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

by Sara Barron

  To this, I replied, “Oh. I’m sorry. A sandwich? May I have a sandwich?”

  He of the Jacket of Jean sighed the exasperated sigh of those forced into repetition. “Yes,” he said. “So: Sheep? Lamb? Goat?”

  I settled on lamb and sweetened, dehydrated beans in lieu of my apple turnover. I gazed out the deli window at a row of squat apartments, and told myself that this new and foreign culture would more than make up for the less than scenic surroundings.

  My new Astoria apartment provided me with a new Astoria roommate, a young man named Roy. Roy, like Jan, I found on Craigslist. He worked for the New York City Fire Department, and the fact of his employment struck me as odd at first because Roy was emaciated. I’m talking, like, he had one of those physiques you want to lay across your knee and snap in two, and use as chopsticks. Further inquiry would eventually reveal he was not, in fact, a fireman, he simply worked for the Fire Department. And although I would remain forever unsure of his job title, Roy’s firehouse responsibilities seemed to categorize as either secretarial or what-a-cleaning-man-does; he did something with phones, I think, a bit of picking up about the place, a bit of cooking.

  “I cook,” he’d say. “For the guys. Casseroles and stuff. With peas. Maybe chicken. That’s what they like.”

  Roy and I didn’t do a lot of talking. His work schedule was such that he spent half the week—twenty-four hours a day for three days straight—at the Kew Gardens firehouse so as to have the following three days off, three days he’d log locked in his bedroom, acting alcoholic. During his three-day stints at home, Roy would engage in certain habitual behaviors. Roy would:

  1. Bring a six-pack into the bedroom.

  2. Watch the TV in the bedroom.

  3. Come out of the bedroom only to urinate, recycle, or restock.

  This may sound bleak, and in theory, it was. However, in practice it meant I had the rest of the apartment to myself. And there was nothing bleak about that. On the contrary, I recall those first months with Roy as an idyllic period in my life. It felt like living alone, save for the asking price of being made aware of someone else’s taste for self-destruction.

  The joys of a quiet alcoholic roommate are too numerous to count. Therefore, I’ll focus only on the one that’s most important: I had control of the living room TV. I celebrated by watching it obsessively, like it was some crippled, dying animal that needed my attention to survive. Hours a day I worked to bolster my knowledge of everything from Tim Gunn’s sex abstention to Tyra Banks’s wig collection. From Jonathan Antin’s water-purification system to the vast array of women who don’t know they’re pregnant until they have a baby in their jeans.

  One evening I stumbled upon a show I had heard about, but never seen. It was called The Sopranos, and it was a rerun episode in which a character named Carmela sobs in a therapist’s office after being forced to confront her husband’s moral code.

  Carmela: But Tony’s a good man. He’s a good father.

  Therapist: You tell me he’s a depressed criminal prone to anger, serially unfaithful. Is that your definition of a good man?

  If an obsession can be born in an instant, then my obsession with The Sopranos did just exactly that. I loved everything about it: James Gandolfini, Edie Falco. The presentation of therapy as brave instead of self-involved. My attraction to John Ventimiglia.

  I saw The Sopranos for the first time and joined Netflix immediately after for the sole purpose of watching every episode sequentially.

  From that point on, the structure of my average day included eight hours of sleep, eight hours of waiting tables, and four hours of watching or rewatching The Sopranos. The remaining four hours were spent showering, eating, commuting, and so on, but it’s important to note that throughout those remaining hours, I thought about The Sopranos. I thought about the character relationships. I thought about mob culture in general. I thought about how nice it would be to have a lot of cousins. I thought about David Chase’s own personal therapy sessions, and also about the physical and emotional experience that would be hugging Tony Soprano. At a certain stage, I grew fearful of becoming a civilian casualty in a mafia-related crime, and became all at once admiring and scared of anyone I met who looked Italian American.

  I wondered if this was potentially racist, but then I thought, Nah. I’m white. They’re white. It’s totally fine.

  OVER TIME, MY Sopranos obsession had a dramatic effect. It left me with the sense that the Sopranos were real, that the mafia was everywhere. I might wind up unwittingly involved if I wasn’t careful, and while this would be good insofar as I liked feeling protected, it would be bad insofar as I didn’t want to die. Perhaps Roy, as my roommate, could have been my grounding influence. But his unobtrusive drinking kept him otherwise engaged.

