The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (14 page)

But just because you don’t own a dog, that doesn’t mean you can’t stand
near
a dog run and
ogle
the dogs. So I packed up a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish, threw on a sundress and a pair of wedge sandals, and walked myself to the one in Union Square. The sundress was to make me look feminine, the heels to elongate my legs, the Goldfish, to solicit canine attention. I hoped to come across as a younger and more comely Bird Woman from
Mary Pop-pins
, but with dogs instead of pigeons and Goldfish instead of birdseed. I would gain a dog’s attention, then trick him into thinking that I cared.

“Hello, sweetheart,” I’d say as he groveled at my feet. I would scratch behind his ears, which would be gross, yes, but a necessary part of the performance. “What a good boy. Are those some yummy Goldfish? Do you like those yummy Goldfish?”

His virile owner would approach.

“Wow,” he’d say. “He really likes you.”

“I like him too,” I’d say. “I mean, I love dogs, generally. And dog parks. It’s the smell that does it. Of man. And beast. Together.”

“I know what you mean. And also, well, I know this is forward of me, but would you like to grab coffee sometime? Maybe take Keaton for a walk?”

“Who’s Keaton?”

“My dog.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. And I think coffee sounds divine.”

So I stood at the fence and started throwing Goldfish. When the dogs did not respond, I started eating the Goldfish myself. I was getting toward the bottom of the bag, deep in consideration of the merits of cheesy carbohydrates, when a man arrived named Charlie. I knew his name was Charlie because he was wearing an oversized polo shirt, and pinned to that oversized polo shirt was a large plastic name tag.

CHARLIE
, it read.
T-MOBILE REPRESENTATIVE
.

Charlie did not appear to have a dog. He was meandering around, looking at the women
with
the dogs. He sidled up beside me.

“Dogs …” said Charlie. “Right?”

“Right,” I answered. “Dogs. They’re … so friendly. They … make such good companions.”

Charlie nodded. He said, “That’s what I think too.”

Charlie and I founded a three-month romance on this, the fact that we both thought dogs made good companions. We shared the requisite attraction, too, of course. Charlie had that attractive urban swagger of someone always in oversized polo shirts and mid-butt-slung jeans. He lived on Long Island with his parents. For our first date, he suggested meeting at his local Papa John’s.

“We could grab a pie and head back to my parents’,” he’d said. “I know it sounds lame, but the thing is, I’ve got the basement all to myself. It’s big down there. I have a mini-fridge, a couch, and a treadmill.”

Papa John’s was just the ticket, the worm to my naïve and eager fish. I’d been waiting tables at the time at this upscale pizzeria, and every godforsaken thing was “locally sourced” this, and “house-cured braciola” that; there was one pizza in particular that featured dried fish roe and cheese that smelled distinctly of a human asshole. Peddle enough of that stuff, and I promise: a night at Papa John’s
will be cause for celebration more than it is a chance to consider where in your life you went wrong.

Charlie and I, once established as a couple, ate Papa John’s pizza almost every day. People like routines, and this was ours: Charlie would finish work at T-Mobile, and then we’d meet at Penn Station to catch the Long Island Rail Road back to his parents’ house in Huntington Station, New York. We’d order Papa John’s, eat it in the basement, have sex, and go to sleep.

You will be
unsurprised
to hear that I gained weight from this routine. I owned a pair of boyfriend jeans at the time that fit more like denim leggings with every passing day. I knew it was happening
as
it was happening, but I couldn’t find the will to care.

AN EPISODE OF
Oprah
jumps to mind in which Kirstie Alley examines her relationship with food. Oprah asks, “Why do you use food to avoid feeling feelings? Why don’t you prioritize your health?”

And Kirstie Alley answers, “Because I’m always putting other people first.”

They go back and forth like this for a while, and then some other stuff happens, and then Oprah surprises Kirstie Alley with a kitchen renovation care of Nate Berkus. The idea is that a more beautiful kitchen will help inspire healthy eating.

The segment ends with Kirstie in tears in her new, fancy kitchen.

“I just want to be good … enough,” she cries. “Good enough … for my kitchen.”

