The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (16 page)

That is when the answer finally came.

When it hit me, I knew instinctively that it was right.

My
tattoo would be … a butterfly. But not just any butterfly.
My
butterfly would sit … atop … 
a heart
.

It was pretty strange, actually, that I hadn’t thought of it before. Because, well, a butterfly
atop
a heart communicated the very essence of what I myself was trying to project: sweet, sexy, daring. I thought, Tattoos say “sexy.” Butterflies and hearts say “sweet.” Therefore, a butterfly atop a heart says that I am super-sexy. And also that I’m sweet!

It didn’t hurt, of course, the way in which the whole thing scratched the unmitigated itch for an animal theme.

If there’s one sure thing besides death and taxes, it’s that I will not age like Helen Mirren. I therefore had to consider which part of me would … advance, if not well, then not badly, either. I was twenty-six at the time, and already my knees had sagged to the point of resembling lumpy, gelatin-stuffed pillows. My breasts would’ve done the same had they possessed the necessary volume, but lest I be spared any indignity in the general region, my décolletage was but a compressed accordion of skin. Other joyous changes were surely forthcoming, and so it seemed the smart course of action would be avoiding my face, back, hands, torso, buttocks, and the length of all extremities.

The only viable option, then, was the back of my neck. It was on frequent display owing to the up-do hair phase I was in at the time that, in turn, was owed to my recent battle with female baldness.

Now, technically, I wasn’t bald. The issue was that I am—and have always been—plagued with a horrendous cowlick on the crown of my head. Combined with the strawlike texture of my hair, it is
the
thing that’s offered unto me the Garth Algar Triangle Shape.

As I’ve gotten older, my hair has behaved as so much hair is wont to do: it has begun the tragic process of a gradual but distinct thinning-out. Therefore my cowlick is now on more evident display, and what it looks like from the back is a series of sparse hairs running
away
from other hairs. It looks as though the sparse hairs are sort of, like,
fleeing
the crown of my head.

I might’ve stayed in the dark about the whole thing, but then my mother felt obliged to point it out. She got in the habit of sending me clippings on the subject. Not of cowlicks, but of baldness.
Lady
baldness.

She would scrawl her own notes in the margins.

“Do
you
think you’re struggling with this?” asked one.

“
I
think you’re struggling with this,” said another.

Sometimes she’d circle phrases like “iron deficiency” or “thyroid problem,” “testosterone,” or “women should not be ashamed.”

I should’ve liked the attention brought to me via an ailment. But the ailment was too ugly for my liking. So I didn’t like the ailment, and neither did I argue with my mother
about
the ailment. I did not say, “Mom. Lay off. I’ve got a cowlick, not a bald spot,” and that is because—in accordance with idiotic superstitions I never
want
to believe but cannot
help
but believe—I felt like claiming
not
to have a bald spot would be the thing to condemn me to a bald spot. I received my mother’s literature and read my
mother’s literature and worked with various hand mirrors to examine the crown of my head. Over time, I decided,
yes:
In point of fact, I had a bald spot. I
absolutely
had a bald spot, and any person who said otherwise—“Your mom’s projecting some weird shit onto you, okay? I promise you. You are
not
bald”—was just being polite. They were protecting me from the bitter truth, and that bitter truth was this: I had a massive, raging bald spot. It looked, from above, like a plowed and barren field.

I knew I needed to solve the problem somehow, and had therefore started gathering what hair I did have into a strategically placed—if sadly flaccid—knot. Doing so covered the bald spot but left the nape exposed.

“Ink me, girl,” it said. “Ink me with a butterfly that’s perched atop a heart.”

I decided to get my butterfly-atop-a-heart tattoo at a spot called Venus Modern Body Arts, and that is because Venus Modern Body Arts was next door to a Taco Bell.

Once, as a follow-up to what I’m
not
ashamed to tell you was an impressive bit of sexual maneuvering, I was affectionately choked, then ordered: “Tell me what to do to you. Tell me what you want.”

