Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants

by Jill Soloway

  Neuroses protect us from thinking about real things.

  That’s not an aphorism, that’s the voice of Joy Lowenthal, my shrink. She reminds me of things like that and things like, “We worry because we don’t want to be present in our lives.”

  I pay her two hundred dollars an hour, okay, one-twenty-five after Writers Guild insurance co-pay, to tell me that? No, Joy Lowenthal, I worry because I have REAL things to worry about. As soon as we put the offer on the new house, I started worrying. I worried about every single thing, that the bathroom was too close to the stairs and the cost of the renovations and the color of the paint, butternut crème or goldenrod soufflé? Or both on opposing walls? But as the house got ready and the time was coming for us to move, I began to focus all of my worry on the people across the street from the new house.

  The people across the street are an elderly Japanese couple, Alvin and Takako, and they’re ready in case the Depression happens again. Me, I’m not ready, all my savings are in money, but lucky Alvin and Takako, their savings are in… things. Things they keep in their front yard, stuff they could surely barter. For example, after the Armageddon, I wonder what they’d get for that rusty old set of weights holding down the black garbage bags I can see from my new living room. Or the two orange traffic cones, turned black from weather, that you can see from the new kitchen. Or what about the giant, three-foot-tall jar of brown somethings that may or may not be pickled eggs floating in purple water, that you can see from our new bedroom?

  Why didn’t I notice the people across the street before we decided to buy the new house? Are those things actually pickled eggs? Are they safe for eating after they’ve been outdoors? In a rainstorm? What are they, really? What are they for? What are they? What are they for? What are they? My brain bucket had to know.

  We worry to distract ourselves from our lives… because we’re afraid of love.

  That’s Joy again. So I’ve run out of aphorisms, big deal. And what does my new house have to do with love, anyway? It’s just a new house, a bigger house, it’s not a story, it’s a house where I’m going to live with my son and… Dink.

  Oh, that’s right, this is going to be our house. All three of us. Dink is about to give up his apartment because he was never there anymore. And okay, yes, with this new house, he is doing everything. He’s over there renovating, right now, he’s there and he’s got a level and he knows how to use it.

  Dink told me that, last night while we were sleeping, I woke up, stared him straight in the eyes, and said, “I’m gonna chop you up.” Then went back to sleep. I don’t believe him.

  It’s too obvious to just blame fear of love for my obsessions about the panty hose. Have I mentioned the hose yet? Alvin and Takako grow their vegetables in their front yard on strips of old pantyhose. Tomato vines, raspberries, growing on hosiery? And is it hosiery or hoisery? God don’t let this be another Box-el-nighter—I mean Boxleitner—I can stop obsessing, I know I can. I promise I’ll stop. There’s just one more thing my brain has to understand. The octopus.

  Alvin and Takako have, perhaps to be neighborly, decorated their rusty front gate with old Christmas ornaments tied on with frayed ribbon. It’s June. There’s a candy cane ornament and a needlepoint train, a puffy Strawberry Shortcake doll and a snowman from foam balls. And there’s the octopus.

  One of the ornaments is a yarn octopus. It’s a shank of gray yarn with thread around its neck, the splaying yarn separated into eight legs. On the octopus head, there is but one little googly eye, with a long, flirty eyelash on it. I bring this up to Joy, thinking she’ll assure me that no normal person would be able to comfortably live across the street from a blind-in-one-eye flirty female octopus.

  But Joy smiles and instead tells me that the three of us should make a videotape of ourselves saying good-bye to the old house. We need a ritual, she says. A place to put the feelings.

  We did. In the last couple days at the old house we made a good-bye video and we wept and it was good. And on the video if you watch it, you’ll see that as I was saying good-bye, good-bye to it all, good-bye to my tree, Dink started to laugh.

  “That tree isn’t yours,” he said.

  “Yes it is,” I turned off the camera. “I own this tree for three more days, and if I wanted to, before we leave, I could chop it down. I wouldn’t, but I could.”

