I cast about me for anything that might prove useful.
Finally I landed on it, and came darting out of the restroom with a plunger clutched in my hand. “I must have this plunger!” I shouted. “We’ve made the bond! Quick! To the exit!”
The man behind the Häagen-Dazs counter shot me a strange look.
“Ma’am,” he said. “Give me the plunger.”
Because I am, fundamentally, law-abiding, I handed it over to him. It is always at moments like this when my nerve deserts me. “Er,” I said, “I will pay you good money for this plunger. I feel as though we’ve really bonded.”
“That’s all right, ma’am,” he said. I got the sense he wanted me to leave.
When I got to the sidewalk, my date was waiting. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll buy you a plunger of your very own.”
I was about ready to give up. But never let it be said that a Petri gave up without a fight.
“I can quit,” I thought to myself, “or I can level up.”
I frowned. What did men find off-putting? Weird sex things, right? Men traditionally disliked strange sex things, I bet. That would scare him off immediately. (Dazed by my prior failures, I was not, I confess, thinking entirely clearly.)
“Gee,” I said out loud, “you’re nice, but—I am only capable of erotic attraction to badgers. And members of the Beatles. You know, in tandem. Doing, you know. Doing . . .” I struggled to elaborate. My explanation quickly devolved into a series of nervous hand gestures, which looked sort of like reaching into a jar where you think there might be spiders.
Finally I lapsed into silence.
He walked away. I’d done it! I thought. He had rejected me! I’d made it! We’d all go home feeling better about ourselves.
Then I saw him looping back around. He stopped right in front of me. “That’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard,” he breathed.
I was defeated. There was nothing for it.
I bowed to him and darted away.
Afterward, I ignored his calls. “I should have done that in the first place,” I told my friends.
“No,” they said, wincing. “No, that’s not really a good strategy either.”
Problem: The world is full of injustice.
Awkwardness Level: 5? This is not really “awkward” so much as “unjust” or “bad.”
Solution: Become a one-woman vigilante.
Growing up I watched America’s Most Wanted religiously each week, hoping I would see a fugitive and be able to make a difference. Saturday nights at nine were sacrosanct.
COPS would end. The “Bad Boys” credit music would start to play. (“Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do?”) and then—whoosh! Zoom! Onomatopoeic noises!—a Big Shield with an Eagle on It would come flying in.
“Welcome to America’s Most Wanted,” John Walsh would say, dignified in his leather jacket and gray hair. “Tonight we’re continuing our fight. We’re on the MANhunt for some wanted sex traffickers.”
“Eeugh,” my mother would say. “Eeugh, how do you watch this?”
“Shh,” I said.
On the screen, a naked tearful woman was running down a highway as cars swerved and honked. She had just escaped from a kidnapper’s van, using courage and ingenuity. (Never, John Walsh reminded us, try to sell your wedding dress in the classified ads. This is what will happen.)
“I hate this,” my mother put in. “This is awful.”
“No,” I would say. “This is REAL LIFE. This is AMAZING. We are going to make a difference.”
On the TV, John Walsh talked compassionately to a man who was convinced that his vanished daughter had become a stripper. The man now spent all his days walking down the Vegas streets handing out flyers. Some footage of this followed. The passersby seemed somewhat baffled.
“Please,” the father said into the camera. “Crystal, just come home. We don’t care what you’ve done.”
“You realize this is Saturday night at nine,” my mom said. “Are you sure there isn’t a high school party with alcohol and boys you would rather be attending? I could drive you.”
“That’s not the POINT,” I said, folding my arms. “I’m going to make a difference. Like that hotel clerk last week who identified the bank robber.”
We fell silent as the screen showed us a reenactment of an elderly Indian mother being mowed down by a white van on the morning of her son’s wedding. Much of America’s Most Wanted is basically anti-van propaganda.
“I can’t stand this,” my mother would say for the sixth time.
“Then why are you watching?”
“We’re bonding.” To be fair, this was how bonding worked in our family. We would find some activity that only one of us enjoyed and all three of us would do it. Bonding was not supposed to be fun.
“Shh,” I said, “they’re doing the Fifteen Seconds of Shame, profiles of wanted fugitives. I’ve got to commit their vital statistics to memory so I can call them in.”
That was the dream. I wanted to be on America’s Most Wanted. Not as a criminal, of course. I used to prison tutor and I am positive I could not make it behind bars, because my tattoos would all support concepts like “grammar” and “the Oxford comma,” and those don’t really bring much gang backing. (“Nice tear tattoo!” “Actually, it’s a comma.”)
No. I wanted to make a difference. I would spot a criminal, like that vigilant hotel clerk had, and I would call 1-800-Crime-TV. Remember, John Walsh said, you CAN remain anonymous!
As we drove down to visit my grandparents in Florida that Christmas, I checked out all the wanted fugitives along our route on the America’s Most Wanted Web site. “Could we stop in Miami?” I suggested, timidly. “There’s a bouncer with prominent barbed wire tattoos that I think I’ve got a very good visual handle on.”
