Screw Everyone

by Ophira Eisenberg

  I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, searching for a sign that he wasn’t really the combination of the contradictions he presented. Could he actually be a moral, loyal guy who was good-looking and still in his thirties? Was it possible that he loved going to musical theater yet never missed a boxing match? Did he have the garden variety of problems that I could handle? Were there no Gar-fields in his closet?

  Jonathan shared an apartment in Williamsburg with his best friend from college and his younger brother. Williamsburg was on the cusp of blowing up into a mini metropolis of hipsters prancing around in long johns and stilettos. A year into our dating relationship, his apartment’s lease was up and decisions needed to be made. Even though the guy crawled into a fetal position at the mention of housecleaning, he was very capable and mature in other ways. Jonathan was very money-conscious and had saved his shekels since his Bar Mitzvah with the hope of someday buying a starter home in New York. And suddenly he found it on the Lower East Side. It was 350 square feet. A starter closet.

  Not only was it was tiny, but a fifth floor walk-up in a co-op half-populated with people who’d bought their apartments for a dollar when the landlord skipped town in the early eighties, and half who purchased their slice in the sky for at least two hundred thousand times that. The space needed to be gutted, renovated, and painted. The front metal door had a huge dent in it leftover from the battering ram the SWAT team used in a drug bust before the neighborhood gentrified. They must have been selling hospital-grade cocaine to make buyers want to climb all those stairs. But that tiny dirty hovel was Jonathan’s chance to get in the game and own property in Manhattan. He put in an offer with the vague understanding that we would live there together, as the only way he could afford it was to share it with someone. And because there was hardly enough room for one full-size bed, it had to be someone like me.

  We talked about the whole thing very logically and unemotionally. Think of all the money we’d save! No more late-night cab or subway rides to be together! We were both in our thirties, we weren’t going anywhere, and this was the natural progression of a relationship. It wasn’t the most exciting way to discuss a major step, using the “hey, we’re getting old and it’s probably not going to get any better than this, so we might as well give it a shot” rationale, but it was also . . . true. After we shacked up, we could work on our living wills.

  Whether it was subconscious or not, I put up all kinds of resistance. For instance, I hated the fact that Jonathan was an extremely picky eater. I grew up in a household where having an adventurous palate was a source of pride. It made you a strong, well-rounded person. Alternatively, someone who was very particular about his food was spoiled and weak and wouldn’t survive the apocalypse. Natural selection should weed them out. Jonathan’s food groups were limited to meat, and meat on bread. I confronted him one night and told him that “this picky eating thing” was a deal breaker. How could I be seriously involved with someone whom I couldn’t share a dinner with? Would I end up cheating on him so I could enjoy a foodie tasting menu with someone? Besides, if something so fundamental as our palates were incompatible, maybe we were too?

  Jonathan listened to my rant and came up with a solution. He offered to try any food I offered him for one year and see what happened, but he still had the right to not like something. It was hard to argue with that proposal, and to test his seriousness I immediately handed him a fistful of cilantro. He picked off a leaf and chewed it, making a face like I’d given him a spoonful of caterpillar snot. But he wasn’t going to roll over and be told what to do. He countered that he’d like to see some improvements on my end, especially with respect to my phone habits. He pointed out that whenever I was out I never called him when I said I would. He was right: I had a terrible tendency of getting caught up with whatever I was doing, be it a show or hanging out with other comics, and I wouldn’t call.

  “I don’t want to be that person who has to check in all the time,” I argued.

  “Well,” Jonathan said, “you’re not single anymore, so stop treating it like you are. You can go outside for a second to call me.” I bristled at the idea that my status had changed and now I had to be accountable, but he wasn’t being unreasonable.

  THE DAY WE moved in together, we had a huge battle about “stuff.” My mother’s warning that “you never really know someone until you live with them” echoed in my head. Jonathan grew up in New York, so he had his entire life’s possessions with him, and by that I mean the hood ornament off his first car, seventy million comics, and one action figure. In other words, garbage. I, on the other hand, was a transient hobo with no furniture and only a couple of plants. My boxes were filled with old notebooks and clothes. And we had one closet. I watched Jonathan hoist a taped-shut banker’s box onto the top shelf of our closet.

  “What’s in the box?” I inquired.

  “My stuff.”

  “Really? That’s your response? ‘My stuff’? Do you really think the best way to start life living together is to have boxed secrets?”

  Jonathan turned very serious.

  “This is my stuff, and you are not allowed to look in the box.”

  I glared at him with daggers in my eyes.

  “You’ll find out when the time is right, okay?” he said.

  What the hell did that mean? One day in the future he’d finally feel comfortable enough to break out his collection of barnyard sex tapes? No, it couldn’t just be porn. It had to be way worse—like a collection of ex-girlfriends’ severed heads. And that would be horrifying—especially if they were prettier than me.

  The whole thing did not sit well, and I was convinced that this secret box was a red flag signaling that things would rapidly decline in our relationship.

  But that didn’t happen. Eventually we put our stuff away, Jonathan continued to hate tomatoes, and I often forgot to call him after shows. Yet things pleasantly rolled forward, albeit over a slightly rocky road.

