Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy (20 page)

The show started and the crowd seemed pumped, so I harnessed all the energy I had left for them. Onstage the adrenaline surged and the endorphins fired, making everything vivid and great. I started in on my dating jokes.

“I’m single, but I go on a few dates a month . . . just to remind myself that I have no standards . . .”

It got a good laugh, but I heard a female voice in the crowd say something like, “Yer fulla shit!”

Was I being heckled? Really? I searched for the heckler, and I saw that it was one of the waitresses. Impossible. But it was. My eyes focused in and there she was, standing, facing me defiantly with a tray in hand. I looked at her, she looked at me, and the audience looked at us both. I could feel the anticipation of the crowd, always hungry for a brawl. I had no idea why this was happening, but first things first: I needed a comeback.

“She’s just bitter because I’m talking about her boyfriend!” I got a solid laugh, but I saw a fire ignite in her eyes as she whipped her blonde head around and walked away. I continued with my act while trying to piece it together. Why would she do that? Did she have a thing for Dark Pony or . . . Oh my god, I
was
talking about her boyfriend! Holy fuck! And now she was going to kill me. I kept telling jokes, going over my time, because I was scared stiff of what awaited me off stage. She couldn’t attack me while I was still holding a microphone. The red light went from solid to flashing, signaling that it was time to wrap it up. Reluctantly, I said thank you, calmly shook the emcee’s hand, and then bolted from the stage to the bathroom. It was the only place I could think of that had a door with a lock.

She came into the bathroom a few minutes later. Fuck.

“Ophelia?” she barked. Technically that wasn’t my name, so I didn’t have to answer. I wondered if she had a gun pointed at my faded yellow stall.

“Uh
, yeah?” This wasn’t the time to correct her.

“Never, ever come near my boyfriend again.” Simple. Succinct. Super scary.

“Seriously . . . I didn’t know . . . I had no idea . . .” I stammered. How did she even know about last night? Did he tell her? There was one thing for sure—they didn’t live together. No woman lived in that apartment.

“Shut up. Did you hear me?”

“Yes.” What was I going to say?
Don’t worry, I don’t really want him. I was bored and he seemed easy
. God, that pony turned out to be the furthest thing from easy. Harder to break than I ever could have imagined.

She said something else, something like “have a nice week” or “I’m going to kill you in your sleep,” but I couldn’t hear her over the pounding of blood in my head. However, I did hear the swooshing of the bathroom door as it swung shut. The brevity of our talk freaked me out. It made her all the more dangerous with her carefully chosen words and confident delivery. She sounded like she’d killed before. After half an hour, I quietly emerged from my stall and took a seat at the far end of the club to order my comp meal, but no one approached my table or came by to take my drink order. No one working there even glanced in my direction. Waitresses walked by and deliberately ignored me. This was her revenge. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t drink. I was blown away that she had that much pull with the staff. She must do the payroll or scheduling.

The rest of the week was particularly lonely. I was invisible to the venue, hungry and parched, and Michael didn’t acknowledge me at all. Half of me felt bad for the waitress—after all, Dark Pony was part of her life—and the other half thought that after what I went through,
it was me who deserved sympathy. I arrived, did my set, and left. On Sunday when I got paid, it seemed like a lot less than what I thought I was getting, but I didn’t say anything.

That pony ride cost me a lot. I should have hired one of those male prostitutes from the postcard; it would have been cheaper and easier. Thanks so much, Raleigh. I asked for
different
, and I got it.

M
y roommate was often out of town, so for the most part I lived alone. I used the freedom to lie around the apartment half-clothed and ponder, “If I killed myself right now, who would be the first person to find me?”

I usually came to the conclusion that it would be a tie between MasterCard and my student loan processor.

Even though I equated being with one person for the rest of my life with settling for less, all my freelancing, subletting, and casual dating made me thirst for some kind of permanence—on any level. I was beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, dating someone for, say, four months would be nice . . . or even a year, but I didn’t want to be greedy. While I was getting good at the witty and biting repartee and deleting guys’ phone numbers before they could call me back, I was concerned that my behavior was unsustainable, much like
particleboard furniture: It’s cool-looking in the beginning, functional for a few years after that, but eventually, it looks like cheap crap.

