Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation (26 page)

But when I finally made it to the shoot, I felt marginally confident. The photographer
was brilliant, the shoot concept was great, and the model I spent most of my time
with was sweet and smart and didn’t make me feel galumphy or plump at all. It was
a great day.

And when I got back to my hotel room I felt an incredible sense of relief, and accomplishment,
³
and I congratulated myself on all my hard work and discipline, and on how focused
I had been on my goals. And then I ordered a giant cheeseburger, fries, three chocolate
chip cookies, and a bottle of red wine, and ate it all like the world was coming to
an end and the eye of the apocalypse was Miami Beach.
⁴

I pushed things into my mouth with index fingers, and wolfed things down without chewing,
stopping only every few minutes or so to gasp for some much needed but entirely uninteresting
air. I finished it. All of it. And then I wandered around the room barefoot, rubbing
my shiny, grease-slicked tummy with a sticky hand, and drinking the rest of the red
wine straight from the bottle.

There is something about the relief of a stressful experience being over, about the
release of anxiety from the body, that is at once highly energizing and entirely discombobulating.
The endorphins released when your brain finally realizes “holy mother of Mabel, thank
god
that
shit is done” act as both relaxant and accelerant. Suddenly the world opens up to
you. All things are possible. You are light as a feather and sharp as glass. You see
all. You know all. You can do all . . .

Except navigate a simple hotel room without walking your big drunk ass at stride velocity
into the corner of the king-sized platform bed. Which is what I did, bottle of wine
in one hand, third chocolate chip cookie in the other, phone pressed between ear and
shoulder, as I attempted to pack. Even then, with both hands full, a mouthful of cheap
Garnacha, and my shoulder contorted into a phone cradle, I should have known better.
I can barely avoid injury when all my limbs are unfettered and I am stone-cold sober.
Why I thought I could manage a hotel room in my state of decreased capacity I will
never know. Hope springs eternal from the bottom of a cheap wine bottle.

I knew right away that I hadn’t just stubbed a pinky toe. I had really broken my shit.
My index and bird toe
⁵
had gone from vertical to an unseemly and alarming l-shape, accompanied by a spreading
bruise and a metallic smell that I later realized was the scent my body makes when
I have just experienced “what the shit.” My toes
killed
. They were tiny, but they were also really fucking broken and radiating pain that
made me forget my own name.

I was alone, and injured, and pretty drunk, and I had to leave for the airport in
twenty minutes.

A trip to the emergency room was out of the question. I wanted to go home, and what’s
more, I had to go home, because the magazine had paid for the hotel room and the flight
and I was pretty sure that, much like the boys I dated in college, now that they’d
gotten what they wanted from me they would not be interested in laying out any additional
money. I had to rally. I wiped away the tears and cookie crumbs and called the front
desk. I asked for ice, ibuprofen, and medical tape. The front desk brought me ice,
ibuprofen, and wondered if Scotch tape would do. I let them know that this would not
do at all, in any way. They scrounged around and found medical tape, that I am sure
one of those skinny models with the perfectly unbroken toes had used to tape their
mouths shut to prevent themselves from eating food or feeling feelings.

And then I, biting down on a washcloth, pulled my toes into a shape more or less resembling
their former selves, and, remembering from my Internet wanderings that you cannot
put casts on toes,
⁶
taped the offending digits to their neighbors, pounded the last of that wine, put
on some flip-flops, and left for the airport.

My foot felt terrible the entire way back. On the rattling ride through the airport
on a rickety airline wheelchair;
⁷
on the altitudinous cross-country flight, my throbbing foot jutting into the aisle,
where it was tripped over repeatedly by flight attendants, passengers who had to pee,
and one really annoying little kid; and all the way home from the airport in the car,
which was really the most comfortable part of the trip but by that time I was just
pissed
, as I had fully sobered up and even had a twee hangover. But I bit down and sucked
it up, because as usual I had no one to blame but my big dumb self.

When I got home, the podiatrist actually remarked on what a good job I had done immobilizing
my toes, and that he couldn’t have done any better. Cold fucking comfort, Dr. Bones.

