Sometimes I Feel Like a Nut (2 page)

2

I don’t freak about heights. Or Freddy Krueger. Or snakes. In fact, when my husband, Harry, and I drove cross-country—sorry, he drove cross-country and I sat managing the pre-XM staticky terrestrial radio stations—we stopped in a small town in rural Wyoming. Wait, that was a redundancy. After a lunch of something fried, we saw a dude with a huge python wrapped around his entire body. When I exclaimed how cool it was he asked me if I wanted to try it on.

“Totally!” I said, as Harry’s face contorted in sheer shock.

“Who are you?” Harry asked me, unable to reconcile that the girl who shrieks at ear-splitting decibels at the sight of a bug was now Britneying a mammoth reptile.

I may scream over a roach on the sidewalk—oh, sorry, water bug (but let’s face it, they’re all fucking roaches)—but a nine-foot anaconda’s
pas de problème
. Which is all to say: I am a freakazoid about fear. I don’t get scared of regular things that have the word “phobia” attached (arachnophobia, acrophobia, etc.). The things that haunt me are sometimes understandable but still pretty abnormal. Here’s some backstory on a few assorted things I find extremely troubling.

1. Vans

Yes, vans. Not the sk8er checkerboard Ked-like SoCal shoe, but rather the vehicle. I hereby propose the following: nothing good comes from vans. I’m not talking about old Volkswagen hippie vans filled with pot smoke or even ones where you can see the band equipment piled in. I’m talking windowless, double-door,
Silence of the Lambs
–mobiles. I’m talking duct-taped Frederica Bimmel in the back. I’m talking drug dealers. I have long believed vans almost always hold kidnapped kids. When I was a child in the seventies in New York, the tragedy of Etan Patz, a little boy who disappeared on his way to school, haunted the city. Haunted. I mean every parent on every block told their kids the story, how he vanished the first time his dad let him walk alone. For years I’d look at creepy vans and assume a kid was stuck in there with rope around him, trying to force out a sound from under the silver tape or bandana shoved in his mouth. Buffalo Bill’s escapades in
The Silence of the Lambs,
among those of other Hollywood villains, included the use of vans, further supporting my theory. Then, in college, the worst story. As in, please dive into my nightmares, the water’s warm. I met a girl from rural Vermont who was so sweet. One night we stayed up talking about her new boyfriend and I asked if they’d done it yet. She told me they were waiting and I wondered why, as they seemed so cute and happy together. And then she told me that when she was fourteen she was walking home from a neighbor’s house when a
van
pulled up alongside her, the door slid open, and three guys grabbed her, threw her inside, and gang-raped her virginity away. I almost threw up. I was ass-white. I was a
mess
. But natch it only added to my anxiety about vans, which has spiraled to traumatic proportions.

Then years later, yours truly decided to take a driving lesson. Yes, at thirty-five I do not drive. Long story long, I’d never needed to drive before, what with buses and taxis and N trains and, you know, legs. But I’d grown tired of everyone teasing me and decided that my lack of motor vehicle knowledge was not in sync with the fact that I am a strong independent woman. Whoops, sorry, that sounded way too Beyoncé-esque. I just felt like it wasn’t part of my personality to be a perma-passenger. After all, as Volkswagen ads say, on the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers. Okay, fine, so I couldn’t drive, but I felt like I was a driver type, despite the sad fact that I truly did not know which pedal was which.

My teacher Dennis was the local high school football coach near my parents’ house in Massachusetts.

At first I was positively schvitzing, convinced I’d mow over an ice-cream-licking tot or golden retriever named Bailey or Tucker, but then my years of playing Atari Pole Position kicked in. (I knew they were good for something! Now I just have to figure out how the hell Donkey Kong helped me . . .) My fear subsided and I got really into it. After my first lesson I thought I was Mario Andretti. Dennis said I was an A student!

The more curves the road took, the more empowered and revved up I felt, until by the hour’s end I was ready to do a full Whitesnake-era Tawny Kitaen hood-straddle. But since I lacked a dry-ice machine for smoky effects, flame-red waist-length hair, and a gauzy dress, I decided against it. Oh, and also, instead of a white Jaguar my chariot was a beige Ford Focus emblazoned with the words “Student Driver.” Decidedly less scorching hot.

As it turned out, however, my cockiness was all beginner’s luck. Clichés exist for a reason, and that reason is me. My second lesson
blew
and left me with zero confidence at the wheel, which I am plagued with at this printing.

