The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters with the Human Race (22 page)

“Fine,” she said.

“I’m having a hard time with my roommate,” I said.

“The diabetic?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “So could I maybe have some money? It would help me move out.”

“You have a
job
to earn money, to help you move out.”

“But if you gave me
more
money, I could get my own place.”

I heard her sigh: the audible eye-roll.

“Sara,
I
don’t have my own place. I’m in the basement at the moment, hiding from your father, who’s annoying.”

My mother hung up the phone after that, and in the moment she did I heard a crash in Jan’s bedroom. And then:

“SARA! COME FIX THE TV!”

I knew that leaving Jan was but a step down the rabbit hole toward some impossibly worse option. But that was just the risk I’d have to take.

I made a mad dash from my bedroom to the kitchen. I rummaged around for an onion, which I promptly sliced and sniffed. I walked toward Jan’s bedroom with tears in my eyes. I knocked lightly on her door.

“Jan?” I called. “Are you in there?”

Jan opened the door.

“What?” she asked. “The hippie dwarf stopped calling?”

“No,” I said. I wiped at my tears. “It’s my mom. She’s … she’s … she’s just been diagnosed with diabetes.”

Jan paused. “What kind?” she asked.

I paused. “The bad kind,” I answered. “So I need to go home. I mean, I need to
move
home. To be with her. I think it’s the right thing to do.”

Honest communication
is
important, but only for those in lasting relationships. With landlords and tenants, it’s better to lie, to preserve someone’s feelings. It’s better to have an effective way out of your lease.

I lied about my mother having diabetes, and doing so proved effective: Jan let me break my lease. The impending freedom was nice, but the downside was that Jan felt rejected. She stopped talking to me in those last weeks we lived together, and while this made for an uncomfortable at-home dynamic, it also meant no more washing of the back. This, in turn, meant I had some extra time to spend on Craigslist. I’d search the “Rooms/Shared” section, and then I’d scan the studios. I still could not afford a studio, but it felt like a treat just to look.

I was shocked to find the odd, affordable option. Nothing
in
my price range, to be clear, but the odd scrap of an apartment that wasn’t quite so wildly
outside
my price range either. Were they hellholes? They were hellholes. Still, though, it was nice to know that they were out
there. I studied a handful of options located in previously unknown neighborhoods: Woodside, Sunnyside, Rockaway. Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Brownsville. I crunched some numbers. I determined that if I saved a small amount of money every month for one year, that by the end of that year, I could maybe—just maybe—afford one. Of course, I could maybe—just maybe—be raped or pillaged if ever I walked around outside in such affordable neighborhoods. But wouldn’t that be worth it to avoid another roommate? I thought that it would, and returned to the “Rooms/Shared” section. I searched for another apartment complete with another roommate. Something “for now,” you see, so I could set aside the necessary money for the hellhole of my future. For a hellhole to call my own.

I MOVED FROM
Park Slope to Astoria, Queens. There were several key reasons why the neighborhood appealed. It was a quick commute to my Olive Garden job, for one thing, and for another, its rents at the time were comparatively cheap. This made my studio goal more manageable. Astoria lacked the wealth and beauty of a place like Park Slope. The apartments were all short and squat, and the large Greek population meant that all privately owned businesses smelled a little bit like feta cheese.

I’ve always enjoyed acclimating to neighborhoods by endearing myself to local deli owners. Some people like doing this at bars, but I find delis less intimidating. Days after my Astoria arrival, I popped into a local spot called Athena’s Face to order a sandwich and apple turnover. The man behind the counter, busy though he was undermining his Omar Sharif resemblance with a knee-length jean jacket, met my sandwich order with the question, “Sheep? Lamb? Goat?”

To this, I replied, “Oh. I’m sorry. A sandwich? May I have a sandwich?”

He of the Jacket of Jean sighed the exasperated sigh of those forced into repetition.
“Yes,”
he said. “So: Sheep? Lamb? Goat?”

I settled on lamb and sweetened, dehydrated beans in lieu of my apple turnover. I gazed out the deli window at a row of squat apartments, and told myself that this new and foreign culture would more than make up for the less than scenic surroundings.

My new Astoria apartment provided me with a new Astoria roommate, a young man named Roy. Roy, like Jan, I found on Craigslist. He worked for the New York City Fire Department, and the fact of his employment struck me as odd at first because Roy was emaciated. I’m talking, like, he had one of those physiques you want to lay across your knee and snap in two, and use as chopsticks. Further inquiry would eventually reveal he was not, in fact, a
fireman
, he simply worked for the Fire
Department
. And although I would remain forever unsure of his job title, Roy’s firehouse responsibilities seemed to categorize as either secretarial or what-a-cleaning-man-does; he did something with phones, I think, a bit of picking up about the place, a bit of cooking.

“I cook,” he’d say. “For the guys. Casseroles and stuff. With peas. Maybe chicken. That’s what they like.”

Roy and I didn’t do a lot of talking. His work schedule was such that he spent half the week—twenty-four hours a day for three days straight—at the Kew Gardens firehouse so as to have the following three days off, three days he’d log locked in his bedroom, acting alcoholic. During his three-day stints at home, Roy would engage in certain habitual behaviors. Roy would:

This may sound bleak, and in theory, it was. However, in practice it meant I had the rest of the apartment to myself. And there was nothing bleak about that. On the contrary, I recall those first months with Roy as an idyllic period in my life. It felt like living alone, save for the asking price of being made aware of someone else’s taste for self-destruction.

The joys of a
quiet
alcoholic roommate are too numerous to count. Therefore, I’ll focus only on the one that’s most important: I had control of the living room TV. I celebrated by watching it obsessively, like it was some crippled, dying animal that needed my attention to survive. Hours a day I worked to bolster my knowledge of everything from Tim Gunn’s sex abstention to Tyra Banks’s wig collection. From Jonathan Antin’s water-purification system to the vast array of women who don’t know they’re pregnant until they have a baby in their jeans.