  Living together in such a tiny space had its own set of challenges. When we were both home, we moved around each other like Tetris pieces. I couldn’t even look at normal decorating magazines because the spaces they featured were massive. I had to resort to buying boating magazines. Whenever a friend or family member braved the five flights of stairs, they’d ask the same series of stupid questions that always included, “Do you have to do this every day?,” then gasp and state, “If you can stay together living here, you can do anything.” I had no idea that the divorce rate was lower in mansions. Our lives were on full display to each other, and we didn’t like everything we saw. It was harder to hide bleaching my mustache, or my obsessive need to clean as procrastination. I hated witnessing the insane amount of time Jonathan spent watching TV, and he seemed to leave a trail of papers, sweaty clothes, and body hair behind him. A shirt left on the floor was stealing one-tenth of our available space. But in the grand scheme of things, it was no big deal. I started to wonder if good matches weren’t based so much on what you had in common with someone, but rather whose crap you could best stomach. Internet dating sites should stop asking people to sell the best version of themselves and instead prompt everyone to post their most unflattering photo and list their worst qualities. Is mean to waiters? Pass. Has unresolved anger issues? Who doesn’t? Is stockpiling weapons in a secret location in case the Republicans don’t win the next election? Sounds like a hobby that might get in the way. Is in love with his sister? Not my favorite, but dealable.

  As it turned out, Jonathan and I fought over dirty dishes, not emotional unavailability.

  I’d always sneered at his use of content to sum up a good relationship, but for the first time, I saw the word differently. There was comfort in coming home to someone I actually liked—even if our miniature apartment was a mess because of him. Still, I didn’t have full confidence in the situation, and I never looked in the box, because I didn’t want to know what was in it. Ignorance may not be bliss, but it is way easier.

  Every January, like a
good, young, hip Jew, Jonathan took a pilgrimage to Key West, Florida, to visit a childhood friend. Not only was this woman brilliant enough to figure out that you can live in Key West, but she also had a guest room in her apartment like a real person. I was working as a twentieth-century plumber, a.k.a., IT consultant, mostly wiping people’s computers clean of viruses they caught while downloading copious amounts of porn, and I wasn’t given much time off. As an assistant promo producer at a real company, Jonathan had proper vacation days, sick days, personal days, moving days, all of which added up to a lot of days. But I was in higher demand.

  He flew down on Wednesday, and I’d join him on the weekend. As roommates with benefits, we didn’t share money: Jonathan worried that my instability would tarnish his perfect credit score, and I didn’t want anyone to think they owned me, so we functioned as monetary singles. Since tickets to Key West were expensive, I opted for a cheap flight to Miami and rented a car for the four-hour drive down to the last Key.

  Before I left, I called and asked Jonathan if he wanted me to bring him anything. He requested some computer files. He’d just started writing his own autobiographical comics and wanted to work on the script. Knowing him, he was hogging his friend’s computer, and I suggested that I copy over his whole My Documents file to my laptop and bring that down. I could do anything. I was a computer consultant.

  Rushed as usual and leaving everything to the very last minute, I networked his computer to my laptop to speed up the transfer. This was before you could shove in a 64GB memory stick or drag it to Dropbox. I used physical cables. It was pretty sexy. There was the added complication that his computer ran Windows 2000, and my laptop was state of the art with Windows XP. The naming conventions of files changed between those operating systems, so while the transfer took place, any file with a weird or long name would trigger a pop-up window suggesting a new name for the file and asking if you’d like to Accept or Ignore. I sat there fuming, clicking Accept over and over again. I was going to miss my plane because of Jonathan’s stupid files with ridiculous names. No good IT deed goes unpunished.

  That was until a file popped up called “All Girls I’ve Ever Been With.”

  Storm clouds gathered over my workspace as I contemplated what to do next. As someone who has had her diary read, I knew how wrong and damaging it was to look at other people’s private stuff. Reading this file would be not only an invasion of his privacy but also an admission that I didn’t trust him. It would be undisputed betrayal. So I hit Accept, finished the transfer, and hailed a cab to the airport.

  Yeah, right. We all know that didn’t happen. I double-clicked that file open within two seconds of reading its name. Jonathan didn’t get to have a secret file and a secret box. I needed to know who this guy really was.

  Anger pulsed through my veins. The contents of the document precisely reflected its name. It was a very comprehensive list of all the girls Jonathan had been with in his life. Fifty-four in all. Not had sex with, but had been with . . . ever. There were notes beside some of them: big boobs, bad kisser, great blow job, nice underwear, liked to touch herself. I looked at each name, each bullet point, my temperature rising as my eyes scanned. At the end of the list, at number fifty-four, was my name, and beside it, just “Comedienne.”

  I wanted to punch the screen. The only reason I didn’t was because that laptop was the most expensive thing I owned.

  This was it. The evidence. A disgusting list reducing old girlfriends and experiences to their physical attributes or sexual tendencies. There were no notes beside any of these poor girls’ names that said, “totally related, had great talks, super intelligent,” or how about “funny”?! No, there were just misogynist asshole things about boobs and dick sucking. I was going to make it my fucking job to make sure Jonathan never got his dick sucked again. He’d be begging for the sloppy blow job of Sonja, number twenty-seven. And you know why number seventeen liked touching herself? Because you couldn’t get her off—you jerk.

