Once I Was Cool

by Megan Stielstra

  Research!

  I was so totally a writer!

  •

  In the second hour, my hands and feet are, predictably, wrinkled. The water is cold and draining slowly, down from neck-level to just below my breasts. More than anything, though, I’m bored. Usually, when I take baths to relax, I either read or precariously prop my laptop on the toilet to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Netflix. But this here in the bathtub, this is not relaxation; this is research! Serious research! I’m experiencing what Eliza experienced, feeling what she felt, living what she lived! That’s what I tell myself, at least. The reality is that I’m safe at home in my bathtub and can get out anytime I want. In order to really experience what Eliza experienced, I’d have to enter a situation in which I also feel trapped.

  I’m fascinated by writers who engage experientially in research. I admire their commitment and worry for their safety. I think they’re profoundly courageous and batshit crazy. Whenever I bring this up, someone asks if I’m talking about Hunter S. Thompson—the drugs, the Hell’s Angels—but my personal case-in-point is far less well known. In fact, I have no idea if he ever published anything.

  Again, the gist: I was at a techno club—black lights, strobe lights, relentless beat—and some guy asked if he could buy me a drink. I was a first-year philosophy major (don’t ask) with a newly purchased fake ID. It was my first time in a real grown-up bar. I ordered an Amaretto Stone Sour, and as I took the first sip, he asked if he could be my slave for a week.

  I asked him to please repeat the question.

  “Can I be your slave?” he said, and then, in response to the look on my face, “I’m a writer. I’m writing a collection of essays. In each one I’m someone’s slave for a week, and I write about what they make me do.”

  “What do they make you do?” I asked—and yes, I know, I was gullible as all hell, and probably he was lying through his teeth, but who cared. It was the best, craziest, most awful story my eighteen-year-old self had ever heard. One woman prostituted him to her gay friends and kept the money. Another made him clean her house wearing only a saddle. A suburban couple filmed him setting himself on fire. “They made me pour lighter fluid in my hair,” he said, “like it was shampoo or something.”

  “Why do you do all this stuff?” I asked, aghast. “Why not just imagine it?”

  “You mean like fiction?” he said, like it was a bad word. “People don’t want fiction. They want the truth—the blood and guts and piss and shit.”

  I didn’t have the wherewithal to tell him how, for me, fiction is truth. I hadn’t yet lived enough, read enough, or dealt with enough writers in bars to be able to explain how a story—when it’s done right—can help you find yourself in others, share realities that can’t possibly be real, and show a person or people a world that you never before imagined. Blood and guts and piss and shit? Sure, but joy and courage and hope and understanding, too.

  The kicker is the when it’s done right.

  Which is why I was sitting in the fucking bathtub.

  •

  In the third hour, the water has drained below my hips, and my knuckles and the soles of my feet are cracked like spider-webbed glass. My dad is a fisherman in Alaska now, and I think of the dead fish he pulls from the water, bloated and eerie blue. I think of all he taught me about appropriate wilderness behavior back when I was growing up in Michigan: camping and hunter safety and taking the canoe over waterfalls on the Shiawasee River. If he saw me now, sitting in this icy water for no discernible reason, he’d think I’d lost it entirely.

  “It’s for a story,” I’d tell him.

  He’d try hard to be sensitive; he’s a big reader. Although one time he got pissed at Tom Wolfe for making a character go quail hunting with buckshot. “Does it have to be five hours?” he’d ask, rational and reasonable. “Can it maybe happen quicker?”

  Could it? I thought of when the Eliza story actually happened to me, some two decades ago around my sixteenth birthday. The day was so beautiful, the water warm. I floated on my back, listening to my own breath underwater—in and out, in and out—and then suddenly they were there. First, just one, and then he called for the rest: six, maybe? Seven? They all stood at the edge of jagged rock, looking down at me, trapped in a fishbowl below them. Instinctively, I locked myself into a ball and moved towards shallow water—low enough so I could stand, but still high enough to shield how naked I was. God, the shame! When you’re sixteen! I’ve had so many relationships with my body; it’s been a source of power, hatred, pride, life, but that day in the quarry was the first time I'd felt shame.

