The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters With the Human Race

by Sara Barron

  “Oui!” said Lucille. “Exactement. Guy, he ees having many problems all zee time.”

  This was surprising information. It was not every day I heard of someone going to a mental hospital. It was also depressing information. I’d had high hopes for Guy and me. Perhaps, then, I should have been either surprised or depressed. Or surprised and depressed. Perhaps I should have been even the littlest bit curious as to the circumstance that had landed Guy in a mental hospital in the first place. But I was not.

  On the contrary, I thought I understood.

  I considered the tan walls and the tiny window. The maman and the papa and the unvacuumed floors. I considered the rabbit—the sound of someone chewing rabbit—and then I considered Lucille. I looked her up and down.

  If my sister looked like that, I thought, I think I’d go crazy too.

  First off, let me say how impressive it was that Lucille was able to sit upright in light of how much metal she’d voluntarily inserted in her face. And when I say “face,” I do mean “face.” Her ears had been reserved for spacers, those dime- to quarter-sized horrors one puts in one’s earlobes so as to free them of any speck of natural elasticity; her hair, for jet black dye. I may lack a knack for deductive reasoning, but even I know an aesthetic like this means a lady does not care to flower-weave.

  Lucille invited me into her bedroom. It was similar to my brother’s bedroom insofar as she had covered it in posters. However, Lucille’s posters were of the death-metal variety, and their method for objectification was to present womyn bound, gagged, and raped by mythic demons. These visuals were used as a backdrop upon which to scrawl band names like Cannibal Corpse and Grave and Suffocation.

  It became clear to me on this, our first morning together, that Lucille’s idea of a good time was having me translate English-sung death-metal lyrics she’d read in the liner notes of various CDs. We’d cover impressive ground over the course of three weeks, studying useful English phrases like “meat hook” and “open wound,” “skull scorch” and “embedded in my cortex.”

  These translations became my little morning pick-me-up. Because it picks one up, considering how best to mime a phrase like “At one with my sixth sense, I feel free to kill.”

  MY AMERICAN SCHOOL had chosen to do its exchange program with a French school on a year-round schedule. As such, my mornings with Lucille were followed either by field trips with our French and American cohorts, or by hours in class spent studying alongside her. I’d never heard of a year-round schedule before, and while it sounded like an okay place to be enrolled—to miss out on summer if it meant you made it up elsewhere in the year—it was not an okay place to be exchanged. If that was the case, then you, the exchanged student, wound up spending your summer in school. It meant you wound up missing your vacation.

  The fact of this put most of my fellow Americans in a mood to misbehave.

  We all took a language class together each week, and while the horizon expanders feigned interest in what the teacher was saying, the brainiacs would sleep. The rebels, for their part, would work to make the teacher’s life a living hell. The worst of those rebels was Danny Carter, he of the midflight makeshift sanitary pad. He was always raising his hand and asking the teacher: “Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir?” The teacher would ignore him or whatever rebel companion he’d inspired to behave similarly. She would turn promptly back to the rest of us for help translating a word like “locker,” for example, or “napkin.”

  But the rebels were not to be deterred.

  They’d shout over whoever tried to answer, phrases ranging from “fat dick” to “big dick.”

  “American friends: Please tell zee word for casier. Oui? Sara?”

  “Ca veut dire—”

  “FAT DICK!”

  “Non, Danny. ‘Locker.’ Maintenant: Who know zee word for serviette? Oui? Sidd?”

  “Ca veut dire—”

  “BIG DICK!”

  “Non, Danny. ‘Napkin.’ ”

  This sort of rabble-rousing happened all the time. I found it only mildly annoying, however, and that is because every moment spent away from Lucille’s death-metal posters felt like a momentary reprieve from a terrible headache. Sidd didn’t seem to mind much either, and I attributed this to the fact that he was as attracted as I was to Danny.

  Danny.

  His grotesque personality was juxtaposed by a dumpling of an ass and the pillowy lips of a young Macaulay Culkin. I make this particular comparison, as I think Macaulay evokes just the right sort of sexual appeal. And just in case this makes me sound as pedophiliac as Monsieur Raffal looked, I’ll say again that I was fifteen at the time, and Macaulay, one year younger.

