I drag the box out and place it in front of me. I tap it to get a sense of its heft. Substantial. All eyes are on me. Perhaps I should give a speech.
“Open it already,” Mom says.
Instead of peeling off the paper one tiny strip at a time as I had planned, I dig my nails under the tape seams and yank as hard as I can. The paper falls away like snakeskin, revealing a colorful cardboard box. On the box is a picture of a girl about my age engaged in some happy activity. What is she doing? What is this?
WHAT IS THIS?
I do not yet know the phrase “What the fuck?” but that is what I would say if I knew the words. Instead I just stare, mute, horrified.
It is an Easy-Bake Oven.
How could this happen? Months earlier, I had specifically written a long list of items I needed from Santa, and I distinctly remember that “stupid fucking girl’s toy” was not on that list. And then, all at once, I make two realizations. The first is that there is no Santa. The second is that my lesbian mother is trying to turn me gay.
Well, gay isn’t the right word because I don’t know that word at age five, nor do I really think that’s the case. But instinctively, I understand that the gift represents something larger for my mom, that her gift to me is as much a political statement as it is a Christmas present.
Since she and Elaine have gotten together, my mother has changed. Obviously, she is now banging the neighbor lady, which is new, but I mean my mother is undergoing some quiet metamorphosis. She used to be a mom-mom, the kind of mom that stays at home and packs lunches and stores coupons in a special avocado green coupon box purchased at a Tupperware party.
There is less of that now. She is still my mom, still loving and supportive. But she’s also harder. There’s an edge to her now. She and Elaine smoke Virginia Slims. They read (or at least subscribe to) Ms. magazine. The word feminist begins creeping into daily conversation, a word I vaguely understand to mean “men are assholes.” My comprehension of the word will expand over time, and as I grow older, I will come to think of myself as a feminist, but at the time it feels like an angry word, often accompanied by the phrase “male chauvinist pig.” Although I never understand exactly what turns a man into a male chauvinist pig, I am pretty sure it’s a penis.
The solution to all this porky male chauvinism is to create gender equality. How do you create gender equality? By creating New Seventies Man. New Seventies Man is tough but sensitive: equal parts hunter-gatherer/cupcake-maker. He plays baseball, yes, but only on coed Little League teams. He does not join the Boy Scouts because the Boy Scouts are, as my mother once tells me, “a sexist organization.” New Seventies Man loves Lily Tomlin. He cries often, and is not afraid to express his fears, but he certainly does not run screaming into the street in his underwear after the doctor tells him he needs to get a shot, as I have recently done.
Does New Seventies Man think a breastfeeding mother is the most beautiful sight on earth? He does. Does he wish that he himself could lactate so he could relieve his partner’s burden? Oh yes. New Seventies Man is respectful and kind and deferential. And lest you think no such man exists, I am here to say you are mistaken. There is such a man.
His name is Alan Alda, and he is the only man on earth with whom Mom and Elaine can find no fault. (Alan Alda, if by some miracle you are reading this book, there is something I have been waiting thirty-five years to say to you: Fuck you.)
This is the man I am expected to become. Of course, as a child, I cannot articulate this intuitive sense I have about my mother’s expectations for me any more than I can speak Latin, but I feel it deep within my shitty male XY chromosomes. So I just stare at the Easy-Bake Oven with an offended expression on my face.
“What’s the matter?” Mom asks. “Don’t you like it?”
NO! NO! NO! No, I don’t like this stupid pink plastic thing. No, I don’t like living in this stupid house with these stupid people I barely know. No, I don’t like being a pawn in your feminist social experiment. No, I don’t like sharing a room with my retarded sister who doesn’t even know how to breathe right. No, I don’t like this new life and I want it to stop.
“I like it,” I say.
She is not convinced. “I thought you wanted an Easy-Bake Oven.”
