I Totally Meant to Do That (15 page)

Here, here!!

Actually, “companion” means gay. So if by “special relationship,” you mean “gay,” then yes. Otherwise, the word “companion” is off-limits … at least until gay marriage is legalized and we can all use “husband” and “wife.” That’s the rule so don’t confuse people. If you introduce me to a woman and say that her partner is by the buffet, I will assume this partner is also a woman. Then, when her boyfriend returns with a plate of food and sits next to me, chances are I’ll hit on him. Believe me, she won’t be more
inclined to forgive the transgression when I say, “Sorry, I thought you were gay.”

I can’t believe she highlighted that. No one in my family has ever talked to me about sex. I’m not even allowed to use the words “stink” or “snot” under my parents’ roof; it goes without saying that no one’s uttered “erection” or “secretion.” My sisters and I don’t even broach the subject with one another and we’re all over thirty.

This is officially the most awkward way a family member has ever brought up the birds and the bees—fifteen years too late and via a pink highlighted passage in an etiquette book. Which means, I guess, that I’ve got to hand it to both my aunt and Ms. Simpson-Giles for proactive intentions. Still, it’s important to note that my aunt did
not
highlight the piece of text directly following that passage: “A lady is not ashamed to purchase condoms or other forms of birth control.” I guess in some ways it’s still a man’s world.

I don’t get joy out of this battle; it doesn’t please me to discount Ms. Simpson-Giles’s edicts. In matters of etiquette, I do need help. I want help. But this book, although claiming to be contemporary, offers little guidance regarding the situations of my modern New York life. Perhaps she simply forgot those chapters, so I’ll pose my questions now in case she’s reading.

When I’m out and about, is it unladylike to use a store’s bathroom when I don’t intend to buy anything?

If I’m feeling too lazy to do dishes, is it more mannered to leave them in the sink for my roommate or to take bites directly from her block of cheese and return it to the fridge bearing teeth marks?

If I’m throwing a party and I run out of glasses, is it more ladylike to force my guests to drink out of common paper cups or to pass around the bottle saying, “Most of you have made out with each other at some point anyway?”

that night to thank her for the package. “You opened it at work, didn’t you?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Hoahhh!”

“I’m sorry,” I said before realizing she was holding the phone away from her face and couldn’t hear me.

I hadn’t intentionally gone against her wishes. I just found her request dubious. My aunt sends packages all the time: a pastel reversible raincoat, a paisley-print shower cap, a bag full of eye shadows. I don’t complain. I love the presents. I’ve gotten a lot of slips out of the bargain. So how was I to know this package would be so different and sensational as to truly require secrecy? On my part, as Condoleezza Rice once said, it was a lack of imagination.

Besides, I couldn’t rob my coworkers of the opportunity to see the parcel’s contents. They’ve come to appreciate these packages—hers are the gifts that keep giving. One time a box landed on my chair while I was out to lunch. When I returned, my desk mate Erin had already checked the return address and spread word throughout
our pod: “Jane’s proper aunt sent another one.” They are fascinated not only by the contents, but even the wrapping: shiny white paper, a pale-green cloth ribbon (of which she says all her friends are jealous), and one large sprig of rosemary tied into the knot (because “Rosemary is for remembrance”).

“Why is there a plant on it?” Erin once asked.

It’s like receiving artifacts from an archaeological dig. Which piece of cultural ephemera would it be this time? “Ah, Professor, your hypothesis was correct: Southerners
will
monogram anything.”

Obviously my aunt didn’t know any of this—yet somehow she still knew it.

“Your New York friends might think I’m silly,” she said, with eerie accuracy. “But listen to me, Jane: You are
not
from New York!”

Ain’t that the truth. The more time I spend here, the more it sinks in. Or rather, the further I get from North Carolina, the stranger my home appears. What I’d thought was reality turns out to be a specific anomaly.

