The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (26 page)

The woman beside me went involuntarily wide-eyed.

“That was me,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

It was unprecedented candor. But I’d needed it, the words exchanged.

And then: the woman
laughed
. Well, no, she didn’t laugh, really. She rather exhaled in a manner to suggest good-natured befuddlement.

“No problem,” she said. “I mean, well, it … happens. It just … 
does
.”

I put my hand to my heart.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

I AM NOT
, by nature, a gamblin’ woman. When my stock is up, I quit. I go home. I call work.

“Hello?” said the hostess.

“Hello,” I said back. “This is Sara Barron calling. I am back from my vacation. I am free to pick up shifts.”

I had been living alone for a total of five years. I had spent the first three of those five in that studio apartment in Bushwick. I had spent the last two of those five in a different studio apartment, also in Bushwick. The new apartment was one block away from the old apartment, and only a little bit bigger. I did not move, then, for any significant improvements in terms of size or neighborhood. I moved because the new apartment had a better toilet than the old one, because I’d reached that stage of life wherein I wanted a toilet that flushed.

I appreciated the improvement, and to ensure I maintained my appreciation—to ensure I did not become embittered by my now longstanding solitude—I made sure to take Eleanor with me. I also hung up
lots
of mirrors. The
mirrors made the space seem larger, yes, but the real benefit was that whenever I needed someone besides Eleanor to talk to, I could just look up, and glance around.

“Idiot,” I’d say.

“
You
are,” I’d say. “
You
are the problem. Not me.”

These devices did a good job of treating the solitude that can, as I said, feel like a physical ailment. They also kept a low cap on the amount I spoke to inanimate objects. They were the treats, if you will, to keep me in line.

My approach to living alone in a functional way mirrored that of a woman who diets in a functional way. Every day, she gives herself a little indulgence so as to prevent herself from, say, shoveling cereal into her mouth
while
unsticking the peanut butter jar … so that the peanut butter’s ready once the cereal is gone.

I may be speaking from experience.

Like a lady on a functional diet, I put a system in place so that I might enjoy the benefits of solo living without falling victim to its hardships. A positive attitude, a nonexistent canine friend. A hand mirror! A hanging mirror! A wall mirror, oh
my
! My methods were smart, to be sure. But they were not failsafe. Substitutes for living with another person are, well, only ever that: substitutes. There are certain jobs only a human can do.

I WAS AT
the local coffee shop one weekend afternoon when I spotted a certain gentleman, and after a series of boring events he and I wound up having sex. It was mostly uneventful, except for the fact that during the proceedings, I sprained my neck. We’d had sex and gone to bed, and when I woke up the next morning, I found I couldn’t move it.

“Oh no!” I exclaimed.

My companion groaned wordlessly in response.

I rotated the entirety of my torso to face him.

“I think I sprained my neck,” I said.

“From the blowjobs?” he asked, but nodding “yes” was not an option. I pitched my torso back and forth.

“Oh, shit!” He laughed. “Wow. That’s really funny.”

Really funny, indeed. The ensuing week consisted of too many ineffective neck braces and heating pads until finally I made an appointment with an acupuncturist. The acupuncturist’s name was James, and James was very handsome. Which didn’t affect the efficacy of his acupuncture, of course, but it
did
unlock my flirtatious instincts while James
performed
his acupuncture. When the needles went in, I made sure to groan sexually, rather than in a way that sounded whiny. When the needles came out and I was told to sit up, I made sure to position myself on the acupuncture table in a manner that was more mermaid-on-rock than it was Sara-Barron-on-table. And when a session concluded and it was time to say good-bye, I made sure to tell James how respectful I was of his practice. I’d roll my neck and shoulders erotically to indicate how much better my neck was thanks to him.

“The healing power of acupuncture is so, like,
tangible
,” I’d say. “I really respect what you do.”

I saw James three times in two weeks and, thankfully, my neck did get better. At the end of the last session, James bowed silently in farewell, and it was something in the perceived subservience of that bow that allowed me to channel my untapped reserves of self-confidence.

