Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy (12 page)

Having never learned enough French to be able to get a job in Montreal, and with no obvious application for my cultural anthropology degree other than sleeping around, I decided to move again, this time to Vancouver, where my older sister had offered me a free bed. I did, however, learn to understand a little Michel Foucault and even printed up a quote of his and pasted it above my Macintosh Classic for inspiration: “I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”

I suspected that I was on that path, even after I donated my black leather biker cap to the radio station.

E
veryone loves Vancouver: You can ski in the morning, windsurf in the afternoon, and smoke your buddy’s top-shelf hydroponic pot at night. It was the perfect place to be if you had no solid plans. No one cared if you had your shit together, were working toward a career, or were a productive member of society. As long as you recycled and were nice to animals, you were, as we Canadians say, eh-okay. So why wasn’t I drawn to a city whose motto is “By Sea, Land, and Air We Prosper”? Because I prospered in dark basements. I didn’t care about hiking or jumping off a cliff. My idea of an endorphin spike was persuading the cute guy at the end of the bar to come home with me.

I had no reason to hold a grudge against the place. Pivotal moments in my early sexual history took place in “The ’Couv.” The first was at sixteen when my oldest sister dressed me and my three best friends up in her spandex nightclubbing clothes, teased our hair, and
took us to see Chippendale dancers. Her attitude was that if we were going to drink underage, it might as well be on her watch, thus making her the coolest sister ever. I think she found us highly entertaining, the way we strutted around in high heels and fake lashes, pretending we were grown up and could handle our liquor, as if we were auditioning for
Teens and Tiaras
.

We may have had some experience with booze, but none of us had ever seen live adult men naked before. That Chippendale performance stuck with me over the years because it was so . . . creepy. The guys were more intimidating than titillating. They seemed too confident, too
into
their jobs as strippers, screwing up the whole power dynamic. I would have liked more sensitive men, guys who were broken down, vulnerable, and ashamed to be exotic dancers. If any of them had shed an embarrassed tear during his dance, I would have given him a twenty. Plus, I didn’t relate to their ridiculous job-related Halloween costumes: the doctor, the policeman, the fireman. Where was the professor, the bike courier, the barista? The headliner was the worst: a greased-up man in a ponytail and a leopard-print bikini yelling, “Me Tarzan! You Jane!” The poor guy actually placed a CorningWare casserole pot on stage filled with kerosene, lit it, and then seductively danced around and over his tiny campfire. All I could think was—would he use that later to make scalloped potatoes? Was that the smell of burning hair?

Two years later at eighteen, I spent a week on the beach in Vancouver with my new best friend from ballet, Michelle, listening to a single Violent Femmes CD and fooling around with random guys. Actually, I don’t think Michelle ever touched any of them. She was by
far the prettier one and was saving herself either for marriage or at least for someone truly worth it. Not me. I was out there getting fingered in the ocean, which was about as orgasmic as watching a guy thrust his junk over a flaming CorningWare pot. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to have my own place where I could lie down.

DURING MY FIRST
few months crashing at my sister Avigail’s place, I did absolutely nothing. I didn’t have a job or a schedule. I’m not even sure I brushed my teeth every day. At month five it became clear, by way of a sisterly ultimatum, that I needed to find my own place and make some money. The job came easy. It was at a business where I’d pictured myself working for many years: Kinkos. Sure, Montreal had
poutine
, smoked meat, and a great sense of style, but did it have a Kinkos? No. How was a college student like myself expected to get any major projects done if I couldn’t photocopy a book or print a paper after hours? Who did homework before midnight? It was a constant frustration. Then I moved to Vancouver and saw it in big glossy blue letters: Kinkos. I would have called mine ProcrastaPrint or something else more obviously fitting than a made-up word that sounded like a fetish club for clowns.

