The Full Catastrophe
Page 17
Unfortunately for him, that meant it was question time. After ordering a second glass of wine, I peppered him with borderline-rude personal inquiries (which I’m told people find extremely sexually appealing). What did he do on dates? How did he meet people? How many relationships had he been in? Obligingly, he answered my queries. Then, of course, he had some of his own. When my barrage of spiky questions finally slowed, he turned to me and said, ‘Have you ever been to Burning Man?’
For those not familiar, Burning Man is a temporary terrordome conjured from dust, glitter and giant sculptures made of tetanus and rich people’s dreams. Or, more simply put, it’s a weeklong communal event that makes Woodstock sound like your niece’s first speech night. Hardy souls head out to the Nevada desert to find themselves (and drugs and people to have group sex with); it doesn’t have fans, but rather, devotees. This should be good, I thought. I told him I’d never been. ‘I’ve gone a few times, actually,’ he said, more animatedly than he’d relayed anything else all night. I became alarmed; going to Burning Man once could be the result of natural curiosity. Returning year after year? That’s something like religion.
Another question swiftly followed. ‘Is that a tiger?’ he asked, gesturing at my left hand. I looked down at the silver ring I was wearing.
‘No, it’s a bear,’ I said.
That was no matter. ‘I love tigers,’ he said, with increasing vim. ‘The people I go to Burning Man with all love them. When we get there, we just … are tigers.’
My face immediately went to ‘nonplussed’, and there was nothing I could do to hide it. It’s possible he didn’t notice, because he was suddenly scrolling through his Instagram to show me photos. A grid of images populated the screen, featuring dust-doused people festooned in black and orange, arranged aboard something that resembled a marooned pirate ship. It looked like a promotional poster for Cats. ‘Oh,’ I said.
My glass of wine was empty. I did not think this man was going to be my boyfriend. But when he said, ‘Do you want to get something to eat?’ all I could think was: How can a person … be a tiger?
‘Sounds great!’ I chirped. I was learning so much.
At an izakaya-style bar, we started on a bottle of sake and picked at snacks. I was ready. Too ready. ‘So, do you … prowl around on all fours?’ I asked.
‘Not everyone,’ he said, forking fried chicken onto his plate. ‘We do wear a lot of tiger-print clothing.’
The world is so wide, I thought, like a wonder-filled Fraulein Maria of sexual anthropology. I was obsessed with these big cat fiends, and there was another question I wanted very badly to ask. There was no easy way to put it, so I just went the blunt path. ‘Is the tiger thing … a sex thing?’
Henry’s eyes flicked to my face. ‘There’s something I want to show you. Want to come back to my apartment?’
Which is how I found myself in his very beautiful Manhattan studio. It had exposed brick walls and enough space to fit a couple of grand pianos. Henry offered me a drink, some obscure brownish spirit I’d never heard of, and I perched on the edge of the couch, cautiously exhilarated. I was doing great, or, at least, fine. He disappeared into a walk-in closet and emerged with a wooden chest. As he pulled various tiger-print garments out of it one by one – leggings, a mesh top, some drapey, cape-ish thing – I started to feel flutters of panic in my chest. Someone who owns a custom-made leather jacket with animal-striped trim is not kidding around.
Let me be clear: I wasn’t judging him. Each to their own; I’m not fussed. But while I couldn’t get enough of his tigerish lifestyle stories, my intellectual interest was not matched by any kind of romantic interest. Having made it this far, I wasn’t sure exactly how to leave or backtrack. My brain activity, stymied by liquor, fumbled for a next move.
Before I could decide on anything, Henry halted the fashion show, and looked at me intently. ‘There’s one more thing. But it’s not in the box,’ he said. Curiosity killed the cat, but there was no way this guy would harm any feline.
‘I’d love to see it,’ I said. Back he stalked to the wardrobe. When he returned, he was in possession of a metal leash that ended in a tiger-print leather collar. It hung off his fingers, glinting.
‘What do you do with this?’ I asked carefully.
‘Usually, I’ll put it on women,’ he said. ‘But what I’d really like’ – a brief pause – ‘is to have someone put it on me.’
One thing I learned about myself that night was that, when faced with an unusual proposition I’d have little interest in, I’m apparently able to visualise and seriously consider it, even (or perhaps specifically) after five drinks. Could I assist this nice man? I didn’t think I’d even have to take my clothes off. Had I, with my assiduous study of dating, been unwittingly preparing for a hyper-specific, next-level challenge of this kind?
Part of me thought I could take it on, channel my inner Carrie and take this kitty for a walk, just to see what it would be like. But part of me was tired, and as well versed in human–tiger lore as I could ever hope to be. By this time, though, I felt pretty fond of Henry and I didn’t want to punish his vulnerability with a rebuff.
I wasn’t going to be able to give him what he wanted. But I thought I knew how to conclude the evening to our mutual satisfaction. ‘Do you like being told what to do?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘Henry, this has been very nice. You’re going to kiss me, and then I’m going to go home,’ I said, an edge of command in my voice.
‘I understand,’ he said, seeming pleased to have some direction. He leaned in and kissed me softly.