What, you may ask, does this have to do with vans? Everything, actually. So lesson #2: I’m cruising along trying to keep my focus in the Focus, basking in the rays of my instructor’s praise of my killa skills, feeling extra Tawnyish.
Then,
lo and behold, a ramshackle death trap on wheels (
van
) cuts me off with a crazy rubber-burning screeching turn in front of me. I
scream
my head off, slamming on the brakes, and if my harrowing escape isn’t enough for a second-day driving student, suddenly the double door that would usually hold the roped up kidnappee with duct-taped piehole, unable to scream,
burst open,
unleashing a fury of splattered food. Dennis leaned over and slammed my horn until the asshole van driver clued in that his vehicle had just shat out a seafood feast. As it turns out, assholic driver was not a serial killer, but in fact a moronic caterer en route to a deliver a Silence of the Clams beachside lobster bake. Not one, not two, but about twenty red crustaceans and bags o’ steamers littered the road and a huge bowl of gloppy potato salad landed on the hood of my car. So I had slammed on the brakes and swerved out of the way, deftly avoiding claw crackage, crossing over the double yellow line. Thank almighty Adonai there wasn’t an oncoming car careening toward us or yours truly would’ve gone the way of the aforementioned crustaceans. After hyperventilation that nearly necessitated a brown paper bag, I shakily attempted some parallel parking but was so rattled by the onslaught of flying sea creatures that I lost my nerve and my will to keep trying to drive. Again.

Which is all to say: fuck vans.

2. Nellie Oleson

I’m still haunted, twenty-five years later, by my
fierce, all-consuming, intense
loathing of the ringleted
Little House on the Prairie
cunty villainess. Her smug smirk. Her ice-blue eyes. Her merciless taunting of Laura Ingalls, who, while beaverish and semi-annoying, did not deserve that shit. Nellie had her petticoats and her satin bows and her big-ass house: she’d won! Her family owned the fucking store! Everyone else had to cross fields swinging empty buckets to score their loot and she just rolled out of her princess bed downstairs! Bitch. She had it all; why did she need to goad Laura with those bitchy dirty looks and snobbery? As a child I hated her *so* much I literally wanted to go and find the actress who played her and murder her and chop off her blond curls. Because you can’t act evil that well. It’s like Brenda on
90210
years later. But way worse. ’Cause Nellie never cracked. My other fantasy involving N.O. was to take a time machine back there and show her all my stuff, like my TV, and say, “You think you’re so great with your pa owning the store, you rich bitch? Well look what I got!
A fucking television, that’s what! Fuck you, Nellie Oleson!
”

3. Meat

Okay, I know what you’re thinking: ew, she’s a righteous vegetarian. No, no, I’m not. I swear. In fact I’m eating a chicken burger as I write this. Not really, but I will later. Animal rights is just not a cause I think about (sorry). Boo-hoo, I like my lipstick and medicine. I wear leather. Kill the cow to make my boots, I don’t care, but I just don’t really want to eat it. Here’s why.

When I was twelve, I wanted to have sex sooo badly. I know, that’s, like, way too young north of the Mason-Dixon but I was
so
curious and I wanted to close my eyes and moan like the girls in the movies ’cause it felt so good. Little did I know it would fucking kill, but more on that later. This relates to cows because I was having a major flirtfest with my friend Jessica’s Camp Weekela friend Owen. My best friend, Dana, and I shopped camps and the Weekela guy did a whole presentation and said earnestly, “This is the Rolls-Royce of camps.” Our parents decided we should hit the Chevy of camps instead. But once I saw the gorgeous guys from Jessica’s camp pictures I wished we’d passed on Like a Rock and instead requested some Grey Poupon.

Fast-forward a couple months and Owen was attending Jessica’s coed slumber party. Tween sparks flew. I knew Owen and I would be playing tonsil hockey big-time. I secretly plotted maybe even letting him go to second. Which at the time, back in ’87, was boobs, not beedges or whatever the fuck rainbow kissing/Cleveland steamer/Dirty Sanchez fast-lane shit “yutes” do today. So on the night of what was to be the first real make-out session of my life, some idiot at the party decided we should pop
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2
into the Betamax. In case you haven’t suffered the misfortune of enduring this silver screen gem, it opens with a chili contest where the main ingredient in the blue-ribbon-winning concoction is . . . (drumroll) . . . people. Yum! I didn’t feel so hot. In fact, I began to feel my chunder mid-esophagus. I then proceeded to toss my tacos all night, sending Owen fleeing, and the only thing I had my arms around for the rest of the evening was the porcelain shrine of misery. I came home the next day vowing never to eat red meat again.

My mom crossed her arms. “You’re kidding me! I just bought steaks,” she said, pissed. “Can’t you become a vegetarian tomorrow?”

My parents thought it was just a phase but to this day I do not eat moo or bahhh. Or oink, for that matter. I know, I know, the piggy lobby says it’s “The Other White Meat,” but bacon looks fuckin’ red to me. I’m sure real vegetarians think my grilled slabs of fowl are foul but somehow I’m not as grossed out by bird. And now I’m anemic. Thanks, Wes Craven. Or whoever the hell ruined my cute-boy mackfest. I’m now the loser at the wedding who subtly asks the caterer if there’s a veggie plate and is greeted with some boiled carrots rolling around. And my iron levels are so in the shitter I whack my leg on a stray toy car and have a bruise the color of a J.Crew navy cardigan. God damn you, cannibal chili cook!

4. Mimes and Clowns