I’ve referenced the clip so that I might compare it to the response
I
had to Charlie’s basement. So that you will have the proper context when I tell you: Charlie’s basement had a dissimilar effect on me. That is to say, it
inspired
obesity.
There was wall-to-wall blue carpet. Posters of Derek Jeter and Bob Marley Scotch-taped to the wall. There was a TV set and a pleather couch in the center of the room, while the treadmill and mini-fridge had been placed in opposite corners.

I’d be down there and I’d think, The world’s a lonely place. I think I’ll have more pizza.

Charlie, unfairly, did not gain weight from our routine. He responded to it differently insofar as he started falling asleep during sex. The habit took a month to gain momentum, but once it did, look out:
It did not stop
. There were two weeks over the course of which we engaged in a smattering of intercourse, and Charlie stayed entirely awake for none of it.

“I’m embarrassed,” he said.

“Don’t be,” I said. “I like the chance to pee or watch TV. Honestly, it’s fine.”

“It’s not,” he said.

“It is,” I said.

“Sara, it’s not. I want to apologize. I’m taking you out.”

Being taken out was an odd thing to consider in my relationship with Charlie. We only ever appeared “out” together on that stretch of the Long Island Rail Road that ran from Penn Station to Huntington Station. And, of course, the Papa John’s.

“Out?” I asked. “What do you mean by ‘out’?”

“What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’ ” he asked. “
I
mean we’re going out.”

Charlie put his hand in his pocket and pulled out two tickets.

“Are we going to a show?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “We’re going out for hot wings.”

Charlie had purchased two tickets for an all-you-can-eat buffet serving an assortment of hot wings. It was part of a “Hot Wing Festival” taking place at his neighborhood bar.

“And that’s not all,” he said.

“It’s not?” I said.

“It’s not,” he said.

Charlie then put his other hand in his other pocket. He pulled out two white pills.

“I thought that for dessert we’d do some ecstasy.”

“As in … the drug?” I asked.

“As in the drug,” he answered. “I thought we’d go eat
lots
of hot wings. And then take a walk to this park.”

Charlie leaned closer in when he said “this park.” He put his mouth against my ear. He said, “And then we’ll take our tablets, babe. And then I’ll stay awake … to
do
you.”

MY MOTHER WOULD
tell me, as a child, that the only thing she regretted about her marriage to my father was that he never called her “babe.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” she’d say. “I love your father. I know I’m lucky to have a husband who does the dishes as well as all the rest of what I tell him. It’s just, sometimes I wish I had one of those husbands who would walk into the kitchen, all five-foot-nine of him, and say, ‘Hey, babe! What’s the problem with the dishwasher?’ And then just
fix
it, you know?”

I was nine and so I didn’t. However, the statement repeated over the course of my childhood had left the impression that to land a man who called one “babe” was a rare and precious victory. “A keeper,” let’s call him, regardless of whether he says, “I’m gonna stay awake to do you.” Regardless of whether his polo shirt fits him like a nightgown.

THE ECSTASY WAS
a bigger step toward psychosis than I had ever planned to take. I was now several years into the stopwatch-and-bagel-based moderations to my drinking. I had not smoked pot in years. My regimen for substance
experimentation had fallen to the wayside simply because I had never stumbled across another opportunity, and I had been too traumatized by my previous experience to aggressively chase one on my own.

And yet now, here one was. Here
he
was, in his basement. In his big ol’ polo shirt.

“Ecstasy.” I said the word again. “I mean, like,
wow
. Right? Like,
ecstasy
.”

Charlie shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought it’d be fun.”

Charlie thought it’d be fun, but my instinct disagreed. My instinct told me that a jump to an ecstasy tablet from my tailor-made drinking regimen was just too huge, the gap too wide. Working against that instinct, however, was not just Charlie, but my still-burning desire to have that bit of edge about me, and that’s to say nothing of my new convincing silhouette. I’d put on quite a bit of weight since getting together with Charlie, and while the fact of this was depressing, it was also fortifying. It made me feel, if not resilient, then absorbent. As though my new physique could take an ecstasy tablet and hide it in its far and distant corners.

“Well, then … okay,” I said to Charlie. “Let’s eat some wings. And … take some ecstasy.”

