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

by Sara Barron

  “I’m saying, I get action,” Sam will say, “and that this action is due to knowing, for example, Hello, Dolly.”

  “That’s so not fair.”

  “No. But it is awesome.”

  Sam used his tween years to broaden his musical horizons, his macho flair to contrast cutely against his early, effeminate tastes. But I was not so lucky. If, at the age of sixteen, someone had asked me my favorite song, I would’ve said, “ ‘Last Night of the World’ from Miss Saigon,” and it was at this impressionable age, in this impressionable state of mind, that my parents forced me to get my first real job. I’d done the water-aerobics assistance thing a couple years before, but that had been only an hour a day for the sum total of twenty dollars a week. Now here I was, a young woman with international travel under her braided leather belt.

  “You can’t just sleep all day,” said my mom. “It’s depressing. Don’t you think it’s depressing?”

  “By ‘depressing,’ do you mean ‘relaxing’?” I asked.

  “I don’t,” she said. “Go get a job.”

  I did as instructed, and wound up working the to-go counter at a local restaurant called Bino’s BBQ. Bino Steinberg, owner and proprietor, was a middle-aged man who wore a golf-ball-sized Jewish star around his neck. My primary responsibility was answering his three-line phone system whenever customers called in to place an order. Additional tasks included taking the attendance of the all-Hispanic kitchen staff, filling mayonnaise containers, and keeping up appearances by wearing a plastic visor that read BINO’S BBQ: WE’RE SMOKIN’.

  There were pros and cons to my new job.

  Pros

  1. The kitchen staff was kind and welcoming, bestowing unto me a nickname: Sweaty Sara B. (pronounced SweatEEE Sara BEEE), because whenever I entered the kitchen I’d become instantly, profusely sweaty.

  2. The guy whose job it was to prep the sides—sautéed spinach, baked potatoes, etc.—who looked Hispanic, but his name, weirdly, was Olaf. Olaf had the appearance of an amateur bodybuilder insofar as his physique was so athletic, it walked the line between sexy and grotesque.

  In Olaf’s case, I felt the sexy side won out. I was therefore thrilled when he began to flirt with me about my sweating.

  “Here she is, amigos: SweatEEE Sara BEEE! Lookin’ good today, amiga. You want for me to wipe you off? For to be using my bandanna?”

  I felt an attraction between us, and eventually asked Olaf if, in light of his advances, he might not like to take me out. But Olaf just laughed and put a hand on my shoulder.

  “What? Ha! No, Sara BEEE. My SweatEEE Sara BEEE. I am being only funny. You and me, we no go out. For you, you are too sweaty. For me, I have too much wife at home.”

  Despite the romantic rejection—or, perhaps, because of the guilt it inspired—Olaf continued to shower me with attention. I, naturally, continued to love it. He called me by my nickname, he kept up with his flirting. And, yes, now I knew the flirting itself was an empty promise, but I didn’t care, really, since in addition to the flirting, Olaf took up the daily habit of sneaking me a twice-baked potato. Out of guilt or affection, I didn’t know and didn’t care. One must never look a gift horse in the mouth.

  Con

  1. One of the prominent features at Bino’s BBQ was Bino’s wife, Sharon. Sharon was angular of feature and very mean, and she’d come in every day to yell about how no one was working hard enough. The waiters were “fuckups,” the cooks were “lazy.” The specific issue with me was that I watched too much TV.

  My to-go station came equipped with a cable-connected, large-screen version, and as most of my job involved waiting for the phone to ring, I spent most of it leaned against the cash register staring at the TV screen. In any given shift, Sharon was guaranteed to wander through the to-go station and see me in a state of repose. And then she would scream, “GET OFF YOUR ELBOWS! WE’RE RUNNING LOW ON RANCH DRESSING!” or “GET OFF YOUR ELBOWS! GO WINDEX THE FRONT DOOR!”

  The thing was, though, the cable access made it worth it, enduring Sharon’s rants. As the TV at my parents’ house had only six channels, I spent my first weeks at Bino’s BBQ delighting in the vast cable array. I’d enjoy one channel, then hop caddishly on to the next. Nothing compelled me at first, for there was too much to explore.

