Self-Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation

by Aisha Tyler

  I laughed. Of course I wouldn’t break my arm! Why would I do that? Who likes breaking their arm? I was going to rip up the snow and destroy the mountain and generally have a killer day. I was not going to break my arm. I hated breaking limbs.

  Of course, now it was in my head, so cue the Plaster of Paris.

  I didn’t set out to break anything. I was in a great mood, the sun was out, and the house I was staying in with friends was huge and luxurious and had a hot tub and a toaster oven.4 My friend met me at the lodge, there was lots of snow on the mountain, and life was good. I rented a snowboard short enough to make up for the fact that I hadn’t ridden in a zillion years, but long enough not to make me look like a pussy. It was going to be a perfect day.

  As it was, I landed at eleven, was snowboarding by noon, and at four in the afternoon my arm was broken. Very badly.

  See what telling me not to do something does? Aargh!

  It is worth mentioning here that my oldest friend is a guy. A guy I love dearly, but a guy nonetheless. And as such, he is someone I feel competitive with and must beat at everything. Not because I need to teach him a lesson or get payback for some earlier perceived slight, but because he is a boy and I am a girl and I cannot let him be better than me at anything other than having a deep voice and peeing standing up.5 I love him, and he is better than me at lots of things: computers, knowing things about sports, memorizing old-school hip-hop lyrics, making the shape of a vagina with his thumbs and forefingers, and being dourly sarcastic. He is definitely a way better snowboarder than I am. But I will never, ever tell him that.

  Ever.

  On this day, I had not ridden in a very long time, and it was very important to me to be as good as the last time we rode together, and maybe better, because I was older, and people are supposed to improve at stuff as they get older, right? But my friend rode faster than me from the very beginning, because he had gotten better as he had gotten older, while I had gotten soft and puddinglike, which made me mad, so I sped up to keep pace. The faster I rode, the more afraid I was that I might fall and mess up my face,6 which made me even angrier at myself for being so girly, which made me ride even faster. Soon I was riding a bit out of control, which scared me, but also made me happy, because I like feeling a little scared, and also because it made me look like a badass, and freaked out all the rich white people who were already a bit confused at seeing a giant black girl go screaming by on a snowboard.

  I was rocking people’s world—or so I thought, as I went whizzing down the mountain about to pee myself in terror. I was ripping it up.

  At the bottom of a particularly long and harrowing run, we came to a stop at a line for another lift that would take us to another part of the mountain. My friend had stopped before me, because he was always getting to the bottom before me, because he was faster than me and wanted to rub my nose in it like a naughty dog.7 And I came to a screeching halt right next to him, to show him I meant business and that the only reason I was riding more slowly was because my board was a rental so I couldn’t really turn on the afterburners. As I did, I realized that my braking abilities had decayed significantly in the more than four years since I had ridden last, and I wasn’t going to stop fast enough, and I was going to crash into him.

  But crash hardcore. Because I’m fucking hardcore.

  I actually didn’t crash into him. I stopped like two inches in front of him, and then I crashed across him. I fell over his board, and I realized if I put my hands down to break my fall, they would hit the metallic blade-like edges of his snowboard, and I would sever all my fingers at the palm, and make a really big bloody mess for the mountain patrol to clean up, and ruin my mittens.

  So instead, I put my hands out, on the other side of his board, so that I would not cut off my fingers, and so that I could fall in the most painful and awkward way possible, which is what I did.

  I felt fine when I stood up, after I swallowed a big bolus of embarrassment about falling in the lift line, and then swallowed a big rash of shit from him about falling at all. But my arm felt funny. Crunchy. Clacky. Maraca-like. I complained. He told me to stop being such a pussy, and I told him to go fuck himself, because this is how we talk to each other.8 And I got back on the lift and rode back up to the top and took another four screeching runs down the mountain.

  During which I fell on the same arm three more times.

  Because when I fuck something up, I fuck it up but good. I fucking mean it.

