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

by Sara Barron

  As we ran, my mother ran around after us. She carried with her a large bag of trail mix.

  “Someone take some trail mix!” she yelled. “I made too big a batch!”

  So we took the bag of trail mix. We started our drive to the show.

  En route, Howard said, “It’s good your mom gave us that trail mix.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because,” he answered, “we’re about to get the munchies.”

  Slowly, seductively, Howard pulled a bag of marijuana from his pocket. “Sara,” he said, “meet the Super Silver Haze.”

  Howard’s hope was that he, Kate, and I would all smoke the Super Silver Haze together. Kate, however, refused. Like me, she was a delicate flower and had suffered hallucinations the one time she’d smoked previously. Unlike me, she hadn’t enjoyed her hallucinations. Mine had been almost soothing. They’d felt like, Oh, I’m a duck. I get to sit in a waterfall, or Oh. I’m a rich lady. I own a boat.

  But Kate’s had felt otherwise.

  “The one time I smoked pot,” she said, “I hallucinated that I was stuck in a real-life version of the musical The King and I, and that the king was trying to kill me with a machete.”

  “Wow. Sounds scary. How did you cope?”

  “By climbing in the bathtub. I was in there for hours. I ate a lot of pretzels. I wasn’t right for days.”

  With Kate down for the count, Howard focused his marijuana pitch on me.

  This is a thing about potheads, or as I am now wont to call them, the Marijuana People. In the style of the truly self-loathing, vast numbers are forever rambling on about the merits of their actions. They are a prideful, proselytizing people. And boy, oh boy, they love to dish on product quality.

  “The Super Silver Haze is a top-notch product,” Howard explained. “It won first place at this year’s High Times Cannabis Cup.”

  I had no idea what it was, the High Times Cannabis Cup. Nevertheless, the phrase prompted stirrings of nausea within.

  “What is it?” I asked. “What’s it even mean?”

  “That you will get high,” said Howard. “Like, very. Like very, very high.”

  I looked to Kate for approval. She said, “As someone who shares your sensitivity to marijuana, I hope you’ll hear me when I say: I don’t think you should smoke this.”

  Howard scoffed. “Jesus. Chill,” he said. “Sara will be fine.”

  “Yeah. Chill,” I repeated. “I’ll be fine.”

  The word “chill” hadn’t previously appeared in my personal lexicon, but there I was on a madcap adventure in the fine town of Tinley Park. I figured I’d give it a whirl.

  HERE’S WHAT I remember:

  That after smoking the Super Silver Haze my head felt fuzzy. I also recall that I was hungry for a hot dog. So I went to a nearby food vendor, and bought myself a hot dog. A jumbo one, as a matter of fact, since being at a concert in this heretofore unknown bit of the Midwest felt like a celebratory occasion. I remember eating the hot dog and thinking, This is delicious. I remember looking at my friends swaying in rhythm to Paula Cole’s “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” and thinking, This is the life. This is the life.

  That whole scene took all of twenty minutes, at which point I remember feeling like a vise had been placed on my head. I’d returned to Kate and Howard by this point, and I remember saying, “Excuse me. I have to lie down.”

  “Now?” Kate asked. “Are you sure? I mean, Paula Cole’s playing.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  I remember hearing Howard tell Kate, “Maybe she’s just hungry.”

  And I remember hearing Kate tell Howard, “Did you not see the hot dog she just ate? It was, like, really big.”

  And I remember lying down.

  HERE’S WHAT I’VE been told happened next:

  That I passed out one-third of the way through the show.

  I’ve been told that my body lay sprawled on the grass in an unflattering position. I’ve been told, “Your belly was out. It was just … all, like, out.”

  I’ve been told I stayed unconscious only briefly, however, before getting up.

  I’ve been told that after getting up, I had renewed energy with which to express a wide range of emotions.