I still had plenty of time to figure it out. Right?

At least until after the weekend?

I scored a stand-up gig opening for a local headliner at a comedy club in Orange, New Jersey. Calling it a comedy club was generous—it was more of an abandoned event space in the basement of a family restaurant. The stage was a small wooden platform, like a children’s sandbox turned upside down, surrounded by a bunch of scuffed and chopped banquet tables. Still, rumor had it that it was packed every weekend with intelligent, excited crowds.

I hadn’t met the headliner yet—some local guy named Rob. I was prepared to react indifferently, but he made a big impression on me when he walked into the prep kitchen, a.k.a., our green room, and his first words to me were “Can you get me a Coke, please?” I was instantly offended and intrigued.

Offended because he assumed I was a waitress. Intrigued because he was pretty cute, and he did say “please.” From under his baseball cap peered a pair of warm brown eyes reflecting slight damage, in an injured puppy kind of way. He looked as if he were still working out why his ex-girlfriend didn’t go nuts for the spiced cranberry candle he bought her for Valentine’s Day. It didn’t make sense—she loved cranberries!

I said I didn’t work there. I was a comic on the show. He scanned me up and down. “Oh . . .” he replied, without apology.

The lights went down and the emcee hit the stage, wooing the
crowd with Ronald Reagan impressions and a handful of Michael-Jackson-is-a-pervert bits. Momentarily, I forgot what year it was. I began to get nervous that they would hate me and my autobiographical act. It didn’t include even one outdated impression, not even Sean Connery. Noticing that I was wringing my hands while watching the emcee moonwalk, Rob taunted me. “Scared?”

“No!” I snapped back like a kid sister, maturing it with a get-over-yourself glare. I wanted to continue with the insulting flirty banter, but the emcee introduced me.

My set went over badly. The crowd wanted me to talk more about blow jobs, and less about my seventy-five-year-old mother sending me her first e-mail with the entire thing written in the subject line. After a strained thirty minutes of comedy—which could have been confused with giving a thoughtful speech—I left the stage to polite applause that sounded almost mocking, and I headed straight to the back bar to order a drink. The bartender bought me an Absolut and soda and toasted my set.

“You’re very smart!” he said. I’d heard it a hundred times before, and it still didn’t sound like “funny” to me. That being said, I was happy for the free booze and a compliment of any sort.

I gulped my cocktail, hoping it would water down my insecurities, and watched Rob bring the crowd back up with jokes that centered on being angry, bitter, and depressed. My mind wandered, obsessing about how lonely stand-up comedy could make me feel. You never have anyone to high five or commiserate with. You’re in it alone. Why couldn’t I have been good at improv or sketch comedy?

I wasn’t looking forward to that long bus ride home, with nothing but idle time to review every excruciating detail of my pathetic life as I stared out a grimy window at the industrial wasteland that is New Jersey.

Rob’s big closing joke was a really offensive, wince-inducing dog-farting joke, but the crowd howled in response. Suddenly I knew exactly how I could turn my night around. I’d resort to my fallback feel-good plan. I needed to sleep with Rob. Extra bonus: He had a car.

He left the stage to wild applause. I could tell he was pretty proud of himself, which was going to make my mission easy. I strolled into the prep kitchen and supplied the perfunctory postshow adoration. “That was great, man! Love that closer! You’re like Chris Rock up there. Hey, can I catch a ride with you back to the city?”

He said, “Yeah, sure, I guess,” and walked away. I assumed I should follow, and I did.

His blue Datsun was well lived-in to say the least. It took him a solid ten minutes to clear the passenger’s seat of scraps of paper, balled-up T-shirts, empty food containers, and a little stuffed bear. Did he even have an apartment? As we drove, he mumbled about how he’d been miserable over the past month since some girl left him for reasons unknown, and the business had been wearing him down. He was considering meditation. Meditation? Seriously?

“You know what really calms the mind?” I said.

He looked at me with anticipation, as if I was going to reveal an important answer.

“Alcohol! Do you wanna meditate over a few drinks with me?”