  At this point, my arm was starting to act funny, like pointing in the wrong direction funny, and going all numb and wonky and feeling like the arm of a dead person. This is when I called it. Yes, it took me until my arm felt cadaverous to decide it was time to stop snowboarding. I am bullheaded and obstinate, but I am also willful and slow to admit defeat. So I have all that going for me.

  When I went to the mountain doctor, he told me what I had suspected after the second fall: I had broken my arm spectacularly. Lots of little pieces were rolling around in there, alongside a few bigger chunks—the x-ray of my elbow looked like a bag of calciferous marbles. I was pissed, a bit at my friend for making me so competitive, and a bit at my husband for telling me not to do what he knew I would be powerless not to do once I heard it. And, of course, I was mad at myself, for being such a blazing idiot.

  But only a little, because of course this was all other people’s fault.

  I spent the rest of Sundance that year with my arm in a sling. They couldn’t cast my arm, because if you cast an elbow, apparently it fuses in place and never bends again, and you’re forced to lean casually against walls and bars everywhere so that your bent arm looks like a jaunty pose and not the terrible result of your reckless life choices. I refused drugs because I hate drugs and also because drugs make you say stupid things and I need absolutely no help doing that, thank you very much. And while my plan was to control my pain via alcoholic beverages, this was the most poorly conceived strategy ever, because I could never drink fast enough to get ahead of the pain, and so was both boozy and pissy the entire trip, partly because I was drunk, partly because my arm killed, and mostly because I had broken my right elbow and so couldn’t zip up my pants and was always holding in all the pee I had made trying to drink the pain in my elbow away. And I was a huge party pooper for all my friends who just wanted to drink all night and sploosh around in the hot tub and eat toasted bread in the morning slathered in butter, while all I wanted to do was moan gutturally while wandering around the house like a phantom, muttering about snowboarding and brittle bones and being hardcore.

  I was a fistful of hot, wet, ouchy mess.

  After Sundance, I had to spend two weeks on a book tour, during which I had to sign books with my left hand because I had broken my writing hand. Hundreds of people have the signature of one “Asa Tyr” in their books, as that was the best I could manage. Occasionally people just got a giant “A,” or an X, or a few well-placed salty tears after they grabbed my broken arm without knowing it was broken (it not having a cast ’cause of the fusing and all) and squeezed it like I owed them money.

  Was my life ruined? Not even close. I still snowboard, and I still love my friend, and my elbow healed like new,9 and life went on. It was only hugely inconvenient that I did the exact thing I was told not to do, and thank god it was only my elbow.

  But it did teach me that I needed to find a way not to be so defiant of others, or of safety, or the universe in general, and that maybe it was time to slow down a bit, and not try to prove how badass I was to absolutely everyone all the time.

  Of course, I only learned that for a little while. I went right back to the old Aisha as soon as my elbow healed. Because apparently, I will not do even what I tell myself to do.

  I never listen.

  ( 30 )

  The Time I Broke My Foot, Alone, in a Hotel Room

  “You can’t patch a wounded soul with a Band-Aid.”—MICHAEL CONNELLY

  “You can’t fix a broken toe with Scotch tape.”—AISHA TYLER />
  Just to prove that I do not need others, or a high-speed athletic activity, or obstacles, or any reason at all to self-injure, I offer this anecdote.

  I was in Miami for a photo shoot,1 one for which I was very anxious, because it was going to be me and a bunch of models, and they would all be models, and of course, I would be me. The thing most people do not realize about models is that when they are all together, they look normal. Thin, yes, but not as abnormally thin as they actually are, because contextually they are thrown next to other crazy-thin people and other things that resemble them, like light posts, palm tree trunks, and drinking straws. So compared to those things, they just look slender and fit, like they decided to hit the treadmill or cut out gluten or something.

  But! Put them next to someone who is of a normal weight, and eats dairy, and loves gluten like she birthed it from her womb, and something very different happens. The models all look thin, and the normal-sized person looks as if she has some kind of glandular illness that has made her puff up like a manatee. I’m not saying this is what I was worried about in regards to this particular shoot, I’m just saying this is what was shaking me awake in a cold sweat every night for weeks on end in the months leading up to the photo shoot. Those fucking models and their fucking oppressive skinniness.