This is typical of my mother. She invents other people’s opinions for them. “I thought you loved plaid,” she might say. When you ask her why she thinks you love plaid, she will lie: “You told me you love plaid.” If you tell her you never said that, she will get mad and insist you are mistaken. “You love plaid,” she will say again, as if repetition will make it so. “You love it.”
Although I am choking on my rage, I agree that yes, I must have at some point demanded that Santa bring me the most effeminate toy his little elves can make. Perhaps he could also wad up a pair of pink panties for my stocking to complete the humiliation I feel under Eric’s and Greg’s mocking gazes.
But I feel like I can’t reject the gift because to do so would be to reject the new, postpenile worldview Mom and Elaine are attempting to construct. Doing that would be the same thing as rejecting her. I can’t do that. I still depend on my mother to pour my cereal.
More than that, I just don’t want to hurt her. She seems happy, or at least happier than she was with my dad. When they were together, they were always screaming at each other. I remember coming downstairs during one of their arguments and seeing them yelling at each other across the dining room table like chained dogs trying to kill each other, their faces strained and purple. Dad left home several times and didn’t come back for days. Now there is at least peace, although over time that peace will wear away as Elaine’s own emotional issues become evident.
That night, all of us boys sit down at the kitchen table with Mom and shake envelopes of dusty brownie mix into the little petri dishes that came with the Easy-Bake Oven. We add water, stir, and watch through the oven door as a sixty-watt lightbulb transforms the watery goo into tiny chocolaty desserts. They come out brown and soft and good smelling. How do they taste? I would be lying if I said they taste anything other than delicious. I hate them and everything they represent, but they are fantastic lightbulb brownies.
We eat our treats and go to bed, another Christmas crumpled up like so much wrapping paper. That night, I lie in bed listening to my sister not breathing, and I think about that watery sludge turning into brownies, and about how quickly one thing can be changed into another.
The next day, the Easy-Bake Oven gets shoved into the closet, never to reappear. When holiday season rolls around again, I tell my mom I want a Big Wheel.
“Tell Santa,” she says.
“I’m telling you,” I respond.
That Christmas, a Big Wheel shows up under the tree with a card that reads, “To Michael. Love, Mom.”
“Do you like it?” she asks me.
I tell her I do, and this time I mean it. Then I ask Mom if I can take it for a test drive. And even though it is well below freezing outside, she lets me go.
CHAPTER 5
i love you two
Things with Martha are easy and sexy and fun. We are just having a thing, fooling around. When we see each other it’s great, and when we don’t it’s no big deal. At least that’s what we tell each other. But the truth is, our early relationship is never as carefree as I pretend. I am falling in love with her almost from the moment we meet. But it’s stupid to even admit that to myself for all the obvious reasons. Plus I don’t want to scare her off, the way I did with the Lovely Miss Claire Walters. For now, I will try to content myself with our unserious affair. I never ask her to break up with Christopher and she does not ask me to stop seeing other girls. Of course, there aren’t many other girls.
But there is one.
A recurring fantasy I have as a young man is that I will meet a beautiful girl at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Why there, I do not know since I do not particularly enjoy going to art museums and of all the art museums in the city, I like the Met least of all. It
’s just a big, joyless stone box where dead people are venerated, more mausoleum than museum. Nevertheless, it is the Met where my fantasies reside and it is the Met where I go when I am in my twenties, bored, and on the prowl. Although I like art, I have no passion for it. My passion is for girls who like art.
The best galleries for girl watching are the Impressionist rooms on the second floor. If there is one thing I know about Impressionist paintings, it’s that they totally make girls wet. All those soft, blurry pastels, all those dreamy landscapes. Girls like to lose themselves in Degas’s ballerinas, Renoir’s bathers, Pissarro’s landscapes. It’s all very lovely and ethereal and gooey-girly. A perfect place to catch the eye of a winsome, bohemian art lover, but one who shaves her armpits.