“We should go out sometime,” I said.

James lifted his head.

“Yes,” he said. “We should.”

His response was unexpected, but ideal. It was the most wonderful news.

However, I successfully undermined it by putting Band-Aids on my breasts.

The source of the problem was an off-the-shoulder sweater I’d decided to wear on our date. Because I was punching above my weight with James, I’d initially planned to go all-out, clothing-wise, to pair an extravagant frock with high heels. But then I reconsidered after James suggested meeting at Chipotle. I’d texted, “Any thoughts on where to meet?” and he had written back, “How about the 42nd Street Chipotle? They have delicious margaritas.”

Well, I wasn’t picky. I
would
go on a date at a Chipotle. However, I would also spare myself the indignity of showing up in high heels and an extravagant frock. I’d go instead with my Forever 21 off-the-shoulder sweater.

I planned to do as one does in an off-the-shoulder sweater and wear a strapless bra. But then I tried one on and saw that it created this unattractive shelf effect. So then I decided maybe I should just go braless, and took off the sweater
and
the bra, and then put the sweater
back
on, but this time without the bra. Then, though, I saw that my nipples looked ridiculous. They were all like,
HELLO! WE ARE NIPPLES!
rather than
Ah, bonjour. Nous sommes les … nipples
. It was just too much.
They
were just too much, and after extensive consideration, I decided Band-Aids were the workable solution. They’d provide the optimal level of restraint.

So it was that I taped one extra-large Band-Aid horizontally across each nipple.

James needed five margaritas to invite me back to his apartment. I needed zero to accept the offer, but two to forget I had extra-large Band-Aids on my nipples. I knew what I looked like with them on, of course. I had looked in the mirror before I left, and I had noticed how the fleshy color of the Band-Aids blended with my skin tone to create the overall effect of an alien life form. Something sluglike. Undefined. They were gross and alarming, to be sure, but even so, I thought James’s response to the Band-Aids
was unnecessarily dramatic. We’d gone back to his bedroom, taken off our shirts, and he had screamed, for God’s sake. I am tempted to write, “He let out a blood-curdling scream,” but to be more specific about it, James screamed like he’d seen, not Band-Aids on breasts, but rather cockroaches on breasts. Truly. It was as though he’d ripped off my sweater to discover one tampon-sized cockroach per breast.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Are those … Band-Aids?” he asked.

And I looked down. And I remembered.

“Oh, God. Yes. Sorry. It’s sort of, like, this thing I do.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because,” I answered, “my nipples protrude too much without them.”

We sat for a moment.

Finally, James said, “I’m sorry I screamed.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “
I’m
sorry
I
put Band-Aids on my breasts.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “You had your reasons.”

We sat for another moment.

“So,” he said.

“So,” I said.

“Do you want to take them off?” he said.

“Oh. Yes. Sorry,” I said. “Of course I’ll take them off.”

And so I did. Or rather, and so I tried to.

At this stage in the story I would like to vouch for Johnson & Johnson’s Band-Aid brand adhesive. As an unpaid sponsor, I would like to tell you that their Band-Aids wanted
on
. It was almost impossible to remove them, and when finally I did, my breasts looked red and raw. Bumpy and truly diseased.

It is a testament to both James and me that we tried to carry on. We hemmed and hawed, picked and prodded.
We boogied and we woogied. In short, we did all manner of unmentionable things together, but it was like his libido was this perfect, healthy baby, and my breasts were a pillow, and I had used the pillow to kill the baby. So seemingly benign was the weapon, you almost didn’t know it was a weapon. But oh, it
was
. And the baby wound up limp and flaccid. Unresponsive. Irrevocably dead.

Finally—hopelessly—I motioned in the direction of James’s genitals.

“Is there … anything else we could … do?” I asked.

And James motioned in the direction of my breasts. He shrugged, in apology. He said, “I’m pretty sure there’s not.”

