I hadn’t met the headliner yet—some local guy named Rob. I was prepared to react indifferently, but he made a big impression on me when he walked into the prep kitchen, a.k.a., our green room, and his first words to me were “Can you get me a Coke, please?” I was instantly offended and intrigued.
Offended because he assumed I was a waitress. Intrigued because he was pretty cute, and he did say “please.” From under his baseball cap peered a pair of warm brown eyes reflecting slight damage, in an injured puppy kind of way. He looked as if he were still working out why his ex-girlfriend didn’t go nuts for the spiced cranberry candle he bought her for Valentine’s Day. It didn’t make sense—she loved cranberries!
I said I didn’t work there. I was a comic on the show. He scanned me up and down. “Oh . . .” he replied, without apology.
The lights went down and the emcee hit the stage, wooing the crowd with Ronald Reagan impressions and a handful of Michael-Jackson-is-a-pervert bits. Momentarily, I forgot what year it was. I began to get nervous that they would hate me and my autobiographical act. It didn’t include even one outdated impression, not even Sean Connery. Noticing that I was wringing my hands while watching the emcee moonwalk, Rob taunted me. “Scared?”
“No!” I snapped back like a kid sister, maturing it with a get-over-yourself glare. I wanted to continue with the insulting flirty banter, but the emcee introduced me.
My set went over badly. The crowd wanted me to talk more about blow jobs, and less about my seventy-five-year-old mother sending me her first e-mail with the entire thing written in the subject line. After a strained thirty minutes of comedy—which could have been confused with giving a thoughtful speech—I left the stage to polite applause that sounded almost mocking, and I headed straight to the back bar to order a drink. The bartender bought me an Absolut and soda and toasted my set.
“You’re very smart!” he said. I’d heard it a hundred times before, and it still didn’t sound like “funny” to me. That being said, I was happy for the free booze and a compliment of any sort.
I gulped my cocktail, hoping it would water down my insecurities, and watched Rob bring the crowd back up with jokes that centered on being angry, bitter, and depressed. My mind wandered, obsessing about how lonely stand-up comedy could make me feel. You never have anyone to high five or commiserate with. You’re in it alone. Why couldn’t I have been good at improv or sketch comedy?
I wasn’t looking forward to that long bus ride home, with nothing but idle time to review every excruciating detail of my pathetic life as I stared out a grimy window at the industrial wasteland that is New Jersey.
Rob’s big closing joke was a really offensive, wince-inducing dog-farting joke, but the crowd howled in response. Suddenly I knew exactly how I could turn my night around. I’d resort to my fallback feel-good plan. I needed to sleep with Rob. Extra bonus: He had a car.
He left the stage to wild applause. I could tell he was pretty proud of himself, which was going to make my mission easy. I strolled into the prep kitchen and supplied the perfunctory postshow adoration. “That was great, man! Love that closer! You’re like Chris Rock up there. Hey, can I catch a ride with you back to the city?”
He said, “Yeah, sure, I guess,” and walked away. I assumed I should follow, and I did.
His blue Datsun was well lived-in to say the least. It took him a solid ten minutes to clear the passenger’s seat of scraps of paper, balled-up T-shirts, empty food containers, and a little stuffed bear. Did he even have an apartment? As we drove, he mumbled about how he’d been miserable over the past month since some girl left him for reasons unknown, and the business had been wearing him down. He was considering meditation. Meditation? Seriously?
“You know what really calms the mind?” I said.
He looked at me with anticipation, as if I was going to reveal an important answer.
“Alcohol! Do you wanna meditate over a few drinks with me?”
He snickered and kept driving.
The Holland Tunnel felt like a corridor into a better night, a better life. It spit us out in Tribeca, and on the corner of a thin street we passed what looked like an old bar with warm orange light pouring out of its windows. It was getting late, almost last call, so we took our chances.
Once inside, I realized that we had stumbled upon “magic bar.” That wasn’t the name of the bar; it’s when you catch a bar at its best moment, at its magic hour. The light was just low enough, dancing off the mahogany decor, to make everyone glow. The music was at the perfect level to both listen to and talk above—it was Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, one of my favorites. The other patrons were hip but not trendy, good-looking but not better looking than us. It was Cheers, the Regal Beagle, and the Village Vanguard rolled into one.
