The Harm in Asking: My Clumsy Encounters With the Human Race

by Sara Barron

  I have both ordered and eaten olives for the length of my adult life, and yet I lack a clear sense of whether I actually like them. They’re always there, olives, always on the menu.

  Oooh. Yes, I think, Olives would be tasty.

  So then I go ahead and order the olives, and then the olives arrive, and then I eat the olives, and every time I do I think, I don’t not like you, olives. But neither are you as delish as I always think you’ll be.

  The mechanics of making out with Janet were similar, and the fact of this kept us stationed in public, in various Greenwich Village dive bars, for the length of our romantic courtship. It lasted one whole month. Lacking pure desire, we needed some other effective motivation, and I was of the opinion that the continued attention from surrounding male bar-goers did an excellent, substitute job.

  I also liked having a secret. I didn’t keep Janet a secret. On the contrary, I debated buying a pocket-sized foghorn so that I could adequately advertise the news: HEAR YE, HEAR YE! I HAVE MADE OUT WITH A WOMAN. WHAT’S THAT? YES. I AM OPEN AND I’M WILD.

  Between us, however, Janet and I said nothing about it. There was no “So: What’s all this about? Why did we start making out?” No discussion of how inexperienced we both were in these, the Sapphic arts. Our conversations were as they had always been: Janet would discuss how she liked being single, how happy it made her. I’d opt not to point out that rambling on about how happy you are serves only to convince the world you’re repressed and depressed, both. I’d just nod in agreement, maybe mention the ways in which my service skills had markedly improved. Then at a certain point, we’d kiss.

  I found it weird—I find it weird—the lack of conversation to address the thing between us. But the weirdness lent an air of mystery to the proceedings, and the air of mystery lent it an air of excitement.

  Well, show me something exciting, and I’ll show you something that’s ready to break.

  JANET AND I had been at it for two weeks, maybe three, when I noticed our routine had already gotten boring. I felt it internally myself and I knew that Janet felt it too. She’d gotten into this habit where, in the last seconds before a make-out, she would sigh.

  And this was not a sexual sigh. This was a rallying energy sigh.

  Perhaps I should have been offended, but I was not. I understood on a visceral level where Janet was coming from. The pressure we felt to kiss in public was now akin to the pressure one associates with having to floss.

  I really ought to do this. But I do not want to do this.

  We were mere days away from ending it. Whatever it was.

  But then: we did not.

  Because then: we got a big shot of adrenaline.

  ON TUESDAY, JANET heard through the grapevine that the guy who liked to skateboard had gone and got himself a girlfriend.

  On Wednesday, Janet barreled toward me at the start of the Wednesday-night shift.

  “Look,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think tonight’s our night.”

  “For …?” I asked.

  I saw a tremor in her hand. Inadvertently, it shook the powdered sugar off the doughnut she was holding.

  “Us,” Janet answered, “to, you know, skip the bar. I mean, I was thinking … you could … just … comehomewithmeinstead.”

  It’s a jarring shift, from tipsy French kissing to sober conversation about implicit nakedness and oral sex. But grief caused by an ex-boyfriend who’s moved on, this must be managed swiftly and with a strong hand.

  I understood that, and obliged.

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  “Really?” said Janet.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Great,” she said. “Well, then. Right. I guess I’ll just … buy us a bottle of wine. We’ll drink it, and … just … see. We’ll just … see … what happens.”

  AGE 6

  The Pantaloon

  Spring of my twenty-fifth year, my friends, and here is exactly what happened: Janet and I ran the bases. WE RAN THE BASES. Never in my whole entire life have the minutes passed so slowly; imagine sprinting on a treadmill with a backpack filled with dumbbells, for that is the speed at which time passed as I tried to please my girlfriend Janet. It went on for … gosh. I don’t even know how long. How long are the minutes before you shit yourself in public? How long the minutes before he finally texts you back? Things went on for ages, is my point, until finally Janet delivered unto me the most disheartening tap to my shoulder I hope ever to receive. So I stopped. I looked up.