  How much time passed that day? Truly, I don’t remember. It could have been five minutes; it could have been five hours.

  “Stand up,” they yelled. “We just want to see!”

  “Stand up. We’re not gonna do anything to you!”

  “Are you fucking deaf? Stand up!”

  But I didn’t. I was frozen. I was terrified. I was ashamed. It was so much bigger than five minutes.

  But five hours?

  After five hours, I’d surely remember the water growing cold. My feet, split and cracked. My skin, blue like fish. Wouldn’t I remember?

  •

  In the fourth hour, I panic. The tub is nearly drained and my face is puffy. My hands are swollen, my body heavy like a wet blanket. I’m remembering bits and pieces of biology lectures, articles from Scientific American, and things Dad said on the boat out in the ocean, where being smart might mean your life. What had he said about hypothermia? Didn’t I read something about trench foot? Muscle atrophy—what was that? And didn’t David Blaine do this, and his skin like peeled off?

  This is stupid, I decide. Even for me, and I’ve done some stupid shit; I did acid one time at the opera. And now I’m counting down the minutes, shivering in an empty bathtub? A bathtub! It’s not even the right kind of water! Eliza’s quarry is full of organisms! Minerals! The setting sun changes the water temperature! She is thirteen-years-old; I am thirty-five, and sixteen, too. All of us were in that quarry. The story changes with every telling, and—like Tim O’Brien being unable to remember the smell of the mud in Vietnam—I can’t for the life of me remember what happened to my skin that day in the quarry.

  •

  By the fifth hour, I’ve given up. I’m on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. My body is too heavy, my head too light. I feel better after the first hot water and bourbon. Better after the second. And the third.

  After a while, I get my laptop and Google “Being underwater for long periods of time.”

  THE WALLS WOULD BE RUBBLE

  I JUST PEED ON THE STICK, and now I have to wait three minutes.

  It’s seven twenty-five and fourteen seconds and, according to the instructions on the box, in three minutes either a plus sign or a minus sign will appear in the little window, which means by seven-twenty eight and fourteen seconds, I’ll know if my entire life just changed.

  Funny how time plays tricks on you; one second I’m a freshman at a nice East Coast university with my nice Midwestern boyfriend, and then—

  I get a scholarship to study in Italy, and suddenly I’m here in Florence, meeting people from all over the world, looking at art that’s a million years old until—

  I get back to the pensione late one night, and there’s the nice Midwestern boyfriend, sitting on the steps with a backpack and a flower. “I crossed the ocean for you,” he said. It was really, really perfect.

  Except a few months later, I’m sitting in a bathroom stall in an eight-dollar-a-night hostel; the kind with fifty bunk beds in a single room and a bathroom like some high school gym: row of sinks, row of showers, row of stalls. I locked myself in the last one, up against the wall, and peed on the stick.

  Now all there is to do is wait.

  Seven twenty-six and five seconds.

  Seven twenty-six and ten seconds.

  It smells in here—fifteen. The florescent lights are buzzin
g—twenty. From the hall, I can hear voices, but I don’t recognize the language—twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight—and never in my life have I felt this alone.

  Seven twenty-six and thirty seconds.

  I don’t even know how to find an English-speaking doctor—forty, forty-one, forty-two—let alone get it taken care of—forty-four, forty-five, forty-six. Can you even do that in a Catholic country?

  And I realize that keeping it never once entered my head.

  Seven twenty-seven.

  I got the pregnancy test from Janine, this girl from class who’d brought a ten-pack in her suitcase. “It’s Italy,” she’d said. “All they do in Italy is have sex!” She’s the one who told me to send my nice Midwestern boyfriend home, back across the ocean, so I’d be free to Enjoy The Culture. But I couldn’t. I love him. I’m eighteen. The world is at my feet, a red carpet spread out before me—seven twenty-seven and eight seconds, nine seconds, ten, eleven.

  When I told the nice Midwestern boyfriend I was late, he said, “For what?”

  When I said, “Late, late,” he didn’t say anything.

  Then, he got up and, without looking at me, went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. “Aren’t we going to talk?” I said, following. He was standing fully dressed under the faucet. He hadn’t pulled the curtain, so water was spraying everywhere. His eyes were shut tight, his clothes hung drenched and heavy, pulling him down like he was sinking. And I realized then that if he couldn’t hold himself up, how was he ever going to hold onto me?