  “No you couldn’t,” Dink said in his Marlboro man voice. Fuck him and his folksy wisdom and his chuckle that shames me, I thought. “That tree belongs to the land,” he continued. “We just happen to be lucky enough to have lived underneath it for a few years.”

  But that evening, I began to see the house and the tree and the yard as a place that I had been visiting, not a place that was mine. I took my ownership out of the equation, then put the house and the yard and the truth of the move outside of myself, like AA.

  We admitted we were powerless, came to believe there was a Power greater than us, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God. Or something like that.

  There’s another tree. This one is in the backyard of the new house. It’s a Brazilian pepper tree, with that old old kind of crackling bark. One day I was staring at it, trying to figure out why I didn’t like it as much as my tree that was my lover. I finally figured it out. This tree’s bottom half was that old old crackling bark but the top half was shiny new branches, all much thinner than the bottom half. It looked freaky. Dink explained it to me.

  “Someone butchered this tree,” he said. I looked closer, and it was clear that in the past couple of years, someone had hacked off this tree into naked stumps. At our old house, we’d called in the most expensive tree surgeon to lace it out, shaping and pruning the canopy with loving precision. The people we’d bought the house from had used a saw and a heart of stone. Entire giant perfectly aged gnarled hands from the top of this tree must have fallen with great sound. They probably thought, hey it’s our money, we need to do things cheaply, and hell, it’s our tree.

  “Don’t worry,” I said to the tree. “While we are here with you, we will protect you. No one will hurt you again.”

  Ultimately, I guess, it wasn’t letting go that allowed me to move on. It was anthropomorphizing a thing— that poor tree in the new yard—into something sad that needed me to save it. I had to see myself as a special rescue hero to find my way out of the darkness. God, I’m a fucking tool. I really am.

  We moved.

  I’m writing from my new office. In the old house my computer was in the bedroom, but now that we live here, I wake up before Dink and my son. I come downstairs and get my coffee and pour my thoughts into the computer, in the marine layer morning silence.

  And did I tell you about my office? It has purple walls and a hippie-dippie Moroccan bed, and from my desk, I can turn and look out the doors, and I see trees, endless trees, and hills that look like Spain. I don’t see the octopus and I don’t see the pickled eggs. And there are hummingbirds here. And butterflies. This house, something about it—it seems to attract butterflies. I don’t remember ever seeing butterflies at the old house. Change is good.

  11

  Why Jews Go to the Bathroom with the Door Open

  When this book first went to publishers for what became a high-priced bidding war, eventually rising into the low nine figures (lying yet again), the title was Why Jews Go to the Bathroom with the Door Open. There are still publishing industry Web sites that announce the sale of my book with that title in it. It really felt like the perfect title to me. I was ready to defend it to the death, to claim it was the only possible right title for my book.

  Then I remembered Uncle Sheldon and Aunt Flossy.

  My Uncle Sheldon and Aunt Flossy lived in a condo development in the Chicago suburbs. They were the first people who openly proclaimed their right to read while they shat, with signage even. There was a wooden placard on the door that called the room The Library, as well as a magazine rack and a stack of joke books, some with titles like Bathroom Humor for
the Bathroom and Two Hundred Best Toilet Jokes. Here it was, a subcategory of humor—about the bathroom, for the bathroom.

  What if people thought my book was a book for reading on the toilet? What if they thought it was a joke book for reading on the toilet? What if they thought it was a joke book chock-full of jokes about toilets?

  I couldn’t take this chance. I was aiming for the title of The MTV Generation’s Susan Sontag, a Fran Lebowitz with Laser Eye Surgery, or An Angrier Natalie Angier. I didn’t want to bungle my branding. So when my editor called me to tell me her higher-ups didn’t want to narrow my audience by having Jews or bathrooms in the title, I shocked her by replying, “Okay.”

  “Okay?” she asked. “Seriously?”

  I explained to her my reasoning and she agreed. If this book ends up in your bathroom, that’s fine, but I don’t want it in that section of the Barnes and Noble. It needs to be up front, by the door, on the table with the sign that says FUCKING HILARIOUS WORLD-CHANGING POST-FEMINIST MUSINGS.

