Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences (8 page)

There’s somethin’ happenin’ here

What it is ain’t exactly clear

We cruised up the highway, levitating in some musically induced reverie that delivered us from bleakness. After six hours,
I was feeling infinitely better and immensely grateful to Ned for the time we had shared. He was right: this was exactly what
I needed, we were great pals, and I was lucky to have him in my life. Once we were within a few miles of Ned’s place, we stopped
for provisions at a little market, cracking up as we gamely selected a variety of pesticide-free veggies, additive-free grains,
and biodegradable products.

“Hey, look!” I said, pointing to a small hemp sack while we waited in line to pay for our things. “It’s couscous. Did I tell
you? It’s my new favorite thing!”

“Wanna get some?” Ned asked. Damn! This was
fun.
And easy. Easy-peasy. Blue skies. What the hell had I been so worried about?

“Here we are!”

Ned grinned, flinging open the door to his cabin and steering me over the threshold. I looked around. The cabin, which is
perhaps too generous a term—let’s call it a shanty—was one long room. There was a kitchen on the right side, and on the left
was a full-size bed with a fluffy white down comforter adorned with a richly hued handwoven Native American blanket. Completing
the mise-en-scène was a black potbellied stove, which stood majestically in the middle of the space. The air was thick with
cedar.

“This is great, Ned. It’s really beautiful.”

“Thanks,” he said, pulling me to him. “I was hoping you’d dig it.” He gave me a light peck on the lips and brushed the hair
out of my face. “You sure are
fetching
. Mint tea?”

Uh-oh. Scanning the room, trying not to panic, I saw a door on the left side, adjacent to the bed. Was that the other room?
Where else would it be?

“I just—maybe I’ll just throw my stuff—”

“Just throw it on the bed,” Ned said, filling the kettle. “You don’t have to unpack this minute.”

I knew before I knew, and yet still, I had to ask.

“So. Where’s . . . ?”

He looked at me, a total blank.

“Where’s . . . what?”

“The other . . . ?”

Still blank.

“The other what?”

Oh. My. Fucking. God.

“The other room.” And then, very quietly, very small, like Cindy Lou Who in
The Grinch
, “My room.”

Ned eyed me quizzically. “I’m not sure what you mean. Here”—he handed me my tea—“you should let it steep a bit.” He smiled
warmly. “So. What d’ya say I start a nice big fire and you start rustling us up some grub?”

“You gotta be kidding. WHERE THE FUCK IS MY BED?” I demanded. “You SAID there was another bed—WHERE IS IT?”

Ned did a double take, flabbergasted.

“Now hold on there,” His benevolent aura evaporated. “I don’t appreciate your tone.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t appreciate being LIED to.”

“ ‘Lied to’? You’re calling me a
liar
?”

He put his tea down and turned to face me, blood boiling. “You need to calm down and get a hold of yourself.”

“Ned, you said there would be another bed—WAIT! NO! You said there’d be another whole room! For me! To stay in so it wouldn’t
be weird! But guess what? It’s pretty fucking weird! Weirder than I could have even imagined!”

“Now listen to me: I never, ever said there was another bed. I never said there was another room. You know why I never said
those things? ’CAUSE I DON’T HAVE THOSE THINGS.”

“This is totally fucked up . . .”

“You want to know what’s really fucked up? YOU. And all those women like you.
Mind games
. Playing major
mind games
. You came up here—
willingly—
you came here to be with me. You knew what this was, and you made a decision, on your own. You are a grown woman, and you
said, ‘
I’m gonna go up to
Ned’s cabin for a week, with Ned.
’ Now, who’s fucking with whose head?”

I was so astonished that I could only stand there mutely, blinking at him in dazed bewilderment.

“HOW DARE YOU?” he continued, ranting, now swollen with indignation and pomposity. “How dare you turn this into a scenario
in which YOU have been bamboozled when, in fact, it is ME who has been taken advantage of? I feel amorous toward you. This
was to be romantic, and you have led me on.”

“Ned. I told you, I said it clearly, and you said you understood. I am NOT ready for something to be a thing and—”

“Then you shouldn’t have come here! You shouldn’t have accepted the invitation of a man who you know has feelings for you.
It is
wrong
, and it is
manipulative
.”

“How is it manipulative when you agreed that we could come as friends?”

“You
really
are a woman, aren’t you? This is what women do all the time.”