  “That’s fine,” she said. “That’s … plenty.”

  “Oh,” I said. I sat up.

  “Do you …” asked Janet, “… want me to …?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m good.”

  I lack the self-esteem to be sexually demanding. My feelings on the matter go something like I don’t want it if we have to talk about it. I mean, I like to talk, but just not about, (a) other people’s vacations, or (b) what’s about to be done to me sexually.

  Key word “about.”

  HERE, I MUST stress: It’s not that the experience was awful, it’s that I was awful at the experience. These sorts of oral extravaganzas in which we humans engage are occasionally pleasurable, but always ridiculous, and that’s under the best circumstances. Experiment on a person for whom you’re not biologically programmed, and Godspeed. Because you’ll need it. There’s no hope of those aspects that do occasionally make it better: getting lost in the moment, getting told you’re adept. Nothing so fortifying will occur. You’ll only be trapped and alone, plagued with the backbreaking sense you’re doing something at which you’re really—like, really—inept.

  AGE 7

  The Second Childhood

  It was fall, now, of my twenty-fifth year. And was I “good,” really? Was I satisfied in the way I claimed to be when Janet asked? Maybe I was, since, well, they say failure isn’t the absence of success so much as it is the absence of having tried, at least once, to eat pussy. So I’d tried. I’d run the bases and struck out.

  It was difficult, afterward, for Janet and me to look each other in the eye. We did force ourselves to hang out a few more times, but with everything sexual having happened between us, the tension was gone. There wasn’t much there there. Work became awkward, as you might expect, so thank god I was somewhat briskly fired. It was two weeks after my final encounter with Janet, and I’d been assigned a tableside fish fillet. However, I wound up accidentally stabbing the customer for whom I was doing the fillet with the fillet knife. It was just a little nip in the shoulder, really. Nonetheless, I lost my job.

  After that, and despite the occasional text, I never saw Janet again.

  MY REAL-LIFE LESBIAN encounter had been a failure insofar as it had neither confirmed me as a lesbian nor made me feel adept in the art of experimentation. But rather than let this lack of success motivate me to try harder and better a second time, I chose to let it close a door.

  Good-bye, gay, I thought. You were fun, and you were wild, but you were sadly not for me.

  The closure felt good, in its way, but it also created a hole.

  What would make me cool if not my inauthentic gayness?

  And, well, I don’t mean to sound too sexual about it, but this hole was a big hole. This was a hole I’d need to fill.

  Part II

  Renegade

  5

  Alcoholics Accountable

  Prominently displayed on my parents’ living-room mantel is my fifth-grade school photo. It’s terribly unflattering, but my mother insists on keeping it up.

  “It’s not that you look cute,” she says. “It’s just that you look happy.”

  This much is true. My smile demonstrates the sort of enthusiasm commonly associated with Mormons or Down syndrome. The waistband of my jeans is visible because the way I wore them at the time made it more of a nipple-band, really, than anything relating to a waist. As for my cheeks, they look fat enough to sit on.

  Throughout my adolescence, I saw this
version of myself more than any other. It left me with the overarching sense that I could stand for some roughening up. I didn’t want an authentically challenging experience; I wanted a veneer of coolness, a lick of the mysterious about me.

  The need had fueled my Sapphic desire for years, and as that desire waxed and waned, I searched for a workable substitute. Something that would project a dark side lurking just below the surface. Which was ironic, actually, because I do have a dark side. The problem, though, is that it presently involves peeing in cups in the middle of the night so as to avoid getting up and going to the bathroom.

  Such behavior may be darkly slothful, but it does not provide the best fabric out of which to fashion the veil of one’s mystery.

  “And what about you?” asks a future suitor. He’s been drawn in by my unmistakable something. What it is, he knows not. All he knows is that as far as I’m concerned, he smells danger. Complexity. A hypnotically erotic edge. “You’re so … mysterious,” he says. He leans in closer. “I want to know you. Really know you.”

  I inch closer to him. There’s a brushing together of knees.