He snickered and kept driving.

The Holland Tunnel felt like a corridor into a better night, a better life. It spit us out in Tribeca, and on the corner of a thin street we passed what looked like an old bar with warm orange light pouring out of its windows. It was getting late, almost last call, so we took our chances.

Once inside, I realized that we had stumbled upon “magic bar.” That wasn’t the name of the bar; it’s when you catch a bar at its best moment, at its magic hour. The light was just low enough, dancing off the mahogany decor, to make everyone glow. The music was at the perfect level to both listen to and talk above—it was Miles Davis’s
Kind of Blue
, one of my favorites. The other patrons were hip but not trendy, good-looking but not better looking than us. It was Cheers, the Regal Beagle, and the Village Vanguard rolled into one.

I ordered a martini with three olives. I liked to eat one at the beginning, one halfway through, and one at the end, as if they were rationed snacks on my hike to intoxication. Rob ordered an Amstel Light, the beer of champion lightweights. The spell of magic bar started to take hold. I found him irresistible as we conversed in a way you can only with a one-night stand. Someone you have no investment in.

“Really? Your last two girlfriends were underage? Good for you! Get ’em while they’re fresh and young! Your dad’s in a mental institution? Hey, not everything is genetic! Your grandfather was in the SS? What a coincidence—I
am
Jewish.”

His contemptuous tone gave everything a “been there, done that” edge. He came off like a typical angry man. He wasn’t apologetic, or a mama’s boy, or even nice. I had to admit, I kind of liked
it. It made me feel like a delicate ray of sunshine in comparison. My brain started to do that twenty-years-in-the-future trick I despised but couldn’t control. We were at our summerhouse in Barcelona, sitting on our terracotta patio, drinking espresso, waiting for our maid to bring out our paella. We shared a laugh remembering that he used to do a dog-fart joke.

It was closing time. Finally, he asked me the question I had been avoiding since I moved to Manhattan.

“Wanna come back to my place in Queens?”

I deflated. Queens was a solid twenty-minute drive away. Talk about a foreplay buzzkill. How would I get home? What subways were even out there?

Who was I kidding? We both knew I was going. I was desperate for connection, even if it was fraying, tenuous, or located in Queens. Like a junkie, when my narcotic of choice wasn’t available, I took what I could get. And it was perfect timing—checkmark on the fresh bikini wax.

Although I didn’t feel like going through “the scar” chat, I also wasn’t afraid he’d be repulsed; it just meant reality would suddenly poke its ugly head into our night. I wouldn’t be another girl anymore; I’d be that “scarred girl.” It added a level of vulnerability to an experience that I wanted to be fun and purely physical. Revealing the scar meant revealing myself. Could I just leave my shirt on? Yeah,
that
would be normal.

Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the house where he lived. We crept down the brown sisal-rug stairs to his bachelor pad in the
basement of a Greek family’s home. His place wasn’t terrible; it was clean, and there was even a minimal attempt at decor: a coffee table with a magazine on it and a framed picture of a sports car. However, the vase of silk flowers standing on a rattan end table didn’t make any sense. They were so out of place that I couldn’t help but think there was a webcam stashed in the bud of a rose.

Time was running out, and I was filled with anxiety over the stupid scar situation. He was about to open his bedroom door when I blurted out, “Okay, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“All right,” he replied cautiously. “What’s up?”

“Uhhhh
. . .” I gave him a goofy smile to try to lighten up the dramatic moment I’d accidentally created.

“Okay, well,
uhhh
, I’ll get to it. Sorry I’m making this so weird!”

“What’s going on?” He was completely lost.

“Okay, I was in a bad car accident when I was a kid, and I have a huge scar on my stomach, so don’t be freaked out. I’m totally fine, and it doesn’t hurt or anything—it’s just a big scar. See?!” I lifted up my shirt while sucking in my stomach to make it look as flat as possible. I was embarrassed by my own explanation. I may as well have said, “Want to see my boo-boo?”

He laughed a little. “Jesus, you built it up so much I thought you were going to say you had a tail or something.” He came closer to examine it and ran his finger lightly down the center of my torso.