I am also not ashamed to tell you that the answer that came to me was Taco Bell. There was one next door to the gentleman’s apartment, and I could smell its chemical fiesta through the walls. So when, in effect, he asked me what I wanted, I remember thinking, Taco Bell.

I
love
Taco Bell, and I mention this because, despite where I was in my life in terms of wanting a tattoo, despite the progress I’d made in terms of finding them disgusting, I was still terrified of the actual parlors. I was under the impression they would smell sterile, but unsettlingly so: the
sterileness of a stripper pole, not a nicely tiled bathroom. However, with a Taco Bell next door, I could take my fear of odor off the table. The Taco Bell would permeate the parlor, and this, in turn, would help to calm me down.

I ARRIVED AT
Venus Modern Body Arts in the early afternoon because the early afternoon is a non-satanic time of day. I thought I’d be the first customer in there, but in what appeared to be a dentist’s chair lay what appeared to be a prostitute. Maybe she wasn’t a prostitute, but if it walks like a duck and it’s in bike shorts and knee-high boots, it’s probably a prostitute. A whirring needle buzzed at the prostitute’s abdomen. And while, yes, it
did
smell like Taco Bell, it did not smell
enough
like Taco Bell to distract from the iguana. It was perched on the shoulder of the presumed employee, who had a beard—I
swear
—that was long enough to braid.

“Need any help?” he asked. “Have any questions?”

“No thank you,” I said. “I am just here to browse.”

Of course I was not just there to browse. But the iguana unnerved me, and I lost control of what had been said and of how I had hoped to respond.

“Okay, cool,” said the man, and handed me a book of design options.

He crossed back toward the quasi-prostitute in the quasi–dentist’s chair.

Between them, a conversation started on the subject of a musical band.

Someone said, “Rough, wild sound.”

Someone else said, “Trish got kind of raped, if you ask me.”

I hadn’t felt this out of place since I’d gone to dinner with a thirty-year-old friend and her fifty-something boyfriend only to discover the fifty-something boyfriend liked
to feed my friend her food. As a manner of eating, this one is never pretty, but throw in a fat age gap for good measure, and you’ll find yourself praying for the impending apocalypse. You’ll be like, “Now, please. I’d like
my
impending apocalypse
now
.”

Well, I didn’t bolt from that dinner, and I should have, seeing as how the dessert course involved the fifty-something boyfriend saying, “It’s nice, for once,
not
to date an Asian.”

You live and you learn, though, right? You learn enough to know it’s time to leave.

I returned the design book. I strolled toward the door.

Now, strolling toward a door may mean that a lady is
leaving
, but it does not mean she’s
left
.

If you talk about her, she can hear you.

“These girls, man. Jesus Christ.”

“We ought to shove Iggy in her face. Be all like, ‘Oooga booga, oooga booga!’ You too scared now for your tramp stamp?”

There was laughter. Iggy, I figured, was the iguana.

“Seriously. I wanna be like, ‘It’s a tat shop, little princess. Not the Gap.’ ”

I
wanted to be like,
Your valid point is no match for my fear of braided beards. I’m just not meant for this. I’m too afraid
.

Not being “meant for this,” however, means confrontation is beyond you. It means you get defeated by your princesshood. It means you go silently into your day. I had planned to spend the rest of mine in tattoo-recovery mode, but now I had nothing to do. I wandered around. I bought myself a jumbo pretzel. I decided to see a movie. I saw
Notes on a Scandal
. I listened as Cate Blanchett explained her minor dance with pedophilia to Judi Dench:

“Well, you see, I was always
so
good. I had always
done
everything
proper. And finally, I just needed … to be bad …”

I heard the explanation. I looked at gorgeous Cate Blanchett. I thought, Now
there’s
some cool rebellion.

Of course, pedophilia is a bigger commitment than even an ink stain.

I stuck with the rebellion of no tattoo instead.