  “You told me you loved me,” said Kate. “You said that if anyone was ever rude to me you’d ‘break all sorts of bottles on their heads.’ You were holding a Snapple bottle when you said this, which you then hurled at a nearby garbage can.”

  I’ve been told that after hurling the Snapple bottle at the nearby garbage can, the Snapple bottle shattered.

  I’ve been told that, once the Snapple bottle shattered, I did a series of seven deep lunges.

  I’ve been told that as I performed each one of these lunges, I yelled out one letter of the word “victory.”

  I’ve been told that once I’d spelled out all of the word “victory,” I did a cartwheel-into-demi-split.

  I’ve been told that once I hit the demi-split, I yelled, “Oof! My thighs are tight!” and that this, finally, drew the attention of Tinley Park Security.

  I’ve been told that as Tinley Park Security approached, I told them, “If you guys gotta problem, you can stick it where the sun don’t shine. Hey! Where the sun don’t shine means a butt!”

  I’ve been told that despite their attempts to look surly, Tinley Park Security laughed when I said this, and that I clocked their laughter, and then broke into a rousing version of “Let Me Entertain You” from the musical Gypsy.

  I’ve been told that after I finished the song, I asked Tinley Park Security, “Do I seem like a star? Because I feel like a star!”

  I’ve been told that a member of the security team responded, “No. You don’t seem like a star. You just seem off your face.”

  I’ve been told that I was then dragged toward the exit.

  I’ve been told that Howard and Kate were given the choice to join me or leave me.

  I’ve been told that Howard could not offer an opinion, because Howard, too, was very high.

  I’ve been told that Kate, alone, was forced to decide what to do.

  I’ve been told that what Kate wanted to do was lock us both in the car while she returned to the concert to enjoy it on her own.

  I’ve been told that the only reason Kate didn’t do exactly that, was that she thought we both might vomit.

  I’ve been told she cried tears of frustration.

  I’ve been told she thought, My night’s beyond repair.

  I’ve been told that we all left together.

  I’ve been told we missed most of the show.

  WE WERE BACK at my parents’ house by the time I finally regained consciousness. It happened in the middle of the night, when I was jerked awake by a horrendous wave of nausea. It kept me up for hours, and then at six a.m., I puked.

  Kate, Howard, and I had made a standing date for breakfast the following morning. My mother had promised to make us pancakes if we all promised to eat some of her trail mix too. She’d begged us, pretty much, and so we’d felt obliged.

  My appetite was back by mid-morning, which was good. Nonetheless, I maintained an overall sense of foreboding. Although I did not know yet what had happened, I knew it probably wasn’t good.

  Kate, my mother, and I all arrived in the kitchen at ten a.m. Howard, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  “So, ladies: trail mix?” asked my mom.

  “Thank you, but no thank you,” Kate answered, and then she turned to me. She said, “We have to have a talk.”

  “Now?” I said.

  “Now,” she said.

  “So no trail mix?” asked my mom.

  “Sorry, Lynn. No,” answered Kate.

  “Well, then here,” said my mom, and handed Kate a one-pound bag of trail mix. “You can eat it on the road.”

  Kate thanked my mother for the trail mix. Then, again, she turned to me.

  “Go outside,” she said, “while I go wake up Howard.”

 
“Outside?” I said.

  “Outside,” she said. “I think we should go on a walk. We’ll go on a nice little walk and have a nice little talk.”

  I nodded in agreement, and with an increased sense of foreboding, went to wait outside. Minutes later, Kate arrived with Howard, who looked groggy.

  “All right. So let’s go,” she said. “You’ll walk, and I’ll talk.”

  So that is what we did. We walked while Kate talked.

  “The first thing I want to say is that I am enraged. And that if I don’t express my rage before we’re in the car, then, Howard, I will kill us. I’ll be totally unfocused and I’ll drive us both into a pole.”

  Howard and I both nodded yes. Okay. That all sounds good. Whatever you want, Kate. Whatever you say.

  “Do you remember what you did?” she asked.