  But then one special day, I found one special channel.

  Her name was VH1.

  Once we found each other, I could not channel surf again.

  MTV I’d heard of before, but found it rather hard—too rock—for my sadly honed tastes. But oh, VH1. She was my glass slipper of channels bestowing unto me an embarrassment of riches: Lisa Loeb, Tori Amos, Natalie Merchant. Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, the Indigo Girls … I felt as though my life up until the moment of finding these women had been but a preparatory course in learning to love them. Their lyrics were so far up my alley as to be pornographic, possessing as they did all the nuance of Bino’s golf-ball-sized Jewish star.

  They spoke to me directly:

  So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts / What’s so amazing about really deep thoughts? / Boy, you best pray that I bleed real soon / How’s that thought for you?

  That is an excerpt from a wonderful song called “Silent All These Years” by Tori Amos. A tale of a woman loved and left. I heard it for the first time when I was still a virgin, and thought, She is me. She gets me. I bet she’d really like me.

  I will call it a homecoming, my discovery of VH1 and its featured female artists. For in finding them, I felt I’d found a place where I belonged.

  I do believe Jewel said it best:

  You were meant for me / and I was meant for you.

  I REACHED A stage in my relationship with VH1 wherein I’d memorized almost all its songs. This, in turn, became the stage in which I had to sing along. It happened fast, over the course of a month. I’d do it inadvertently sometimes. The to-go station was its own little air-conditioned room set apart from both the kitchen and the larger restaurant; it shared the storefront with the restaurant, with the kitchen in the back. The layout fostered a sense of isolation and made it easy to forget I was within earshot of the staff. Having forgotten, I would belt unself-consciously along.

  Other times, though, my belting was more conscious. My hope was to be overheard and then discovered. I had this fantasy that Olaf doubled as a music executive, and that our flirtation was but a covert test to see how I would handle the attention once he made me a star. Or I’d imagine that a customer would wander in, and although he would be conservatively dressed, he would turn out to be a talent scout.

  “Hello. How do you do? I happen to be a talent scout.”

  “Really? Because you look like an insurance salesman.”

  “I know. But I am not. What I am, actually, is a talent scout, and I am looking for a girl like you. With your body type exactly. Although … Hold on: Are you open to fattening up?”

  “I am.”

  “Great. Then I’m looking for a girl like you—or fatter—to cover songs by Tori Amos.”

  ONE AFTERNOON I was leaning against the register, throwing all my energy at a sing-along to Lisa Loeb’s “Stay,” when Bino wandered in. You’d think someone with a Jewish star as big as Bino’s would have a lead-footed swagger about him. But Bino did not. He crept in silently. Gentle like the breeze, but with a hint of CK One.

  “YOU TELL ME THAT YOU WANT ME THEN … Oh. Hi Bino. Sorry. Sometimes I forget I’m not alone.”

  “No problem,” said Bino. “You sure do like to sing.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “It is?” I said.

  “It is,” he said.

  “Well … great,” I said. “But why?”

  “Because,” he said, “I’d like you as my opening act. For my night of karaoke.”

  What it wasn’t: an album of Tori Amos covers.

  What it was: some vaguely positive attention. Some recognition that my talents were deserving of a bigger “sta
ge.”

  I used the quotation marks on “stage” just then because in my turn of karaoke-kicking-off, I never—not once—saw a stage. I stood exclusively on a section of carpet. A section of green carpet, in a corner of a restaurant.

  Bino explained that his overall plan was to improve his Tuesday-night business. Tuesdays had been slow, he said, and he thought he could lure in more customers with the classic two-for-one customer bait: dinner and a show for the price of dinner alone.

  Bino considered which of his options would have the lowest overhead and decided on karaoke.

  “People will get into it eventually,” he said. “But they’ll need someone else to kick it off.”

  “Me,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “Every Tuesday, you’d do a song to get us started.”

