Hand

Bodega shopping at 4am wasn’t a supremely rewarding hobby of mine until the housing lottery nightmare. Standing in one of six aisles of A#1 NY Star Deli on the corner of 124^th Street in my pajamas I kept hearing the phrase "stress eating" repeated in my head, and as I scanned the shelves of carbohydrates, looking for the one to offer the most comfort, I reviewed the scenario in my head. In my horrible dream of incredible intensity I was sitting in the Office of Residence Life when the announcement came that now GPA would be the number one factor in determining residence. The mammoth quality of this alarming new rule was so bad that, in my dream, I melted to the floor a la Wizard of Oz as the Director of Residence Life poured water on me in a vain attempt to help, but I was beyond help. My mind reeled, even in my previously deep slumber, as I considered that if this were to happen outside of the confines of my head, the gig would be up, and my friends would realize that I didn’t have the grades to match the intelligence they had perceived for the past three years of college. How many Writing / Literature / Bible triple-majors failed Freshman Composition anyway? Would I be forced to live with moronic athletic recruits who took gut classes? Would my bathroom reading selections – The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Utne Reader – be replaced with Sports Illustrated, Teen People and Maxim? Would they blast John Mayer and Eminem and scoff at my Frank Sinatra? Would they even let me keep my coffee table books in public?

Reality wasn’t helping. I chose Hostess Cupcakes. Two packages.

And just for good measure, a six-pack of Corona.

"Stress drinking too now," I muttered under my breath, as I handed the clerk my money. Thank God it was only a dream.

* * *

My mother used to have pads of paper that said "Chekhov Liszt" at the top. She found this absolutely brilliant, and was even more thoroughly pleased when my godmother found "Chopin Liszt" stationary to match. Most of my mother’s friends thought these were hilarious, except for the ones who were "really nice people." I wasn’t really so smart, just well-spoken and the only child of parents who were very, very smart. After being the sole child at my parents’ dinner parties I realized that it didn’t matter anyway, since with an excellent vocabulary and a good handbag, you could fool the world. I had forgotten these brilliant scratchpads until a recent finals cramming session. Xeroxed copies of charters in various languages from medieval Spain were circling my feet, and scattered across my desk were empty diet Coke bottles and overdue reserve reading that wasn’t worth the $32 I’d be paying in late fees. My friend Arielle, convinced that being stoned would assist in her study of what Columbia had decided were the masterpieces of Western music, was smoking yet another bowl and listening to Gregorian plain chant. By the time my eyes started to focus on Pope Pius II, my friend Joseph had come upstairs to check our progress and get blazed. He was studying Kafka and felt that the weed would help him too. As he searched for a lighter, Arielle forged forward in her CD study, moving up several hundred years to some effervescent Hayden piece.

"That’s such a distinct sound," Joseph said, searching for a lighter, "Is that Dostoevsky?"

Suddenly I remembered all of the people who hadn’t understood the scratchpads.

"I don’t think he composed much," I said, recalling the paper goods of yesteryear, "I mean, he was probably too busy writing Crime and Punishment."

* * *

Assuming that I had found the love of my life, I had begun to purchase the appropriate footwear. Presumptuous, perhaps, but not to the same degree of psychosis as, say, picking out a china pattern. Jack was from Dallas, of Texican and culturally Jewish descent, and fell into my life as a gift from the academic gods who felt he should spend his summer away from Harvard, where he had just completed his freshman year. Since I was gearing up for senior year at Columbia, my friends were quick to dub me "Anne Bancroft" and remind me that he was, in fact, a teenager. While my mind was busy thinking of reasons why it was totally okay to rob the cradle, my heart was also engaged in figuring out why I was so enamored, so quickly. Something was different about Jack, and it was an unassuming, borderline-subversive element that I couldn’t place until we’d been spending considerable time together for around a week. Jack was my new partner in crime for fun in Manhattan.

So like I said, when I realized I loved Jack, I had to buy shoes. Flats, to be precise, which was somewhat relaxing, because I had become accustomed to wearing come-fuck-me heels everywhere. As my hero, by definition, Jack had to have a tragic flaw. Because I wasn’t perfect but did have a horrible, critical quality to me, I saw this as his height. Jack was small. Okay, he was young, but his license said he was 5'7" and that was, quite literally, a stretch. I’d wager that he was my height – 5'5" – because when we’d hug we’d be at eye level, which would later prove really convenient for kissing.