My father shrugged at my mother, who gave him the parental look that translates to “What’s going to happen when she gets out of the house?”
I knew what would happen. I was going to get my man.
When I got to college up in Boston, I soon fell into my groove, watching America’s Most Wanted on the dorm TV on Saturday nights, staying sharp and vigilant, like a knife that is also vigilant.
And then, one afternoon, I saw him.
He was walking down the cobbled street looking for all the world like another law-abiding citizen among dozens of other law-abiding citizens. But I knew who he was. I knew what he had done.
I can still remember the reenactment footage of him going on a murderous rampage, putting his daughter into a plastic bag and tossing her in the river. There he was with that toothy smile, the thinning brown hair that looked sort of like the top of an eggplant, that corrugated wrinkly forehead.
I followed a few steps behind him, hoping he wouldn’t notice, but he gave me a look, casually, like a “You following me?” sort of look. I tried to give him a look back that said, “Hell yeah, I followed you because of your raw sexual magnetism,” instead of the Inspector Javert–like Glower of Justice I was currently sporting.
I looked forward to calling the hotline to announce: “I have seen the man—what’s his name—the murder guy—with the bag—and the face—and I’m a tipster and a hero now!” And they would totally know who I was talking about. And they would tip off the local police department, where a rugged old sergeant with a mustache who was all but retired except he couldn’t let this one case go would sit bolt upright at his desk and he would say PARTNER, CALL THE TEAM. WE’VE GOT A REAL 3-9, and they would show up outside the dorm and surround it and take out the creepy man in handcuffs and everyone would say “What’s all this commotion? Was it really him? He seemed so quiet! We never suspected!” and I’d shrug and say, “Yeah, just a little thing I like to call Making a Difference,” and then America’s Most Wanted would call me up and I’d get to be on the air (but with my face obscured in case the guy came busting ou
t later seeking vengeance) and John Walsh would shake my hand and say, “Tell me about your courage,” and I’d say, “Well, John, I have been watching America’s Most Wanted for the better part of my life, and I just knew I could make a difference.” And then I could go off somewhere and die contented, and all those nights I’d spent watching America’s Most Wanted instead of familiarizing myself with nineties culture like everyone else wouldn’t have been a big old waste because I’d brought CLOSURE to a FAMILY.
All this in my mind.
• • •
But as I followed my suspect into what I realized with horror was my dorm’s cafeteria it struck me that maybe calling in and saying, “I have the guy, the murder guy, with the bag,” might not be maybe exactly a hundred percent the best idea of all time. Maybe I should get the name, just so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot on what was sure to be the first of many lifesaving calls.
When I got to the cafeteria, my friends were no help. I nudged them, trying to avoid drawing attention.
“Doesn’t that guy there look like the murder bag guy on that recent episode of America’s Most Wanted?”
“Dude,” they said, “A, no one watches that but you. B, no one watches that but you. No one. And C, that’s the prelaw tutor.”
“No,” I said. “No, that’s a lie, that’s a falsehood, that’s an alias! I’m going to go look this up on AMW.com, and you are going to see who is vindicated and who is not. Keep a visual on him.”
I rose in a blaze of glory and climbed the stairs to my laptop to visit the AMW Web site and try to find the actual name of this Wanted Felon.
I found his name, all right.
I found the picture. I found the details of the case—the bag, the daughter. And he did look just like I remembered.
There was only one problem.
The crime had happened in 1970. It was unlikely he looked exactly the same thirty years later, unless of course he were some kind of warlock, in which case we had a much bigger problem on our hands.
So that was awkward.
• • •
You begin to see the pattern.
Every time I thought I was out, I was only dragging myself deeper in.
But maybe that was all right.
It was one thing to have people around you staring and murmuring and pointing at you. It was another to throw yourself into the awkwardness, wholeheartedly, and see where you could get.
If you leaped into it with both feet, arms flailing wildly, you were invincible, like someone in a video game who had stepped on one of those flashing stars.
But I hadn’t quite figured that out yet.
• • •
I couldn’t keep away the nagging sense that all this would have gone so much better if someone else had been writing it. I had more experience with books than people. And when people in books did things like this, they always turned out a little bit better. Logan Pearsall Smith said, “People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.” Logan Pearsall Smith was onto something.
My favorite book growing up was something called the Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations. It was given to me at a formative age and I read it cover to cover. It was an anthology of humorous quotations taken completely out of context, a sculpture composed entirely of elbows.
Do you want to know what Oscar Wilde said about smoking? I can tell you without even turning on my phone. (“A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and leaves one unsatisfied.”) Do know want to know what George Bernard Shaw said about self-plagiarism? “I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.” You want P. J. O’Rourke’s advice about when to send funny cards? “Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.” I’ve got all of this at the tip of my tongue.
Now it makes a kind of sense.
But back then it didn’t.