Impressed by my knowledge of Microsoft Word, Kinkos hired me on the spot and put me in charge of renting out computers by the minute and helping people with their word processing problems. The other computer employees, distinct from the copy people, were geeky boys still struggling with acne, twenty-sided dice, and what to say to
girls. They were great when I needed to pawn off an unwanted shift, but that’s where the courtship ended. I needed someone more my speed. It was slim pickings on the copier side too. Let’s just say that Kinkos didn’t employ any handsome Fulbright scholars—it was the sort of job that attracted lost souls, extreme potheads, and me. I was delighted to discover that if you heard “safety meeting” announced over the PA system, it meant someone was about to spark up a joint in the back alley. Safety meetings took place multiple times a day. The regular customers must have thought that handling toner was extremely dangerous.

I fell into a convenient, one-sided flirtation with a very tall, very thin, half-hippie half-just-broke dude named Bruce. He had the most amazing green eyes and Mick Jagger lips, if only he’d cut his stringy shoulder-length hair to show them off. Although he had decent hygiene, he never quite looked clean, as if he were perpetually covered in a layer of dust. At the same time, he was one of those people obsessed with offbeat health fads and was currently drinking two cups of olive oil a day. Maybe that was why the dirt stuck to him. He doted on me with everything he had to offer, and as the rides home, the free beers, and the bummed cigarettes added up, I could tell he was getting impatient, wondering when we’d take things to the next level. The only thing climaxing for me was my guilt. I didn’t want to lose him as a loyal companion. I also didn’t have the faintest clue why he liked me so much.

It may have been a special occasion like his birthday or something that intensified my shame level, but I finally gave in and slept with him. I don’t remember the quality of the sex because I was drunk and
high (big surprise), but I do remember how fat and round I felt next to his long, thin body. He was like a cricket, all elbows and knees knocking together. After, while he was getting me a glass of water and himself a cup of oil, I actually asked him, “Hey, why do you like me?”

“Duh,”
he answered back. “Cuz you’re awesome.” It was nice to be awesome but it was not specific enough of an answer for me to draw any solid conclusions. I tried to avoid him after my bed surrender as I had no intention of duplicating that evening, and I didn’t want to have to be faced with telling him that. I needed to find a new job since it was becoming increasingly clear that I was in the top 1 percent of awesome at Kinkos. And when you hit the glass ceiling at the copy shop, it’s time to move on, at least to a Starbucks.

While still working there, pondering who I was and what I was doing with my life, I tried stand-up comedy. It altered me chemically forever.

There is a correlation between me and sex, and me and stand-up. There’s the obvious therapy angle—the bottomless well of self-loathing that no amount of adoration by strangers will ever fill,
blah blah blah
. Boring. The more visceral link between the two has to do with the deep connection you create with a person when you have sex and with a crowd when you get a laugh. Even if you can bond for a brief second, it’s a moment of bliss, a wave of pure release. Good sex that is. I would seriously rather do the worst stand-up show than have bad sex, any day.

I’d been secretly flirting with the idea of trying stand-up for years but didn’t know where to start. The most proactive, yet safe, thing I could think to do was volunteer as an usher for a comedy festival. It
ended up being a good choice. A few of the other ushers were actual up-and-coming stand-ups, and after we shined flashlights in one another’s faces for ten minutes, they invited me to come check out a workshop for wannabe comedians. I guffawed at the idea. You can’t teach funny in a class. Yet I found myself signing up, with the intention of skipping out after the first hour, before they collected their money. Nice try. This outfit knew what they were doing and asked for the money at the door. I hemmed and hawed, then found myself taking out $300 from the ATM, still suspicious that I was being roped into a scam and being sold a lofty dream. In a way, I was.

In front of ten other hopeful amateur comics, I told a few stories, little anecdotes that I’d used over the years to try to amuse my friends. The teacher said he saw talent in me and suggested I do the “graduation show”—the next night. I couldn’t believe a weekend workshop had a graduation show. But those were the words I’d waited to hear my entire life, and it only cost me three hundred bucks! The following night I called in sick for my shift at Kinkos and stepped out onto the stage for the first time.