I’ve
been
dumped more often that I
have
dumped. I am, if not happy to admit this, then certainly willing, and the reason I bring it up is this: I was somewhat recently dumped. Nothing would thrill me more than speeding along into another doomed relationship. However, friends and family have suggested “focusing” on myself as an alternative. Which sounds nice, but isn’t, really. Since self-involvement is like sex: more fun when you’ve got someone to focus
on
you,
with
you.

So instead of focusing on myself, I filled out an online dating profile for the sole purpose of e-mailing a guy whose online name was I_am_a_Spanish_Bagel. He’d been advertised by my Yahoo! homepage as a “Brooklyn single,” and claimed in his profile to like the book
The Kite Runner
.
Well, I
also
like the book
The Kite Runner
! Realizing we were thus destined to marry, I sent along a clever quip and awaited a reply. None came, however, and while this threw the obvious wrench in the works of our marriage, I was consoled by the fact that I thought I knew why: I had been too honest when describing my musical taste. The website had asked, “What kind of music do you like?” and rather than journey down my usual path of feigned sophistication, I thought, I have to tell the truth. My future perfect boyfriend must love ALL of me.

And so I wrote what follows:

“I like Paula Cole, the Indigo Girls, and Tori Amos. I like Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan, and Jewel.”

I HAVE BEEN
plagued my whole life with unfashionable taste in music. It’s a fact I’ve hinted at already: There’s been Jewel and Paula Cole. And Lisa Loeb and Lilith Fair. What I admit to you now, though, is that such references are not just nostalgic facts. No. They are part of my present, the fabric of my current taste. This might not sound so bad, but it is. I’ve spent my adult life living off again, on again, and
on
again in hipster central: Northern Brooklyn. And this, in turn, means everyone I meet has expert taste in music. I might fare okay elsewhere, but here, I do not. Here, it is
bad
. It’s a message I’ve absorbed for years, and it’s played a large part, I think, in fueling my ambition to be cool in other ways. To have some other edge about me.

“What’s that? Well, I’m
sorry
I like Jewel. But perhaps you haven’t noticed THAT I’M GAY.”

“What’s that? Well, I’m
sorry
I like Meredith Brooks. But perhaps you haven’t SEEN ME DRINK THREE BEERS.”

These goals of mine, while impressive, still failed to serve as effective antidotes to my musical taste. Not a
single one was realistic or achievable, and the fact of this led to the eventual conclusion that I ought to keep my taste in music under wraps.

As with any secret, mine requires upkeep. It has therefore facilitated a low-boiling but chronic anxiety. Whatever fear unfolds for grown illiterates when asked to read aloud, so unfolds for me when I’m out on a date and I’m asked, “So, what kind of music are you into?”

Over time, and with the assistance of friends and loved ones whose goal it is to have me married off, I’ve learned to lie. I’m told of bands with names like Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes, Blonde Redhead, the Helio Sequence, the National. Because, you see, unimpressive musical taste is one thing, lack of preparedness another. I’m nothing if not crafty. I know how to play it on a date.

THE TRUTH COMES
out eventually, though. Keys get exchanged, and I’m walked in on singing in the shower. I’ll be singing “Bitch” or “Cornflake Girl.”

GROWING UP, MY
brother and I listened mostly to musical theater. Over time—and in much the same way a literal
palate could be fed fast food and adjust to fast food—my youthful mind registered “good” music as that which lacked nuance. I liked a bold message, loudly expressed. I liked Caucasians bemoaning affairs of the heart. Sam did too, but for reasons unclear and unjust, he eventually outgrew the taste. Newly adolescent, he found this one band called the Who, and another called Pink Floyd, and then there he was: set on the path to acceptable taste. Moreover, the musical-theater affections of his past have not only
not
hurt him, they’ve helped. They’ve been offset by an air I’ve heard others call “macho.” (Sam and I were at a bar once, when a woman leaned drunkenly toward me and slurred, “Your brother looks like what I want all firemen to look like.”) He’s considered empirically manly, is my point—a quality that’s effectively juxtaposed against his knowledge of the American musical theater canon from 1945 to 1982. The female population finds the contrast attractive in much the same way they find a masculine cry attractive: He looks all at once hard but soft; tough but tender.