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

by Sara Barron

  “Why not just write ‘ANUS-FACE’ on your face?” asked one. “That sends a subtler message.”

  Another told me I’d be better off shaving my head.

  “Really?” I asked, and felt a flutter of excitement. “Would I look like I had cancer, do you think?”

  But the friend just shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “You weigh too much to look like you have cancer. My point is just that a dolphin tattoo is deranged. So if you want to look deranged, then why not shave your head? Aesthetically speaking, it’s less of a commitment.”

  My brother Sam offered yet another perspective: “If someone says ‘dolphin tattoo,’ the first thing that jumps to mind for me, personally, is a condom.”

  “As in, you’d find it attractive? You’d want to have sex?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “More like, ‘Dirty hippie. Wrap it up.’ ”

  So I dropped the dolphin idea and went a different route entirely, designing a hieroglyphic-like entity comprised of my mother’s initials, L.H.B. It sounds extreme, I know, but at this stage I was willing to do whatever I could to offset her guilt trips:

  “You don’t call.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No. You don’t. You do not call enough. And on those rare occasions when you do call, you never talk to me about my health.”

  “About yourself?”

  “About my health.”

  “You see a doctor a week, Mom. I just can’t keep up.”

  “And you never visit, either. And when you visit, you never rub my feet. You used to rub my feet when you were little. You never do that anymore.”

  I was at a breaking point, forced to wonder whether etching her initials on my person might not be the way to go. Might not stave her off for a while, express devotion in a manner not involving foot rubs.

  It seemed like a good idea to me, and so I shared it with my friend Amanda. I’ve known Amanda since college. The first time we met was in a dormitory hallway and she was wearing a nightgown she’d fashioned into a viable dress with a belt and a series of brooches. Holistically speaking, Amanda is/was informed and creative in the ways of fashion. I did/do value her opinion.

  “I’m thinking of getting a hieroglyphic-y tattoo comprised of my mother’s initials,” I said.

  Amanda furrowed her brow.

  “Did your mom die?” she asked.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  “Did your mom die?” she repeated.

  “No,” I answered. “You know she didn’t die. You saw her last week. You told her she needed new jeans.”

  “She does,” said Amanda. “But my point is that you—that one—can tattoo someone else’s name on your body if and only if that person has already died. Or, alternately, if that person has frequent exposure to gang-related activities.”

  “What? Really?”

  “Yes. Really. Furthermore, you may not tattoo someone else’s name on your body just because she pays your health insurance bill.”

  “It was more, like, to get her off my back. She says I don’t rub her feet as much as I used to.”

  Amanda sighed as if to say, Whaddya do.

  “Regardless, Sara, the bigger issue has nothing to do with gangs, or alive-versus-dead, or foot rubs or whatever. The bigger issue—the biggest issue—is your whole my-mom-is-my-best-friend routine.”

  And therein lay the point. The real point.

  I am loath to endure the company of individuals who describe their parents as best friends.

  My mom and I are just so close. She is truly my best friend.

  These declarations seem always laced with undue pride, always rife with subtext.

  “I value my family,” says the subtext. “I bridge generation gaps.”

  I’m supposed to be impressed. But I am always unimpressed. If I hear a mother’s a best friend, I don’t think, Wow. That’s just so lovely. No. I think, Find someone to like you who doesn’t have to like you. And Amanda’s point, I guess, was that a person who espouses such beliefs has no business etching her mom’s initials on her body.

  I decided Amanda was right, and dropped the idea of the hieroglyph just as I’d dropped the idea of the dolphin. I spent the next couple weeks backing and forthing on various other options. I considered the Chinese symbol for “Alone,” as well as the Palestinian flag. However, nothing so eccentric seemed to suit me. So I tried thinking in terms of something more basic. Something more steeped in tradition.

  That is when the answer finally came.

  When it hit me, I knew instinctively that it was right.

  My tattoo would be … a butterfly. But not just any butterfly. My butterfly would sit … atop … a heart.