  Sidd and I would sit beside each other, and as Danny yelled “fat dick” umpteen times or asked some nearby French girl if she was “having a boner”—the word bonheur sounds dangerously like “boner” and translates roughly to “good time”—we’d glare at him and say what an asshole he was. But we were stern in content only. There was saliva dripping from our mouths and it set a different tone.

  Neither Sidd nor I discussed our true feelings toward Danny, and that is because it is embarrassing to crave someone so rudely disgusting. It is also a natural part of life. But we were fifteen at the time, not yet hardened to the sad reality that men who act the part of douchebag(uette) don’t make you go, “Eww,” really. They make you go, “Let me up on it, boy. Let’s grind.” Additionally, Sidd was in a life phase wherein he was writing his overall effeminacy off as general charisma rather than definitive homosexuality, so being, like, “Look at Danny’s ass, Sidd! JUST LOOK AT DANNY’S ASS!” would not have helped his cause.

  I, too, had reason to keep my mouth shut. The last young lady to express interest in Danny had paid a pretty penny for it. Julie was her name, and she was one of our fellow exchange students. Rumor had it that following our Cluses arrival, Julie had written Danny a note suggesting a late-night rendezvous, and that Danny, in response, had written “SLUTTY BITCHES RULE!” on Julie’s note, which he’d then taped to a tree in the French schoolyard.

  Attractiveness-wise, I was the “Before” to Julie’s “After,” the Gary Busey to her Nick Nolte, the Jan to her Marsha. I therefore shuddered to think what would befall me if I made a move, passed a note, snaked an arm around a waist, and so on. Instinct told me that regardless of other particulars, stained underpants would be involved.

  Like Sidd, I kept my hands to myself, my attitude seemingly disdainful.

  SIDE NOTE: JULIE did not wind up a stripper or unkempt agoraphobe or whatever else can result from grade-A humiliations in one’s formative years. My ten-year high school reunion revealed her to have maintained a slender waistline and scored a decent job. I can’t recall what exactly, other than it made me feel bad about myself. As for Danny, he was but a less noble Dexter, a less accomplished Keyser Söze. For he was not justly punished for his crimes. He’d remained empirically attractive, and this, I thought, was a real heap of bullshit, since when are schoolyard bullies ever rightly punished? Everyone I know has got a story on the subject, yet no adults will admit to having played the starring role.

  An annoying social blight. I thought I’d do my own small part to solve it.

  1. Danny’s full name is Daniel James Carter.

  2. Daniel James Carter spent large portions of his adolescence getting aphrodisiac highs from the mistreatment of his fellow humans.

  3. If you know Daniel James Carter—if you see him on the street—point a finger at him. Tell him, “I know what you are.” If he claims to be reformed, tell him, “You don’t look reformed, so much as you look headed to a strip club. A nice one, but still,” since—if my high school reunion is to serve as any indication—you’ll have found him in a rigidly starched button-down shirt he’s paired with jeans of a wide leg and flamboyant back pocket. So it is your judgment shall be just and true.

  ON OUR WEEKDAYS off from French schooling, my classmates and I went on field trips to towns like Sochaux to v
isit the Peugeot headquarters or to Albertville to see the out-of-use exhibition halls from the ’92 winter Olympics. These tours didn’t feel informative so much as they did boring to the point of physical discomfort: like being given a sedative, then forbidden from sleep. Worse still were our euphemistically titled “scenic hikes” in which we were forced to meander around a hill, then graze on a picnic lunch of butter and mayonnaise sandwiches.

  I understand it’s not the best way to score likability points, bitching about your teen tour en France, about la pauvre petite toi wandering amid Alpine foothills. In my own defense, I would therefore like to say that I’ve done so only so that I might demonstrate how deeply I hate nature walks. I hated them. I hate them. I can just about struggle through a city walk where there’s at least the option of a subway, but where walks through nature are concerned, my baseline mood is one of real misery. I become obsessed with the repetitive quality of the scenery. Oh, that’s a nice mountain, I’ll think. And then three hours later when I’m inevitably staring at the same mountain, Oh, what a nice mountain. Honestly, though, what I wouldn’t do for a hammer to the vaginal canal. Anything, really, to save me from the boredom.

