A Woman Trapped in a Woman's Body Page 5

  Now I understand: I am Chancy. Except I’m slightly hairier and in dog years I should be long dead.

  “I am grateful for my beautiful family,” Dini is saying. She starts to cry with joy.

  The therapist that was recommended to Mathew and me held his sessions in his apartment on East 41st Street. His name was Samuel, and he defended every disgusting or disturbing aspect of his practice as his gift to us “in order to keep costs down.”

  I would have paid twenty dollars more to have him not answer his telephone in the middle of a session. Ten more on top of that for him not to put an entire Entenmann’s coffeecake on his lap and pick at it for the entire hour. One hundred and twenty dollars more for him not to say, “These cakes are so moist” in the middle of my talking about my abandonment issues.

  “You have severe ADD,” he told me. “She must be driving you nuts,” he said to Mathew.

  Mathew did not respond to his question. He just lit a cigarette. (One reason Mathew agreed to keep coming was that Samuel let him smoke.)

  “I’d like to know if that’s true, Mathew,” I said. “Am I driving you crazy? I wish you’d say that. Tell me to shut the fuck up or—”

  The phone rang and Samuel put a finger up to pause me.

  “I’m in session,” he said into the phone. “Okay. Okay. 2:00 p.m. is fine. Okay. Bye.” To me he said, “Where were we? Oh, I want you to read the book Driven to Distraction, which will help you to control your ADD.”

  I sighed loudly.

  “What’s your problem?” Samuel growled, in his delicate therapist manner.

  “Mathew bartends until 6:00 a.m.,” I said. “And even on the nights he’s not working he’s out all night talking to his bartender friends. I feel like he’s always trying to get away from me.”

  “Well, he probably is,” Samuel said, stuffing a crumbling piece of cake into his mouth. “Aren’t you, Mathew?”

  Mathew chose not to answer, which I’d never before realized was actually an option when someone asked you a question.

  Someone knocked on Samuel’s door.

  “Come in!” he yelled at the door. “This is my lunch,” he said to us. “I’m hypoglycemic—I have to eat.”

  A slim young man walked in and handed him a grilled cheese. Samuel explained it would settle his upset stomach.

  Mathew and I were there because the only conversations we seemed to have went like this: A said, “You hate me,” and B said, “No, I don’t. I love you.” We took turns playing A and B.

  Our quality time meant going out for Manhattans and seeing how long before I melted down and told him I was too fat for my knees. Or that I was so heavy I needed a wheelchair. I’d name and show photos of all the women I thought he should be with—women who I told him were as good-looking as he was. Then I’d ask him if he’d ever thought he was an alcoholic. He’d get insulted and I’d spot an attractive woman whom I’d try to set him up with. We’d end the night with Mathew drunkenly going on about Noam Chomsky as I stared out the bar window, tears streaming down my face, because I was sure—I was convinced—he didn’t love me anymore.

  I told all of this to Samuel and suddenly he jumped up.

  “Time’s up!” he announced. “You two could make it but it’s gonna take a lot of work. Did I tell you guys how I was John and Yoko’s personal assistant for years? I procured young black men for him and young surfer boys for her. That’s completely true. I’ll see you next week.”

  Dini is finishing up her list. (“And I’m thankful for our ... summer home! We got it! We close on December 13, so you all must visit. You guys! You have to!”)

  The flame is making its way toward me at a rapid pace. Everyone is grateful for their beautiful baby and their beautiful husband. I’m going pass out. Where the fuck am I? I’m watching everyone’s lips move—watching everyone wink at loved ones, saying, “Grateful for blah blah blah husband blah blah blah baby.” The flame is passed. “Blah blah blah husband blah blah blah baby.” It’s like a horror film—a scene from Rosemary’s Baby. Who are these people? What is happening? All the faces are being shot through a fisheye lens, and the only word that I can make out in this secret language of contentedness is “husband ... husband ... husband ... husband ...”

  “He’s not crossing!”

  “He’s going back!”

  “What’s he doing?!”