I read it cover to cover, over and over. I read all the naughty sections, where I learned everything that I knew about sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. “Sex is bad for one, but it’s good for two,” I quipped. “For three, it’s fantastic.” I didn’t realize why some of it was naughty or why much of it was funny. But I knew that, on the occasions listed, those would be the words called for.
I had the words all ready to go. All I needed were the opportunities to use them. If I discovered love, I was supposed to agree with P. G. Wodehouse, that it “seems to pump you full of vitamins. I feel as if my shoes were right and my hat was right and someone had left me ten thousand a year.”
The quips were like bread crumbs strewn through literature for me to find. As I read along, there, in the middle of the page, would be a quotation that I recognized, beckoning me forward. There was that thing Oscar Wilde had said about marriage. There, on page 89, that Evelyn Waugh quip about sex and dentists. (“All this fuss about sleeping together. For physical pleasure I’d sooner go to my dentist any day.”) All of it made a little more sense when I saw where it fit.
The picture filled in, slowly. The words weren’t always right. They didn’t always defuse the situation with a laugh, the way I’d hoped.
There is a certain awkwardness inherent in coming at life book-first.
Life was a word whose definition I knew but I had never seen used in context.
That tends to lead to mispronunciations. And then someone has to take you aside and say, “No, it’s not Penile-ope, it’s Penelope.” “It’s Rafe Fines, not Ralph Fee-yennis.” (I’m pretty sure that one is on him, though.)
• • •
I had all the dictionary knowledge I could have wanted. What I needed was context. I had to go out there and live. I had to use all these words in sentences.
Reality comes on with a jolt. The way you imagine that things will be and the way they actually are go gliding toward each other like the Titanic into the general vicinity of an iceberg. Growing up is the process of watching them collide.
And that’s plenty awkward.
The only way I could handle it was to turn back around and feed it back onto the page again. On the page, marshaled in words, it made a kind of sense. On the page, I could almost see a logic to it. It had themes. It was awkward but it was also all the other things that life is—beautiful in unexpected ways, full of those strange gifts that the universe sends you on mornings that are otherwise rotten, when you walk past a statue that is supposed to be a majestic lion and notice it looks constipated instead, when you spot an unexpected purple house, when you hear a favorite character’s name being called out over the PA system at an airport and it feels like a private joke. The trick was to notice these parts and save them from the wreckage.
So. I swam out to the lifeboats, and began dragging the words onto the beach, shuddering, with towels around their shoulders, and waited to see what they’d look like when they dried.
Ten General Rules
Nobody who actively enjoys middle school is a good person.
Never wear a T-shirt with a picture of someone more attractive than you on it.
“Live like you’re dying” is bad advice. You would never stop skydiving and telling people you loved them.
Nobody saw that.
There is nobody whose browser history, if published, would not fill the world with shock and horror.
“I’m not a [noun], but . . .” = “I’m a [noun].”
Never compare anybody to Hitler.
It’s hard to pass the Bechdel test at brunch.
The smaller and more esoteric the online community, the nicer the comments.
Never read the comments.
How to Talk to People
A Handy Guide Arranged by Age
Talking is awkward. Not always, but most of the time. Not knowing what to say is even worse. At their worst, conversations can feel like a horrible countdown to the inevitable moment when you and the other pe
rson have both run out of things to say and, for want of anything better, are forced to start describing the scenery around you and reading, word for word, the signs you pass. Sometimes one or two ideas for things to talk about are the only difference between silence (awkward) and years of lasting friendship. And that’s where this guide (arranged by age) comes in!
Babies: You can tell if someone is a baby because that person is next to you on an airplane emitting sharp ninety-decibel bleats. If you aren’t sure if it’s a baby, try to pick it up. If it won’t come with you, or claws you on the shin, it might not be a baby.
Sometimes people treat their dogs or cats like babies, dressing them up in little Future Princetonian sweaters and buying them expensive organic food. This can be confusing. It is best not to go by how the human charged with their care behaves but to judge the baby itself. If it barks, it might not be a baby. If it wears a leash and collar, it could be your friend’s lover, Dean, although it is considered a little gauche to wear these things out in public.
The key to talking to a baby is not to act like you’re talking to a baby. Speak frankly and use adult words. One advantage of talking to babies is they seldom want to interrupt you with stories of their own, so you can wax eloquent to your heart’s content.
One-year-olds: One-year-olds look like babies, but larger. If one tries to engage you in conversation, “How ’bout that object permanence? Far out, right?” is a safe response.
Two-year-olds: These are called “the terrible twos.” Just to be safe, address them as you would a work colleague, avoiding controversial political topics that might set them off.
Three-year-olds: The difference between a three-year-old and a two-year-old is that three-year-olds scream less—unless they make a habit of listening to a lot of talk radio. They don’t remember much at this age, so it is still safe to insult them witheringly, as long as you keep your tone friendly and use polysyllabic words (“that ensemble is far from pulchritudinous, and you are NOT callipygian, not that I would notice, because that would be creepy, hey, you know what, never mind”).
A Field Guide to Awkward Silences Page 3