There’s a subconscious level on which I think I must like feeling ashamed and embarrassed. I’ve been that way for, well, ever I guess, and it’s what made it difficult for me to blame James in the long term. I mean, sure, he had a dramatic, physical response to a small mess of adhesive, but my dominant feeling was that the fault was mostly mine for failing to think things through beforehand. I do not believe in destiny, but I do believe in predictability. I do believe we are more or less likely to wind up in a given situation based on the way we behave. I, for example, was more likely to drink two margaritas, to forget about the Band-Aids, to carelessly remove my shirt. I know these things about myself, and should, then, have put that self-knowledge toward better social planning. But I got wrapped up in a moment, seduced by my own ingenuity. This can happen when you live alone.

A fantasy returned in the wake of my repulsive breasts. For the first time in a long time, I found myself wanting a roommate. Someone to talk to and check in with. Someone to save me from myself. It was a strange thing to have evoked after all that time away from the idea, and
it brought to mind a particular park in Bushwick, just around the block from my apartment. I’d go there once in a while to enjoy the sunshine and/or the physiques of the guys on the basketball court, and while it was lovely by virtue of being outside, it was also kind of gross. There was garbage everywhere. There weren’t any benches. The grass was a mess. So it wasn’t a question of which part was greener. It was a question of whether I felt like sitting in garbage or in mud. Near a baby or a rat.

A nice day in that park was a hard thing to achieve. A nice life in New York is a hard thing to achieve. You’re damned if you do get entrenched in the psychosis of your roommate, you’re damned if you don’t have a roommate, but then your imaginary bulldog fails to explain the pitfalls of the Band-Aids on your breasts. I must remember this when times are tough. I must not mourn what I don’t have. I must rejoice in what I do have. I must remember my pedicure station. I must remember that I pass gas when I want to and that doing so provides authentic joy. I must consider there’s no better option out there. I must accept it’s as good as it gets.

Often I find myself in one of two positions: I am either (a) bemoaning whatever drama presently surrounds me, or (b) lacking drama, enduring the grind, and as a result, beset with a crushing panic as to the purpose of human existence.

I found myself in one such latter phase several years back. I had recently moved into the second of my Bushwick studio apartments. I had been in high spirits because of it.

But then the winds changed.

The tides turned.

Because this friend of mine, Vicki, had gone and scored herself a boyfriend.

I have, as I’ve said, an unsavory taste for people who
find partners like I find ingrown hairs. For them, it is effortless, and this fact was never truer than in the case of my friend Vicki.

Vicki is warm, bright, and empirically attractive. She is professionally unintimidating. She has a lot of internalized self-loathing, and that internalized self-loathing manifests as a lack of self-esteem. That lack of self-esteem, then, manifests as a willingness to date whomever just so long as they’re around.

In the fifteen years that I’ve known Vicki, she’s been single for a total of four months. Four months. In fifteen years. And although I would like to say that I pity her situation, that I think it’s sad for her, actually, how she cannot be alone, the truth of the matter is just that I’m jealous. I, Sara Barron, am terribly, wildly jealous, and so it was that my current joy was undercut when Vicki got a shiny, brand-new boyfriend yet again.

Although perhaps I ought not to use the word “shiny.” Since, well, there was nothing shiny about Vicki’s latest boyfriend. On the contrary, he was old enough to be her dad.

Before going further, I should admit a problem of my own: I am not amenable to May-December situations. I am terribly judgmental, closed off to even the most sympathetic variations on the theme. It’s something I’m consciously working on, always. But Vicki made my stabs at self-improvement really hard. Her elderly boyfriend’s name was Don, and whenever their relationship came up, Vicki would present it as a demonstration of her own maturity. She would say, “I just needed a grown-up, you know?”

The statement, to me, was the verbal equivalent of nails running down a chalkboard. Vicki said it all the time, and the process of hearing her do so felt like the process of being pushed into a downward emotional spiral. Down and down I’d go, considering her baser motivations.