  One day Roy arrived home from work earlier than usual. His doing so prompted an atypically lengthy exchange.

  Me: Oh, hi.

  Roy: Hi.

  Me: How come you’re home?

  Roy: I was fired.

  Me: What? Really?

  Roy: Yes.

  Me: Wow. I’m sorry.

  Roy: Thanks. (A pause.) I guess I’ll make dinner. You want some? You like a casserole?

  Me: What kind of casserole?

  Roy: Chicken casserole. I’ll throw in some Del Monte peas.

  Roy made the casserole, we ate the casserole, and I am here to tell you that it was the worst thing I’ve ever eaten in my whole entire life. It tasted as though he’d thrown a gallon of week-old water onto a masticated, chicken-stuffed croissant. It was so disgusting that I gagged. I hadn’t wanted to, but the reaction was not to be stopped.

  Roy was drunk at this stage, and offended by my gagging.

  “Jesus!” he screamed. “You are welcome! For your dinner!”

  “Roy,” I choked, and made up a story about being allergic to peas. “And when you said ‘peas,’ I thought you said ‘cheese’!” I lied. “And that is why I gagged! Please don’t be offended!”

  Roy slammed down his beer can. He did this thing I’d seen in The Sopranos called “getting up in someone’s face.”

  “Don’t treat me like I’m dumb,” he said.

  “What?!” I yelled. “I don’t!”

  But Roy had already stormed out of the kitchen, down our meager hallway, and out toward our front door.

  The apartment was quiet now, save for the half-dozen beer cans that stirred in his wake. I took the moment of quasi-silence to reflect on this first occasion of having someone up and in my face. It had been scary and threatening, but if the upshot was that I no longer felt pressured to eat the Del Monte casserole, then fine.

  I debated wrapping the casserole in Saran wrap and putting it back in the refrigerator. But then I thought, No, Roy. You should not have gotten up and in my face. I will not reward such bad behavior by graciously preserving a casserole.

  So I left the casserole out, exposed, atop the kitchen counter.

  After that, I watched The Sopranos.

  After that, I went to bed.

  BY THE FOLLOWING morning, Roy still had not returned. I did not feel nervous in his absence. I rather enjoyed the luxury of having the place so fully to myself. I fluttered about. I whistled The Sopranos theme song. I imagined that if e’er I lived alone I’d keep a vase of flowers here, set a pedicure station up there.

  I sipped my morning coffee. I gazed out the kitchen window at the car wash across the street.

  And then I heard the noise.

  It sounded very much like intercourse.

  It came from behind Roy’s bedroom door.

  So. He is home, I thought. He is home. And he is having intercourse.

  I debated whether to masturbate along, but decided instead to drown it out with an a.m. episode of The Sopranos, the one in which Janet Soprano steals Svetlana’s wooden leg.

  I watched half the episode before the noise stopped, and Roy’s bedroom door swung open. A woman emerged who looked exactly like Snooki Polizzi. Mind you, this was
before Snooki Polizzi blasted into public consciousness, so I didn’t see this woman and think, She looks exactly like Snooki Polizzi. Rather, the revelation came years later. I’d be watching Jersey Shore, see Snooki, and think: Wow. She and Gina are THE SAME.

  “This is Gina,” Roy said, and this new woman, Gina, responded by slapping her hand against Roy’s chest.

  “Whatta man,” she sang to no one in particular. “Whatta man, whatta man, whatta man, whatta man, whatta mighty good maaaaaaaaan.”

  Gina, I gathered, was in her clothing from the night before: jeans and a mesh-lace halter top, as well as one of those bracelet/ring combinations that clamps onto the wrist, snakes up to the finger, and into a gargoyle ring. Accessory-wise, it’s two for the price of one. Two for the price of looking like you belong at New York City’s most repulsive rave. And, I’m sorry, but were we at a rave? No. We were standing in my kitchen.