  Mathew and I were screaming at a squirrel that was darting back and forth in the middle of the road in front of our wedding caravan. If the furry rodent didn’t make up his mind immediately he’d be hit by three generations of Mathew’s family. We’d do the initial killing, then his father would back us up, and his sister and grandma would finish the job.

  “STOP! JUST STOP!” I yelled, trying to grab the wheel. The squirrel froze with a look on his face that said, “Fuck it, just go around me!”

  Mathew plowed onward with a dazed look on his face. He had had to make so many decisions in the past forty-eight hours he simply couldn’t make one more (should he convince his brother to take his medication—just for the weekend—or respect his wishes to not take it and listen to his frequent high-pitched announcements of “I’m losing it, man. I’m losing it,” while constantly scratching his face?).

  So onward we went, sure that squirrels knew they should move.

  Mathew looked in the rearview mirror as I glanced to the side of the road, looking for signs of the squirrel running away.

  “Oh my god,” Mathew said. He put his hand up to his mouth and bit it. “I hit him,” he said through teeth clenched on his own skin.

  I turned around to see the squirrel’s tail sort of waving in the air. (“Goodbye, you guys! Have a good wedding!”)

  Mathew looked like he was about to cry. “I’ve never hit anything in my life,” he said. “I killed him. Oh my god.”

  Tears came to my eyes and I grabbed Mathew’s shoulder to comfort him. I couldn’t figure out what to say because I was caught up in trying to figure out how to view what just happened as “not necessarily a bad sign.” It couldn’t have been. It was just ritualistic. Like a sacrifice. Hell, if our backyard were bigger I’d have been sacrificing goats every time I had a job interview. I was determined not to freak out.

  If at the next stoplight the car was suddenly covered in baboons—jumping on the hood and licking the windshield—I was going to see it for what it was. Baboons wanting to taste the windshield. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Everybody agreed that our wedding was amazing. (“Orcas Island, what a perfect choice! And the ferry ride—so cleansing. And—oh my god—look up! Eagles! Eagles, you guys! That’s such a good sign for you two!”)

  But the big talk of the actual ceremony was how Mathew cried and cried and could barely get his vows out.

  I’m in line for the bathroom at the wedding reception when a friend of Mathew’s from the bar tells me, “Lauren, the ceremony was the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. I’m not kidding.”

  “I know,” I said. “I feel so lucky that my friend David could play the Irish music, and I picked out the vows—”

  “Mathew could barely get through his vows because he was crying,” the bar friend interrupted. “That’s when I really lost it. Seeing him cry just tore me up.” All the girls in line for the bathroom agreed.

  “I cried too,” I said. I was trying not to sound defensive as I defended myself.

  “Really? It looked more like you were laughing,” she said. All the girls in line agreed about that too.

  “Wow, everyone’s already siding with him,” I said. “I can see it’s going to be a rocky divorce!” I joked.

  The ladies in line all groaned. A few actually yelled out, “No, Lauren!”

  I guess nobody likes divorce jokes at weddings.

  “I was laughing because I was so happy,” I explained. “It was joy.” I picked up my dress and cut to the front of the line.

  “No, from where I was sitting it seemed more like you were laughing at Mathew for crying,” the relentless ba
rmaid said. Everyone agreed that it was “So Lauren!” to do that.

  In the bathroom my veil fell in the toilet so I had to rinse it off in the sink. I decided maybe I did laugh. But it wasn’t like I was really laughing at Mathew. It just felt so vulnerable up there, with the bouquet forbidding any hand gestures, and Mathew looking so emotional, and in the front row, my mother and my birth mother holding hands and crying. I had to laugh or I would have fainted.

  My candle has been lit (by someone’s new husband) and is shaking a little in the grip of my trembling hands. My first instinct is to blow it out and sit down. But when I realize everyone is looking at me with sad faces, I feel like I should lighten the mood.

  “Uhmmm ... well. I’m grateful that I dated so many gay men in high school, because now I have a fabulous place to live. Thank you, Jay and Bryan! Though I didn’t plan on living there. But it’s still fabulous!”