And I learned that dieting is evil, and it is better to live a life of moderation,
where you have a little something delicious every day, rather than saving up for weeks
on end for one explosive food orgy where you might make yourself sick, undo all the
hard work you have accomplished, and in all probability break a digit. Or two.

I will say that while I won’t win any awards for being lithe, graceful or having functional
motor skills, if the world ever comes to an end, I would be a killer triage medic.
With tape, ice, Neosporin, and a cookie, I can fix almost anything.

Bring on the zombie apocalypse.

( 31 )

The Time I Fell Asleep on the Patio Furniture at a Birthday Party

“Wounds are an essential part of life, and until you are wounded in some way, you
cannot become a man.”
—
P
AUL
A
USTER

“I’m really not interested in being a man.”
—
A
ISHA
T
YLER

The
person who passes out at a party is a very specific creature. They are someone for
whom time and space have slowed, and the rules of comportment in a group setting no
longer apply. They have set aside all pride or dignity in favor of something much
more pressing: the sweet, sweet oblivion of sleep.

I used to make fun of this person. Point, mock, place their hand in a bowl of warm
water, cover them in shaving cream, and perch a teacup poodle wearing a sweater vest
precariously upon their chest, before taking one million cell phone pictures. They
had brought this embarrassment upon themselves, and there was naught to do but teach
them a lesson. I was crass and merciless.

Until it happened to me.

You may remember the term “walk of shame” from your time in college, or your twenties,
or last week. But you have not experienced a true walk of shame until you have fallen
asleep mid-party and awoken at sunrise, birds singing as if it is the dawn of creation
itself, and someone has tucked a knit blanket around your knees and put on soothing
house music, which made you dream you were at a rave dancing with a very hot guy with
very scratchy legs all night long. And you are not in college, young lady. You are
a grownup with a mortgage and a job and mutual funds and a car note, and you have
absolutely no excuse.

To pass out and wake up alone in the dark is one thing. The damage may not be that
bad. Maybe people cleared out without noticing you on the couch. Maybe you were just
part of the scenery, one more jacket in a pile of discarded coats. Maybe you were
resting your eyes before leaping up spryly for another round of Jell-O shots. Maybe
you were meditating.

But if someone has tucked you in, you are completely fucked.

How I
let
this happen, I have no idea. As an adult, I have become supremely disciplined in
social situations. This circumspection is not innate, but rather the aftermath of
a lifetime of egregious drinking errors. Having made the terrible mistake of being
the MVP of a party
¹
several times in my twenties, and having experienced the relentless mockery that
follows, I know better than to give others even a sliver of an opening. And much like
the hazed freshman who becomes a fearsome Pledgemaster her sophomore year, I am a
kind but relentless teaser of others when they themselves falter. It is not that I
am mean. It is just that passing out is such a party foul, such a calamity of one’s
own doing, such a perfectly self-inflicted wound (and one I have experienced multiple
times) that it demands notice. No one made you drink that much. No one made you do
shots on an empty stomach. No one made you curl up in the corner of the futon like
a milk-filled kitten. You have chosen this set of actions for yourself. And you have
no one to blame but this self-same selfy self. I know this from painful experience.

So for me to have done this was such a shock, such a foundation-rocking misstep, that
for a good couple of minutes I wondered if I was hallucinating. Certainly I, a grown
woman, her humiliating college years far behind her, someone who owned a car and the
license to drive it, could read, write, and eat with a fork, could not have possibly
made the series of specific and terrible mistakes required to result in waking up,
cement-faced and groggy, on the porch of a rented house in Palm Springs. This was
some other giant black woman, and I wanted my life back.

The worse part of this was how happy I was right before I fell asleep. There is nothing
worse than having lots of fun one moment, and then, in what feels like the blink of
an eye, sucking on the penny-tang of humiliation the next. It is like you got to the
bottom of your ice cream sundae and found a mouse turd. You were so happy one bite
ago, and now you wonder how you can ever go on living. And the ice cream is gone,
the Jimmies and nuts too, and there is nothing to do but continue, yet all the color
has drained out of the world, and it is a dark and joyless place.