  The first thing I thought to consider was whether Gina was a one-night stand or a previously unseen girlfriend. Or a one-night-stand who would become a much-seen girlfriend. Instinct told me Gina was a one-night-stand who would become a much-seen girlfriend, because, as previously demonstrated, I have a bizarre and hugely annoying habit of attracting people who slip into relationships like they’re slipping on a pair of well-worn jeans.

  The second thing I thought to consider was whether Gina might have mafia connections. Because, well, she did seem as Italian American as any human could. I was both excited and terrified by the idea, and made a promise to myself that come hell or more audible sex with my roommate, I would work to stay on Gina’s good side. I would not piss Gina off.

  “Well! Hello, Gina!” I said, just as warmly as I could. “It’s really nice to meet you! Would you like some pro-SHOOT? Or perhaps some ri-GOT?”

  Gina grimaced.

  “Nah,” she said. “I’ll just have cereal or whatevah. It’s too early for pro-SHOOT.”

  “Totally,” I said. “I’ll just fuhgeddaboudit then.”

  GINA, LIKE TOMAS, appeared one day, and then just pretty much moved in. I thought things could go differently between us, however; that in the case of Gina and me, the deference I showered upon her would preemptively put her in a headspace to be kind and respectful toward me. But as the days and weeks progressed, it seemed rather that Gina wanted to challenge my deference by being annoying. Her personal habits included nicknaming Roy’s forearms her “nibble sticks,” as well as making frequent reference to her levels of vaginal moisture. When I asked her how she and Roy had met, she’d said, “I’ll tell ya. I was atta bar, and I sawr him, and I said to my girl, Adriana, ‘Oh my gawd, Adriana, check him out. Get me a paper towel now.’ And Adriana was like, ‘Why?’ And I was like, ‘Because: My snatch is floodin’, bitch! I wet my seat! I need to wipe!’ ”

  My main point of interest here was not Gina’s physical response to the emaciated Roy. It was rather that Gina had a close friend named Adriana. Which, I’ll remind you, is the name of Chris Moltisanti’s ill-fated fiancée who (spoiler alert) IS KILLED BY THE MAFIA CAPTAIN WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE HER FRIEND.

  Hello.

  I had become the kind of person who cannot separate the characters in her favorite daytime soap from the real-life actors who play them on TV. When Gina said “my girl, Adriana,” what I heard was “I have a friend who’s engaged to the protégé of the head of the New Jersey family.”

  In which case:

  1. Gina, Roy’s girlfriend, was two degrees removed from the New Jersey mafia.

  And also:

  2. I, Sara Barron, was three degrees removed from the New Jersey mafia.

  In light of points 1 and 2 above, I considered how at any second of any day I might find myself in the inconvenient path of a stray bullet. Civilians who move near those mafia circles can be harmed in this way, and so did I consider whether to treat myself to a bulletproof vest.

  Gina went, “My girl, Adriana …”

  And I went, Maybe I need a bulletproof vest.

  I considered it. Not a lot, but a little. Eventually, though, I realized I was jumping to conclusions, and that the money I’d put toward a bulletproof vest could be used to more practical effect if I put it toward sanitary wipes instread. In light of Gina’s excitable vagina, I figured they’d be good to have around.

  Gina discussed her vagina nonstop. Everything was “my snatch” this and “my snatch” that.

  “My snatch gets swamp damp when I see my boyfriend.”

  “My snatch is a horny jellyfish.”

  “My snatch is wet ’n’ wild. LIKE THE LIP GLOSS!”

  Now, I am nothing if not a woman who loves a little vaginal comparison now and again. But it was just too much when combined with Gina’s other affections: vanilla-scented Yankee candles, as well as a Jessica Simpson home spray called Fancy Nights. The candles were always burning, and as for the home spray, anytime anyone made a bowel movement—or rather, any time Gina thought she smelled a bowel movement—she would shout the phrase “Fancy Nights! Fancy Nights!” and grab the spray, and spray it everywhere within ten feet of the toilet.

  I felt about this behavior as I felt about the vaginal comparison: enjoyable in the right circumstance, and from the right person. But a woman living rent-free in my apartment is neither. Not when she has a boyfriend and I myself do not. Under this particular circumstance I am destined to be less receptive. I’ll hear her Fancy Nights turd alarm and become thoroughly annoyed.

