing my balls on a bathroom floor. Stephanie recounted that she'd been so excited to see the animals that she basically pushed little kids out of the way to get in front of them.

“I'm really sorry I missed that,” I said, meaning it. The conversation among Stephanie, Tim, and Sarah was full of charming little details and inside jokes I had no frame of reference for. I started to feel out of place at the table. And then the conversation shifted from the day's highlight reel to plans for the immediate future.

“So,” Stephanie said, turning to me, “we can't stay out too late because I'm staying with Sarah and she lives in Brooklyn and has to work tomorrow.”

We'd only spent a little over an hour together, so inviting her to stay at The Palace with me still felt too forward. My only shot of extending the evening was to transition to drinks somewhere and present a more appealing alternative to a cozy night in Brooklyn.

“How late can you stay out?” I asked.

“Well, Sarah's shift starts at eight, so I don't think we can do much later than eleven.”

This was a considerable roadblock. It was already past nine. If I was going to convince Stephanie to stay out later, I'd have to convince her friends that I wanted them to stay out too.

“You should just take the day off tomorrow,” I told Sarah. “Where do you work?”

“The 9/11 Memorial,” she said.

If there's a tactful way to suggest blowing off one's job at the 9/11 Memorial, I haven't yet discovered it. My last hope was that Andrew and Kevin could come up with a brilliant plan. Maybe if we had fancy cocktails at an enchanting New York bar with a 1920s vibe surrounded by old library books, I could change the tone and sweep Stephanie off her feet with nostalgia or something.

As I was grasping at straws, Andrew texted:
Just got into Penn Station and hooked up with Kevin. Should we still come to meet you?

In Andrew's ideal version of this night, things were already going so well that I wouldn't need any wingmen. But I texted him back saying that they should definitely come, and they should hurry.

Clinging to a last shred of optimism, I asked, “Do you guys wanna grab a drink?”

“Yeah, but it's gotta be quick,” Sarah said.

“Uh, where should we go?” I wondered aloud. “Who has fancy drinks around here?”

“I dunno,” said Sarah, and Stephanie took out her phone to Yelp which bars were close. Then came the nail in the coffin.

“Well,” she said tentatively, “there's a TGI Friday's right up the street. You wanna just go there?”

There are very few things I am absolutely sure of, but one of them is that no one in the history of recorded time has converted drinks at TGI Friday's into a passionate one-night stand, and if they had, they had to've been more intoxicated than Stephanie and I could ever get from a pitcher of Blue Moon. It was crystal clear now that even though I had been fully aware of what was happening this time, and had a made heroic effort, I'd still be a virgin in the morning, and probably every morning after that until the morning I woke up dead. It was bleak, but at least I had my future planned out, and how many people can say that at twenty-seven?

As we headed to Friday's, I did my best not to seem somber. But seeing Tim and Sarah's playful chemistry as they walked ahead of us made me wonder if I'd ever have that kind of connection with anyone. If there was someone out there for me, it certainly wasn't Stephanie. She'd be heading to Australia in less than a week, meeting guys with far more charming accents than I had to offer. But still, I tried to make pleasant conversation.

“They're a really cute couple,” I said, gesturing toward Tim and Sarah.

“Oh, they're not dating,” Stephanie clarified. “They just met today.”

“WHAT?!” I said in disbelief.

“I know, crazy, right?”

Then it dawned on me what I'd really missed while I was so preoccupied with my fuzzy balls and obsessing about losing my virginity: I'd missed the opportunity to spend time with a person I genuinely liked, and because I'd failed to establish a rapport on the one day I had with Stephanie, I'd likely never see her again. This stung more than anything else. Romance isn't preparation. It's paying attention. This girl wouldn't have cared that my nether region looked like Art Garfunkel, but she would care that I'd missed out on sharing a day at the zoo with her because I'd been too self-absorbed to focus on anything but Gene Shalit's hairdo. I wouldn't get a third chance. As we sat down to our red-and-white-checkered tablecloth and met our waiter with his silly vest adorned with a thousand buttons, what should have been a celebration felt more like a funeral.