‘That’s good,’ I said. And it was. I thought we both did pretty well, in the end.
Flat Packed Fuck Up
Rebecca Huntley
MY FULL CATASTROPHE is all about the time I went to IKEA four times in eleven hours.
Let me be clear, I wouldn’t normally have anything bad to say about a Scandinavian institution. They tend to do extremely well – you’ve got your Finnish schools, your Danish design, your Swedish pornography. In fact, I’ve had a long and lustrous relationship with IKEA.
My first job out of high school was working in the cafe of what was then the only IKEA in Australia, at the Super Centa in Moore Park. The key to the success of Cafe IKEA was that it served no Swedish food whatsoever. It was the 1990s, so I made toasted focaccias filled with roasted capsicum, ham and cheese for the overly entitled eastern suburb families that would flock there daily. These were pre-babychino days, at the apex of public interest in banana smoothies. Well-coiffed mothers would order a coffee for themselves and a banana smoothie and a blueberry muffin for their kid. I don’t know what kind of explosive device they put in those freaking muffins, but as soon as they hit the Laminex tables they would burst into a million pieces, taking the smoothie down with them. And all of those crumbs and the banana goo would combine and create a thick paste. I’d have to get down on the floor and use genuine force to remove it. Despite those hazards, it was a fun job and there was a terrific camaraderie amongst the staff. I think that’s because we all knew we were destined to leave Cafe IKEA in the future and buy over-priced homes that we could only afford to fill with IKEA furniture.
Fifteen years later, after my time at Cafe IKEA, I was married and we were living in the eastern suburbs and our home was full of IKEA furniture. We had couches, we had ottomans, armchairs, coffee tables, everything, all bought and constructed without an ounce of domestic strife. I mean I didn’t call my husband a cunt once in any of the trips to buy the furniture or to build it.
I soon became pregnant with a little muffin–smoothie destroyer of my own. My sister in-law had given birth to her first child a few months before and they’d call her Scarlett India. I asked her, ‘Where does the India come from?’ and she said, ‘Oh, it’s where she was conceived.’ So for many months we called our unborn cherub Norsberg. Although that’s kind of more of a boy’s name.
I should have realised that my positive relationship with IKEA couldn’t last.
This all brings me to the time I went to IKEA four times in eleven hours with two-year-old twins.
What made my husband Daniel and me decide to do this? Well, the twins were starting to climb the sides of their IKEA cots in an endearing attempt to kill themselves as a way of getting back at their parents for insisting they go to bed before 1 am. Over the Christmas break – yes, the Christmas break – we thought, look we’ll buy them new beds.
We drove to IKEA in Tempe, bright and early so we could arrive as soon as the doors opened. But, on the way the twins fell asleep, so Daniel circled the parking lot over and over while I went in to find the beds we wanted, made a note of the different pieces we needed, and then dragged the boxes off the shelves and loaded them onto steel trolleys. One of the pieces I was looking for was a slatted bed base called the Luröy, so I grabbed two and picked up a $1 soft-serve cone on the way out. Licked it, dropped it on my foot, cleaned it up. Then I exited the building, left the boxes near the lift, and chased my husband around the IKEA parking lot until he saw me. We strapped everything onto the roof of the car and started to drive home. Then it started to rain, not heavily, but enough that when we got home, we had to tear the sodden cardboard from the boxes before we brought them into the house. The twins were awake now and hungry. I think they could smell the scent of forsaken soft-serve on my feet, and they were screaming.
As I fed them, my husband started to assemble the beds, and we quickly realised we had the wrong Luröys. They were too small. Shit. I’d already dismantled the cots at five o’clock that morning and we’d promised a friend we’d give them one of the cots the next day. So we fed the kids, changed them, then got back in the car to return the two Luröys and pick up the new ones.
On the way the girls started to lose it. Understandably, they didn’t want to go back to IKEA, and they started to scream. So we made a detour to my mother’s place, halfway between IKEA and our house. As we unloaded the girls, we made a plan – Daniel would return the undersized Luröys and get the new ones. We had a scheduling issue though. We had to pick up our eldest daughter from the airport as she was arriving home from holiday with her uncle and aunt. So, off Daniel went while the twins and I watched cartoons at my mum’s place. Time passed. Daniel returned with our eldest daughter, her aunt and uncle, without the smaller Luröys, but also without the larger ones. ‘What happened?’ I asked, not calmly.
Apparently there had been a long line of frustrated people at IKEA’s return counter, all crying, pulling their hair, the works, which meant it had taken him a long time to return the Luröys and left him no time to get the new ones before he had to head to the airport. So, we decided to leave all the children at my mother’s house and return to IKEA on our own. The traffic was terrible, but at last we arrived. I told my husband he should go in and find the right Luröys as I seemed incapable of performing this simple task. He went in, he came out, he had the right Luröys. But also a hot dog, two packets of frozen waffles and two boxes of those alphabet biscuits. I ate an entire box of biscuits in seven minutes.
We picked up the kids, went back to our place, unloaded the car, then we put the Luröys together.