To be clear, I wasn’t anything special, just another person trying stand-up for the first time, so, pretty terrible. I believe my opening line was, “So my name is Ophira. People always ask me, what kind of name is that? And I tell them it’s Hebrew. I’m from the land of Heeb.” I heard
a
laugh, resulting in the biggest rush of my life. It was like jumping out of a plane while having sex with the guy people told Clive Owen he looked like. But I was paralyzed by the idea of actually
pursuing
stand-up comedy. The whole thing was so daunting. My family
would never approve of my hanging out in bars all night, making no money, and dealing with drunk people. Then again, that was almost exactly what I did already. But there was also dying miserably in front of a crowd or having a heckler ruin you—it seemed too much for me to bear. The comedy teacher did nothing to assuage that fear. He warned, “When you die onstage, you die alone.”

So you could say that I was afraid of the truth.

On the advice of the stand-up teacher, I signed up for an acting class; it was a garden party by comparison. Not that I was a naturally good actor either, but the atmosphere was nurturing. The class was all about having faith in yourself and your scene partner, and everyone hugged at the end. One of my acting-class partners, Cindy, begged me to go out with her friend Phillip, claiming he was the “best guy ever.” Never believe a single girl who says she has the greatest single guy for you. If he’s so amazing, why isn’t she with him? I took her endorsement to heart after letting her slap my face in a trust exercise and agreed to have coffee with him. He insisted we meet at a “nonchain café,” as he referred to it, which I appreciated.

I looked over this “best guy ever.” He resembled Tom Wopat, Luke from
The Dukes of Hazzard
(or Johnny Knoxville, depending on your generation) but with a massive Jew fro. So like a Heeb of Hazzard. I could definitely work with it.

We both ordered a regular coffee with milk, no bullshit. The barista rang us up for $2.50.

“Do you need some money?” I offered, after watching him search through his wallet for many minutes.

He looked confused and then gestured for me to speak into his other ear. “I blew this ear out listening to Beethoven too loud when I was sick in bed,” he said.

What did that even mean? Regardless, he had my attention, and I had to know more.

“Do you need some money for the coffees?” I yelled into his other ear.

“No, I got it, but this is weird,” he said, delicately holding up a tiny piece of paper. “I found a couple tabs of acid in my wallet. I guess I forgot about them. I have no idea how long they’ve been there. Do you think acid expires?”

What was it with me and acid?

“I guess we should find out, right?” I said into his good ear.

I can’t say I was convinced that he’d conveniently found two tabs of acid in his wallet, but I applauded the fact that he’d prepared a pitch. I was more than happy to follow along.

He handed me my tiny square of paper.

“I never thought I’d do acid again,” he lied.

“Me neither!” I lied.

And with that, we each swallowed a mouthful of LSD-laced java.

“It’s so nice out. Should we walk?” he suggested. There is nothing more attractive than a man with a plan.

We sauntered along the shoreline, high out of our heads, for about twelve hours. By the time we made it to breakfast, I was too worn out to think about the logistics of making sex happen, let alone a shower and a nap. He really did blow out his ear while sick with the flu when
he was fifteen; he put the speaker right near his bed, dialed the volume up to ten, and basically hugged it while listening to Beethoven. He ended up closer to Ludwig than he’d bargained for. But I liked this guy. He was a complete anomaly.

We parted after pancakes and shared a quick, syrupy kiss. I worried that I whispered my number into his bad ear. We hung out two more times. The sex was surprisingly straightforward for a guy who stuffed drugs in his wallet and punctured his eardrum listening to a symphony. Not that I was waiting for an invitation to swing from the rafters, but I thought he’d amaze me with some real passion. He was the first person I’d ever been with who smoked a cigarette after sex, and he was surprised I’d never tried it. He claimed, “Because of the chemicals and the endorphins surging through your body, it tastes totally amazing.” He was right; it tasted more sugary, almost like cherries. That’s when I realized chemicals were this guy’s “thing.”

The Zagat review for Phillip would say that although he was “unique,” he wasn’t much for “hanging out in public spaces” as they were “too unpredictable.” All he wanted to do was blow cherry-laced smoke circles in bed. The third time I called to try to convince him to come out for drinks with my friends, he didn’t return my call. Perhaps he didn’t hear his phone ring. I have no idea what happened to him. My guess is that he replenished his wallet with another couple of tabs of acid for the next girl. It’s what made him the “best guy ever.”