Night Terrors

by Ashley Cardiff

  A few months after I encountered the porn star on the subway platform, a friend of mine who’d been living in Prague visited New York. By that point, my racist boyfriend and I had parted ways. This friend happened to be a mutual friend of mine and the aforementioned racist tantrum-prone ex’s, who used to boast that his WASPy name “rings of money,” so we’ll call him Cecil. Cecil and I decided to bury the hatchet that night and be civil so we could enjoy the company of our friend, Jack from Prague, along with another friend, Johnny, with whom we also attended college.

  Despite the fragility of the situation, me, my ex-boyfriend of approximately two weeks, Jack from Prague and Johnny were all having a nice time at the bar. By “nice time,” I mean I was deep in the doldrums of those critical weeks post-breakup where you would do anything to be around your recent ex, anything including but not limited to humiliating yourself and sending cryptic text messages allegedly intended for someone else. The doldrums are the point in any person’s life where—should that person have any instincts toward self-preservation—he or she would do well to stay away from the ex, the point at which one is most vulnerable. By “stay away,” I mean locked in your bedroom, sewed into a Onesie and wearing a helmet.

  There we were, sitting outside in the back garden of our neighborhood bar. Jack from Prague and Johnny have—for brevity’s sake—an occasionally collapsed and always competitive relationship, or a tense friendship with lots of baggage. They were having a conversation about something having to do with college. I was sitting there trying to look like I wasn’t utterly preoccupied with the recent breakup and what my ex was thinking and if he was as curious about me as I was about him and if this would all blow over soon and if we’d get back together and have little bigoted children together (if he didn’t make me abort them!). Severing yourself from someone after several years actually corrupts the brain and one entertains such thoughts.

  There I was, smoking cigarettes and slumped over and worrying about whether or not I looked pretty when, all of a sudden, a man appeared. He was tall and pasty-white, stocky if not a little doughy, with a pinched expression on a narrow head under the kind of spectacles that only a person who refers to them as “spectacles” would wear. He embodied that collision of smug condescension and social unease that you’re probably familiar with if you’ve ever gone to a big electronics chain to get your computer fixed. Curiously, he put down a shot in front of Jack from Prague and a glass of wine in front of me. Though I’m normally not one to order wine in bars—because of pride—I was drinking wine that night, anticipating a situation I’d need to navigate unwasted.

  There we were, a full drink in front of me and a shot in front of Jack from Prague. My automatic assumption in this stricken, preoccupied state was that the Stranger somehow knew Jack, had been invited to the bar by someone at this very table and the shot was a celebratory gesture, honoring Jack’s return to the States from the Czech Republic. I assumed the drink for me was simply gentlemanly behavior.

  Jack from Prague invited the Stranger to have a seat. It was immediately established that no one at the table had ever even seen the guy and that he was insufferable: as we raised our drinks to observe the free ones—I with my glass of wine, Jack with his shot, the Stranger with his pour of whiskey—the Stranger cautioned Jack not to breathe through his nose while swallowing, in order to somehow mask the taste of the liquor. As someone who’s watched a lot of spaghetti Westerns, I knew it was dishonorable to tell a man how to drink his whiskey. Moreover, as someone who is plagued by genuine fears that the amount of whiskey in the world is finite, I knew this man was wrong.

  After polite introductions around the table, the Stranger noticed that I was smoking unusual cigarettes and—much like in Denver at that awful frat party—took that as an opening to conversation by asking for one. I happily obliged because the man had just given me a full drink for no discernible reason. I offered my lighter and watched with some skepticism, as the ritual of lighting the cigarette seemed visibly foreign to him. Once it was lit, the Stranger took a few methodical puffs and then snubbed out the full cigarette. For those of you who aren’t smokers, this is an astonishingly tactless move. Like punching a gift horse in the teeth.

  He noticed as I watched the display with giant eyes and he said, “Too harsh.”

  I recoiled a little bit, but with some understanding. I have been occasionally told that the brand I smoke is harsh. I have also been occasionally told they taste like “nothing.” Smokers have preferences. His display became less outrageous and more within the realm of reason (though it is still rude).

  He reached into his breast pocket, with pinky finger lifted fastidiously, as if offering his shirt a spot of tea. He removed a small black box with a blue light on the side that glowed and stirred like a neon heart. From the black box, he produced a slim, plastic-looking tube.

  “Now these,” he said, “are really smooth.”

  It was at this point I realized his request for my cigarette and subsequent snubbing out had actually been a performance, a lead-in, a verse before the chorus about how objectionable he was. Not only that, I realized I had encountered my first electronic cigarette smoker, patron of a product I’d seen only in ads on the subway boasting of its value as a quitting tool (not as a cool, sexy alternative to real smoking). I could not believe my eyes as the Stranger sat there and decorously puffed away. I then wondered if I would have taken him more or less seriously had he produced a fucking bubble pipe.