ONE WEEK LATER
, Charlie and I attended the Hot Wing Festival at Punches! bar in Huntington Station, Long Island. While the first hour was fun enough, we got thrown out in the second. Charlie got belligerent on promotional vodka samples, and when the overweight lady bartender cut him off and told him it was time to leave, he screamed, “You’re a fat fucking cunt, you know that? You’re really fucking fat.”

It was awful hearing him talk this way. I mean, I enjoy a joke about incest, rape, farts, Hitler, pedophiles, September 11, Columbine, midgets, bestiality, pediatric cancer,
wealthy Russians, spousal abuse, the word “Mongoloid,” the mentally disabled, homosexuals, hookers, dead hookers, anything pertaining to Jewish culture, and a large portion of race-related issues as long as the audience for whom the joke is performed isn’t entirely white. I like fat jokes too, if I’m being honest. It’s just, this wasn’t a fat joke so much as it was authentic rage directed at the overweight.

Awful as it was, though, I said nothing to Charlie about it. I didn’t want to make the already tense mood even worse. On the contrary, I wanted to ensure we were both in a positive state of mind for the ecstasy portion of events.

Over the course of the previous week, I’d convinced myself I could not only handle the drug but enjoy it. I’d worked myself into a state of genuine excitement. Charlie and I had been together three months by the time the hot-wing festival rolled around and already we were shouldering the dual issues of my weight gain and his sexual sleepiness. We felt similarly ambivalent toward each other, I think. I found Charlie both likable
and
pathetic for his willingness to be with me, and I was pretty sure he felt the same toward me. I liked him fine and hoped to like him more. I had therefore identified the ecstasy as a sexual spark plug. A sexual savior, if you will. Doing ecstasy with Charlie would mean I’d shared something with him that I had shared with no one else. The fact of this would forge a bond between us to make up for the overall lack of chemistry. I would take the ecstasy, and I would do some sexy, crazy thing. In the sand, under the stars, I’d twirl Stevie Nicks–like before the inevitable onslaught of an overwhelming sex drive to facilitate rousing sex with my now highly conscious boyfriend.

HAVING BEEN THROWN
out of the hot-wing festival, Charlie and I made our way to “this park.” When we arrived at “this park,” I noticed a playground, at the center
of which was a slide (for babies) with a tree house (for babies) attached to its top. Charlie and I climbed up to the top of this slide for babies, and into the tree house for babies. We did this for the privacy, and despite the fact that the dimensions were such that we could not stand upright.

We sat down Indian-style instead.

Charlie took out the ecstasy tablets. He swallowed his tablet. He fed me my tablet, which, as a process, I did not enjoy. Having it fed
to
me felt rather like living inside a poorly staged version of the musical
Hair
. It felt much more grimy than sexy, and the griminess undermined the excitement I had so far managed to drum up. It undercut it with a strong case of anxiety.

“Charlie,” I said. “I am feeling very anxious. Do you hear me?
Can
you hear me?
I AM FEELING VERY ANXIOUS
.”

Charlie had been sitting on the opposite side of the tree house. He looked dazed. He’d told me that yes, he could hear me. He told me to sit back and relax.

I tried doing as instructed, and although I did manage to sit back, I don’t think I quite relaxed. I took a few breaths, and over the course of … I don’t even know how long … twenty minutes? Maybe thirty? … I swam through alternate waves of nausea and sexual longing. I waited for the waves of nausea to pass, until I was secure in the zone of sexual longing. And then—and even though I lacked the space to stand upright, and even though Charlie himself was now lying on his back, rigid and wide-eyed—I slid toward him on the doughnut-in-the-doughnut of my stomach.

I reached him. I straddled him. I made a polite request for sex.

“Would you like to have sex?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “I feel too depressed. I called that fat girl ‘cunt.’ ”

“You
did
?” I asked.

And not because I myself did not remember. Rather because I wanted Charlie off the subject of his own self-loathing, and onto the subject of wild baby-tree-house sex.

“I did,” Charlie said. “I called her a cunt. I told her she was fat.”

“Which, okay, was maybe not the
best
thing, but it wasn’t the worst thing either. Anyway, would you like to have sex?”