I ordered a martini with three olives. I liked to eat one at the beginning, one halfway through, and one at the end, as if they were rationed snacks on my hike to intoxication. Rob ordered an Amstel Light, the beer of champion lightweights. The spell of magic bar started to take hold. I found him irresistible as we conversed in a way you can only with a one-night stand. Someone you have no investment in.
“Really? Your last two girlfriends were underage? Good for you! Get ’em while they’re fresh and young! Your dad’s in a mental institution? Hey, not everything is genetic! Your grandfather was in the SS? What a coincidence—I am Jewish.”
His contemptuous tone gave everything a “been there, done that” edge. He came off like a typical angry man. He wasn’t apologetic, or a mama’s boy, or even nice. I had to admit, I kind of liked it. It made me feel like a delicate ray of sunshine in comparison. My brain started to do that twenty-years-in-the-future trick I despised but couldn’t control. We were at our summerhouse in Barcelona, sitting on our terracotta patio, drinking espresso, waiting for our maid to bring out our paella. We shared a laugh remembering that he used to do a dog-fart joke.
It was closing time. Finally, he asked me the question I had been avoiding since I moved to Manhattan.
“Wanna come back to my place in Queens?”
I deflated. Queens was a solid twenty-minute drive away. Talk about a foreplay buzzkill. How would I get home? What subways were even out there?
Who was I kidding? We both knew I was going. I was desperate for connection, even if it was fraying, tenuous, or located in Queens. Like a junkie, when my narcotic of choice wasn’t available, I took what I could get. And it was perfect timing—checkmark on the fresh bikini wax.
Although I didn’t feel like going through “the scar” chat, I also wasn’t afraid he’d be repulsed; it just meant reality would suddenly poke its ugly head into our night. I wouldn’t be another girl anymore; I’d be that “scarred girl.” It added a level of vulnerability to an experience that I wanted to be fun and purely physical. Revealing the scar meant revealing myself. Could I just leave my shirt on? Yeah, that would be normal.
Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the house where he lived. We crept down the brown sisal-rug stairs to his bachelor pad in the basement of a Greek family’s home. His place wasn’t terrible; it was clean, and there was even a minimal attempt at decor: a coffee table with a magazine on it and a framed picture of a sports car. However, the vase of silk flowers standing on a rattan end table didn’t make any sense. They were so out of place that I couldn’t help but think there was a webcam stashed in the bud of a rose.
Time was running out, and I was filled with anxiety over the stupid scar situation. He was about to open his bedroom door when I blurted out, “Okay, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“All right,” he replied cautiously. “What’s up?”
“Uhhhh . . .” I gave him a goofy smile to try to lighten up the dramatic moment I’d accidentally created.
“Okay, well, uhhh, I’ll get to it. Sorry I’m making this so weird!”
“What’s going on?” He was completely lost.
“Okay, I was in a bad car accident when I was a kid, and I have a huge scar
on my stomach, so don’t be freaked out. I’m totally fine, and it doesn’t hurt or anything—it’s just a big scar. See?!” I lifted up my shirt while sucking in my stomach to make it look as flat as possible. I was embarrassed by my own explanation. I may as well have said, “Want to see my boo-boo?”
He laughed a little. “Jesus, you built it up so much I thought you were going to say you had a tail or something.” He came closer to examine it and ran his finger lightly down the center of my torso.
“I like that scar. It’s cool. You’ve been through something.”
Good. That was the response I’d hoped for. I was ready to resume the seduction.
“Now, I have something special to show you,” he said flirtatiously and swung open the unfinished wooden door to his bedroom.
In that one moment before light revealed the inner contents of his boudoir, I envisioned many things. Another man? A harness? A bunk bed?