  We agreed, however, that there would have to be a chapter addressing the question of why Jews go to the bathroom with the door open, because when she was buying the book and my agent was selling the book, everyone wanted to know the answers to the following:

  Why do Jews go to the bathroom with the door open? and

  Do Jews go to the bathroom with the door open more than everyone else?

  The answer is, I don’t know.

  I have theories—one about the hypervigilance of wanting to make sure the Nazis aren’t coming again, another about the hyperspazzy need to keep the conversation going no matter what. Or maybe it’s just an old, shtetl-un-fabulous habit left over from the days when everyone lived in one room anyway, so there was no point pretending your shit didn’t stink.

  There are other questions you may be asking, which I believe I can help you with.

  Should you shit with the door open?

  Of course not. It stinks. The urge to close the door on that stuff is instinctual: The vulnerability required to make a bowel movement is not consistent with a mammal’s intrinsic self-protection needs. Hide it, crouch it, cover it up, keep it from everyone.

  But now, the more important question:

  Should you pee with the door open?

  This still has not been answered to my satisfaction. When I was a teenager I went with my friend Melissa to her dad Irv’s fancy condo above Water Tower Place. He had just moved in with his brand-new, twenty years younger, not-Jewish wife. She was a model and there were giant photos of just her face, in some cases Warholically doubled and tripled, but without the photo negative effect to make them interesting. She was just—everywhere, her blond-headed head surrounding us in this glass box that overlooked Lake Michigan.

  Melissa’s father chalked up the success of his new marriage to his latest revelation: “We got separate bathrooms. I’ve never seen her on the can.” Instantly it was clear to me why my parents appeared to hate each other—there was no love because there was no spark because the mystery was gone because they had seen each other on the can.

  The Soloway household didn’t know from mystery. Bathroom doors were wide open or at least ajar when peeing, unlocked when shitting. There was no knocking, no “excuse me,” just a free flow of information, lines of questioning regarding the days’ plans or desired lunch choices. Showers and toilets and even tampon insertion were just things that threatened to impede communication. Toilet activities became omnipresent yet ignored, like TV.

  Bodily functions were also perfectly acceptable to discuss at all times. I guess it’s natural to start talkin’ pee-pee and poo-poo when you’re raising a toddler. But once toilet training is over, should all reference to these topics cease?

  In the Soloway family, there never was such a ceasing. Talk of and familiarity with urinating and defecating continued our entire lives, and still continues now when my parents come to visit or I go home. All of the following are considered acceptable:

  Wait here while I pee.

  Did you pee?

  Did you need to pee before we leave?

  Last pees!

  Did you have a BM?

  Do you need to make a BM?

  I need to make a BM, so I’ll catch up with you guys at the Olive Garden.

  You know what I just realized? I haven’t moved my bowels in a couple of days!

  Where’s Jilly? I think she’s moving her bowels.

  The newsy status of said movements were just the beginning. Qualitative assessments were also welcomed. My dad was the king of this—Yiddishisms and Britishisms peppered his excited announcements: “Oy, do I have to make a nice scheiss!” or “Not now, I’m sheissing!” And, proudly, placing the New York Times Magazine back onto the dining room table: “Say, that was the shite of the month!”

  We knew who did what, who had diarrhea, how long it had lasted. We knew who was constipated, who felt constipation coming on, and who was ending a bout with it. Things were constantly being smelled, examined, sniffed, or shared with someone else in the family, often on two fingers held aloft. There was way too much visual and aural overstimulation as well. As a teenager the sound of my dad’s pee, particularly the last two or three shakes, was nerve-shattering.

  Lonely contemplative afternoons, an hour of meditation, a half hour of musing—none of these things were ever part of our lives at any point. The only person who got any alone time was my father, but less out of respect for his privacy than fear of his bad mood after a long day shrinkin’. My mother, sister, and I were a boundary-less, three-vagina’d lady-monster. Privacy was discouraged, perhaps because it might promote independent thinking and possible disagreement, which our lives had no room for. Faith and I were our mother’s right and left leg, and she liked it that way.