I never met anybody. Admittedly, a lot of that was my fault because I never talked to anybody. But in my fantasy, she started the conversation, not I. Because if I start the conversation it just looks like I’m some creepy dude on the make. Which I am. But I don’t want to look like that. The way it would work is that I would be staring up at a painting, hands locked behind my back in a manner suggesting deep, focused concentration. She would approach, probably wearing glasses, probably carrying a sketch pad under her arm. After a few contemplative silent moments together, she would speak: “Those water lilies are so impactful.”
“Yes,” I would respond. “Monet really painted the shit out of water lilies.”
Then we would go back to her (tastefully appointed, well-lit, cockroach-free) artist’s garret and fuck.
That is the fantasy. But like most fantasies, it does not come true. Until it does. It’s a Saturday. I am at home in my little apartment with nothing to do. The week before I had bought a sleazy red leather jacket on the street for twenty dollars. I like it because it makes me look like heroin-era Lou Reed, and I am thinking, Maybe if I wear my jacket to the Met some girl who finds heroin-era Lou Reed attractive will also find me attractive. So I put on my sleazy jacket and head uptown.
I don’t know if there is a real lack of Velvet Underground fans at the mausoleum that day or what, but nobody says a word to me, not even the Japanese who can reliably be counted on to ask me to take their picture. After a couple hours I am bored, my feet hurt, and my jacket is making me hot. I am making my way toward the exit when I hear a voice call, “Michael?”
I turn.
It is a girl. More than that, it is a beautiful girl. No glasses, no sketchbook. But blonde and beautiful.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi. I was at your taping last night.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask because I am a sparkling conversationalist in the presence of beauty.
“Yeah. My roommate knows Ben from Tennessee.” Ben is a guy in our sketch group; this opens up a whole avenue of possible conversation about the fact that Ben and I dropped out of college in order to tour the country together as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I can already envision Katie and I sitting across from each other at a diner languidly turning the spoons in our coffee mugs as I regale her with stories from life on the road as Raphael, the brooding ninja turtle with the red headband.
“Cool,” I say.
Silence.
“Okay, well I just wanted to say hi,” she says. God she’s cute.
She stands there for a second with a smile on her face, obviously alone. She probably just came here by herself to see the Impressionists. But then she ran into me, the cute guy she just saw making a popular TV show the night before. This must be very exciting for her. We’re totally going to do it.
“Bye,” she says.
“Bye.”
I watch her walk through the museum’s big glass and gold doors and into the sunlight. Don’t go! I am screaming in my head. But she’s gone. I am such an idiot. Why didn’t I get her number? Why didn’t I ask her out? This is exactly why I can’t have nice things!
When I get back home I call Ben and ask him if he knows the roommate she was talking about. He thinks so. She’s a freshman at NYU. A freshman? Which would mean the girl I met is only eighteen or nineteen years old. I’m not sure how I feel about that. Actually I am sure, but I am pretending not to be because it would be unseemly to admit how much the words “barely legal” turn me on. Can he call her and get the roommate’s name? He promises he will. Now? Sure, sure. It takes days of pestering before he finally gets around to it, almost as if getting me laid isn’t the most important thing in his life. Finally he gets me her name and number.
I call.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Katie?”
“Who’s this?”
“Yeah, hi, this is Michael Black …”
Silence.
“We met at the art museum the other day?”
“Oh yeah … hi.”
“Yeah. Hi. Good.”
Long silence.
“So, I was wondering if you wanted to maybe get together sometime for dinner or something?”
Silence.
“But not at the student cafeteria.” God, I’m smooth.
Silence. “Okay.”
You’re damned right okay! We arrange to meet a couple nights later at a casual place near her school. I wear my sleazy red leather jacket again. I have no idea what she wears because I only pay attention to girl’s outfits insomuch as they relate to how far I can see down their shirts.
