I was on fire when I opened the journal, all shaky with reading something so personal. But it was a really good thing that I read it—there was something about his ex-girlfriend, and now I know not to fall too much in love with him. I know that he’s still in love with someone else so I know not to trust him. That’s good. Taking care of the old Laurita.
Monday, 6:30 p.m.: I have this technique where I’ll confess to someone how horribly I’m acting and they laugh at what a mess I am and we shake our heads at my antics and it’s okay—it becomes just a quirky story. So I told Jay that I read D’s journal and he was grossed out. He shamed me. He reminded me how I destroyed my last relationship. Then he berated his boyfriend for not caring enough about him to read his journals.
Wednesday, 12:00 p.m.: I’ve been taking hits off the journal. That fucking gray journal. My crackpipe. If I’m not feeling right or if I feel off, I open it up and read one quick thing and immediately I’m taken away. It alters me. I act like I suddenly have these amazing insights into him based on what I read in the journal. So, if I read, “I have fear that I don’t connect with Lauren very well,” I wait a few minutes and then casually tell him, “I feel so connected to you.” It’s a dream come true: direct access to his thoughts. What he’s really thinking. I know when he says, “You look nice tonight,” I can run to the journal and read, “I have fear that I keep trying to please women and tell them what they want to hear.”
Friday, 11:20 p.m.: We were fighting about something tonight and while he was out of the room I grabbed the pipe for a quick hit. I was hoping to read what I sometimes find—a nice pick-me-up like, “I have fear that I’m not worthy of Lauren.” Or better yet, “I have fear that I love Lauren more than she loves me.” Something that lets me know I have him right where I want him. But instead I read something like, “I have fear that I will act on my sexual fantasy about ...” I tried to recover before he came in the room but I didn’t have enough time. As soon as I saw him I said, “This is so fucking insane. I don’t know how to love anyone. I can’t do this.”
Saturday, 1:45 p.m.: This morning he wrote, “I have fear that Lauren tries to create drama out of nothing.” I keep waiting for the day it says, “I have fear Lauren is reading my journal.” I had a little plastic Barbie journal when I was in third grade where I’d write about what the cats did and what I ate that day. (Nothing has changed.) I remember finding “Jamie was here” written on one of the pages in my neighbor’s scratchy handwriting. I was so mad I told his mother on him.
Maybe I should write “Hi, D” on one of the pages. Or, “I have fear that Lauren is psychotic.”
Sunday, 3:00 p.m.: Nobody is on your side when you tell them you’ve been reading your boyfriend’s journal. I keep telling different people, hoping that I’ll find the one person who will be casual about it. I should go to the prison and tell a child molester.
Tuesday, 1:00 a.m.: I told D I read his journal. It was hilarious! We laughed and laughed. He thought it was cute and grungy and sexy. And then we made love on the torn-out journal pages—the ones that read, “I have fear that I can’t handle being in a relationship with Lauren.” I wanted to make love on the “I have fear that Lauren is too needy” pages. But I wasn’t really in a position to get demanding.
Actually, I was so fucking scared. I figured it was the deal breaker.
Like when my ex-husband peed in the bed and I got so mad I slapped myself in the face. I thought it was going to be the deal breaker. Peeing in the bed is bad, but he was drunk and asleep and dreaming about peeing into a toilet and the next thing he knew ... But I was awake and sober when I hit myself. It was sexy when Betty Blue ran naked and crazy through the streets and poked her eyes out. But I’m not French. I’m a Hoosier. When Hoosiers hit themselves it looks trashy.
I am thrilled to report the reading of the journal was not a deal breaker. It turns out David is not an easy one to shock. I thought about throwing in a quick uppercut to my chin and maybe shitting my pants just to prove I wasn’t going to easily scare him away, but I didn’t. He was more concerned about what I read. He wanted to make sure that I didn’t have any unanswered questions or hidden resentments that were going to come out during our next Baja trip.