  As for the weekends, I would spend them chez Raffal. They were nothing more than a test, really, to see how much snot my shirtsleeve could absorb. It needed a good wringing out by the time they were over, and that’s owed to the crying jags that, in turn, were owed to the homesickness.

  If a month earlier you had told me that I would get to France and cry because I wanted my family, I would have showed you my brother’s bowel movement and told you that you were less intelligent than the bowel movement itself.

  But that was then. This was now. This was weekends spent alone with Papa, Maman, and Lucille.

  In the otherwise sparse living room, both Papa and Maman had their own La-Z-Boy chairs. They would spend the weekends in those chairs, in the lack of natural light. They didn’t talk a lot, or at all. They would mostly watch TV. Sometimes Maman would go to the bathroom and come back with a tube of unidentifiable cream, which she would then rub on her knees and in her armpits. Sometimes she would get out of the La-Z-Boy chair to go make rabbit and mayonnaise sandwiches for Papa, Lucille, and me. You’d think that by this point I might’ve put my foot down about the whole rabbit situation, but honestly, whatever animal I was eating by this stage was way beside the point. For while Maman was nice enough to make the sandwiches, she was not nice enough to wash her hands before she made the sandwiches. I would watch Maman squeeze the unidentifiable cream onto her hand and into her armpit, and then I would watch her compile those sandwiches and I would think, I am eating her armpit! I am eating the cream! I resented Papa for leaving the domestic duties entirely to Maman, although this had less to do with my burgeoning feminist tendencies and more to do with Maman’s cream-application situation. In Papa’s defense, however, he did give me four more coloring books during the course of my stay.

  I had no choice but to interact mostly with Lucille. She spent large portions of our weekends together chasing not only my explanations of death-metal lyrics, but also proof of my own affection for the genre.

  “Good, yes?” she’d ask while adjusting her dog collar. “You like?”

  Was there a question? I mean, please. There I was in my breathable travel shirt and the compression stockings I’d taken to wearing as everyday socks. I’d been reared on musical theater. I believed a musician’s primary responsibility was evoking joy and/or lyrical dance. The clearest sense I had of “dark” and “rebellion” was Paula Abdul’s “Cold-Hearted Snake” music video, and suffice it to say that Do you think he really thinks about you when he’s out / He’s a cold-hearted snake, girl! sung while jazz-handing in a high-rise thong is quite the far cry from Let’s flagellate the sluts with their serpentine wings, for example, or Blood spills on the sluts grinding the staff of the priests. Still, though, I told Lucille I liked her music very much, and that is because it’s simply the right thing to do when dealing with a human in a dog collar.

  Confronted with this style of individual, an instinct flares within.

  Agree or you’ll be harmed, it says. Or, worse yet, prolong the interaction.

  AT THE END of three weeks, we, the Americans, left Cluses with our French counterparts in tow. Little fanfare surrounded our departure, save for a party at our temporary French school at which there were doughnuts and a game of Danny’s devising called Pin the Tail on the Fag. It involved chasing Sidd around and slapping Sidd’s ass. Then you’d shout, “TAG, FAG! YOU’RE IT!”

  Sidd tried to defend himself by standing with his ass against the wall and, when that didn’t work, by hiding in the womyn’s bathroom. I went in there to pee and found him locked in the handicapped stall.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “No!” he answered. “Why does he think I’m a fag? Honestly! Like, why?!”