To say I was stunned by the actual contents would be putting it lightly. It was like nothing I had ever seen before, especially from a grown man, or at least one in the same room with me. Rob’s room was full of—and I mean covered with—Garfields. Stuffed ones, ceramic ones, bronze ones, Garfields in a variety of poses on a special Garfield-only shelf. There was Golfing Garfield, Pool Hall Garfield, Garfield avec un beret, and Angry Garfield. Plus a huge one, twice the size of me, adorned with Mardi Gras beads, propped up on his bed. There were so many of them, frozen in orange-and-black-striped action, it was chilling. I didn’t quite get it. If I performed well, would I win one?
The sight of this altar to Jim Davis’s dynasty killed any sexy, warm, or even safe feeling. He was way more scarred than I could ever be. Then I had what I refer to now as a Kaiser Soze moment, where I reflected on our night, the things he said, and started to connect the dots. The dog-fart joke, the stuffed bear in his car, the fact that he dated much younger girls, that weird comment about my having a tail. . . Since I didn’t have a coffee cup, my jaw dropped.
“Um . . . well . . . how did . . . what’s up with all the Garfields?” I asked. I knew I should at least show him the same acceptance he did for me, but he was thirty-seven years old for god’s sake! Clearly he hadn’t gone through anything.
“Oh, I’ve had them since college,” he explained, tossing it off as if amassing a huge stuffed animal collection was a perfectly normal collegiate activity. I was hoping for more of a They were left to me by my sweet crazy aunt when she died, and I have to display them to keep my inheritance, or even, They’re a childhood collection that is now worth millions!
My mind flashed again to our conversation at the bar. He mentioned he was from Boston, that he’d gone to Boston U, then moved to Providence for a while, and then moved back to Boston, then to Manhattan, then to Brooklyn, and now Queens. All I could picture was him wrapping each precious Garfield in newspaper and gently placing them in a cardboard liquor box time after time. I felt cheated and a little ill. He wasn’t a sexy man; he was a fucked-up man-child. To top it off, I was in Queens.
I tried to work with the situation. “Can you take a few of them out of your room? They’re creeping me out a little.” He did, without question, almost as if he had done it before for other trapped desperate girls who were trying anything to make the love den less infantile. He removed the big cat from the bed and carefully selected two other ones from the top of his dresser, setting them neatly on the sofa in the next room. When he returned, he flung me onto the bed and pounced. At least the Garfields were working their magic on one of us.
Turns out the only thing bigger than his Garfield obsession was his penis. It made perfect sense. Only a thirty-seven-year-old guy with a dick that big could get away with a bedroom full of stuffies. I had never seen one that big before and wasn’t sure how to approach it. It looked fake, or like it could strangle me. I’m sure he nicknamed it Odie. Without warning, he threw on a Magnum condom and just . . . stuck it in.
The next thing I knew we were having the world’s worst, most unskilled sex I had ever experienced. Basically, he lowered his head beside my right ear and pumped furiously like a jackhammer. Like Odie in heat. It took a few moments for me to even catch up to what was happening. It felt like he was punching me inside. Like he was fucking a stuffed Garfield, and not even the favorite in his collection. I imagined that under his bed, I would find a bounty of old, mutilated, sticky orange-and-black cats.
More important, had he ever been with a woman before? What past girlfriend would put up with this? Even with all my problems and baggage, I knew that my scar and I were way above this. The sex was so empty and mechanical that I actually started making life resolutions in my head. Tomorrow, I’m going to go to the gym, cut down on the drinking, stick to a disciplined writing schedule, get out of debt, get a better apartment . . . Tomorrow is a brand new day. I still have my whole life ahead of me. It’s not too late.
I turned to look at him—at least I could do my job—but his eyes were shut. He had a tight smile on his face as he continued to thrust at a sprinter’s pace. He was lost in some fantasy world. A world of no Mondays and endless lasagna.
And then it was over. He rolled off and wiped perspiration from his forehead. I felt like I had been duped by a distracted carny running a crappy and dangerous ride at the county fair.
“Do you want me to go down on you or something?”
Yeah, or something, I thought.
“No . . . I’m good.” I smiled with fake reassurance. Bad missionary-style sex is one thing. Bad oral sex would be unbearable. I didn’t feel motivated to give him useful tips and guidance. Let the next girl deal with it.