  I get it, though. He never signed up for this.

  Neither had I.

  Seven twenty-eight.

  I left the apartment, wandering the dark cobblestone streets ‘til I found this hostel with its hidden bathroom stall, horrible florescent lights, no familiar faces—ten, nine, eight—and I peed on the stick—seven, six—I am so, so stupid—five, four—Please, I think. Please, please please—three, two—

  And all that’s left to do is look.

  A few years ago, an old friend from Alaska came to visit me in Chicago, and we started talking about abortion. Neither of us meant to go there. My friend—let’s call her Kelly—said something about how her new governor was a woman, and I was all impressed.

  “Do you like her?” I asked, which in retrospect, was the exact moment of my downfall, ‘cause Kelly said, “Yes,” and I said, “Why?” and she wrapped her fingers around the stem of her wine glass and said, “Because she’s pro-life.”

  We were at a swanky Italian place downtown. It was mid-summer—a lovely, decadent afternoon with people strolling lazily down the sidewalk—so we sat outside. We were supposed to be reconnecting over Chianti and Caprese salad, but instead we were gripping the dishware, suddenly on the defense and poised for a fight.

  I know politics is a dicey subject for anyone’s lunchtime conversation, but Kelly and I are especially volatile. Maybe you have a friend like that?

  On one side of the table, you’ve got me: Twenty-six at the time, with ripped jeans, ponytails, and thick-rimmed glasses I didn’t really need. I’d lived in five cities in three different countries. I was a college teacher, a registered Democrat in a very Blue state, and not quite atheist but leaning that way. Also, it’s important to note: I was a hothead. Probably still am, but I like to think I’ve learned a little self-control. In fact, I probably learned it from this very conversation.

  On the other side of the table, we’ve got Kelly: Also in her late-twenties, in an oversized T-shirt, clogs, and thick-rimmed glasses she really does need. She’s lived her whole life in rural Alaska. Mother of two, a registered Republican in a very Red state (we’re talking fire engine red; like, imagine a stop sign. That’s Alaska). Also, it’s important to note: her faith is the forefront of her life. It’s given her joy, comfort, and the strength to slay some pretty profound fucking dragons, which is something I’ve always respected and even, at times, envied.

  As you might imagine, we can get into it, yelling ourselves hoarse over gun control, oil, No Child Left Behind, tax reform, her church, and my lack of it. And to Kelly’s credit, I’ve always walked away having learned something. She’s smart. She listens. I like fighting with her.

  But my body is not something I should have to fight about.

  “Pro-life,” she said that day at Gratzi’s.

  And I said, “Oh.”

  We sat there.

  Half of me hoped she’d press it. Like, Come on. Give me a reason to erupt, volcano-like, spilling anger and guilt and reality all over this starched-white tablecloth.

  But the other half? Please drop it, I thought. Please.

  She didn’t.

  “I believe,” she said, her words slow and cautious, ‘cause maybe what she wanted to say was: Life begins at conception; that child’s heart, however weak, is beating.

  She didn’t say that. She said, “I believe all life is precious.”

  I wanted to say how pro-choice doesn’t mean anti-life; how, for me, it’s about choosing a better life, one where that child is wanted.

  But I didn’t say that. I said, “I believe it’s precious, too.”

  We stared at each other across the plates and napkins and bowls of pasta—so close, yet miles and miles and miles away. I thought of all she’d been through: losing her mother to a long, slow battle with cancer; her father passing not long after; several heart-wrenching miscarriages. For her, it’s just so simple: Life is precious. The end.

  For me, it’s: Life is precious. The beginning.

  I just peed on the stick, and now I have to wait three minutes.

  It’s ten thirty-five and twenty seconds, so by ten thirty-eight and twenty seconds—I’ll know. I shouldn’t be getting all excited because my husband and I have only been trying a couple months. But, this morning, I had this feeling. I was going to meet my friend Amy at Uncommon Ground, and something made me pull over at Walgreens and buy the three-pack of Fact Plus tests. What was that something, you ask? I don’t know. Hormones? Magic? Jesus Christ, Our Lord? Whatever—I get to the coffee shop, tell Amy to order me a Chai, be right back, gotta pee, and here I am.