  I did not answer back, “Because you are, Sidd. You are.” And that is because I, Sara Barron of the Student Coalition for Awareness, would never use a word like “fag.” All I did say to Sidd was that Danny was an asshole, and that, clearly, Sidd was not a fag. But then I went back to the party. I felt bad for Sidd, yes, but I did not feel bad enough to start showering him with affection. Sidd’s gorgeous French maman had come to our going-away party, and after everything I’d been through, the sight of her laughing, engaging, trying to protect him from his various aggressors, it was all a bit much. It made me jealous of Sidd. It felt like, “Yeah, well, I’m sorry about this whole fag situation. But at least you didn’t eat your weight in skin-cream sandwiches this month.”

  Misery is supposed to love company. But I’ve always felt like my misery prefers someone who’s doing okay. Someone with enough energy to keep the attention on me.

  THE THREE WEEKS I spent in France were the first three weeks I’d ever spent away from home. My parents came to greet me at the airport. When I saw them for the first time it was inexplicably bizarre to feel an emotion other than annoyance. Something had shifted in the time I’d been away, and for the first time in a long time they looked to me like allies. For they spoke in fluent English. They could operate a vacuum. Their faces were un-pierced.

  My parents hugged me hello and introduced themselves to Lucille. But Lucille acted cold. Reserved. My parents wrote this off as a simple case of shyness. They waited until we were all together in our car—my parents in the front seats, Lucille and me in the back—to try to coax her into conversation.

  “So Lucille,” said my dad. “Did you have a nice flight? Did you get any sleep?”

  Lucille, still, said nothing. I decided I should answer for her.

  “Dad,” I said, “we don’t want to talk right now, okay? We’re back from France, for God’s sake. Hello? France? Do you even know how jet-lagged we feel?”

  It was a faux snap. A love nip. That I wasn’t afraid of my father, that he was there to knock about, it made him so much less annoying than he’d ever been before.

  My mother piped in.

  “If you think France is bad,” she said, “try Israel. It’s eight hours ahead. I was there, you know. In 1968.”

  My mother paused. She turned around to face us.

  “So Lucille,” she said, “are you excited for Chicago? It is home to deep-dish pizza and many good museums.”

  Lucille shrugged but did not speak. She put on her headphones and turned on her music.

  My mother, father, and I all listened to Lucille’s music through Lucille’s headphones.

  “Is that … music?” asked my mom.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “I see,” she said. A pause. Then: “How good is her English?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “How. Good,” my mother repeated. “Is. Lucille’s. English?”

  “Oh,” I said. “It’s good.”

  “I see,” she said. “And can she hear me through the headphones?”

  I looked at Lucille, who was looking out the window.

/>   “Lucille?” I called, but she did not turn around.

  “No,” I said. “She can’t.”

  “Then tell me,” said my mother, “what the fuck are in her ears?”

  “Lynn!” cried my dad.

  “What?” asked my mom.

  “They’re called spacers,” I said.

  “They’re disgusting,” she said.

  “I know,” I said. “But you’ll get used to them after a while.”

  MY MOTHER WAS lucky insofar as she didn’t have to spend a lot of time around Lucille’s earlobes. In Chicago, as in Cluses, the schools had worked to coordinate various weekday field trips to keep the students busy. Lucille had a lot of free time too, but rather than spend it at our house, she liked to spend it at the local mall.

  My dad had to ferry her there and back whenever she wanted to go, but he said it was worth it if it kept my mother calm.

  “She hates those ear things, your mother. And as for the drive, it’s not really that bad. Lucille puts on her headphones, and I put on my Cole Porter CD, and it’s kind of like being alone.”

  Ours was a three-bedroom house, and this meant shifting the sleeping arrangements so as to accommodate three kids instead of two. My mother asked if I wanted to sleep in my room, in my bed, near Lucille, or in Sam’s room, on his bunk bed, near Sam and Carmen Electra.

  There was no question to this question. I knew what I wanted to do.

  I ENTERED SAM’S room humbly, with metaphoric cap in hand. Literally what I was carrying was a magnet from the Evian factory that I’d intended to keep for myself.

  I found my brother Scotch-taping his nose to his forehead. His chin was flecked with spit he looked too bored to wipe away.

  “Hi,” I said, and handed him the magnet. “Here’s a magnet.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said. I pointed at his face. “I like what you’re doing there with the tape. Your nostrils look … long.”