One evening I stumbled upon a show I had heard about, but never seen. It was called
The Sopranos
, and it was a rerun episode in which a character named Carmela sobs in a therapist’s office after being forced to confront her husband’s moral code.

If an obsession can be born in an instant, then my obsession with
The Sopranos
did just exactly that. I loved everything about it: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco. The presentation of therapy as brave instead of self-involved. My attraction to John Ventimiglia.

I saw
The Sopranos
for the first time and joined Netflix immediately after for the sole purpose of watching every episode sequentially.

From that point on, the structure of my average day included eight hours of sleep, eight hours of waiting tables, and four hours of watching or rewatching
The Sopranos
. The remaining four hours were spent showering, eating, commuting, and so on, but it’s important to note that throughout those remaining hours, I
thought
about
The Sopranos
. I thought about the character relationships. I thought about mob culture in general. I thought about how nice it would be to have a lot of cousins. I thought about David Chase’s own personal therapy sessions, and also about the physical and emotional experience that would be hugging Tony Soprano. At a certain stage, I grew fearful of becoming a civilian casualty in a mafia-related crime, and became all at once admiring
and
scared of anyone I met who looked Italian American.

I wondered if this was potentially racist, but then I thought, Nah. I’m white. They’re white. It’s totally fine.

OVER TIME, MY
Sopranos
obsession had a dramatic effect. It left me with the sense that the Sopranos were real, that the mafia was everywhere. I might wind up unwittingly involved if I wasn’t careful, and while this would be good insofar as I liked feeling protected, it would be bad insofar as I didn’t want to die. Perhaps Roy, as my roommate, could have been my grounding influence. But his unobtrusive drinking kept him otherwise engaged.

One day Roy arrived home from work earlier than usual. His doing so prompted an atypically lengthy exchange.

Roy made the casserole, we ate the casserole, and I am here to tell you that it was
the
worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my whole entire life. It tasted as though he’d thrown a gallon of week-old water onto a masticated, chicken-stuffed croissant. It was so disgusting that I gagged. I hadn’t wanted to, but the reaction was not to be stopped.

Roy was drunk at this stage, and offended by my gagging.

“Jesus!” he screamed. “You are
welcome
! For your
dinner
!”

“Roy,” I choked, and made up a story about being allergic to peas. “And when you said ‘peas,’ I thought you said ‘cheese’!” I lied. “And that is why I gagged! Please don’t be offended!”

Roy slammed down his beer can. He did this thing I’d seen in
The Sopranos
called “getting up in someone’s face.”

“Don’t treat me like I’m dumb,” he said.

“What?!” I yelled. “I
don’t
!”

But Roy had already stormed out of the kitchen, down our meager hallway, and out toward our front door.

The apartment was quiet now, save for the half-dozen beer cans that stirred in his wake. I took the moment of quasi-silence to reflect on this first occasion of having
someone
up
and
in
my face. It had been scary and threatening, but if the upshot was that I no longer felt pressured to eat the Del Monte casserole, then fine.

I debated wrapping the casserole in Saran wrap and putting it back in the refrigerator. But then I thought, No, Roy. You should not have gotten
up
and
in
my face. I will not reward such bad behavior by graciously preserving a casserole.

So I left the casserole out, exposed, atop the kitchen counter.

After that, I watched
The Sopranos
.

After that, I went to bed.

BY THE FOLLOWING
morning, Roy still had not returned. I did not feel nervous in his absence. I rather enjoyed the luxury of having the place so fully to myself. I fluttered about. I whistled
The Sopranos
theme song. I imagined that if e’er I lived alone I’d keep a vase of flowers here, set a pedicure station up there.

I sipped my morning coffee. I gazed out the kitchen window at the car wash across the street.

And then I heard the noise.

It sounded very much like intercourse.

It came from behind Roy’s bedroom door.

So. He
is
home, I thought. He
is
home. And he
is
having intercourse.

I debated whether to masturbate along, but decided instead to drown it out with an a.m. episode of
The Sopranos
, the one in which Janet Soprano steals Svetlana’s wooden leg.

I watched half the episode before the noise stopped, and Roy’s bedroom door swung open. A woman emerged who looked exactly like Snooki Polizzi. Mind you, this was before Snooki Polizzi blasted into public consciousness, so
I didn’t see this woman and think, She looks exactly like Snooki Polizzi. Rather, the revelation came years later. I’d be watching
Jersey Shore
, see Snooki, and think: Wow. She and Gina are THE SAME.

“This is Gina,” Roy said, and this new woman, Gina, responded by slapping her hand against Roy’s chest.

“Whatta man,”
she sang to no one in particular.
“Whatta man, whatta man, whatta man, whatta man, whatta mighty good maaaaaaaaan.”

Gina, I gathered, was in her clothing from the night before: jeans and a mesh-lace halter top, as well as one of those bracelet/ring combinations that clamps onto the wrist, snakes up to the finger, and into a gargoyle ring. Accessory-wise, it’s two for the price of one. Two for the price of looking like you belong at New York City’s most repulsive rave. And, I’m sorry, but were we at a rave? No. We were standing in my kitchen.

The first thing I thought to consider was whether Gina was a one-night stand or a previously unseen girlfriend. Or a one-night-stand who would become a
much
-seen girlfriend. Instinct told me Gina was a one-night-stand who would become a much-seen girlfriend, because, as previously demonstrated, I have a bizarre and hugely annoying habit of attracting people who slip into relationships like they’re slipping on a pair of well-worn jeans.