  “I pee in cups sometimes,” I say. “I do it when I’m tired.”

  I understand this to be a less than ideal response, evoking a woman Truly Disturbed rather than Alluringly Troubled, and that’s not what I was going for. I wanted something in the neighborhood of a Sexy Idiosyncrasy. A head-turning aspect, but one that did not evoke an image of me in a diaper. I was a teenager at this point in my story, and my lesbian aspirations were not looking promising. They’d done nothing in terms of helping me seem as enthralling as I would’ve liked, so I forged ahead with another, better option: I would experiment with alcohol and drugs. I would drink it, and do them. I would seem wild and unique.

  I ARRIVED AT New York University in the fall of 1997. Within a month, I attended one of its famously pathetic sorority parties. God bless my alma mater: Its theater program might waste your money like every under-eye cream I’ve ever tried, but its Greek system is one of the worst in the country. If you join, you will be laughed at.

  I never drank in high school, owing to a lack of social invitations and a fear of projectile vomit. Once I hit college, though, I did as young gals do and harnessed a sense of adventure. I purchased a tube of dark lipstick and a Blackstreet CD. I told my newly minted friends and put-upon acquaintances, “Hey there. I’m looking to party.”

  I did this for one whole month until finally I heard about the aforementioned sorority party. I decided to attend, and spent the week leading up to it doing dexterity exercises in my dorm room. I did wall-to-wall sprints. I deep-lunged. I quad-stretched. I made an effort to ensure that if someone did throw up in my general vicinity, I’d be nimble-footed enough to steal away.

  My overall thinking was that the vomit risk was worth it for the revels that awaited. I’d never been to an alcohol-laced party before, but I had seen a few John Hughes films. I hoped to go to the party and meet a beefcakey guy who hoisted girls up above his shoulders. Who’d hoist me up above his shoulders.

  “Put me down!” I’d yell.

  “Only if you do a shot!” he’d yell back.

  So I’d do a shot. And then another. And another.

  “You’re crazy!” he’d shout. “Most girls can’t handle their liquor!”

  “But I can,” I’d say.

  “Yes. You can,” he’d say. “You’re a real special lady.”

  This, in all likelihood, would be the beginning of a mostly physical relationship in which I’d use the beefcake for his body but keep him at arm’s length. The new coolness I possessed from drinking would imbue me with that specific and awe-inspiring skill.

  I attended the sorority party with a young lady named Melanie whom I’d met in a freshman-year acting class called Masks of Commedia. Pre-party, Melanie and I had dinner in our dorm’s cafeteria. It was during this time that I carbo-loaded so as to prep my body for proper alcohol absorption. I ate one sesame bagel and two plates of refried beans. Having finished, I removed the napkin I’d tucked into the collar of my delicate chemise. I looked Melanie in the eye in much the same way Jennifer Connelly looks Russell Crowe in the eye in the movie A Beautiful Mind. I’m referring to that scene in which she says, “I need to believe … that something extraordinary … is possible.” I conveyed a fear of the unknown, I like to think, but also hope. Hope. Of meeting men who hoist women up above their shoulders. Of men who get you drunk but make you feel understood.

  “We can do this,” I told her. “I truly believe that we can.”

  Melanie and I arrived at the sorority party at nine p.m. on a Friday night. I had expected it to take place in some attractive Greenwich Village brownstone, and that is because I thought the sorority scene was made up of refined and wealthy ladies.

  Instead, though, it took place in a run-down apartment building just east of Union Square. A total of eight sisters lived on the first and second floors, and to host their party they used their individual apartments, the stairwell between the apartments, and, finally, the ground floor entryway. So when you walked in, you walked in.

  When I walked in, the process of doing so felt rather like passing from the natural world, where there was fresh air and reasonable human behavior, into an insane asylum designated for the treatment of grubby, promiscuous women. People were screaming and flying every which way. There were indeed a handful of beefcakes, but in person the smell of their cologne was just too much to bear. My left arm knocked into one of them at one point, and instantly my hives sprang up.