  The room gets very quiet and very focused on me. Even the kids—who have been screaming and chasing each other around the table during the other “I’m grateful” speeches—have suddenly gone completely still.

  “Uhmmm ... I’m grateful I’m not pregnant right now!” I say. “That would make everything pretty awkward. So I guess I’m grateful I’m barren! Ha ha!” I hold my candle in the air like it’s a champagne glass for a toast. No laughter.

  “Well, I don’t know that I’m technically barren. Uhmmm, let’s see here. Geez. How hard should this be?” I give a weak fake laugh and make a joke that the candle is a microphone. (“Is this thing on?”) And then suddenly, I don’t know where it came from, maybe it was the power of the flame, or the pain of the hot wax dripping onto my hands, but I start pouring it out:

  “I don’t know if you all are aware of the situation, but my husband was supposed to be here today. Wait, I should go back a little bit. Mathew and I were going to move to Los Angeles from New York to start our lives all over again. Buy a house. Have a baby. But what he did instead was pack up our car with all our shit and drive off and disappear into the desert for three days. Three days! And nobody had any idea where he was—not me, not his family. He was just gone. And all I had was this voicemail message from him saying, ‘Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I do want to see you again, okay? I do.’ Isn’t that hilarious? It was so formal. Like he didn’t even know me! Or like he was trying to convince himself that he wanted to see me again. So I’m calling him and calling him and calling him. Then finally, after three days, he answered his cell phone. At which point I started sobbing because I was so relieved that he wasn’t dead. And I told him that I needed to hang up so I could calm down—get my breath—so I could actually speak to him. So I hung up, calmed down, and called him back. And when I called him back—THAT CHICKENSHIT MOTHERFUCKER HAD TURNED HIS CELL PHONE OFF!”

  I grab the edge of the table to balance myself and notice that my angry breath has taken a toll on not merely the entire table’s appetite but my candle too.

  “Um, I don’t know what the procedure is here,” I say, “but my candle blew out.”

  When Mathew asked me to marry him in front of the Circle K, I screamed “No!” and started running toward the street. That’s how much I loved him. I didn’t want him to be asking me in some sort of kitschy way. Because the way he said it sounded like he was suggesting something wacky. Like, “Hey, let’s wear our shoes on our ears!”

  He ran after me yelling, “I’m serious! What are you doing?”

  What I was doing was trying to avoid the “Oh my god, Lauren, I thought you knew I was kidding” second part of the conversation. But as I neared the rural street that we’d walked down from his parents’ house in the small might-as-well-be-Mexico town in Southern California, a monster truck swerved toward me going about fifty miles per hour. So I turned back and ran to him.

  “I mean it,” he said. “Let’s get married. You’re who I want to be with for the rest of my life. Forever.”

  There it was: that word. Forever. Immediately I saw the twin sisters from The Shining joining hands and beckoning me, “Forever ... and ever ... and ever.”

  I hated that word. It was so “and then you’re dead.” I wanted to believe that Mathew was as good as he seemed. That when he rocked me in his arms and told me I could “relax, just relax,” he wasn’t just saying that to relax me enough so he could chop my head off and bury it in the backyard. (Or worse, my real fear, that he was saying it just to have conquered another lady—one that didn’t want to be conquered by his bartender charm. But he did it. He charmed me.)

  Is it really this good? I wondered. Do I really get him? Could I really get the sweet sexy novelist bartender boy? The one that everyone lusted after?

  It was like I’d won the husband contest. “He’s our prince,” his mother kept telling me. “No, he’s my prince!” I wanted to say, and push her against the wall and scream, “MINE!”

  My parents treated him like royalty too.

  “Your dad and I were talking,” my mom once said, “and we decided if our family was ever on Survivor, Mathew would be the last one we’d vote off.”

  Then she told me I’d be the first one they voted off because I lied and exaggerated for the sake of a good story. And if she were playing, she’d be playing to win.