  It was pretty strange, actually, that I hadn’t thought of it before. Because, well, a butterfly atop a heart communicated the very essence of what I myself was trying to project: sweet, sexy, daring. I thought, Tattoos say “sexy.” Butterflies and hearts say “sweet.” Therefore, a butterfly atop a heart says that I am super-sexy. And also that I’m sweet!

  It didn’t hurt, of course, the way in which the whole thing scratched the unmitigated itch for an animal theme.

  ON WHERE I MIGHT PUT IT

  If there’s one sure thing besides death and taxes, it’s that I will not age like Helen Mirren. I therefore had to consider which part of me would … advance, if not well, then not badly, either. I was twenty-six at the time, and already my knees had sagged to the point of resembling lumpy, gelatin-stuffed pillows. My breasts would’ve done the same had they possessed the necessary volume, but lest I be spared any indignity in the general region, my décolletage was but a compressed accordion of skin. Other joyous changes were surely forthcoming, and so it seemed the smart course of action would be avoiding my face, back, hands, torso, buttocks, and the length of all extremities.

  The only viable option, then, was the back of my neck. It was on frequent display owing to the up-do hair phase I was in at the time that, in turn, was owed to my recent battle with female baldness.

  Now, technically, I wasn’t bald. The issue was that I am—and have always been—plagued with a horrendous cowlick on the crown of my head. Combined with the strawlike texture of my hair, it is the thing that’s offered unto me the Garth Algar Triangle Shape.

  As I’ve gotten older, my hair has behaved as so much hair is wont to do: it has begun the tragic process of a gradual but distinct thinning-out. Therefore my cowlick is now on more evident display, and what it looks like from the back is a series of sparse hairs running away from other hairs. It looks as though the sparse hairs are sort of, like, fleeing the crown of my head.

  I might’ve stayed in the dark about the whole thing, but then my mother felt obliged to point it out. She got in the habit of sending me clippings on the subject. Not of cowlicks, but of baldness. Lady baldness.

  She would scrawl her own notes in the margins.

  “Do you think you’re struggling with this?” asked one.

  “I think you’re struggling with this,” said another.

  Sometimes she’d circle phrases like “iron deficiency” or “thyroid problem,” “testosterone,” or “women should not be ashamed.”

  I should’ve liked the attention brought to me via an ailment. But the ailment was too ugly for my liking. So I didn’t like the ailment, and neither did I argue with my mother about the ailment. I did not say, “Mom. Lay off. I’ve got a cowlick, not a bald spot,” and that is because—in accordance with idiotic superstitions I never want to believe but cannot help but believe—I felt like claiming not to have a bald spot would be the thing to condemn me to a bald spot. I received my mother’s literature and read my mother’s literature and worked with various hand mirrors to examine the crown of my head. Over time, I decided, yes: In point of fact, I had a bald spot. I absolutely had a bald spot, and any person who said otherwise—“Your mom’s projecting some weird shit onto you, okay? I promise you. You are not bald”—was just being polite. They were protecting me from
the bitter truth, and that bitter truth was this: I had a massive, raging bald spot. It looked, from above, like a plowed and barren field.

  I knew I needed to solve the problem somehow, and had therefore started gathering what hair I did have into a strategically placed—if sadly flaccid—knot. Doing so covered the bald spot but left the nape exposed.

  “Ink me, girl,” it said. “Ink me with a butterfly that’s perched atop a heart.”

  ON WHERE I MIGHT GO TO GET IT PUT

  I decided to get my butterfly-atop-a-heart tattoo at a spot called Venus Modern Body Arts, and that is because Venus Modern Body Arts was next door to a Taco Bell.

  Once, as a follow-up to what I’m not ashamed to tell you was an impressive bit of sexual maneuvering, I was affectionately choked, then ordered: “Tell me what to do to you. Tell me what you want.”

  I am also not ashamed to tell you that the answer that came to me was Taco Bell. There was one next door to the gentleman’s apartment, and I could smell its chemical fiesta through the walls. So when, in effect, he asked me what I wanted, I remember thinking, Taco Bell.

