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

by Sara Barron

  Charlie, unfairly, did not gain weight from our routine. He responded to it differently insofar as he started falling asleep during sex. The habit took a month to gain momentum, but once it did, look out: It did not stop. There were two weeks over the course of which we engaged in a smattering of intercourse, and Charlie stayed entirely awake for none of it.

  “I’m embarrassed,” he said.

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I like the chance to pee or watch TV. Honestly, it’s fine.”

  “It’s not,” he said.

  “It is,” I said.

  “Sara, it’s not. I want to apologize. I’m taking you out.”

  Being taken out was an odd thing to consider in my relationship with Charlie. We only ever appeared “out” together on that stretch of the Long Island Rail Road that ran from Penn Station to Huntington Station. And, of course, the Papa John’s.

  “Out?” I asked. “What do you mean by ‘out’?”

  “What do you mean, ‘What do you mean?’ ” he asked. “I mean we’re going out.”

  Charlie put his hand in his pocket and pulled out two tickets.

  “Are we going to a show?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “We’re going out for hot wings.”

  Charlie had purchased two tickets for an all-you-can-eat buffet serving an assortment of hot wings. It was part of a “Hot Wing Festival” taking place at his neighborhood bar.

  “And that’s not all,” he said.

  “It’s not?” I said.

  “It’s not,” he said.

  Charlie then put his other hand in his other pocket. He pulled out two white pills.

  “I thought that for dessert we’d do some ecstasy.”

  “As in … the drug?” I asked.

  “As in the drug,” he answered. “I thought we’d go eat lots of hot wings. And then take a walk to this park.”

  Charlie leaned closer in when he said “this park.” He put his mouth against my ear. He said, “And then we’ll take our tablets, babe. And then I’ll stay awake … to do you.”

  MY MOTHER WOULD tell me, as a child, that the only thing she regretted about her marriage to my father was that he never called her “babe.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she’d say. “I love your father. I know I’m lucky to have a husband who does the dishes as well as all the rest of what I tell him. It’s just, sometimes I wish I had one of those husbands who would walk into the kitchen, all five-foot-nine of him, and say, ‘Hey, babe! What’s the problem with the dishwasher?’ And then just fix it, you know?”

  I was nine and so I didn’t. However, the statement repeated over the course of my childhood had left the impression that to land a man who called one “babe” was a rare and precious victory. “A keeper,” let’s call him, regardless of whether he says, “I’m gonna stay awake to do you.” Regardless of whether his polo shirt fits him like a nightgown.

  THE ECSTASY WAS a bigger step toward psychosis than I had ever planned to take. I was now several years into the stopwatch-and-bagel-based moderations to my drinking. I had not smoked pot in years. My regimen for substance experimentation had fallen to the wayside simply because I had never stumbled across another opportunity, and I had been too traumatized by my previous experience to aggressively chase one on my own.

  And yet now, here one was. Here he was, in his basement. In his big ol’ polo shirt.

  “Ecstasy.” I said the word again. “I mean, like, wow. Right? Like, ecstasy.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought it’d be fun.”

  Charlie thought it’d be fun, but my instinct disagreed. My instinct told me that a jump to an ecstasy tablet from my tailor-made drinking regimen was just too huge, the gap too wide. Working against that instinct, however, was not just Charlie, but my still-burning desire to have that bit of edge about me, and that’s to say nothing of my new convincing silhouette. I’d put on quite a bit of weight since getting together with Charlie, and while the fact of this was depressing, it was also fortifying. It made me feel, if not resilient, then absorbent. As though my new physique could take an ecstasy tablet and hide it in its far and distant corners.

  “Well, then … okay,” I said to Charlie. “Let’s eat some wings. And … take some ecstasy.”

  ONE WEEK LATER, Charlie and I attended the Hot Wing Festival at Punches! bar in Huntington Station, Long Island. While the first hour was fun enough, we got thrown out in the second. Charlie got belligerent on promotional vodka samples, and when the overweight lady bartender cut him off and told him it was time to leave, he screamed, “You’re a fat fucking cunt, you know that? You’re really fucking fat.”

