The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (11 page)

The need had fueled my Sapphic desire for years, and as that desire waxed and waned, I searched for a workable substitute. Something that would project a dark side lurking just below the surface. Which was ironic, actually, because I do
have
a dark side. The problem, though, is that it presently involves peeing in cups in the middle of the night so as to avoid getting up and going to the bathroom.

Such behavior may be darkly slothful, but it does not provide the best fabric out of which to fashion the veil of one’s mystery.

“And what about you?” asks a future suitor. He’s been drawn in by my unmistakable something. What it is, he knows not. All he knows is that as far as I’m concerned, he smells danger. Complexity. A hypnotically erotic edge. “You’re so … mysterious,” he says. He leans in closer. “I want to know you.
Really
know you.”

I inch closer to him. There’s a brushing together of knees.

“I pee in cups sometimes,” I say. “I do it when I’m tired.”

I understand this to be a less than ideal response, evoking a woman Truly Disturbed rather than Alluringly Troubled, and that’s not what I was going for. I wanted something in the neighborhood of a Sexy Idiosyncrasy. A head-turning aspect, but one that did not evoke an image of me in a diaper. I was a teenager at this point in my story, and my lesbian aspirations were not looking promising. They’d done nothing in terms of helping me seem
as
enthralling as I would’ve liked, so I forged ahead with another, better option: I would experiment with alcohol and drugs. I would drink it, and do them. I would seem wild and unique.

I ARRIVED AT
New York University in the fall of 1997. Within a month, I attended one of its famously pathetic
sorority parties. God bless my alma mater: Its theater program might waste your money like every under-eye cream
I’ve
ever tried, but its Greek system is one of the worst in the country. If you join, you
will
be laughed at.

I never drank in high school, owing to a lack of social invitations and a fear of projectile vomit. Once I hit college, though, I did as young gals do and harnessed a sense of adventure. I purchased a tube of dark lipstick and a Blackstreet CD. I told my newly minted friends and put-upon acquaintances, “Hey there. I’m looking to party.”

I did this for one whole month until finally I heard about the aforementioned sorority party. I decided to attend, and spent the week leading up to it doing dexterity exercises in my dorm room. I did wall-to-wall sprints. I deep-lunged. I quad-stretched. I made an effort to ensure that if someone did throw up in my general vicinity, I’d be nimble-footed enough to steal away.

My overall thinking was that the vomit risk was worth it for the revels that awaited. I’d never been to an alcohol-laced party before, but I
had
seen a few John Hughes films. I hoped to go to the party and meet a beefcakey guy who hoisted girls up above his shoulders. Who’d hoist
me
up above his shoulders.

“Put me down!” I’d yell.

“Only if you do a shot!” he’d yell back.

So I’d do a shot. And then another. And another.

“You’re
crazy
!” he’d shout. “Most girls can’t handle their liquor!”

“But
I
can,” I’d say.

“Yes.
You
can,” he’d say. “You’re a real special lady.”

This, in all likelihood, would be the beginning of a mostly physical relationship in which I’d use the beefcake for his body but keep him at arm’s length. The new
coolness I possessed from drinking would imbue me with that specific and awe-inspiring skill.

I attended the sorority party with a young lady named Melanie whom I’d met in a freshman-year acting class called Masks of Commedia. Pre-party, Melanie and I had dinner in our dorm’s cafeteria. It was during this time that I carbo-loaded so as to prep my body for proper alcohol absorption. I ate one sesame bagel and two plates of refried beans. Having finished, I removed the napkin I’d tucked into the collar of my delicate chemise. I looked Melanie in the eye in much the same way Jennifer Connelly looks Russell Crowe in the eye in the movie
A Beautiful Mind
. I’m referring to that scene in which she says, “I need to believe … that something extraordinary … is possible.” I conveyed a fear of the unknown, I like to think, but also hope.
Hope
. Of meeting men who hoist women up above their shoulders. Of men who get you drunk but make you feel understood.