  I love Taco Bell, and I mention this because, despite where I was in my life in terms of wanting a tattoo, despite the progress I’d made in terms of finding them disgusting, I was still terrified of the actual parlors. I was under the impression they would smell sterile, but unsettlingly so: the sterileness of a stripper pole, not a nicely tiled bathroom. However, with a Taco Bell next door, I could take my fear of odor off the table. The Taco Bell would permeate the parlor, and this, in turn, would help to calm me down.

  I ARRIVED AT Venus Modern Body Arts in the early afternoon because the early afternoon is a non-satanic time of day. I thought I’d be the first customer in there, but in what appeared to be a dentist’s chair lay what appeared to be a prostitute. Maybe she wasn’t a prostitute, but if it walks like a duck and it’s in bike shorts and knee-high boots, it’s probably a prostitute. A whirring needle buzzed at the prostitute’s abdomen. And while, yes, it did smell like Taco Bell, it did not smell enough like Taco Bell to distract from the iguana. It was perched on the shoulder of the presumed employee, who had a beard—I swear—that was long enough to braid.

  “Need any help?” he asked. “Have any questions?”

  “No thank you,” I said. “I am just here to browse.”

  Of course I was not just there to browse. But the iguana unnerved me, and I lost control of what had been said and of how I had hoped to respond.

  “Okay, cool,” said the man, and handed me a book of design options.

  He crossed back toward the quasi-prostitute in the quasi–dentist’s chair.

  Between them, a conversation started on the subject of a musical band.

  Someone said, “Rough, wild sound.”

  Someone else said, “Trish got kind of raped, if you ask me.”

  I hadn’t felt this out of place since I’d gone to dinner with a thirty-year-old friend and her fifty-something boyfriend only to discover the fifty-something boyfriend liked to feed my friend her food. As a manner of eating, this one is never pretty, but throw in a fat age gap for good measure, and you’ll find yourself praying for the impending apocalypse. You’ll be like, “Now, please. I’d like my impending apocalypse now.”

  Well, I didn’t bolt from that dinner, and I should have, seeing as how the dessert course involved the fifty-something boyfriend saying, “It’s nice, for once, not to date an Asian.”

  You live and you learn, though, right? You learn enough to know it’s time to leave.

  I returned the design book. I strolled toward the door.

  Now, strolling toward a door may mean that a lady is leaving, but it does not mean she’s left.

  If you talk about her, she can hear you.

  “These girls, man. Jesus Christ.”

  “We ought to shove Iggy in her face. Be all like, ‘Oooga booga, oooga booga!’ You too scared now for your tramp stamp?”

  There was laughter. Iggy, I figured, was the iguana.

  “Seriously. I wanna be like, ‘It’s a tat shop, little princess. Not the Gap.’ ”

  I wanted to be like, Your valid point is no match for my fear of braided beards. I’m just not meant for this. I’m too afraid.

  Not being “meant for this,” however, means confrontation is beyond you. It means you get defeated by your princesshood. It means you go silently into your day. I had planned to spend the rest of mine in tattoo-recovery mode, but now I had nothing to do. I wandered around. I bought myself a jumbo pretzel. I decided to see a movie. I saw Notes on a Scandal. I listened as Cate Blanchett explained her minor dance with pedophilia to Judi Dench:

  “Well, you see, I was always so good. I had always done everything proper. And finally, I just needed … to be bad …”

  I heard the explanation. I looked at gorgeous Cate Blanchett. I thought, Now there’s some cool rebellion.

  Of course, pedophilia is a bigger commitment than even an ink stain.

  I stuck with the rebellion of no tattoo instead.

  10

  How Long Till My Soul Gets It Right?

  I’ve been dumped more often that I have dumped. I am, if not happy to admit this, then certainly willing, and the reason I bring it up is this: I was somewhat recently dumped. Nothing would thrill me more than speeding along into another doomed relationship. However, friends and family have suggested “focusing” on myself as an alternative. Which sounds nice, but isn’t, really. Since self-involvement is like sex: more fun when you’ve got someone to focus on you, with you.