  The experience gave me a sense of not belonging, and Melanie made it all worse by abandoning me upon entry to chug a monstrosity called a “forty-ounce beer.” She chugged three in a row before meandering along to the sorority’s mascot, a jumbo stuffed-animal panda. Melanie straddled the panda, then dry-humped the panda. At that point, I knew I’d have to soldier forth alone.

  I knew I had to do what I was there to do.

  I escorted myself to the bar.

  I say “bar,” although it is perhaps better described as a filthy kitchen counter stocked with bottom-shelf booze. In order to serve myself, I had to squeeze between two couples that were both French kissing. I was about to tap one of them on the shoulder to ask them to move, but before I had the chance, one of the young ladies jerked out of her embrace so she could projectile vomit.

  The vomit went everywhere. Everywhere except on me, that is! I used my newfound strength and dexterity to propel myself at top speed out of the kitchen in the first-floor apartment, up through the stairwell, and into the kitchen of the second-floor apartment. There, I found another filthy counter stocked with the identical bottom-shelf booze. From the options available, I chose a festive-looking punch for the singular reason that it smelled like suntan lotion. It reminded me of a sunny day at the beach, which, in turn, helped calm me down after seeing someone vomit. The punch tasted like cough syrup mixed with gasoline. It wasn’t great. But it was … doable. So I parked myself in the beanbag chair beside its serving bowl. And I began to drink.

  Over the course of the next hour I did so steadily and with negligible interaction from fellow partygoers. At one point I tried stretching my legs out for a more flattering presentation of my figure, but this just caused one of the perfumed beefcakes to trip over my foot and yell, “Watch your fucking feet!” So then I tucked them in again.

  I thought, Sara, you can work with this. Just look prettily forlorn. The problem with that, though, was that while my face does have its workable angles, Attractive Sadness isn’t one of them. If I look forlorn, I just look puffy and deranged. So I kept my face in neutral. If I were to lure in any bait, I’d have to do it with my drinking.

  So I drank.

  And I drank.

  And I drank.

  I drank steadily for a total of two hours. After two hours, I was drunk. I thought, Oh, okay. So this is drunk. I felt confused and a little bit sick. Furthermore, I had finally accepted that no one was en route to fin
d my solo drinking sexy. So I pushed myself up out of the beanbag chair and hobbled out the front door and into the stairwell. This should not have been that big a deal, but I’d lost the ability to balance, and to make matters worse, I’d worn a high peep-toe heel for my exciting evening out. Walking normally when sober took some effort. Walking normally when drunk for the first time was simply not an option.

  I hobbled toward the staircase, then down the staircase. I made it halfway before I tripped and fell. Which is to say, I didn’t walk the rest of the way down the stairs, so much as I flew the rest of the way down the stairs. Lucky for me, an emaciated sister was there to break my fall. She’d been standing at the bottom.

  “AHHHHHH!” she screamed.

  She was awfully loud for someone so teeny-tiny.

  So I apologized, like you do, and seeing as how our bodies had landed such that I appeared to be mounting her from behind, I tried to make a joke.

  “Buy a gal a drink first, right?” I tried. But the sister was not amused.

  “What the fuck?” she screamed.

  And then I farted in response. It was not intentional. It was merely the choice my body made on my behalf.

  The sister screamed again.

  “She’s farting!” she screamed. “On me!”

  “Not technically,” I said. “Technically, I’m farting above you.”

  One of her male contemporaries charged over and grabbed me by the collar of my delicate chemise.

  “You’re outta here,” he said. “That shit was disrespectful.”

  I’m not convinced a person does himself a favor by mentioning the word “respect” at a sorority party. He, my molester, held me by the collar of my delicate chemise while the sister lay at our feet huddled in the fetal position. Beside us stood a young woman who’d removed her own brassiere so she could use it as a toilet. People were applauding in response, and, I’m sorry, but my feeling is that if one woman is allowed to urinate into her own brassiere—and believe you me: I am glad that she is—then another woman should not be chastised for a little toot. A little root-toot. A little trumpet de la rumpet.