During my Great Year of Sexual Liberation, I have learned the secret to a good first date: Ask a lot of questions. It’s a good strategy because most people love talking about themselves. I know I do; in fact, I am currently writing a book in which I do nothing but that. On my first date with Katie, I dig out all the pertinent first-date dish. She is a nineteen-year-old college freshman from Indiana. She has two brothers whom she loves very much and two parents she adores. She loves animals, especially chimpanzees. Katie is as fresh and wholesome as a squirt of fresh milk from a cow’s teat.
And like fresh milk, she is kind of a bore.
Plus I am four years older than her. Not a huge age difference, but I have already been living a fully adult life for those four years. This girl just seems so young to me. Too young? Too innocent? Too boring? Ordinarily I would say yes except for one simple, yet important fact: She is so hot.
After our meal, we wander back to her place and she invites me up. Her “place” is a dorm at NYU, the concrete warehouse where they store freshmen. I feel stupid signing in to a dorm. Does the security guard know that my interest in this girl is only prurient? That I am only interested in sullying this doe-eyed young creature? If so, he does not say anything. But I feel bad. I feel bad getting into the elevator and I feel bad listening to her chatter on about the wonders of Indiana. I feel bad because she is so nice and clean and all I want to do is finger her.
I should leave. I should definitely leave.
We get to her room. The front door is, of course, decorated with construction paper cutouts of stars with each girl’s name written on them in glitter glue. God, I feel dirty.
What is going to happen here? What are we going to do in this place that smells like industrial disinfectant and Secret underarm deodorant? As it turns out: nothing.
When we walk in, her roommate from Tennessee is at her desk studying. Well, that’s just bullshit. Unless it’s about to get kinky really fast, this date is not going to progress the way I want.
Katie introduces us. We chitchat for a few minutes. Great to meet you, so you and Ben went to the same high school, that’s so amazing, canyoupleaseleaveI’mtryingtofingeryour roommate, yeah New York is a lot of fun. Some boys from the hall knock on the door. Can they hang out? Sure! Let’s all hang out together! You, me, Katie, her roommate, the Boy Scouts, and the Mormon fucking Tabernacle Choir.
I give it one unbearable hour and then I bid my good-nights. At the door to her room, Katie presents a cheek, which I kiss. “That was really fun,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say. “We should do it again.”
“I’d like that.”
“I’d like that, t
oo.”
I wouldn’t like that. Why am I saying I would like that? Why did I just make another date with this girl? Am I that hard up? Yes. Yes, I am. I am fuming all the way back to my grownup apartment where I live alone because I am a grown-up.
A couple of nights later, we go out again. It is exactly as before. She blathers on about her mom and dad and all the great people from where she comes from—Indiana, by the way—and she has no idea that most people do not float through life on a taffeta-covered parade float because most people do not look like her. Please put out, I am thinking. This will all be worth it if you just put out.
She does not put out.
Why am I so attracted to these fresh-faced maidens? They are not looking for what I am looking for. They want boyfriends and hand-holding and breathless diary entries. I want to experiment with anal. Why don’t I go for sluts and drunks? I should end it with Katie but I can’t bring myself to do it because she’s so—and I hate to use this mealymouthed word but sometimes it is the perfect descriptor—nice. God, she is so nice.
My relationship with Martha starts a couple of months after I meet Katie. I do not tell Katie about Martha, but I do tell Martha about Katie. It turns me on to talk to her about this other girl I’m seeing. It turns me on to say unkind things about her, to say she’s boring, to laugh at her prudishness and unabashed enthusiasm for the world.
One night just before the holidays, a musician friend of mine is playing a show downtown. Everybody I know is going to be there. I am going with Katie, Martha with Christopher. It’s hot, the place is mobbed, people are bumping against each other. Half an hour into the show, I am standing with Katie near the bar. I’ve seen Martha and Christopher earlier in the night, but I do not know where they are. Then I feel hands on my waist, hands sliding down to my ass. It’s Martha. Katie is in front of me and does not see anything.
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