  “Me?” I said.

  “Yes, you,” she said.

  “Well, no,” I said. “I don’t remember what I did. But I do remember throwing up. Because I threw up. This morning at, like, six o’clock. And, well, awful, right? You know how much I hate that.”

  “Poor baby,” she said.

  “Are you being sarcastic?” I said.

  Kate inhaled through her nostrils. She exhaled through her mouth.

  “Oh, yes,” she said. “I am.”

  Kate went on to explain my antics from the night before: the passing out, the belly out, the waking up. The telling her I loved her. The Snapple bottle breaking. The singing, the expulsion. The missing two-thirds of the show.

  She chastised Howard for providing the Super Silver Haze, and me for electing to smoke it.

  “Do you guys even know what I’ve dealt with this summer?” she asked. “I’ve watched my grandfather’s Alzheimer’s advance. I’ve watched my mother sob in the face of my grandfather’s advancing Alzheimer’s. I’ve babysat my nephew, and he’s a fucking asshole, by the way, because my sister’s husband is two hundred pounds of bitterness and unlikability, and he’s passed those qualities on to his kid. He’s ugly, too, although not overweight. Which is good. Anyway, my nephew spits. He’s a spitter! He spits in my face! I’ve been spit at by my ugly, shitty nephew all fucking summer, you guys! And the one thing I had to look forward to amidst it all, was a road trip I thought would include Paula Cole. But you, Sara, collapsed during Paula Cole. And you, Howard, could not have been less of a help.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Howard.

  “Me too,” I said.

  And although I was sorry, I was not, like, crazy sorry. I thought Kate could’ve cut me more slack, seeing as how I’d said all that loving stuff about her while blacked out. Guilt didn’t overwhelm me so much as regret overwhelmed me, and that regret was owed less to Kate than it was to one specific fact that she had shared:

  I’d collapsed with my belly “all out.”

  My belly, exposed, is but a Russian doll of doughnuts: a doughnut in a doughnut in a doughnut.

  That other people would have seen it un-sucked-in was just too much to bear. It was just so un-Bacall.

  Kate saw how sad I looked. She sighed and rolled her eyes.

  “Jesus,” she said. “It’s not that big a deal. Just don’t let it happen again.”

  I nodded in agreement.

  “I won’t,” I said. “Not ever.”

  And true to my word, I did not. I did not let it happen again, because I didn’t ever smoke pot again. Never ever. Never once. Sure, the drug and I had had our easy start, but the cumulative effect of the vomiting, the minor guilt, and the major regret had proved a powerful means of dissuasion. Pot had robbed me of my sense of self-control, and that’s a thing I need in order to act my way around my honest self. Without it, I will not appear naturally cool. I will just fart or puke or sing or lunge, and these actions form a foghorn. They proclaim, “I AM NOT COOL.”

  Perhaps I should’ve listened to the foghorn. But people who are cool never listen to the foghorn. People who are cool always learn to shut it out.

  8

  Appetite for Destruction

  At the age of twenty-three, I found myself single, as usual, and convinced I would remain so until my early death at fifty-four. The death fixation was owed to a recent annual physical at which I was diagnosed with poor circulation. When I went home to research the condition online, I discovered that one in twenty afflicted may die prematurely.

  So I was anxious and lonely overall, and one otherwise uneventful afternoon it came to my attention care of an Empty Nest rerun that a good way to get a boyfriend was to hang out in a dog park. Dogs, apparently, are conversation starters. And women who own dogs and go the length of engaging with them are, by and large, considered interesting, kind, and attractive.

  I didn’t own a dog, however, and that is because I take no genuine delight in the species as a whole. Rather, I feel about dogs as I do about plantar warts: Fun to play with, yes. But at what cost? People run their mouths about unconditional love and what have you, but that’s not of interest to me. Not unless the individual in question has the capacity to verbally articulate a thought like, “You are special, Sara Barron.”

  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.