  Just prior to this conversation with Bino I’d read an article in Seventeen magazine. It had been a profile on Claire Danes in which she discussed the degrading commercial work she’d done prior to My So-Called Life, and it had left the conveniently timed impression that every step toward glory was a step worth taking.

  If she, Claire Danes, could preach the merits of Velveeta cheese or Ford Motors, then I, Sara Barron, could be the kick-off act in a night of karaoke.

  I told Bino I would do it.

  MY DUTIES BEGAN the following Tuesday. I was nervous, but only to the point of a loose pre-show bowel movement. I had been craving an audience for ages, after all. I was mostly just excited.

  When six o’clock rolled around, Bino introduced me to his customers.

  “Hey, everyone. Hey,” Bino said. “We’ve got some fun stuff for you tonight. Good stuff. Here’s Sara. She answers the phones. She’s gonna get us started.”

  There was a smattering of applause. I took the microphone from Bino.

  “Hello,” I said.

  I then stayed silent until the opening chords of the song, which, for my first performance, was “Memory” from Cats.

  Once I’d finished singing, there was another faint smattering of applause. I did try basking in its glory; however, this was the equivalent of trying to scrub myself clean in a faint morning dew. It wasn’t bask-worthy applause, really, but I thought, Well, that’s okay. I’ve got time in which to grow.

  TUESDAY-NIGHT KARAOKE LASTED eight weeks in total, and during those eight weeks neither Bino nor I ever wavered from our opening routine. Bino would introduce me. There’d be a smattering of applause. I would say hello, and then stand in silence before the opening chords of my song. After that, I would sing.

  With each passing Tuesday, I established a more powerful carpet-corner presence. I walked toward that carpet corner with an increased level of confidence. I would swagger toward it. I would tell myself how good I was.

  You’re a star in the making. A gift to those who get to hear you sing.

  I was able to indulge these delusions in part because I’d convinced myself that wanting an audience was proof enough that I deserved one. Moreover, my audience was made up mostly of middle-aged parents, and these types, as a group, are inclined to be supportive. They were never rude or mocking. They would just avoid eye contact by staring at their plates.

  I perceived their discomfort not as discomfort at all, but as reverence. I thought that they were in awe of my talent. I thought that they’d been wowed by the boldness of the songs I chose. Ideally, these would’ve been the songs of my new lady idols, but sadly they were not. Bino’s karaoke songbook did not include my favorite songs, so I sang duets instead. I would sing them on my own. I loved the chance to play two parts: “Suddenly Seymour,” “Summer Nights,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “A Whole New World,” “I Got You, Babe,” “Opposites Attract.”

  I enjoyed the acting challenge of conveying the dual roles through the use of shifting focal points.

  The above duets were the only ones I knew well enough to do at karaoke. I ran out of options as time went on, and so at the eighth week decided to scrap the duet format entirely, as well as the karaoke machine. I decided to sing a cappella “Behind the Wall” by Tracy Chapman. Recently, I’d seen Chapman’s video for her more current song, “Matters of the Heart” on VH1. I had loved it, memorized it, and made a point of going to the library to check out her other CDs. I listened to these other CDs until they too had been memorized. My hope was that any number of her songs might be featured in the karaoke songbook. When they were not, I recalled that “Behind the Wall” off her eponymous album was done a cappella. It didn’t need a backing track. In which case, I didn’t need a backing track. I could do it on my own.

  “Behind the Wall” is a story of domestic violence: a wife abused. A police department ill adept at keeping her protected. I chose the song figuring my community would appreciate the issues being brought to light, and performed it in a style that was less song singing, than it was spoken-word poem reciting. To my carpet corner I brought a similar delivery to what you’d see years later on Russell Simmons’s Def Poetry Jam. I thought the content of the song and the style in which I performed it were not only Progressive, but Important.

  On this point, however, neither my employers nor my audience agreed.

  Usually, it was during my performance that my audience would look away. Usually, after my performance they would clap or tentatively smile. However, when I performed “Behind the Wall,” the audience didn’t look at me even once it was over. Perhaps this was because there had been no backing track to signal that it was over. Or perhaps it was because they’d felt too … inspired to look me in the eye.