  And then there was “comedienne.” That was unforgivable. No one says “comedienne” anymore. It’s derogatory, and it falls under the same category as “spinster,” a long-discarded sexist term. It’s “comic,” or “comedian,” much like how “spinster” has been replaced with “career woman” or “cougar.”

  Stand-up is hard enough. I didn’t also need a special soft consonant name to further make me feel like I was the short-bus version of an actual comic. Like you’d see a poster for a show advertising four comics and one comedienne. Aw—how adorable—they got a comedienne! If I had to get in front of the same drunk, obnoxious audience as everyone else, I wanted to be called the same name.

  I hated that there was a list, period. Seeing my name among a bunch of other failed experiences only made it worse. I wanted to believe that somehow I was different from the rest, the exception, much like how I tried to convince myself that he was more evolved than the other guys. Nope. He was just another dumb guy. Who keeps a list like that? I didn’t, but then again I couldn’t remember half the people I kissed or had oral sex with. And then there were many that I’d like to forget.

  The last thing I wanted was to ever see that asshole again, which would be a major problem since we lived together. I couldn’t tell him over the phone—how would that work? I’d move out before he got back? That would not be satisfying enough. No, I wanted to confront him in person. Throw my findings right in his face. Who cares that I was ruining his vacation? He’d ruined my life.

  I spent the whole flight staring at the seat tray in front of me, questioning everything. How did I not see who this guy really was? Was our love really that blinding? Why didn’t he write anything about my underwear? Those lace thongs were really nice!

  It was a shame to be so distraught while driving on the most beautiful one hundred miles of highway in the country. The road felt as if it were hovering over the Atlantic Ocean or suspended by the clouds, as you crossed over from one tropical island to the next. I would look out the windows and gasp at the scenery, then return to planning Mission Delete Jonathan. My idea was to start by telling him that he could take me off his stupid list and wishing him luck finding a girl who fit in better among the Sarahs and Laurens. I’d tell him he didn’t deserve my great blow job that I actually cared about giving to him. Then I’d turn on my heels, drive back to the airport, and get on the next flight. After packing up my stuff, I would move to LA. Fuck that guy—he was dead weight in my life and career. It was too bad we wasted a year and a half on each other.

  Jonathan called while I was still driving. I picked up the phone and answered his questions simply, with no cadence or energy in my voice. “About an hour away. Yes, I’m fine. I have the address.”

  He ended the call by saying, “I can’t wait to see you, baby!” and the words screeched in my ears and made my mouth dry. I hated him. I felt played, betrayed, and stupid. But I wasn’t going to say anything on the phone. I needed to see his jerky face.

  As I pulled up to the condo, I saw Jonathan and his friend Jen race down the outside cement stairs to greet me. I tried not to pull back too much from the obligatory kiss and hug and give myself away. We walked to Jen’s apartment down a path surrounded by palm trees and hibiscuses in bloom, and I fought to control my urge to smash my suitcase over his head. I felt terrible having to meet this sweet friend Jen under these sour circumstances. The poor girl, she kept flashing me these big beaming smiles, but I had nothing to give her back. I knew the disdain was all over my face, my bottled-up fury slowly seeping out of my pores and perfuming the air. She probably thought I was a bit of a cold bitch, but she’d forgive me once she found out why I was acting so bizarre.

  It was getting late and Jen was an early riser, so she bid us good-night. I did not want to retreat to our air mattress room and start freaking out with abandon. I wanted it to be controlled and specific and effective. Jonathan closed the door behind us and asked innocently, “Are you okay? Did something happen on the way down?” It was enough to light
my fuse. I burst into insults, starting with calling him a sexist pig, and moving on to a lousy misogynist who couldn’t see past a girl’s fucking vagina, and that he certainly didn’t deserve me.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I found your stupid list. You must have felt like a really big man writing that list,” I seethed.

  “What list?”

  “Don’t pretend to be an idiot.”

  “I’m serious, Ophira. I don’t know what list you’re talking about.”

  “Oh—there are others? Perfect. The list of all the fucking girls you’ve been with! I found it when I was transferring your stupid comic files.”

  I could see it dawn on him, and then he sank into a chair. Fuck. This was really happening. We were breaking up.

  “No, that’s not a list . . . well, it is a list, but I wrote it, like, a year ago, when we first met, because I wanted to do a comic strip for this sex anthology, and I was trying to organize my thoughts.”

  “Well, you have the thoughts of a misogynist pig. It’s revolting how you think about your exes.” I couldn’t believe I was defending his exes. Also, I’d run out of words to describe a woman-hater, so I was recycling.

  Jonathan exhaled hard. “I know exactly how that must have come across to you, but that’s certainly not how I see you or women in general. It was for this story that I never wrote. How can you not know that about me? You know how I see you.”

  “Yeah. You see me as a ‘comedienne.’”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “No one uses that term! It’s like ‘spinster.’”