  To look inward, my sister had the piano as her solace—she would explain her feelings to the black and white keys and fill the house with a beautiful jazzy story. I had nothing, just the ever-returning hug back into my mother’s generous bosom. I hovered next to her, head tilted, as she tapped away on her typewriter.

  My mother was of no use in helping my sister and me negotiate how much of our bodies belonged to ourselves and how much belonged to the world—it was simple, we belonged to her. I guess that’s the way it is at first with all mothers and children. We do what our moms do. Our kids do what we do. My son and I both drink Vitamin Water because I buy it, even though I know it’s nothing more than Kool-Aid with smart ’n’ jaunty labels. Even if my son preferred, perhaps, Clamato, he wouldn’t know it, because he doesn’t do his own grocery shopping. He does what I do.

  I did what my mom did. As an adult I realize my mom did things differently from some moms. For example, when we were kids, she never taught us you shouldn’t sit on toilet seats in public restrooms. Later in life, when beneath the stall wall I saw the straining calf muscles of my neighbor toileteer, I had no idea what was going on. Finally, I saw a friend do it and asked her what the hell she was up to.

  “I never sit on toilet seats—they’re disgusting!” she replied, displaying an unbelievable talent of concurrently tightening her haunches and loosening her urethra. This was big, big news. I guess she was able to pull off the balance needed for this hovering pose thanks to years of practice. I can’t even walk past a yoga studio without falling over, so I promptly dismissed her, and all successive hoverers, as lunatics.

  In fact, all of these hoverers who purport to be contributing to decency and cleanliness are actually just disgusting, nasty people. Although I thought I was finished with toilet training when my son was out of diapers, I, at this point, feel called upon to continue toilet training others, specifically, the hoverers, whom I would now like to address directly.

  SAY, HOVERERS! Did you know that when you are done hovering, the toilet seat is covered in multi, multi droplets of your piss?

  SAY, HOVERERS! Did you know that I have to wipe your piss up with a piece of toilet paper, using my very own hand, a hand that is much better put to use
writing humor such as this?

  SAY, HOVERERS! At least raise the fucking seat if you need to hover! OR JUST FUCKING STOP HOVERING!

  Paper toilet seat covers hold the same mysteries for me as do hoverers, albeit with less bilious rage. I truly don’t understand their purpose. As I wept above, a toilet seat with any sign of pee upon it still has to be wiped. Even if you pull your seat cover out of the dispenser, if you are going to use it on a toilet seat a hoverer has marked, you have another thing coming. You still have to wipe the seat off. If you don’t, the paper cover will stick to your thighs, using the stranger’s urine as glue. The seat covers don’t actually save you any humiliation nor contact with other peoples’ fluids.

  As for their prophylactic uses, there aren’t any. As far as I know, women don’t slide to, nor fro, nor rub their vaginas mightily on toilet seats. The bodily part exposed to the seat is a stripe on the upper thighs, one on each side. If there was a disease you could catch from the toilet seat, wouldn’t my friends have pustules on the backs of their upper thighs? What is it you people fear? Something murkily lurking in the toilet bowl itself that threatens to leap up and enter you, musty secrets from another woman’s vagina?

  Perhaps a less defensible politeness overlooked by my mother’s teachings was that we should wash our hands after using the restroom. I have no idea why my mom forgot to teach us this, but I have crafted my very own reasons around my ways. I feel that if you’re going to wash your hands, why not do so before you touch your genitals? For those who wash after, might I remind you here that you are not actually touching your ladyflower, but rather, a wad of toilet paper than can easily be bunched thick enough to avoid contact with your own mucousness? And if you do wash after you go, what, exactly, is the point of washing your hands, when there are people like me in the world who don’t wash their hands and who touch the door handle on the way out? If you are not willing to open the door with your elbows, you have no reason to wash your hands.