  Ten thirty-six.

  Have you ever been in the bathroom at Uncommon Ground? It’s nice. I mean, if you ever have to wait out a pregnancy test, I highly recommend it: small, private, stars painted on the ceiling; mosaic trees built into the wall, like you’re in a forest—ten thirty-six and thirty seconds, ten thirty-six and thirty-one seconds. But, okay, realistically, I can’t be pregnant. We haven’t even been trying! I’m not counting days on the calendar, I don’t have a little watch that lights up when you ovulate, I never showed up at my husband’s office and made him have sex with me in a conference room. Okay, fine, I did do that. Also, the freight elevator, his uncle’s swimming pool, and that schkeevy motel in Texas—but all that was for fun. We’re not trying to get pregnant!

  We’re just not not trying.

  We’re not not trying really hard.

  Ten thirty-seven and ten seconds. Eleven seconds. Twelve.

  “Not not is a double negative,” my friend Jeff told me, and I was all Huh? ‘cause I’m not much with the grammar. “To not not try is the same as trying,” he said. We were out with some friends, and I was drinking 7-Up, so everyone was all ohmygod you’re not drinking you must be pregnant, and I was like, “No, I just don’t feel like drinking,” and they’re all hahahaha— yeah.

  “Are you trying?” Jeff asked later, and I said no, ‘cause, really, we haven’t been. Unless you count all the discussions, the planning, saving money, prenatal vitamins, going off the pill, and having all sorts of sex all the time—which, okay, fine, it’s trying.

  I just don’t want to say it out loud.

  I don’t want to jinx it.

  Ten thirty-eight.

  Because, this kid… I want him more than anything—ten, nine, eight—I could explode this bathroom with the sheer power of my brain—seven, six—the walls w
ould be rubble, the pipes would burst and, in the end, there’s only me, sitting in a pile of dust with the stick in my hand—five, four. Please, I think. Please, please please—three, two—

  And all that’s left to do is look.

  MY DAUGHTER CAN READ JUST FINE

  WHEN I WAS IN THIRD GRADE, maybe fourth, my teacher called in my mother to tell her I couldn’t read. My memory of this moment is fits and spurts: I remember mom and I sitting in little-kid desks across from the teacher in her ginormous teacher’s desk. I remember being scared I was in trouble; your mom gets called in, that means you screwed up, right? I remember the classroom was on the second floor, with windows overlooking the playground, and there were seesaws shaped like sea animals. My mom has since filled in the blanks for much of what happened: apparently, there were these workbooks we were supposed to read, with stories about frogs and cats and stuff, and we had to answer multiple choice worksheets:

  A. The frog is happy.

  B. The frog is sad.

  C. The frog is thinking.

  My teacher showed my mother my worksheets. All the multiple choice questions were wrong—big red X’s through the A’s and B’s and C’s.

  I do remember this next part: my mother looked at me and smiled. What my teacher didn’t know was that my mom has a master’s degree in early childhood education and was then designing a K-5 Gifted and Talented program for Washtenaw County. You want to hear a thing or two about kids and reading? Take my mom out for a beer. But, more important than that, I was her kid; you don’t need a master’s degree to be an expert in your own child.

  I remember she held up the workbook with the frog story and asked, “Megan. Did you read this?” I shook my head no. Mom tapped the stack of workbooks on the teacher’s desk, a semester’s worth of frog stories, and asked, “Did you read any of these?” Again, I shook my head. “What were you reading instead?” I went to my desk, got the dog-eared copy of Little Women, and brought it back to my mother. She thumbed through its pages and, somewhere around page 300, asked me to tell her about it. I remember my fear of the teacher, the classroom, the workbooks—all of it fell away as I told my mom about how Jo didn’t want to get married, how the girls all helped that family at Christmas, and how Beth died (to this day, that scene makes me cry). I loved that book, especially because it was about sisters; I wanted sisters. In retrospect, the March girls kind of were my sisters. I profoundly believe in the relationships we have with fictional characters—what they teach us, how they help us grow and see the world and see ourselves.