You mean people in other parts of the world don’t give each other sausage for Christmas? Every year, for decades, their children don’t wrap forty to fifty tubes of raw pork in red and green paper, affix “Love, the Bordens” tags to their twisty-ties, and deliver them around town? Occasionally, if it was a family’s first time on our list, or if a new housekeeper answered the door, the bags of raw meat were accidentally placed under the trees. On Christmas morning, they became, to unsuspecting children, a surprise far more disturbing than the truth about Santa.

I thought celebrating Christmas with pork was completely normal. Being disabused of this notion suddenly threw everything else into question. What else had I been taking for granted? The deli on Sixth Avenue that accidentally gave me unsweetened tea? After
which I made a mental note that up here one must
specify
sweet instead of assuming it understood? “Guess what,” I told myself. “That place probably doesn’t sell sweet tea at all.” Furthermore, I bet—regardless of the window sign—it
isn’t
the “Best Deli in the World.”

And what about that restaurant on Thirty-Sixth Street? The barbecue spot that
happens
to be owned by Koreans? Like how sometimes Chinese people own taco shops? It probably serves a different style of barbecue altogether that—dear Lord, deliver us—might not even be made out of pigs.

Eventually, of course, came the bigger realization: There are
so
many people who don’t celebrate Christmas. When my friend Bartow received a copy of the office vacation calendar at his first job in New York, he asked a coworker, “Who is Rosh Hashanah?”

Growing up in Greensboro, I knew one Jewish girl. And her dad owned a jewelry store. But I didn’t know that was a stereotype until recently. Because I didn’t know anti-Semitism still existed until I moved to New York. Seriously. I knew it
used
to be a problem, but I thought it had been isolated and cured on D-Day like a strain of polio. Obviously, I was the isolated one. At least my ignorance was optimistic.

For this and other reasons, my life is the subject of wonder to New Yorkers, who sit elbow on knee, chin in hand, and wide-eyed while I talk about the thirty-seven cousins who crowd in my parents’ living room every Thanksgiving, or the grocery store in Goldsboro dedicated solely to pig products (yes, there’s an entire aisle of chitterlings). My Northern friends especially love the rare occasions when my flattened accent remembers its rounded lilt.

Once, while backstage at a comedy theater, Aunt Jane called my cell phone. It wasn’t the best timing but our conversations are typically brief and one-sided. She runs through a litany of yes-and-no
questions, tells me she loves me, and hangs up before I can say, “Good-b—.” So I snuck into a quiet corner of the green room, turned my back to the crowd, and answered my phone.

“Yes ma’am.… Yes ma’am.… A pink sweater, black pants, and flats.… Yes ma’am.… Love you too.… And Uncle Lucius.… OK, by—.… Hello? Oh.”

I closed my phone, spun around, and discovered a small audience.

“ ‘Uncle
‘Lucius’
?” my friend asked incredulously. “Lucius! Who were you talking to?”

“Um, my aunt,” I replied. “In North Carolina.”

“You sounded different,” he said, and then imitated the drawn-out short-a in the way I’d said “Bye.”

I tried to push my way through the crowd. “Wait,” he pressed. “Did she ask what you were wearing?”

“Yeah,” I said. “She likes to know that I look nice.”

“But you
aren’t
wearing black pants,” my friend said pointedly. “You’re wearing jeans.”

What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Yes, it was a white lie, but I don’t utilize them as frequently as people think Southerners do. Directly after divulging my roots, I often receive one of two responses: “People down there are
really
nice” or “People down there aren’t
really
that nice.” Since moving here I’ve had more than one person confess an initial dislike for me. For example, Brian Finkelstein. We knew each other for years before we became friends. Once, in passing, I asked, “How come it took so long?”

“Because I didn’t like you,” he said matter-of-factly.

“What?”

“I thought you were annoying.”

“Wait—what?”

“Well … the enthusiasm; I assumed it was fake.”

Nope: I’m honestly so optimistic it’s cringe-inducing. I assume that, when he came around, his line of reasoning went, “She’s still annoying, but at least it’s sincere!” Or perhaps he read a copy of
How to Be a Lady
, as Candace Simpson-Giles clearly notes, “A lady knows that false congeniality is as obvious as bad false eyelashes.”