Jack and I were having dinner at Daniel – albeit on a Wednesday, but at a respectable table nonetheless – and since we were Spanish and Hebrew speakers, we had resorted to pointing to things that we wanted on the menu, since we could barely decipher the French. For an appetizer Jack selected something that had "a Parmesan froth" which alarmed me, because cheese isn’t supposed to lather, and to be safe I went for chicken, since la poularde was fairly obvious. Ever the adventurer, Jack was eating l’espdaon et le chou, which sounded to me like something involving granola but actually was just grilled swordfish with cabbage. Words like "emulsion" and "jus" were on the menu far too often for me to relax because I wasn’t quite sure what they really meant and I knew showing surprise at their presentation would blow my cover. Luckily we were both drinking enough wine to keep me off edge, and I was wearing a pair of gold Gucci sandals that were low enough to keep us on the same level and expensive enough to make me confident.

I wanted to go to Harvard for graduate school, so I asked all those questions that school-run websites and guide books omit, like what the students are actually like, and how true do the stereotypes run, and will I ever see a professor or will other graduate students be teaching all of my classes? As Jack responded with more information about library reserves than I ever wanted to know I realized that I was probably talking to someone who had never received a B+ in his life.

"You have a 4.0 at fucking Harvard fucking College, don’t you?" I whispered loudly, leaning forward and shooting him a dirty look.

"What? We’re not discussing this."

His tone struck me like the voices of all the arrogant jerks I had had the great misfortune of loving in the past, and how sometimes their brand of intelligence-denial was just an insurgent attempt to brag, like discussing how they were taking golf lessons to go along with their business school courses. Not only was he perfect, but he was going to deny being perfect, because he didn’t think – no, he knew – that I wasn’t perfect.

"Ohmigosh, you won’t tell me what your GPA is, because it’s a 4.0." I sat back in my seat, triumphantly gulped the rest of my wine, and stared him down. Once the glass was back on the white linen tablecloth, Jack took my hand in his and I realized, ironically enough at this moment, that he had the total upperhand in the relationship.

"You know what, it really doesn’t matter," he said, "because talking about GPA with you is stupid. It’s a waste of our time. It makes what we have less special."

"Why? We never talk about personal things, like religion or sex or –"

"Stop. I talk about my GPA with the asshole who wants to be on the crew team so he can have another place to compete."

I was silent.

* * *

A religiously unobservant family of suburban North American Conservative Jews, my parents and I enjoyed our own ridiculous attempts at cultural activity. Friday evenings, when traditional Jews were sitting around their Sabbath table and blessing wine and breaking bread, we were ordering from Wong Palace and watching Jeopardy! In lieu of challah, we had egg rolls; chicken soup was replaced by a wonton broth; and of course, instead of a chicken with stuffing, we had dinner specials, with tasty treats ranging from shrimp and lobster sauce to moo goo gai pan.

"State Capitals" was the most sought-after of the Jeopardy! categories, since we knew all fifty and could recall, spell, pronounce, and cite their respective states without fail. We urged my father to "audition" to get on the show, but my mother and I knew all too well that the ironic forces of this universe would make his categories "Hollywood Couples" or "Pets of the White House" or other absurd selections. We had been enjoying this ritual since I was too young to realize that other people celebrated the Day of Rest in other ways, and we all had our favorite stock answers to guess when Alex Trebek’s lofty answers eluded us. My dad would go with British royalty. My mother liked "egret," a type of bird. I went with Helsinki, since we all know that the Jeopardy! writers have a sick obsession with Scandinavia.

* * *

One morning at a positively ungodly hour Jack had scheduled a haircut at my salon, which, for the record, I was against. Since we had only known each other for two weeks – although we’d spent every minute of those two weeks together, but still, things like past hairstyles don’t automatically calculate – I had begged to see his high school yearbook, which I had noticed on his shelf of books shipped from Harvard for his summer in the city. When he handed me the massive tome o’ adolescent history I almost died seeing the hunter green cover brandishing the words "Class of 2001." Flipping through the pages to see what his life had been such a short time ago, I almost skimmed over him, because his current typical male haircut – closely cropped – hadn’t always been his, as in the photographs I saw long, curly tendrils that I found absolutely stunning.