  Jack from Prague and Johnny resumed their conversation, perhaps trying not to call attention to this absurdity. I don’t exactly recall what they were talking about but I believe Johnny was working on a paper for grad school applications and the conversation was at least loosely academic. The Stranger half-shut his eyes and mustered an extremely serious expression, as if willing his brain to assimilate the conversation and find a way to upend it. He began interjecting in a manner that indicated he saw himself as a sort of gadfly, whereas the rest of us exchanged sneaking glances to communicate puzzlement at his ornery and defensive way. My brain soon turned back on its obsession with heartbreak and loss and whether or not Cecil and I were going to end this charade and get back together.

  The Stranger then turned to me with the smug, contemplative gaze of a serious man without serious thoughts and said, “Tell me, Ashley, what do you think: is there an implicit value to absolute power?”

  I was visibly astounded by the question, having not heard such open, obvious pseudo-intellectualism since freshman year of college.

  “What?!” I blurted.

  Having not registered the look of shock on my face, he repeated himself: “I asked, is there an implicit value to absolute power.” I could see in his pinched expression that he was trying to make me feel stupid by spouting transparent horseshit.

  “No, no,” I said, not wanting him to think he’d just blown my mind, “I heard you.”

  He leaned forward, gathering up his small, darting features and awaiting my admission of inadequacy. “So?”

  Here I stuttered a bit, because I was more than fine with him thinking I was just staggering under awe of him and the rich thoughts within his heaving brain. Finally equipping myself to deal with the situation, I said, “That . . . that’s an absurd question.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  He frowned, confused.

  Here, I let the judgment play out all over my face and added, “Why would you even say that?”

  Not skipping a beat, the Stranger just looked at me squarely, yet in a flinching way, like someone who got beat up as a kid but not enough and said, “Because I enjoy going to bars and antagonizing liberal arts majors . . . and seeing if they’ve actually read Machiavelli.”

  I guess he figured that—like some god of refutation sent to watch on us and show how bad we are at speaking—he had accomplished his task. Unbeknownst to him, he’d mer
ely confirmed he sucked, which wasn’t much in doubt after he wasted one of my cigarettes like so much dry ice so that his stupid electronic ones could enter with some fanfare.

  Here I decided I needed more information in order to continue. I went inside and cornered the bartender, who is a friend of mine. I wanted to know how the Stranger knew exactly what I was drinking, having spoken to none of us before sitting down.

  The bartender looked very guilty and explained, “[The Stranger] came in and asked who the girl in the skull shirt was”—please note that because, developmentally, I am a twelve-year-old, I was wearing a Misfits shirt—“I said to him, ‘You mean the girl who’s sitting outside with her friends and her ex-boyfriend? Who she broke up with a week ago?’ And [the Stranger] said, ‘Yeah, what is she drinking? I’d like to buy her a drink.’” The bartender was apparently so shocked that the Stranger was not deterred by the mention of a recent ex-boyfriend at the table that he told him. Still, if the bartender’s real reason was “personal amusement,” I couldn’t blame him. It was then I realized we were dealing with someone who had no qualms with dropping into a loaded environment and chasing tail anyway.

  The bartender proceeded to explain that the Stranger had recently become a regular of sorts and this table bombing technique had already emerged as his MO: he comes around to the bar, selects a girl, and fixates on her for the night, whether one of his comely fellow bartenders or some unsuspecting patron like myself. I’d like to note that I tend to bristle at men or women complaining of unwanted sexual attention from strangers, as it sounds like nothing more than insisting on one’s appeal. My point is that I was the target this night and some poor sucker was going to be the target the next day.

  Thus, the Stranger knew that one of the three men (though not which one) sitting outside with me was a very recent ex and, as a workaround, brought some shots and invited himself to join us. This is pretty wily but also fucking offensive.

  I returned outside only to find that the Stranger had switched seats with Cecil in order to sit beside me. Considering the Stranger did not know which of these men was my recent ex, I guess asking such a thing requires a balance of balls and stupidity so volatile I admire his facility for walking without tipping over. Obviously, Cecil was entertained by the Stranger’s shameless pursuit and happily obliged him. Taking my seat, I turned my chair to a suitably aggressive angle away from the Stranger and retreated into conversation with Jack from Prague.

  About an hour went by and the Stranger spent the remainder of his time playing a game on his smart phone and pretending to text. He must have deduced early on that, free drinks or no, he’d made himself unwelcome, but he still just sat there. Finally, as the bartender announced that the back garden would soon close, the Stranger turned to me and said with all the urgency of someone trying to whisk me off on the Underground Railroad, “Ashley. I need to see you again.”

  “Why?!” I exclaimed because I was genuinely surprised. I hadn’t made eye contact with him since his bit about “implicit value” and “absolute power” and adding “adjectives to nouns” so they “sound thoughtful.” I thought our interacting time had reached its end and I’d thought my body language was clear enough.

  He replied, “I’d like to have dinner with you and share conversation.”

  I’d like to interject here that I am serious. And he continued!

  “Here’s what you’re going to do: you’re going to give me your number and I’m going to call you in a few days.”

  Because I have a nice, puerile anti-authority streak, this is pretty much the perfect way to guarantee I will not go on a date with you. Tangentially, it’s impressively gross to couch a request for a date in such domineering language.

  “No,” I said, “I’m not.”

  Furrowing his brow just a little deeper, as if simultaneously confused but more certain of himself, he said, “Yes, you are.”