Wednesday, 10:30 a.m.: Now D has seen my “asshole,” so to speak. In a fluorescent-lit room. I hate my real self being revealed. I like it better in the first few months of the relationship where I just lie. I never care where we go eat: “I don’t care about that kinda stuff. Whatever you’re into is fine.” I’m just a giant yes-man. My ex-husband thought I loved video games, whiskey, hearing about his exes, and chewing tobacco.
And after I showed him my unbleached asshole, all he said was “You know what, I appreciate you telling me so much because now I feel like you’ve set the bar for honesty. You telling me this means a lot to me. It makes me trust you more, believe it or not.” I believe him.
Wednesday, 10:45 a.m.: But. What if he reads this and starts to wonder why I told him I only read his journal once? (When it fell off the bed in the earthquake. Open to a certain page. I didn’t mean to read it, but I was thrown from the bed and my face landed right on it. And in shaking my head side to side as I yelled, “No! No! Not D’s private journal!” I accidentally moved my eyes across a few lines.) I’ll just explain to him how I’m adopted and wasn’t held for the first eight days of my life. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll tell him what I tell the ladies who wax my moustache: It’s hormones.
SMILES, EVERYONE, SMILES
Competition for the room service position at the Pulitzer Hotel in Amsterdam was fierce: portly, twenty-two-year-old American me versus several eighty-year-old retired Belgian men. But somehow I convinced the head of human resources that although I couldn’t speak Dutch, I could understand it, and as an added bonus I was able to function without an afternoon nap.
At the end of the interview my potential boss—a big, white, meaty man with red hair and freckles on his lips—asked the standard final question:
“Do you have any questions?”
“No.” I said, “Except I’m curious what you meant when you said, ‘When the moon laughs a cow’s arms get very tired.’ Is that a Dutch saying?”
“No,” he said, suddenly switching to English when he realized I wasn’t quite as fluent as he thought. “I said you must be strong as a cow for this job. With good arms. There is a lot of carrying heavy trays.”
The interview concluded as most of my best interviews did—with me thrusting my arm up into my interviewer’s face, demanding, “Feel my muscle! Feel it!” He declined.
“That’s okay,” he said, adding, “I can tell by your neck you’re strong,” and then offering me the job, explaining that the hotel needed an American on staff to teach the Dutch employees (many of whom had worked in the hotel for more than ten years) how to be fake-happy to the guests.
Thrilled I’d acquired my first full-time real job overseas (which meant I could stay another year in the country), I jumped to my feet and thanked him.
“But don’t be fake with me,” he said, pointing his finger at my face.
“That wasn’t fake, that was—me.”
“Okay. But that was fake, right? What you just said?”
“No.”
“Was that?”
“Okay, that’s enough—”I said, starting to get irritated.
“There we go!” he said. “That’s better. Thank you. You got the job.”
Right after I started working at the hotel, an Italian hotel chain purchased it. Nobody on staff was happy about this, apparently due to the threat of more Italian tourists coming in. (“Now it will be nothing but sunglasses and espresso all the time,” went the general complaint.)
When the new owners posted a notice stating that all employees must attend a customer service workshop, we all thought it was like the Italian classes that had popped up—optional. But then someone wrote “Mandatory” in black marker across the top of the memo.
Apparently, the staff’s
time-honored practice of yelling “WHAT?!?” whenever a guest tried to ask for help was getting out of hand.
The workshop was led by Regina, a Dutch girl who was more than six feet tall in high heels. She wore her blonde hair in a clean ponytail, pulled as tight as her blue lady suit fit. Her face was the same—tight and clean and blonde. Hitler would have loved her. I liked her okay. Until she spoke—in an American accent that she’d clearly picked up from watching back-to-back episodes of 21 Jump Street. (“I hope that’s cool with everyone,” she kept saying. “Alrightythen!”)