I know how it happened. Of course I do. I hit the bullseye on all the clichés. Didn’t
get enough sleep the night before. Didn’t eat enough at dinner. Tried too hard to
demonstrate my knowledge of French wine by drinking a lot of it with my pinky held
aloft. Entertained every challenge to do shots. Thought I was tougher than a twenty-year-old
scotch. Thought I was tougher than a fifth of Maker’s Mark. Believed I was strong
enough to rest, for just a moment, on a highly plush piece of outdoor furniture. Nothing
but arrogance at every turn.

These moves were a series of critical errors, strung together into a terrible necklace
of self-destruction.

The worst part about this whole debacle was that the party was a sleepover party,
and I had to see all of these people for another twenty-four hours. Sleepover parties
are a double-edged sword. Because you don’t have to drive anywhere afterward, you
feel safe enough to cut loose. Usually the group is a group of friends, and small
enough to feel welcoming, so you feel even more comfortable about really letting your
hair down. And because you know you can just stumble off to your room or bunk bed
or beanbag chair at the end of the night, there is really no reason at all to behave
yourself. But because you feel so comfortable, so free to get your rage on, you are
more likely to do something you will really regret, and you don’t have the crowds
of a nightclub or street mob to fade into after you have embarrassed yourself. If
you fall through a plate glass coffee table at a vacation rental in front of ten people,
it’s pretty much guaranteed all ten people saw it. And will remember it. Forever.
²

And then, of course, there’s the next morning, when everyone is bleary-eyed and stumbly
and groping for coffee, and they all congregate in the kitchen to drink juice and
compare notes, and then you come in. And everyone remembers whatever ridiculous thing
you did last night, and while it seemed hilarious at three in the morning in a haze
of bourbon, now it just seems sad and a bit tragic. And you wish you were home in
your own kitchen, where you’d have no one to answer to but yourself, but you are here,
and people are avoiding your gaze, and you still have another twenty-four hours to
spend with these people, and you want to die.

When you are trapped at a remote location on a Saturday morning after a Friday night
of self-immolation, surrounded by everyone who had warmed themselves at your blazing
pyre the night before, there is only one thing to be done: apologize as best you can,
hold your head high, and act as if curling up with your head on a hose caddy is something
you do all the time at home; that you are eccentric and prefer sleeping outside because
you are rugged.
³
These are lies you tell yourself, and others, to cover up for the fact that you passed
out, that everyone knows you passed out, and that you are grateful no one wrote the
word “jackass” backwards on your forehead with a Sharpie.

This approach is universal, and helpful any time you ever blow it in a major way—workplace
faux pas, ethnically insensitive joke, slamming into your boss’s car in the parking
lot, accidentally touching your mother-in-law’s breast at Thanksgiving. You can slink
away, tail between your legs like a dog who just urinated on the baby’s bassinet,
and die alone in a corner, or you can straighten up, look them dead in the face, and
say, “I did this. I’m not proud of it, but I’m owning it, and I am going to look directly
into your eyes and apologize, while holding your gaze so long and with such defiant
pride that you will start to wonder if perhaps it is
you
who has offended
me
in some way. And then I will leave here and humiliate myself terribly in front of
others, because that is just what I do.”

I did apologize to each and every attendee of that party. Individually, and with great
remorse, because I am polite, and also because I needed to find out if I had flashed
my boobs at anyone the night before. Thankfully, at least half of them were as drunk
as I was, and remembered nothing, and the other half were too kind, or too embarrassed
for me, to hold it over my head, dismissing my contrition with a “don’t mention it”
and sending me on my way, and I was grateful, relieved, and very, very hungover. And
the party continued through the weekend and my trespasses were forgotten, because
the very next night someone got even drunker than I was and actually
did
flash their boobs at everyone, and I sighed a sigh of sweet relief that I hadn’t
gone that far.