“We
can
do this,” I told her. “I truly believe that we can.”

Melanie and I arrived at the sorority party at nine p.m. on a Friday night. I had expected it to take place in some attractive Greenwich Village brownstone, and that is because I thought the sorority scene was made up of refined and wealthy ladies.

Instead, though, it took place in a run-down apartment building just east of Union Square. A total of eight sisters lived on the first and second floors, and to host their party they used their individual apartments, the stairwell
between
the apartments, and, finally, the ground floor entryway. So when you walked in, you walked
in
.

When
I
walked in, the process of doing so felt rather like passing from the natural world, where there was fresh air and reasonable human behavior, into an insane
asylum designated for the treatment of grubby, promiscuous women. People were screaming and flying every which way. There were indeed a handful of beefcakes, but in person the smell of their cologne was just too much to bear. My left arm knocked into one of them at one point, and instantly my hives sprang up.

The experience gave me a sense of not belonging, and Melanie made it all worse by abandoning me upon entry to chug a monstrosity called a “forty-ounce beer.” She chugged three in a row before meandering along to the sorority’s mascot, a jumbo stuffed-animal panda. Melanie straddled the panda, then dry-humped the panda. At that point, I knew I’d have to soldier forth alone.

I knew I
had
to do what I was
there
to do.

I escorted myself to the bar.

I say “bar,” although it is perhaps better described as a filthy kitchen counter stocked with bottom-shelf booze. In order to serve myself, I had to squeeze between two couples that were both French kissing. I was about to tap one of them on the shoulder to ask them to move, but before I had the chance, one of the young ladies jerked out of her embrace so she could projectile vomit.

The vomit went
everywhere
. Everywhere except on me, that is! I used my newfound strength and dexterity to propel myself at top speed out of the kitchen in the first-floor apartment, up through the stairwell, and into the kitchen of the second-floor apartment. There, I found another filthy counter stocked with the identical bottom-shelf booze. From the options available, I chose a festive-looking punch for the singular reason that it smelled like suntan lotion. It reminded me of a sunny day at the beach, which, in turn, helped calm me down after seeing someone vomit. The punch tasted like cough syrup mixed with gasoline. It wasn’t great. But it was … doable. So I parked
myself in the beanbag chair beside its serving bowl. And I began to drink.

Over the course of the next hour I did so steadily and with negligible interaction from fellow partygoers. At one point I tried stretching my legs out for a more flattering presentation of my figure, but this just caused one of the perfumed beefcakes to trip over my foot and yell, “Watch your fucking feet!” So then I tucked them in again.

I thought,
Sara, you can work with this. Just look prettily forlorn
. The problem with that, though, was that while my face does have its workable angles, Attractive Sadness isn’t one of them. If I look forlorn, I just look puffy and deranged. So I kept my face in neutral. If I were to lure in any bait, I’d have to do it with my drinking.

So I drank.

And I drank.

And I drank.

I drank steadily for a total of two hours. After two hours, I was drunk. I thought, Oh, okay. So this is drunk. I felt confused and a little bit sick. Furthermore, I had finally accepted that no one was en route to find my solo drinking sexy. So I pushed myself up out of the beanbag chair and hobbled out the front door and into the stairwell. This should not have been that big a deal, but I’d lost the ability to balance, and to make matters worse, I’d worn a high peep-toe heel for my exciting evening out. Walking normally when sober took some effort. Walking normally when drunk for the first time was simply not an option.

I hobbled toward the staircase, then down the staircase. I made it halfway before I tripped and fell. Which is to say, I didn’t walk the rest of the way down the stairs, so much as I
flew
the rest of the way down the stairs. Lucky for me, an emaciated sister was there to break my fall. She’d been standing at the bottom.

“AHHHHHH!” she screamed.

She was awfully loud for someone so teeny-tiny.

So I apologized, like you do, and seeing as how our bodies had landed such that I appeared to be mounting her from behind, I tried to make a joke.

“Buy a gal a drink first, right?” I tried. But the sister was not amused.