He actually wanted to cuddle, and I let him. He wasn’t bad at it. Clearly this was more in his wheelhouse. Emotion swelled in my body as he spooned me tight, and I was surprised that I had to choke back tears. Tomorrow was a brand new day.
CHAPTER 17
TURN AROUND, BRIGHT EYES
My dear old friend and drinking buddy, Lisa, was visiting from Toronto, and we met up at a French brasserie where I was a regular, yet the staff never seemed to recognize me. Either it was part of the joint’s charm, or they were really trying to be authentically French. I always ordered the same drink, what the menu called “Country White Wine,” which was a fancy way of saying “the cheapest one.” On this particular Wednesday night, I changed things up and asked for a Grey Goose vodka on the rocks with a lemon. Why? Because I was on a downward spiral, and tossing back a half glass of fruity white wine wasn’t going to cut it. I wanted that feeling of thick alcohol sliding down my throat, coating the ball of confusion and pain in my gut. The lemon on the side was to camouflage its utilitarian purpose: to make it look like I was festively cocktailing. A word to the wise: If you ever meet me, and I order a vodka on the rocks, just know that it means I’m on the rocks too.
Lisa hugged me warmly, ordered herself a cosmo (because she was in New York!), and asked me to tell her about everything that was going on. I tried my best to make it all sound hilarious and upbeat, but as the words came out of my mouth, they sounded brutally sad.
“The dating scene is pretty intense here. I went out with a ridiculously good-looking guy, but he turned out to be a cocaine addict. Hilariously, he’s the one still calling me. There’s been a comic here, and a married guy there . . . Oh, and get this: A guy actually told me how he likes his girls waxed. I was like, ‘Is that an acrylic sweater you’re wearing? Yeah, you don’t get a choice!’”
Lisa looked more concerned than entertained, so I continued.
“But the best one of all just happened. After this gig a couple Fridays ago, I went home with the headliner, who proudly showed me his bedroom full of . . . stuffed Garfields! Ta-da! Seriously, Lisa, everyone in this town is insane. At least with that guy, if it worked out, we could donate the Garfields to a children’s charity.”
I could tell that Lisa was judging me. Unbelievable. She was the woman who slept with married men; she was the girl who polished off a pitcher of beer and then
went home to work on her thesis. She was a fellow independent woman whose life goals didn’t include settling down. She was my idol. And now she was judging me.
Lisa calmly put down her cosmo before she spoke, mostly because it’s impossible to make a serious point with a pink cocktail in your hand. “Sounds a little out of control to me. Are you . . . okay?”
Her spidey senses were onto something. The bad disconnected sex with The Stuffed Feline Wonder had thrown me off my axis. I understood it was a one-night stand, and I was initially the one who didn’t even want to show him the scar, but the total absence of intimacy coupled with being fucked like I was a prop had really affected me. I mean, I barely needed to be there. I was losing my patience for being of such low value.
“No no no. It’s New York. It’s hard to explain what’s considered normal here. Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
If you ever hear yourself adamantly declare that you’re fine, you’ll immediately hear how not fine you really are.
“Maybe you should take a break from chasing such a big life,” she suggested.
“Heeeyyy,” I said, slurring already. “I’m doing the best I can with what’s out there. Plus, I already wrote a joke about the Garfield guy. Did I mention he had a massive penis? I think he said its name was Odie.”
Lisa didn’t laugh along. The fact that our catch-up had suddenly turned into a mini-intervention worried me. Wasn’t I operating like anyone else? Did I really seem out of control?
I ordered another Grey Goose. Rocks. Lemon.
“Is there anyone that you like? A guy from work or . . . someone else in the comedy world? Have you thought about Internet dating?”
Internet dating was still new, and although I didn’t subscribe to the stigma others had placed on it, I’d been around the block enough times to title my profile “As Is.” I was definitely done dating within the comedy scene. My track record was abysmal, and the thought of falling asleep beside someone who turns off the light and asks, “So why do you think my Wal-Mart joke doesn’t work anymore?” totally repelled me.
Screw Everyone Page 16