They were the wrong Luröys; they were too small – again. And then it dawned on me. Luröy is Swedish for ‘sucker’. There are lots of Luröys and they are different sizes, but most of all, they are just a way for those Swedish bastards to sell hot dogs. Anyway, we decided to put everyone back in the car. Daniel didn’t trust me. He said, ‘You didn’t pick the right Luröys.’
‘Neither did you. We’re all going.’
‘I don’t trust you, you don’t trust me. Yes, we’re all going.’
Agreed. We loaded everyone into the car. It was getting late, it was getting dark, our eldest child had a heat rash that was just about all over her body. The twins were screaming so loudly I thought their jaws were going to dislocate. And the traffic was terrible. We arrived, everyone got out. Like the best Swedish pornography, I thought, let’s just go in the back door. We gave everyone a soft-serve cone to shut them up. Sofia was starving, we hadn’t fed her at all; we’d forgotten. She ate it, and told me she felt sick. The twins just kind of put it in their hair as they do all the time with their food. We rushed around to find the elusive Luröys. We measured them to make sure they were the right ones – this was something, perhaps, we should have done previously. We miraculously found an IKEA staff member hiding behind a display gazebo and we asked her, ‘Are these the right Luröys?’ At that moment I would have gladly presented five hours of social trends to the IKEA management for free, just for a statutory declaration to say that these were the right Luröys. We got everyone back into the car. They were sticky, they were sickly, they were angry. We drove home. We kept the children strapped in the car, we rushed into the room. Everyone was screaming.
They fitted.
I Love Dick
Ivan Coyote
ON 19 APRIL 2016, I was walking from my apartment to the market along a very busy street in East Vancouver. About a half a block up I saw something that just seemed a little off to me somehow. Maybe it was a body language thing; maybe it was my heightened trans person’s spidey senses when it comes to anticipating violence or potential danger, but I saw an interaction that seemed wrong, and I wasn’t wrong. As I got closer I could hear what he was saying.
A very large man was looming over a young woman who was sitting on a bus stop bench, and he was screaming right into her face. She was young, maybe nineteen or twenty, and exceptionally beautiful. She was wearing a sleeveless, floral-patterned dress. She had headphones in her ears and appeared to be trying to read a book. The man must have weighed about 280 pounds [130 kilograms] and was in his late forties.
He was so angry his white face was red like a tomato and he was spraying spit everywhere. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ he was saying. ‘Why can’t you even say hello to me, Bitch? You’re a stuck-up little bitch.’
She was visibly scared, shaking and silent. I was about to intervene when I was intercepted by a tiny, fierce-looking woman in her early eighties, I would say. She squared off and gave the man a solid tongue lashing in a heavy South American accent, finger shaking and saying he was twice the young woman’s age and twice her size. Did his mother know he roamed the streets talking to girls like this?
He sneered and called her a dried-up old cunt. That’s when I swallowed and stepped up, saying, no, no, he couldn’t speak to anyone like that.
‘Stay out of this, faggot,’ he said, and pulled his ham-shaped fist back, but then the bus pulled up and he turned and got on it. The young woman did not. She watched the bus pull back into the traffic, and then turned back to the old woman and me, and burst into tears.
‘Oh, my god, thank you both so much. I knew it. I should have just worn a flour sack or something, but I had a job interview. I just wanted to look nice, you know, I want this job so bad. I need to get out of my parents’ place and move into the city. That was the third time it’s happened to me today, and you were the only ones who said anything. One dude followed me right off the train, all the way down the block. I was so afraid, and
nobody helped me until now. Next time I will wear a flour sack to take the bus and get changed when I get there.’
We all exchanged names and hugs. We told Alicia from the suburbs that she should be able to wear whatever she wanted and take the bus unmolested. Maria from Costa Rica told me I was a nice gentleman, and I did not correct her.
When I got home I wrote a quick little post on my public Facebook author page, something to the effect of:
Dear dudes, yes, all men: she’s wearing headphones AND reading a book. This is code for she is not interested. She knows she looks beautiful. She is not obligated to smile at you. If she’s being polite to you it might be because she knows that if she isn’t you might get nasty, even violent, and this is a lesson she was taught as a very little girl. She’s not wearing that dress for you. She’s not on the bus to meet men, it’s public transit. Leave her alone. Tell your friends.
I hit post and forgot about it.
Until about an hour later when I picked up my phone and it said I had 2000 notifications. Within a couple of hours my post had gone viral, and over the next few days it was reposted or written about on Boing Boing and Reddit and HuffPost, and translated into Spanish and Portuguese and French and Czechoslovakian and Russian. Media contacted me for quotes. I was invited by a Russian feminist discussion group to Skype into one of their meetings. They really wanted to speak to a feminist man, they wrote me.
I said sure, but I didn’t identify as a man. I was a non-binary trans person, I told them.
‘Oh,’ they replied. ‘Then we are not interested.’
That short, unedited, nearly punctuationless post of mine has now been viewed more than any other string of words I have ever written in any of my twelve books and two decades of writing and publishing. In retrospect, I really wish I had considered paragraphs or line breaks, but who knew?