  It was awful hearing him talk this way. I mean, I enjoy a joke about incest, rape, farts, Hitler, pedophiles, September 11, Columbine, midgets, bestiality, pediatric cancer, wealthy Russians, spousal abuse, the word “Mongoloid,” the mentally disabled, homosexuals, hookers, dead hookers, anything pertaining to Jewish culture, and a large portion of race-related issues as long as the audience for whom the joke is performed isn’t entirely white. I like fat jokes too, if I’m being honest. It’s just, this wasn’t a fat joke so much as it was authentic rage directed at the overweight.

  Awful as it was, though, I said nothing to Charlie about it. I didn’t want to make the already tense mood even worse. On the contrary, I wanted to ensure we were both in a positive state of mind for the ecstasy portion of events.

  Over the course of the previous week, I’d convinced myself I could not only handle the drug but enjoy it. I’d worked myself into a state of genuine excitement. Charlie and I had been together three months by the time the hot-wing festival rolled around and already we were shouldering the dual issues of my weight gain and his sexual sleepiness. We felt similarly ambivalent toward each other, I think. I found Charlie both likable and pathetic for his willingness to be with me, and I was pretty sure he felt the same toward me. I liked him fine and hoped to like him more. I had therefore identified the ecstasy as a sexual spark plug. A sexual savior, if you will. Doing ecstasy with Charlie would mean I’d shared something with him that I had shared with no one else. The fact of this would forge a bond between us to make up for the overall lack of chemistry. I would take the ecstasy, and I would do some sexy, crazy thing. In the sand, under the stars, I’d twirl Stevie Nicks–like before the inevitable onslaught of an overwhelming sex drive to facilitate rousing sex with my now highly conscious boyfriend.

  HAVING BEEN THROWN out of the hot-wing festival, Charlie and I made our way to “this park.” When we arrived at “this park,” I noticed a playground, at the center of which was a slide (for babies) with a tree house (for babies) attached to its top. Charlie and I climbed up to the top of this slide for babies, and into the tree house for babies. We did this for the privacy, and despite the fact that the dimensions were such that we could not stand upright.

  We sat down Indian-style instead.

  Charlie took out the ecstasy tablets. He swallowed his tablet. He fed me my tablet, which, as a process, I did not enjoy. Having it fed to me felt rather like living inside a poorly staged version of the musical Hair. It felt much more grimy than sexy, and the griminess undermined the excitement I had so far managed to drum up. It undercut it with a strong case of anxiety.

  “Charlie,” I said. “I am feeling very anxious. Do you hear me? Can you hear me? I AM FEELING VERY ANXIOUS.”

  Charlie had been sitting on the opposite side of the tree house. He looked dazed. He’d told me that yes, he could hear me. He told me to sit back and relax.

  I tried doing as instructed, and although I did manage to sit back, I don’t think I quite relaxed. I took a few breaths, and over the course of … I don’t even know how long … twenty minutes? Maybe thirty? … I swam through alternate waves of nausea and sexual longing. I waited for the waves of nausea to pass, until I was secure in the zone of sexual longing. And then—and even though I lacked the space to stand upright, and even though Charlie himself was now lying on his
back, rigid and wide-eyed—I slid toward him on the doughnut-in-the-doughnut of my stomach.

  I reached him. I straddled him. I made a polite request for sex.

  “Would you like to have sex?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered. “I feel too depressed. I called that fat girl ‘cunt.’ ”

  “You did?” I asked.

  And not because I myself did not remember. Rather because I wanted Charlie off the subject of his own self-loathing, and onto the subject of wild baby-tree-house sex.

  “I did,” Charlie said. “I called her a cunt. I told her she was fat.”

  “Which, okay, was maybe not the best thing, but it wasn’t the worst thing either. Anyway, would you like to have sex?”

  Charlie shook his head. “I’m a loser,” he said. “I live in a basement.”

  I reminded Charlie that it was in this very basement that he had space for a treadmill, a TV, and a mini-fridge. But these facts were cold comfort. He curled up into a ball.