“Do what? What do ‘women do’?”

“Change their minds. They change their minds. They have all that
power
. They know if a guy likes them, has feelings for them, buys them dinner, flowers, massages . . . Does that translate into
maybe wanting a little pussy? YES, AND SO WHAT? This is a genuine
courting
going on. No one in their right mind would have ever construed this as anything but. I WAS COURTING YOU, Ma’am! To accept
those things, knowing I was fucking
courting you
, well, that is just awful.”

“Seriously, Ned, what fucking century are we in? You were ‘COURTING ME’? What is this—
Gone with the Wind
? You may have felt you were ‘COURTING ME’ and that you had the right to do so without asking me if that was OK with me—”

“See? This is how all those terrible women get away with their sexual harassment nonsense!”

“OK. I am not about to discuss the politics of gender mores with you, Ned. The point is this was to be a trip
as friends
. You knew I was a mess. You knew I was heartbroken, and I told you, really clearly: I am not in any kind of shape to entertain
a new relationship—”

“THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE?”

“Let. Me. FINISH!” I screamed back. “I told you where I was at, and you said—YOU. SAID. ‘That’s fine.’ ‘We are pals.’ ‘No
pressure, no weirdness.’ This is what you said. I expressed concern about coming to Maine maybe being a mixed message, and
you go, ‘Naw! We are
copacetic.
’ Now, I don’t even really know what the fuck that means, ‘copacetic,’ but I inferred by your usage that it meant we—you—were
cool with being ‘pals’ and nothing more. Or is ‘copacetic’ another word for ‘It’s time for you to suck my dick’?”

Ned shook his head despondently, victimized.

“I think you coming here,” he said, “knowing how attracted I am to you, how I have always had a crush on you . . . well, to
shine me on like that . . .”

I sat down at the table next to the kitchen and examined the grooves in the planks.

“I just feel so taken advantage of. I really thought you were being my friend. Just like I thought you were being my friend
when I was hanging out in your apartment and you made a pass at me—”

“So this is what it is,” Ned looked like Jack Lord, unearthing the big crime plot point on
Hawaii Five-O
. “You’re getting me back. Now that I’m in a vulnerable spot, having been
cuckolded
by Binky, you’re getting me back—”

“Jesus Christ, Ned, you are infuriating! How can you so deftly turn this around and make me the villain? It’s all about you
and how you’ve been fucked over.”

I got up, grabbed my cigarettes, and stepped onto the porch to fire one up. Ned followed. He wasn’t done.

“I just think it’s really
disingenuous
of you to come up to a man’s place when you know he likes you. You should have known that back then, too, incidentally. But
look, I don’t want to fight anymore. I’m exhausted from the long drive, I’m hungry, and I’m sad. Terribly sad.”

I stared off the porch, zoning out, in the direction of Ned’s truck. It was parked in the mud. The right front tire seemed
to be sinking.

“I’m sorry you’re sad, Ned. I don’t know what to say at this point.” I finished my cig and butted it out.

“Here,” Ned held open the palm of his hand. “I’ll take it.” He stared at the cigarette butt for a few seconds, rolling it
around in his fingers before letting out an audible, exasperated sigh. “I guess it’s just a big misunderstanding. Should we
make something to eat? I’m starved and spent.”

“Sure. Sure. Why don’t I make us some veggie couscous, you make a fire, and we can eat dinner and watch the Oscars—how does
that sound?”

“Sounds great, ’cept for one minor detail.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t have a TV.”

So. Ned didn’t have a TV. No guest bed, no TV, and another thing Ned didn’t have, which he’d also failed to mention: a bathroom.
Actually, he
had
a bathroom. It’s just that it was
outside.
Ned’s bathroom was an outhouse.

I always hated
Little House on the Prairie
. Hated the show, hated the books. Hated “Half Pint” and all those boring “lessons” elucidated by Michael Landon about long
winters and bad crops and what happens to people who have hate in their hearts. But what really seemed like the most disgusting
thing ever about
Little House on the Prairie
was the fact that they had to go to the bathroom in an out house. I just couldn’t fathom it. Even
The Waltons
had plumbing.