Regina requested that we all speak in English—just as we should be doing with the guests. She clapped her hands a few times and said, “Cool! Let’s get started!” and proceeded to get started with me. “So! Lauren, you’re American.”
I quickly scanned the crowd of my fellow employees to try to determine who had told her. Who hated me?
“You know this one,” she said. “What is the basic rule of customer service?”
“The customer is always right,” I said in a tiny voice.
“Say it again, nice and loud!” Regina said, pumping her fist in the air.
“The CUSTOMER IS—” but before I could finish, mass chaos broke out.
The chef, the biggest man on staff and coincidentally, the biggest drunk, let out a booming “BULLSHIT!” For emphasis, he kicked over the chair in front of him, which sent the dishwasher—who had been seated on the chair at the time—onto the floor. But the dishwasher didn’t mind. When he hit the floor he already had his fist in the air, echoing, “Bullshit!”
Regina, who had clearly been trained in America and knew how to ignore unpleasant and/or inappropriate emotions, finished my sentence with a smile on her face. “They are always right! That’s right!”
The head of housekeeping, with her Love Boat ’80s-style frosty makeup and frosted hair, screamed as if Gopher had been thrown overboard.
“NO! They are not!! No!”
Regina didn’t wait for anyone to calm down. Instead she plowed right along, going so far as to write “Smile!” on the dry-erase board. “A nice, pleasant smile as you walk the halls of the hotel makes you look approachable and gives the hotel a friendly atmosphere. Like that!” She pointed at me, again.
Sadly, “smile” had been the personal task I’d given myself that very morning. That and “touch people on the arm when I speak to them.” Ever since reading the self-help spiritual masterpiece, A Return to Love (“sometimes contrary action is needed—do the one thing that you absolutely don’t want to do”), I’d started my days establishing risks I should take to help me find inner peace.
So there I was with a big fake-serene smile on my face that was about to get slapped off by a horde of enraged Dutch people if Regina didn’t quit focusing her attention on me.
When she asked for a volunteer for a customer service re-enactment I knew I was doomed, so I prepared to just get it over with. But luckily the frosty housekeeping lady was chosen instead to role-play a scene in which a guest calls on the phone to ask for an extra pillow.
Regina, who was playing the friendliest guest in the world, held a pencil to her ear to represent the phone. The room got very tense. The chef started biting his finger and rocking back and forth in his chair. Most of the housekeeping staff had to look away.
“Good evening! This is Mr. Smith in room 33,” Regina said. “How are you tonight?” She nodded toward the housekeeping lady to answer.
“Not good,” the housekeeper said. “I’m very busy. What do you want?”
This was exactly what she would have said. It’s what any one of the staff would have said. If you didn’t actively push the guests away, you’d be accused of leading them on and therefore encouraging them to keep bothering us.
When Regina registered her disapproval with a hurt look, Frosty the Housekeeper started yelling into her pencil. “I’m not going to say, ‘I’m grrreat!’ if I’m not great. I’m not going to lie. That’s insane. You have two pillows in your room. That should be plenty!” She slammed the pencil down.
The workshop ended with everyone filing out of the room donning their creepiest fake smiles to prove that one fake smile could do more harm than good. “Oh, good morning. I am so happy!” they said, like they had risen from the dead. “I am sooo grrreat! Everything is grrreat!”
And it was true—when the mouth said, “I’m happy to see you!” and the eyes said, “I hate you because you are standing in front of me,” it was clear that “customer service” was something no customer would want.
I was suddenly embarrassed by what I realized was my over-the-top Midwestern habit of practically screaming, “Good morning” in people’s faces. The way I grinned away, you’d think I was interviewing for Disneyland and asking everyone if they’d taken their picture with Mickey yet. It was so thoughtless and needy. After the customer service workshop I decided from that day forward I would be steely with indifference. A Return to Love, my big white ass.