  THREE DAYS FOLLOWING my “Behind the Wall” performance, Bino received a letter of complaint. It had been sent by someone who’d been there, and had cited my “insensitivity to race.”

  I knew about it only because Bino chose to tell me about it. He carried the letter with him into the to-go station and told me what it said. He told me that because of what it said, he was taking me off karaoke detail. He told me he was scrapping the night as a whole.

  “But why?” I asked. “I thought it was all going good.”

  “It wasn’t,” Bino answered. “I hoped it would, but what I realize now is that karaoke makes people eat less instead of more. Besides which, now here I am with a letter of complaint.”

  “But I don’t even get it. What was her complaint?”

  “That you were ‘acting black.’ She wrote”—and Bino grimaced—“that you were being … racist.”

  If you live in a mostly white suburb—and I lived in a mostly white suburb—you learn the lesson fast that there is no worse thing than being racist. One mentions that word, one cuts close to the bone. You learn to be defensive on the subject, and it is this defensiveness that clouds your judgment. It makes it hard to consider the validity of any racist accusation. For example: Maybe a sixteen-year-old who does a certain style of performance is in fact latently racist. Then again, if a grown adult thinks there’s such a thing as “acting black,” well then, maybe she’s the one who’s racist.

  Regardless of whether my unknown accuser had a valid point, her accusation followed by the loss of the karaoke gig had the cumulative effect of making me really depressed. When Bino left the to-go station, I made a mad dash for the employee bathroom for an impromptu clutch-’n’-sob. (In which I clutched myself. And sobbed.) “Possession” was playing on VH1 when I got back, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I just sulked through the rest of my shift, left work, and went home.

  My bad mood carried through into the next day. I arrived at Bino’s BBQ in the early afternoon only to discover that I was atypically uninterested in Olaf. He’d brought me my potato as usual, and all I’d said was, “Okay. Whatever, Olaf. Thanks.”

  Olaf looked confused.

  “Sweat-EEE Sara BEEEE,” he said. “Today you be some bitch? Why come you be some bitch?”

  Speaking of some bitch, Olaf asked me why I was being some bitch at exactly the same moment Bino’s wife, Sharon, wandered in. Sharon was in an equally bad mood. Sharon was never in a good mood rea
lly, but today’s was especially bad. Earlier in my shift, I’d heard various grumblings about something to do with the employee bathroom. Something about how someone had gone in and drawn Sharon with a penis in her ass. Something about a caption beneath the ass that read, “Tengo muchas ganas de morir.”

  This translates roughly from Spanish to English to mean, “I really want to die.”

  Sharon had discovered this drawing of herself, and now here she was mere minutes later with Olaf and me. She’d walked in on Olaf giving me a potato, and me leaning against the cash register. VH1 blared from the TV set behind us. It was one Ms. Tracy Chapman. She was “Talkin’ ’Bout a Revolution.”

  Over the several months I’d worked at Bino’s BBQ, Sharon had been successful in instilling within me a certain amount of fear. Normally when she entered the to-go station I would jump to attention to feign a modicum of respect.

  This time, though, I didn’t care and didn’t want to. This time I had been accused of being racist, I had been stripped of karaoke stardom, I had been told by Olaf not to be some bitch.

  This time, when Sharon barreled in, I stayed exactly as I was.

  “WHAT THE FUCK?!” she yelled. “YOU ALWAYS WATCH TV!”

  And that’s when I said it:

  “Fuck you.”

  I was not usually so mouthy. But I had been pushed to my limits, and Tracy Chapman was there for support. Tracy Chapman was talkin’ ’bout a revolution. And so was Sara Barron. Sara Barron—finally—had the will to take a stand.

  And, therefore, a reason to be fired.

  There was no fanfare and no time for good-byes. I said, “Fuck you,” and then Sharon shouted, “WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?” and then I shouted, “Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!” and ran straight for the door.

  I was high on fear and excitement for twenty-four hours. Then, though, I had to call work to see whether or not I was supposed to come in. I was terrified to make the call, and to disguise myself I affected a British accent. Which meant I then had to say who I was. In a British accent.