  So instead of focusing on myself, I filled out an online dating profile for the sole purpose of e-mailing a guy whose online name was I_am_a_Spanish_Bagel. He’d been advertised by my Yahoo! homepage as a “Brooklyn single,” and claimed in his profile to like the book The Kite Runner. Well, I also like the book The Kite Runner! Realizing we were thus destined to marry, I sent along a clever quip and awaited a reply. None came, however, and while this threw the obvious wrench in the works of our marriage, I was consoled by the fact that I thought I knew why: I had been too honest when describing my musical taste. The website had asked, “What kind of music do you like?” and rather than journey down my usual path of feigned sophistication, I thought, I have to tell the truth. My future perfect boyfriend must love ALL of me.

  And so I wrote what follows:

  “I like Paula Cole, the Indigo Girls, and Tori Amos. I like Alanis Morissette, Sarah McLachlan, and Jewel.”

  I HAVE BEEN plagued my whole life with unfashionable taste in music. It’s a fact I’ve hinted at already: There’s been Jewel and Paula Cole. And Lisa Loeb and Lilith Fair. What I admit to you now, though, is that such references are not just nostalgic facts. No. They are part of my present, the fabric of my current taste. This might not sound so bad, but it is. I’ve spent my adult life living off again, on again, and on again in hipster central: Northern Brooklyn. And this, in turn, means everyone I meet has expert taste in music. I might fare okay elsewhere, but here, I do not. Here, it is bad. It’s a message I’ve absorbed for years, and it’s played a large part, I think, in fueling my ambition to be cool in other ways. To have some other edge about me.

  “What’s that? Well, I’m sorry I like Jewel. But perhaps you haven’t noticed THAT I’M GAY.”

  “What’s that? Well, I’m sorry I like Meredith Brooks. But perhaps you haven’t SEEN ME DRINK THREE BEERS.”

  These goals of mine, while impressive, still failed to serve as effective antidotes to my musical taste. Not a single one was realistic or achievable, and the fact of this led to the eventual conclusion that I ought to keep my taste in music under wraps.

  As with any secret, mine requires upkeep. It has therefore facilitated a low-boiling but chronic anxiety. Whatever fear unfolds for grown illiterates when asked to read aloud, so unfolds for me when I’m out on a date and I’m asked, “So, what kind of music are you into?”

  Over time, and with the assistance of friends and loved ones who
se goal it is to have me married off, I’ve learned to lie. I’m told of bands with names like Arcade Fire, Fleet Foxes, Blonde Redhead, the Helio Sequence, the National. Because, you see, unimpressive musical taste is one thing, lack of preparedness another. I’m nothing if not crafty. I know how to play it on a date.

  Me: I am into all sorts of music. I enjoy many different bands. For example: the Blonde Redhead, the National, the Helio Sequence.

  A date: What’d you think of their last album, though? I was a little like, “Meh. I’m underwhelmed.”

  Me: As was I. That is exactly how I would describe my own feelings toward the Arcade Fire.

  A date: I’ve heard good things about the National, though. Do you have a favorite song?

  Me: Could Sophie choose between her children? Please. I love them all.

  THE TRUTH COMES out eventually, though. Keys get exchanged, and I’m walked in on singing in the shower. I’ll be singing “Bitch” or “Cornflake Girl.”

  GROWING UP, MY brother and I listened mostly to musical theater. Over time—and in much the same way a literal palate could be fed fast food and adjust to fast food—my youthful mind registered “good” music as that which lacked nuance. I liked a bold message, loudly expressed. I liked Caucasians bemoaning affairs of the heart. Sam did too, but for reasons unclear and unjust, he eventually outgrew the taste. Newly adolescent, he found this one band called the Who, and another called Pink Floyd, and then there he was: set on the path to acceptable taste. Moreover, the musical-theater affections of his past have not only not hurt him, they’ve helped. They’ve been offset by an air I’ve heard others call “macho.” (Sam and I were at a bar once, when a woman leaned drunkenly toward me and slurred, “Your brother looks like what I want all firemen to look like.”) He’s considered empirically manly, is my point—a quality that’s effectively juxtaposed against his knowledge of the American musical theater canon from 1945 to 1982. The female population finds the contrast attractive in much the same way they find a masculine cry attractive: He looks all at once hard but soft; tough but tender.