Six months later I found myself delivering a smoked salmon plate to Dr. Ruth in the master suite. I wished I were back in America so I could brag about this incredible coup. (I also wished I had remembered to ask her how you tell a guy he’s got a faint butt smell that really kills the mood.)
Heart full of wishes, I was on my way to the kitchen when I noticed Jan, the maître d’, leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Jan was always in a tuxedo and always tanned. The tuxedo was by order of the hotel and the tan was by order of his doctor, who told Jan it would help combat his depression. When home, Jan spent part of each day lying on a tanning bed that took up his entire dining room.
When I saw him, Jan was directly facing what appeared to be—based on the fact that every one of them wore bright white, brand-new tennis shoes, and were heavily fannypacked—an American family of six, seated at a round table in the middle of the restaurant. Every member of the family, including the two-year-old, had a hand raised in the air, trying to get Jan’s attention.
I could tell Jan was checking out the voluptuous and coiffed mom because he gave a little grunt and his neck was swelling. Then he leaned the tiniest bit to one side to get a glimpse of the teenage daughter. He was simultaneously taking them in and ignoring them.
“Is that how they dress in Indianananapoli?” he asked me. Jan, like all of my co-workers, couldn’t pronounce Indianapolis. Most often they would just sort of “popopoli” through it until they petered out, waiting for the word to end, which it never did.
Soon the father and the teenage girl were up on their feet, trying to get Jan’s attention, but also seeking mine.
I tried to remember my new resolve (“What would a serial killer do?”), but like a border collie to sheep, I wanted to guide them. Like a mother’s lactating breast to a crying baby, I wanted to provide solace. Like an evangelical Christian to a gay prostitute, I was hopelessly drawn. But mostly, like a Midwestern American girl whose entire moral foundation was based on being polite, I couldn’t not help them.
“They probably just want some ketchup,” I said. “I’ll just go see.”
I took one step in the direction of the table when Jan stopped me with a sharp, “No!”
They so clearly needed something. I looked at them, with their outspread guide maps and the entrance stickers from the Van Gogh Museum still stuck to their collars, all vulnerable and dumb-looking. They made me miss my family.
But Jan wouldn’t let me help them, under the technicality that I was in room service and it wasn’t my jurisdiction. I’d never known him to be a real stickler for the actual rules.
He was more a man of principles, which he quickly made apparent. “First they want an extra fork,” he said. “And then a small plate. Then the small plate has something stuck to it so they need a new one. Then the old lady doesn’t get her drink and makes like she is so thirsty and starts coughing. It’s too much. I’m done with them.”
Jan delivered this speech not in a little side whisper in the direction of my ear, but at fu
ll volume toward the table.
I wanted to grab the tablecloth from under their plates, magician-style, so as to distract these nice people from the angry foreign man.
“How about a coffee?” Jan asked himself out loud. “Yes, let’s go have a nice coffee.” He started to walk into the kitchen but paused in front of the swinging door—the same one that earned me a guest role in a Three Stooges movie every time I paused in front of it.
“Do you want a coffee?” he called.
When the staff overcharged the Germans, I was able to keep my mouth shut. When they told the Italians we were closed for renovations, I backed them up. But when they were being cruel to a family of nervous Americans in sneakers and Izod shirts tucked into pleated shorts, my heart was breaking.
As I stood paralyzed, the mother (who looked an awful lot like my Aunt Betty) locked eyes with me and mouthed, “Hello?”
Jan sensed I was touched by these simple people, so he tried a new technique to make sure I didn’t interfere with his plan to teach them a lesson: humor. Or, at least, his attempt at what he thought was humor.
“Come on, dum-dum, you big asshole stupid. Coffee time,” he said.
Aunt Betty, who knew I was her only hope, abruptly and with a sense of an impending revolution, held a pamphlet in the air and cried, “Anne Frank! The Anne Frank house! Please!”
In that moment, nobody since the Nazis had wanted to find out where Anne Frank lived as badly as she did.
A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body Page 9