"I think you should grow out your hair. It looks so cute long in these pictures!" I said, touching the photos as though I could feel the curls.

"I really think I need a haircut," was all he answered, tapping things into his Palm Pilot, not really paying attention.

"I think you should grow it long," I insisted. I wondered if I was being too forward, acting like a controlling girlfriend at Day 14, when I certainly wasn’t intending to be either forceful or possessive. "It looks really hot," I said, realizing that I found it sexy and not just cute. I wanted Jack to look up and kiss me and cross that line. We’d make out and stop being friends and start being a couple, but I was so far into my own fantasies that I had to blink hard a few times to wake myself up.

"Yah, but it’s such a pain in the ass to take care of," Jack started, almost whining. I had to think for a minute to remember that we were talking about hair.

"I think you should grow it long."

"But it gets so hot in the summer, and in the winter it dries frozen," he said, sounding really annoyed now.

"I think you should grow it long–"

"But no one would make out with me!" he said, turning around. "I loved it, but I couldn’t get a date, and since I cut it, things have been better. I’m not growing it long again!"

End of conversation.

So at my salon, I reluctantly booked Jack with Randy, one of the more flamboyant of the gay stylists I’d had, whose perfectly shaped girlish figure was outdone only by his Eurotrash mesh shirts. He was the only male I knew who wore Vuitton in public and could pull it off. I was very unhappy about relinquishing Jack into his custody, only because I would have loved those curls back on his head, instead of just frozen in photographs.

"Ooh, girl, another one!" Randy said, his eyes glittering as he sized up Jack, who was safely out of earshot in the shampoo area. With his freakishly toned torso, platinum-tipped coif and the requisite one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other stand-out quality – in his case, braces – Randy appeared as a giddy, albeit emotionally mature, adolescent female. I considered how many guy friends I had brought to the salon, and realized I should be getting a commission.

For some reason, the only thing I was getting was defensive. "He’s just a friend, and it’s just a referral." I responded, not in the mood to force innuendos. "I mean, it’s not like I’m sleeping with all of my male friends."

"That makes one of us!" Randy hooted, and proceeded to double-over and swish.

* * *

Going home to visit my parents was a trip, both in the logistical and emotional senses. My parents wanted to treat me like they did before I had hips and boobs, and while this was sometimes endearing – like when my mother decided to have my initials monogrammed on my pink-and-white gingham check sheets, much to my horror – it also got annoying, like when I wanted to talk on my cell phone after midnight, and my father would say "Isn’t it too late to be calling someone now?" and my friends on the other end of the phone would just be starting dinner.

Instead of being a functional twentysomething who had kinky sex dreams, I fantasized about dinner parties, walk-in linen closets, and being married to Jack. My high school journal was the only blank paper I could find in my bedroom in the morning, and in stark contrast to the last entry – written on the morning of my graduation, when I wasn’t talking to either of my parents and when I was dreading seeing my high school ex-boyfriend, since I’d broken up with him thirteen days and twelve hours before – was the recollection of the dream I had, my first night in my old bed. I had gone to bed the evening before at around midnight, having left Jack’s dorm too late at night to take a train and having spent more money on a taxi in Boston than I would have ever spent in Manhattan. He called my cell at around 2am, and when it awakened me, I was nervous, thinking something was wrong.

"You didn’t call to say that you got home all right," he said, soundly oddly concerned.

"I’m fine," I said, trying to tone down a sleepy but huge smile that was creeping across my face ferociously. "I’m excellent."

"Well sweet dreams," he said. "I’ve got to go to bed. I have class in six hours."

"Okay, goodnight," I said, and I rolled over to drop the phone to the floor. It hit with a dull thud and I fell into a housing-lottery-free dream.

The next morning I penned the following pseudo-poetic account of my fantasy:

I was busy imagining what I would have cooked for this dinner, with my parents and Jack’s parents in Cambridge, before we left Harvard and moved to a hardcore suburbia somewhere so our kids could grow up with swingsets and barbeques.

It almost killed me to pack my bags for the plane ride back to Columbia.