  “What?” I had no idea what to make of this. “No.”

  He became fully befuddled. “Why not?”

  “Now’s not a good time,” I said, referring to the racist elephant at the table.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The bartender told you,” I said and looked at him with pretty open anger.

  Whether or not he understood my allusion to Cecil, the Stranger played dumb. He finished his drink in mock nonchalance—no doubt trying to avoid breathing through his nose—and got up and left.

  —

  For months after, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was just socially awkward and trying to reconcile that with wanting to brush his goatee against my unimaginable places. Now I realize he figured—via a free drink and some blowharding about Machiavelli excerpts he’d maybe skimmed online—he might exploit the duress of my recent breakup and coerce me into a date with some pushy rhetoric no doubt nurtured on the Internet in pick-up artist forums. I wasn’t receptive to this because I myself had spent tens of thousands of the government’s dollars on my Machiavelli excerpts, which I had the decency to skim in a physical book while lazily highlighting passages I would never remember.

  Again, you should never be nasty and ungrateful about someone wanting to talk to you because he or she finds you attractive. It takes a lot of courage to approach a stranger. However, I am going to take offense to anyone propositioning me with “Here’s what you’re going to do . . .” and also, “You’re probably not that smart and I like antagonizing you because of that.” For the record, if I were horrible enough to be sexually aroused by men who like to think they read books but kind of just look at the words, New York would make me so full of babies I’d have to shoehorn them out to make room for my organs.

  The Stranger has since furthered his reputation for being an aggressive sleaze and ambushing girls at the bar with his electronic cigarettes and button-down shirts tucked into jeans. A friend of mine saw him recently strolling along in North Brooklyn with one such lucky lady on whom, apparently, his method worked. The Stranger was wearing a crisp new shirt emblazoned with the logo of a jam band and puffing away on his beloved electronic cigarettes.

  Hearing that, I experienced a single piercing moment in which I imagined us together, discussing Machievelli and speed-reading Nietzsche and laughing, just laughing, because who needs thoughts when you can have opinions? And then we’d have middling, stilted sex and we’d smoke electronic cigarettes in the shadows after and then I realized my recent breakup had impossibly colored my perception of “settling” and that dying is really just more noble.

  SEXUAL FANTASIES

  People always tell me I have a “rich inner life.” I used to be pretty flattered by that until I realized, after a few years, it just meant “I think you have Asperger’s.” In reality, I do not have a rich inner life. For one thing, I don’t masturbate. I guess it all started when I was a teenager and didn’t masturbate.

  It’s important to note that I’m not trying to portray myself as some sort of person free of sexual impulse and full of virtue. In a lot of ways, it was just a by-product of confusion—I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, if it was inside stuff or around stuff, if I’m supposed to brush my teeth before (or after)—but I obviously don’t think masturbation is bad. For example, I think people who try to punish kids for masturbating are insane, imposing no small amount of guilt on their children unnecessarily and also stupid because trying to keep kids from masturbating is like trying to play Whac-A-Mole with your hands tied behind your back. Which is not to suggest you should try to stop kids from masturbating by using your teeth. That’s dark.

  My objection to masturbation is purely personal: I cannot bring myself to do it. I consider this more of a hang-up than any indication of valor. In moments of drunken vulnerability, I have admitted as much to close friends. These people always look at me like I’m crazy to think they’d ever be interested in the state and welfare of my vagina. I’m glad when I can discern this particular
look of pained disinterest because some grasp of nonverbal communication indicates that—though I certainly fall somewhere on the autism spectrum—I’m probably not full-blown.

  Basically, I tried. I tried occasionally as a teenager. I always knew that I was different and off and something was probably wrong with me because I didn’t masturbate, so—because peer pressure is such that one can buckle to it even when alone—I gave it a few shots. Sadly, no matter how much I tried, it never worked out. The problem, so far as I can distinguish it, is that I just can’t shake the suspicion the act itself looks so pathetic. Consequently, I tell myself I do not masturbate because I am too cerebral and, because in order to be a good liar one must lie to oneself first, I do all right. As a sidenote, can you imagine what kind of hero you’d have to be to look noble while jerking off? If anyone can do it, I’d guess a fireman. But even then, I’m skeptical.

  I always knew this lack of a normal teenage habit was strange. I recall getting a lecture from a friend in college who told me I’d be doomed to a lifetime of terrible sex if I didn’t know how to please myself. I recall that statement smarting at the time because it sounded so reasonable but I could never convince my brain that a human being hunched over and gravely trying to pleasure itself is anything but the most concise expression of sadness I can fathom, excepting maybe “dead puppy on the floor of an abandoned toy store.”

  —

  Herein exists something fascinating to me: it seems safe to conclude that in order to get around any recognition of how small and sad one looks while masturbating, those who masturbate—that is, the many—require muscular imaginations. It’s impressive enough that, with some physical prodding, the imagination can actually create sexual gratification out of nothing. Going further, the imagination not only forges and sustains arousal, it can actually overcome the nagging certainty we all must experience that we look completely ridiculous while doing so. The imagination performs a ballet around your hunched back, gritted teeth and desperate machinations.