  “Will you stroke my hair until I fall asleep?” he asked. I knew the cause was lost.

  “Sure,” I said, and did as he’d requested. However, as my own little treat to myself I pretended that it was not Charlie’s hair at all, but rather the silky, voluminous chest hair of a handsome Viking.

  Charlie required a half hour of hair stroking before he fell asleep. As I’d been straddling him throughout that half hour, my hip sockets felt overstretched.

  I dismounted, massaged my hip sockets, and decided to slide down the slide. I took off my pants before doing so, however, for I had Spanx on underneath, and I figured sliding down a slide in Spanx would facilitate a swifter and more adventurous descent.

  The only problem with my plan was that I was now a larger lady on a baby slide. So once I was actually on the slide, I traveled mere inches before getting stuck. Nothing a little elbow grease couldn’t fix, of course, but I’d been wiped out by my self-administered hip massage. I decided to stay where I was. I stared at the sky for a while. I thought about the Viking with the chest hair. I, too, fell asleep.

  WHEN I AWOKE the following morning, the first thing I saw was Charlie, who was perched at the top of the slide. He seemed to have pulled it together. His torso blocked the sun.

  “Where are your pants?” he asked. “And why are you sleeping on the slide?”

  “I wanted to slide down it,” I explained, “and I thought it’d be faster if I wasn’t wearing pants.”

  I paused. Charlie said nothing.

  “But then I got stuck on the slide,” I continued, “because, well, I’m fat.”

  “You’re not fat,” said Charlie. “That bartender last night was fat.”

  “She was morbidly obese,” I said. “And I am standard-issue fat.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Here,” he said. “I’ll push you.”

  Charlie pushed, although his doing so did not prompt the glorious descent I had imagined. I had to nudge myself the whole way down.

  We reconvened at the bottom.

  “Wanna come back to my basement?” he asked. “We can order in some Papa John’s?”

  Strangely, I did not want to go back to Charlie’s basement and I did not want to order in more Papa John’s. The sentiment surprised me. For I loved Papa John’s. And while the same could not be said of Charlie’s basement, it could be said that I loved to be invited to his basement.

  Prior to getting together with Charlie, all I’d wanted was a boyfriend. And then I got one. At a dog run. He’d offered access to his basement, coital time in which to pee and wash my face. What more could I want? What more could I need? Why wasn’t it enough? Was I afraid? Was I a snob? Was I wrong to turn my nose up at a carpet in a basement?

  I was, and had been, ambivalent where Charlie was concerned. And although ambivalence will grow into disappointment, the great thing about it is that it’s easy enough to ignore. At least for a while. You can distract yourself by eating. You can remember what it’s like to be alone. Such techniques are effective, but they are never foolproof. They will not, for example, hold strong for you through ecstasy. Lost endorphins are a pin to their balloon.

  “I think I’ll skip the pizza,” I told Charlie. “I think I’ll just go home.”

  Charlie shrugged. He said, “Okay.”

  I said, “Okay.”

  He said, “Do you want to put your pants on?”

  I said, “Oh, right. Yes. Of course.”

  So I put my pants on and Charlie and I walked together to the Long Island Rail Road station. We waited for the train. When finally it came, I said, “Okay, well …”

  And Charlie said, “Okay, well …” and then we kissed good-bye.

  I GOT BACK to my apartment and lay down on my bed. Eight hours had passed since I’d taken the ecstasy. Now, suddenly, I felt awfully depressed. By which I mean I felt so depressed, and also that it was awful how depressed I felt. But it was only eight a.m. There was still time in the day to turn my frown (as it were) upside down. I thought maybe it’d be good to be alone in my apartment. I thought maybe I’d find joy in tweezing or watching TV. But sequestered as I was, I just kept feeling sad. I just could not get off my mattress. I did try a few times, to do some bare minimum activity. To get up and watch TV. The problem, though, was that in order to watch TV, I had to get up and go to my couch. And I could not lie flat on my back on the couch and also see the TV.

  I felt compelled to be flat on my back.