“What the
fuck
?” she screamed.

And then I farted in response. It was not intentional. It was merely the choice my body made on my behalf.

The sister screamed again.

“She’s farting!” she screamed. “
On
me!”

“Not technically,” I said. “Technically, I’m farting
above
you.”

One of her male contemporaries charged over and grabbed me by the collar of my delicate chemise.

“You’re outta here,” he said. “That shit was disrespectful.”

I’m not convinced a person does himself a favor by mentioning the word “respect” at a sorority party. He, my molester, held me by the collar of my delicate chemise while the sister lay at our feet huddled in the fetal position. Beside us stood a young woman who’d removed her own brassiere so she could use it as a toilet. People were
applauding
in response, and, I’m sorry, but my feeling is that if one woman is allowed to urinate into her own brassiere—and believe you me: I am
glad
that she is—then another woman should
not
be chastised for a little toot. A little root-toot. A little trumpet de la rumpet.

I made the choice not to argue about it, however, as I was too afraid of my molester. I just asked him—nicely—to please let go of my collar. I tried, for the sake of a smooth exit, to tell him I was sorry.

“I am sorry,” I said, and then turned to the sister. “And to you, miss: I am sorry.”

Having apologized, I took off my high peep-toe heels
and made my way out the front door. I wasn’t wearing socks or pantyhose, but I figured I could walk barefoot the ten minutes it would take to get back to my dorm.

As I walked, I reflected.

I had tried getting drunk—I was still
currently
drunk—and yet I had not been sexily hoisted nor perceived as a lady of wild taste and ability. All I’d been seen as, really, was a woman who farted on better-looking women. And where was the coolness in that? It was mysterious in its way, and possessing of a certain level of darkness, but it was nonetheless the wrong variety of both. Mysterious like
I talk to myself while I shit
. Dark like
I pee in a cup when I’m tired
. It wasn’t any inch of what I wanted.

To compound the issue I couldn’t relax for so much as an hour once I got home before I myself had to vomit. I threw up in my awful freshman toilet in my awful freshman dorm. As I did, I thought, This is fucking disgusting. I’ll never drink like that again.

It’s a common enough promise for someone in a regretful situation, but the noteworthy thing here was that I meant it. I never drank like that again. From that day forth—from the moment I left that sorority party—I always drank in moderation. I established a system. I was surprised to see it worked.

Several weeks after the sorority party I was invited to another party thrown by a fellow acting student. Determined not to repeat the trauma from those weeks before, I went out the afternoon of the party and bought myself a stopwatch. I planned to use the stopwatch to keep track of my drinking. I would allow myself one drink per hour, for up to four hours. I would use the stopwatch to time the intervals. I would stock up on bagels prior to the party for proper alcohol absorption, and each time I had a drink, I’d eat a bagel.

What this all meant, then, was that I attended this second party wearing a stopwatch, as well as a backpack that was large enough to carry many bagels. It didn’t help me look cool or mysterious, although I nonetheless tried acting cool
and
mysterious. When my stopwatch beeped, I tried turning it off in a “Bond, James Bond” kind of way. When it was time to eat a bagel I tried doing so daintily, in the fashion of an alluringly troubled woman of mystery.

I had this sneaking sense, though, that my efforts weren’t successful. At the second party someone said, “Cool backpack,” and although I said, “Thank you,” I did also intuit that what he meant, really, was, “That is not a cool backpack.”

Then someone else said, “Oh. Hey. Where did you get that bagel,” and I said, “I brought it in my backpack.”

And he said, “Do you have any more? I’m totally starving.”

And I said, “I
do
have
several
more. But I have to eat them all.”

“You have to eat them
all
?”

“Yes. I have to eat them
all
. I don’t like … Ooops! Sorry. That’s my stopwatch. I can have another drink.”

There was nothing cool about this situation as a whole, nor the conversation in specific. Neither parties nor alcohol were helping me look cool. They were rather like a drought to the tiny garden of my mystery. It seemed I’d have to find another way.