To find myself in the revolting predicament of having to shit in a hole was almost, given what else had transpired, too much
to bear. Maybe it’s just me, but it seemed amazing that Ned thought that taking a chick for a woo-pitching wingding up to
a shack with an
outhouse
for a bathroom was a no-brainer in terms of romance. In addition, I don’t even remotely have an air about me that might suggest
I’m the type who enjoys “roughing it.” You could hardly persuade me to have a picnic in Central Park; I don’t camp or have
a mess kit. I get grossed out at almost every public restroom and even at the homes of some of my friends—so why,
why
, was there no mention of the out house? I decided, rather impractically, that I wouldn’t pee or shit until I spotted, on
the horizon, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. But with all the roughage we were consuming, that plan lasted about forty-five
minutes.

The out house was straightforward enough: a wooden half shed, with a swinging latch door and a hole in the ground. I don’t
remember if there was something you actually put your ass on; there must have been, but all I remember is the hole. I remember
that it was March, it was freezing, and there was a hole. That night, I lay awake in bed, plagued by the lacerating voice
of my old roommate, Therese, who had correctly predicted the catastrophic heartbreak I would suffer at the calloused hands
of the Jazz Musician, and who had also so pithily described her views on my flaws of character and wanton shamelessness.

“COCK-TEASE!” she’d squawked. “TWAT-TEASE!”

In the quiet of the frigid, moonless night, as I lay motionless, fully clothed under the covers, I heard Therese and her vituperations.

“BITCH!”

“WHORE!”

“YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT, YOUR FAULT, YOUR FAULT!”

At some point, I drifted off. When I woke in the morning, Ned was up, sitting in his flannel robe, drinking tea in front of
the stove, listening to Garrison Keillor.

“She won,” he said absently.

“What?”

“Marisa. She won.”

“Wow—really?” I clapped my hands together; I was elated. I tried to picture her: her expression when they announced her name,
her dress, her hair, what she ate afterward, what she was doing right now, at that moment. “Oh my god. She did it!”

“Yup,” Ned replied, glumly. I wished so bad that I could have seen it, and though I knew someone must have taped it, I also
knew I’d never actually sit down to watch it. The moment, for what ever reason, had passed. Watching it after the fact would
only highlight what I had missed.

“There’s hot water in the kettle,” Ned said. “Want some tea?”

“I would, thanks.”

Ned puttered over to the stove while I sat down at the table. He handed me my tea, then rolled a joint, got stoned, and went
out for a two-mile run. When he came back, he was in better spirits and scarfed down two heaping bowls of Grape-Nuts cereal.
I sat across from him while he ate.

“Ned,” I said finally, “I am really sorry if you felt led on. Really, really sorry. I tried to be clear as best I could.”

“OK,” he said, pouting.

“I’m also upset, though, ’cause I feel like you don’t care about my feelings. You’re on your own timeline, and whether I’m
ready or not to date seems to be of no concern to you.”

“Look, I told you: you have disappointed me with your
capriciousness
. You knew how I felt, and that’s all I have to say.”

“Is there any way we can shelve this for right now? Can we just agree to disagree? I mean—I thought we were friends. At the
very least, aren’t we friends?” I started to cry. Ned got up and handed me a dish towel.

“Come on, don’t cry. Yes, we can be friends.”

We decided to take a drive into town. It was a beautiful day, and a good deal warmer than the previous day. We walked around
the main street for a bit and went to a little sandwich shop for lunch. At the register, they were selling
The Moosewood
Cookbook
, and thumbing through it, I decided I wanted to get it.

“Let me get that for you,” Ned offered, taking the book from me and pulling out his wallet.

“No, come on, I don’t want you to do that, Ned,” I protested.

“I want to,” he insisted. “To make up for . . .” He sighed. “All of it. Just—this is on me.”

“That’s very sweet, thank you. Thank you very much.”

When we got back to Ned’s place that afternoon, the mud situation seemed to have worsened.

“Yup,” Ned concurred when I mentioned it. “That’s the thing about mud season: you can pull out of your driveway in the morning,
and there’s just a teensy bit of mud; you get home just a few hours later, and it’s a quagmire.”

The reason for this, Ned explained, was that as the winter faded into spring and the snow on the ground melted, the layers
of ground lying deep below were still frozen, unable to absorb the water. The result was a slushy, muddy mess that engulfed
the area’s small trails and old dirt roads almost until summer. People were constantly getting trapped in their homes, too
afraid to brave the mud, sometimes for weeks at a time. Or worse, they would get trapped in the ruts created by tires whose
wheels had been spun during desperate attempts to escape.