  The combination of my running and the monster truck stirred up the pit bulls in the yard next to the Circle K. All three of them came tearing toward the way-too-low fence and started attacking the chain link, biting and trying to pull it down. For a second I confused pit bulls with bears and froze, hoping I didn’t have my period.

  But Mathew was unfazed by what to him was “just a little piece of home” and, using the voice he usually saved for the drunks at his bar, commanded the dogs to “Cut it out!” And they did.

  It reminded me of how he always did this thing where he would grab me and throw me over his shoulder and run down the middle of the street, dodging in and out of traffic, with a cigarette dangling out of his mouth. People would be shouting from their car windows (“Is she okay? Do you need help?”) and he would just keep running with me bouncing along. My underwear would work itself into a painful wedgie, but I loved it. He made me feel like a light, girly flower. Like I could be his light, girly flower.

  “Okay,” I answered. “Okay, I’ll marry you.”

  LIVE NAKED GIRL

  It’s been two months since a tiny Texas psychic told me what I already knew: Mathew and I were over. “He can’t do it,” she said, her voice sounding like Loretta Lynn’s (as played by Sissy Spacek). “It’s like you’re screaming at a paraplegic to get the phone—he just can’t. So leave him alone and move on.”

  So far, moving on has meant moving into Gay Jay’s guestroom, where I’ve been staying for the past three months. He painted the walls a beautiful Tibetan orange to create a healing space just for me. (At least I thought he did, until his boyfriend told me, “Yeah, Jay said the same thing to our crystal-meth friend who was detoxing here right before you arrived.”)

  But it doesn’t matter, because over the past two months, I’ve developed my own sort of healing ritual. It goes like this: wake up, look at clock, remember I’m divorced—cry.

  Today, however, the tears and snot just aren’t coming. Maybe I’m sick. Maybe I froze to death.

  The soothing color of my room is somewhat offset by the fact that it is always freezing to the point that you can see my breath in here. It’s like a scene from The Exorcist.

  Jay claims he hides the space heater from me because I can’t afford to help pay the five-hundred-dollar energy bill. But I’ve seen the look of “ew” on his face whenever I mention taking a shower while he’s home, so I know it has more to do with his wanting to guarantee that I’ll be sleeping in a snowsuit and not in the nude.

  So I’m under the covers trying to warm my face with my morning breath, and even that isn’t bringing the tears. It’s so odd. The sadness just seems to be gone, which leaves me wondering, Now what am I gonna do? Before the universe can answer “get cancer,
” I try to look busy. I fluff the pillows and dust off the bedside table.

  I decide that the best thing to do is to jump back into another relationship. It’s like at Thanksgiving when you think, “Well, I don’t feel like throwing up anymore—I guess I’ll have some more of that pie.”

  Within two hours I am on the Internet, signing up on various dating sites. It’s the first day of the rest of my life, and oh my goodness, would you look at all the men looking for company. My profile is hilarious. Celebrity I most resemble? “Madonna. From behind.” Last book read? How to Fake a Pregnancy. I save my only sincere response for the question, What are you looking for? “Someone who has his own wonderful life and is happy with it.” (I remembered from my dating years that as flattering as it may feel, the last thing you ever want to hear from a date is, “I didn’t know I could smile, or feel happiness, or not punch people in the face before I met you.”)

  The first time someone sends me a response, saying, “You sound kind of interesting. I like your profile. Can I see a picture?” I feel sick and immediately take my profile off all the sites.

  Dating is so—queer. So “Oh man, all the good ones are married or gay. Am I right, girls? High five!” But I’d just like to do something that isn’t literally queer. Since I’m new to town and crashing at Jay’s, every activity I do is gay-centric. Gay coffee, gay gym, gay porno, gay-themed kitchen magnets. It’s time for a change. Time to create a new life, away from the gays. Time to get my butthole waxed.

  The only problem with this rebirth strategy is that I can’t be naked in front of people—even after living in Holland, the most naked-loving country in Western Europe. You can’t keep clothes on the Dutch people. Of course, if I were tall and thin with uncomplicated nipples, I might be happy to answer my door nude too.