  I AM HAPPY to tell you that things did turn around eventually between Gina and me, and that I owe that turnaround to the excessive length of Gina’s vagina.

  Yes. The excessive length of Gina’s vagina.

  Six months into Gina’s relationship with Roy—which, then, was six months into Roy’s stint of unemployment—Roy was busy drinking in his bedroom, while Gina and I sat chatting in the kitchen. We’d been discussing those more scenic sections of Weehawken, New Jersey, when suddenly a light snow began to fall. In response, Gina shouted “HOLY SHIT! SNOW!” and then tried hoisting herself onto the kitchen table—it sat right beside a window—in the hope of getting a better view. However, her jeans were too tight to allow her to do so, and so she removed them, as you do. She took off her jeans and was therefore in only the snuggest of underpants when she succeeded in getting herself up there on that table. Gina perched there, squatting froglike, watching snow.

  The view from behind was astounding. Just … astounding. A large tongue, was what it looked like, sandwiched by a puffy bun. I have to admit that I loved it, and by this I mean that I loved the experience of seeing it. What with my limited real-life lesbian experience as well as my general pornography aversion, it was the first occasion wherein I’d struck that delicate balance between distance and proximity—in other words, the balance one needs to get a proper look. When finally I did, I was delighted. For I thought, Well, I might be hefty of neck, waist, and ankle, but at least that’s not happening. Then it occurred to me that maybe it was happening, it was just that I didn’t know it was happening since I don’t ever see myself from that particular angle.

  Ultimately, though, I abandoned that line of thinking, and that is because occasionally—and for reasons unknown—I manage effective steps toward self-preservation. Sometimes I think, Sara, you don’t need a bulletproof vest just because you live with an Italian girl who has a friend named Adriana. Or, Sara, let it go. Your vagina length is perfect.

  The knowledge of the long vagina did a lot to improve my relationship with Gina. It provided me with a much-appreciated bump to my self-esteem and, as we all know, a person who makes us feel good about ourselves is a person we enjoy. Furthermore, it helped to humanize Gina. This was the natural side effect of seeing her in so raw and vulnerable a state. Something shook loose in my head, and I got it. I was like, Oh. Gina’s not some scary mafioso. She’s just a nice girl, with a long vagina.

  I felt less afraid and was therefore able to be more direct. So when, for example, Gina started hand-washing her underpants and hangi
ng them to dry on the shower rod, and when this particular action resulted in water dripping on my person from the crotch areas of Gina’s underpants whenever I entered or exited the shower, I was empowered to say something about it rather than cower in fear. I said, “Hey, Gina. Can you do me a favor and hang your underpants somewhere else after you wash them?” and Gina answered, “Huh? Oh. Sure,” and started laying the underpants across the kitchen chairs instead. It wasn’t the optimal location, but the point is that we were communicating, and that that communication was helping our relationship.

  The same could not be said for Roy and Gina. Their honeymoon period was over by this stage, and the sound of their intercourse had been replaced with the sound of inebriated attempts at conversation.

  “I wanted a cone.”

  “What? I don’t know you.”

  “You know me, baby!”

  “Fuck it. Want a sandwich?”

  “What? No! I wanted a cone. Ice cream is fun in a cone.”

  Most of the time, these exchanges would start out drunk and relating in some way to food, before devolving into something hostile, and relating in some way to money. Gina was angry because she’d lent Roy an indiscernible amount and he had failed to pay her back. He also drank too much, although I’m paraphrasing by writing it that way. What Gina said exactly was, “Roy! Ya’ too drunk! Ya’ don’t take the snatch no more! Just take it! Be like, ‘Who’s your boss, bitch? Roy’s your boss!’ ”

  I myself had overheard this particular argument countless times, and had taken it upon myself to devise a solution. The old me might’ve warned Roy that an unpaid debt to an Italian was a really bad idea, but the new me was direct with those around her, and not at all beholden to Italian American stereotypes. The new me had mature solutions, and wondered whether Gina, who was living with Roy and me full-time, should perhaps forgive the debt as repayment for the previous months’ rent. More to the point, I wondered whether she should pay rent moving forward.