  Don’t get me wrong. I love my body. I have a very generous sense of self-worth, and I believe in being healthy. I like to promote responsible and realistic standards of beauty, not terrible and totally unattainable standards that most people cannot meet, male or female, even if they never ingested solid food again, and had their bottom two ribs removed by a wild-eyed surgeon wielding a bone saw and a tapeworm. These model people are tiny. They could be used as an example of developing-world malnourishment, if people in the developing world could afford to live on yogurt, cocaine, and organic fair-trade pesticide-free roll-your-own cigarettes.

  You might think I’m being catty, but I am talking about the dudes. I actually had one of the guys on this shoot—who had slender little legs and a waist so small that two pairs of his pants could have been sewn together to make a single pair of very depressing chinos for me—tell me my build was “athletic.” Which I took as a very nice, very modern way of saying, “Wow, you disgust me.” I suppose I should have appreciated the effort.

  I had tried to diet in the most responsible way in the weeks between when I was asked to participate in this shoot and when it happened. I did not starve myself. I made sure my meals were balanced. I worked out, but not to the point of self-destruction. I was reasonable.

  And I was fucking starving. I don’t know how people diet. As it is, all I think about is food, all the time—when I am working, when I am driving, when I am on the toilet.2 And when I am trying to diet, my food obsessing goes from a low background hum to a deafening foreground rumble. I watch the Food Network while I am on the treadmill. I look at pictures of layer cakes made out of meatloaf on the Internet in bed before falling asleep. I make a comprehensive and thorough mental accounting of every single time I have eaten ice cream, and try my hardest not to touch myself. When I am dieting, I am completely unhinged.

  So I struggled through this period of dietary restriction and borderline madness because these photos would be committed to the annals of history forever, and I did not want to be the homely bystander who had wandered accidentally into a faerie wonderland of beautiful sylphs, then plopped to her haunches to watch the goings-on, wobbly jowls agape. I wanted to at least kind of look like I belonged. And I was miserable. I hated everyone and everything.

  But when I finally made it to the shoot, I felt marginally confident. The photographer was brilliant, the shoot concept was great, and the model I spent most of my time with was sweet and smart and didn’t make me feel galumphy or plump at all. It was a great day.

  And when I got back to my hotel room I felt an incredible sense of relief, and accomplishment,3 and I congratulated myself on all my hard work and discipline, and on how focused I had been on my goals. And then I ordered a giant cheeseburger, fries, three chocolate chip cookies, and a bottle of red wine, and ate it all like the world was coming to an end and the eye of the apocalypse was Miami Beach.4

  I pushed things into my mouth with index fingers, and wolfed things down without chewing, stopping only every few minutes or so to gasp for some much needed but entirely uninteresting air. I finished it. All of it. And then I wandered around the room barefoot, rubbing my shiny, grease-slicked tummy with a sticky hand, and drinking the rest of the red wine straight from the bottle.

  There is something about the relief of a stressful experience being over, about the release of anxiety from the body, that is at once highly energizing and entirely discombobulating. The endorphins released when your brain finally realizes “holy mother of Mabel, thank god that shit is done” act as both relaxant and accelerant. Suddenly the world opens up to you. All things are possible. You are light as a feather and sharp as glass. You see all. You know all. You can do all . . .

  Except navigate a simple hotel room without walking your big drunk ass at stride velocity into the corner of the king-sized platform bed. Which is what I did, bottle of wine in one hand, third chocolate chip cookie in the other, phone pressed between ear and shoulder, as I attempted to pack. Even then, with both hands full, a mouthful of cheap Garnacha, and my shoulder contorted into a phone cradle, I should have known better. I can barely avoid injury when all my limbs are unfettered and I am stone-cold sober. Why I thought I could manage a hotel room in my state of decreased capacity I will never know. Hope springs eternal from the bottom of a cheap wine bottle.