  So I returned to my mattress. I put on a Jewel CD. I played it again and again, and as I did—as time went on—I decided to break up with Charlie. I felt it was time. I just felt so low. And if I felt so low, maybe Charlie did too. And if Charlie did too, maybe he’d break up with me. And if he broke up with me, well, I was not equipped to cope.

  Charlie called me the following day. When he did, I channeled Jewel.

  “These foolish games,” I said, “are tearing me apart.”

  “What?” asked Charlie.

  “The foolish games?” I said again. “Are tearing me apart?”

  Nothing.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “since they’re tearing me apart, I think we should break up.”

  “Oh,” said Charlie. “Well. Okay.”

  “Okay?” I said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  We shared an awkward pause. We both hung up the phone.

  It was summer at this stage, and I lay sweating on my mattress. I took off my Spanx, wiped at my brow, and with the dandruff that accumulates from a week without a shower, formed little thoughts to myself on my mattress, impermanent letters of note.

  Dear drugs, please stay away from Sara.

  Dear Sara, you must now stay away from drugs.

  9

  Forever Yours, Flipper

  On the path toward artful, attractive rebellion, one must consider a tattoo. Tattoos give their owners a new energy, a sexier aura. Tattooed women have an air about them that says, “I have lived.”

  We all have, of course, it’s just that my unexceptional variation on the verb involved frequent masturbation and a deep-seated fear of throwing up. My history was written in my arch-support sneakers and boot-cut jeans. A tattoo would be a counterbalance.

  The impulse to get a tattoo did not come about easily for me. As a child, I found tattoos repulsive. They struck me in much the same way a meth den strikes me now. That is, when I’m watching Breaking Bad.

  They seemed foreign, dirty, and depraved.

  I think that about meth dens. I thought that about tattoos.

  If, as a child, I saw a tattoo, I saw its backstory. I saw the victim strapped into the awful chair, staring down the awful needle. That a person would voluntarily subject herself to such a thing seemed entirely psychotic, and for years I struggled to trust the people who had them. For years, I found these people filthy.

  As I got older, however, I outgrew the opinion. I began to feel less afraid of both tattoos and the tattooed. This was due in part to the fear swap that occurs as you pass from c
hildhood into adulthood: You get better with things like monsters, the dark, the sense that tattoos are disgusting. In their place, though, comes a flood of other issues: how you’ll afford it, that thing on your toe. I went from thinking tattoos were disgusting to thinking they were not so bad to finding them attractive.

  There was not a specific moment in which the shift occurred. Rather, there were a few occasions wherein I enjoyed riotous intercourse with gentlemen who had tattoos. This helped me form a new opinion. I began to think tattoos were sexy, and then, eventually, to think that I’d be sexy if I had one. Some residual horror surrounded the actual application process, but I chose to ignore it. I thought it’d be worth it for the increased desirability. For my increased desirability.

  I decided I would get one. Before I did, though, I had questions.

  What might I get?

  And where might I put it?

  And where might I go to get it put?

  ON WHAT I MIGHT GET

  Because I live alone and am often described by friends and family as “challenging; but not in the way that’s that rewarding,” I have on various occasions been encouraged to get a pet. People think a dog or cat would do me good, to which I respond, “If by ‘dog’ or ‘cat’ you mean ‘affordable cleaning woman’ or ‘Djimon Hounsou blow-up doll,’ then yes.” Otherwise, I’m not in the market for things that can’t converse yet whose vomit I’m expected to dispose of.

  I do, however, enjoy animals when they’re part of a design aesthetic. Anthropologie sells beautiful bird-shaped coat hooks, for example. A friend’s kitchen features swaths of owl-themed wallpaper, and every time I see it I think, What a charming and whimsical touch!

  It therefore stood to reason that an animal etched on my body would deliver unto me a vibe that was equally charming and whimsical.

  I narrowed the vast kingdom down to one: the dolphin. I liked the dolphin’s reputation for intelligence, as well as the fact that they always look as though they’re smiling. But then I voiced my idea to various acquaintances and learned the overriding opinion is that dolphin tattoos are moronic.