  I knew right away that I hadn’t just stubbed a pinky toe. I had really broken my shit. My index and bird toe5 had gone from vertical to an unseemly and alarming l-shape, accompanied by a spreading bruise and a metallic smell that I later realized was the scent my body makes when I have just experienced “what the shit.” My toes killed. They were tiny, but they were also really fucking broken and radiating pain that made me forget my own name.

  I was alone, and injured, and pretty drunk, and I had to leave for the airport in twenty minutes.

  A trip to the emergency room was out of the question. I wanted to go home, and what’s more, I had to go home, because the magazine had paid for the hotel room and the flight and I was pretty sure that, much like the boys I dated in college, now that they’d gotten what they wanted from me they would not be interested in laying out any additional money. I had to rally. I wiped away the tears and cookie crumbs and called the front desk. I asked for ice, ibuprofen, and medical tape. The front desk brought me ice, ibuprofen, and wondered if Scotch tape would do. I let them know that this would not do at all, in any way. They scrounged around and found medical tape, that I am sure one of those skinny models with the perfectly unbroken toes had used to tape their mouths shut to prevent themselves from eating food or feeling feelings.

  And then I, biting down on a washcloth, pulled my toes into a shape more or less resembling their former selves, and, remembering from my Internet wanderings that you cannot put casts on toes,6 taped the offending digits to their neighbors, pounded the last of that wine, put on some flip-flops, and left for the airport.

  My foot felt terrible the entire way back. On the rattling ride through the airport on a rickety airline wheelchair;7 on the altitudinous cross-country flight, my throbbing foot jutting into the aisle, where it was tripped over repeatedly by flight attendants, passengers who had to pee, and one really annoying little kid; and all the way home from the airport in the car, which was really the most comfortable part of the trip but by that time I was just pissed, as I had fully sobered up and even had a twee hangover. But I bit down and sucked it up, because as usual I had no one to blame but my big dumb self.

  When I got home, the podiatrist actually remarked on what a good job I had done immobilizing my toes, and that he couldn’t have done any better. Cold fucking comfort, Dr. Bones.

  And I learned that dieting is evil, and it is b
etter to live a life of moderation, where you have a little something delicious every day, rather than saving up for weeks on end for one explosive food orgy where you might make yourself sick, undo all the hard work you have accomplished, and in all probability break a digit. Or two.

  I will say that while I won’t win any awards for being lithe, graceful or having functional motor skills, if the world ever comes to an end, I would be a killer triage medic. With tape, ice, Neosporin, and a cookie, I can fix almost anything.

  Bring on the zombie apocalypse.

  ( 31 )

  The Time I Fell Asleep on the Patio Furniture at a Birthday Party

  “Wounds are an essential part of life, and until you are wounded in some way, you cannot become a man.”—PAUL AUSTER

  “I’m really not interested in being a man.”—AISHA TYLER

  The person who passes out at a party is a very specific creature. They are someone for whom time and space have slowed, and the rules of comportment in a group setting no longer apply. They have set aside all pride or dignity in favor of something much more pressing: the sweet, sweet oblivion of sleep.

  I used to make fun of this person. Point, mock, place their hand in a bowl of warm water, cover them in shaving cream, and perch a teacup poodle wearing a sweater vest precariously upon their chest, before taking one million cell phone pictures. They had brought this embarrassment upon themselves, and there was naught to do but teach them a lesson. I was crass and merciless.

  Until it happened to me.

  You may remember the term “walk of shame” from your time in college, or your twenties, or last week. But you have not experienced a true walk of shame until you have fallen asleep mid-party and awoken at sunrise, birds singing as if it is the dawn of creation itself, and someone has tucked a knit blanket around your knees and put on soothing house music, which made you dream you were at a rave dancing with a very hot guy with very scratchy legs all night long. And you are not in college, young lady. You are a grownup with a mortgage and a job and mutual funds and a car note, and you have absolutely no excuse.