Maeve in America Page 10

  We’re sad about it for a moment. It’s so silly, our bodies are on the way out anyway! Daily, they degenerate. It’s a long melting march toward old age, with all the brittle bones, saggy skin, and big fat middles that come with it. Even if you’re an athlete with a face-lift (yes, Shaq, I’m talking to you), sooner or later you’ll end up a wreck. It’s the stupidest way to decide who to love, and it embarrasses me constantly to be part of a species that decides who to procreate with based on such a goofy premise. But that is the way things are, at least in New York City in 2018. Mona eventually counters with the classic, “But some cultures don’t have those ideas, in fact they’re the opposite.” Her Iraqi family have at times expressed sympathy that she is not fat. I tell her I’ll move to Iraq to find a boyfriend.

  Then I remember once more that there have been times, in the past, when I’ve pummeled and starved my body smaller, to the point where my periods stopped for almost a year, and I dipped my low-carb body in wax one hundred times over and sprayed it a sort of orange to resemble a tan. The joke of it all is that I didn’t like my body then either. That particular time I was thin is a little foggy, because I was so hungry, but I believe I started to hate my nose. I don’t remember why, my poor old nose! All it’s done is help, and I’ve dragged it through some of the stinkiest blocks on the Lower East Side this hot, awful summer. Changing my body made me no more comfortable as I moved through my life and I realized that this problem I had with my body, with myself, it wasn’t logical.

  There has to be more to it; this violence I feel has to come from something bigger than this world. There truly is something metaphysical that bothers me about my physical body. Isn’t it ludicrous, that I, a person, a soul, a personality, whatever I truly am, am stuck in this body? This body isn’t me; if it was, then wouldn’t I be more comfortable in it? Surely I’d be like, Hey, pal, thanks for getting me up these steps, instead of wishing I could leave it and live my life elsewhere, a simple brain in a jar somehow emitting thoughts and words, or just some code in the digital world, away from the messiness of the physical. Did I even tell you about my bad back? It’s bad, believe me, it’s the worst. Not only does it contain two slipped discs and the most unpredictable acne known to woman, it also possesses a terrible attitude. Sometimes my back decides to shoot pain down my legs, other times it clenches up in a block of tension and sends messages up to my face, forcing that too to crinkle in discomfort. Most days it’s fine, and other bodily concerns crowd in instead. Ostensibly small sensations, sometimes minute discomforts, but they are things I can’t elude, because they’re on me, or rather they are me. A dry scalp, a sunburn, a cutting bra strap.

  On days like that, I want out of my body. Such a liberating idea; I would not lament the time spent squeezing into jeans and blushing at meetings. I’d gladly be rid of reflections in unexpected mirrors that sour my day, and vicious menstrual cramps and sudden mustaches and horrifying photos. Really, I decide as I finally make it into my apartment, strip off my too-tight clothes, and dive onto the bed, banging my knee on the bed frame in the process, I want out! I want out of this body.

  I lie on my bed, eyes screwed shut, completely allergic to myself. A few dizzy moments later, I start to cool off. The mattress holds my back and shoulders steady, my hips and spine loosen and drop, grateful for the support. I notice that the sheets smell lovely, a faint cherry blossom, which I recognize as my body lotion. Without a body, I wouldn’t be able to do that lovely thing of putting on lotion after a shower. I would miss the feeling of my father’s hand on my forehead when he’s saying goodbye to me. I wouldn’t get to experience the wide-awake shock of walking into the Atlantic Ocean, and the wonder of my breathing matching up with the breathing of a week-old baby fast asleep in my arms. And what about sex? A digital relationship is fun, an intellectual one thrilling, but the only way to truly know if you’ve found yourself a real one is to get your two bodies together and follow their orders. I sigh into the pillow, and look down at my body. All the sand dunes, gently breathing in and out, the poor thing is glad to be resting. I don’t feel the need to attack her. I know that, without a body, I would not feel what I’m feeling right now, this gorgeous melting into a soft bed in a bedroom golden with afternoon light.

  Of course, without a body, I wouldn’t feel anything. And that’s when my resentment makes a little more sense to me, because, feeling nothing? Now, that’s a seductive prospect. Not just to be rid of physical feelings, those odd twinges or slowdowns that make you flash forward to the end, but to be rid of all feelings. With no place to store emotions, how could they sneak up on one the way they do? Imagine not having to feel anything, specifically, not having to feel anything bad! You see, in my extremely tender little heart I’m a tiny baby who longs to live in a paradise where she never has to feel sad or angry, or even mildly unsure about whether she tipped that waitress enough. And when you’re a tiny baby determined not to grow up, even good feelings can be difficult. Feelings like love and excitement and joy can hurt, because they are too fleeting or too poignant or just too beautiful to bear easily. Lying there in the golden light of late afternoon, I understand why I so often am loath to be in my body. A body makes me feel everything. A body is what makes me human, a body is what makes me alive. And being human and being alive is difficult. Life flows sweetly at times, but for much of the time it junks and shudders and hurts, so what am I to do?

  When life is difficult and painful at times, do I scream for a time-out, or try to step off quietly because, well, it’s all a bit much? That little baby in me, the one who thinks she is especially vulnerable because of her self-diagnosed extreme tender heart disorder, she wishes I would. She protests and tries to squirm away, but that baby has to grow up and be stoic for ten minutes, please, at the very least. In the summer, life explodes around us in so many ways it’s impossible to forget that we are alive. Our bodies are exposed more, so we are exposed more. That’s inevitable, that’s nature, that’s life. I’ve decided to use my body to help me through, and I will use every part. I must lead with my best foot forward, put my head into the wind, keep my nose to the grindstone and my ear to the ground, and try my best not to bawl my eyes out. I do not see a blissful future for us, a clean and pretty picture of all the senses together in one place, but I do sense a truce coming on between myself and my body, myself and my life. I understand that this has to be, so I accept it. For now, I’m Sisyphus in a sun hat, determined to smile.

  Are You My Husband?

  I REMEMBER ONE SATURDAY that was filled up with jobs around the house. My brother was chopping wood, my sisters were baking, and I was washing the car. What a cute little team, the seven dwarves to my mother’s Snow White! We children always did jobs, it was unquestioned, and my main task was minding the baby. That was a fun job, because the baby in this case was my sister Daisy, who was and is pure sunshine. I was around fourteen then, so she was almost four, and required less looking after than before. I guess that’s why I was washing the car. I certainly wasn’t happy about it. Lest you think it was a sexy kind of washing, like in that Jessica Simpson music video where she has tiny jean shorts on and is using an extremely large, possibly spermicidal, sponge, I will set you straight.

  There was nothing sexy about me washing the car. I had an ancient vacuum cleaner, a yellowed plastic bucket that I’d filled with water from the kettle. I had braces, acne, and was carrying my customary extra forty pounds. I was dawdling, taking too long, so long that the water in the bucket got cold and the detergent fizzled out to the point of becoming a gray scum on the surface. My brother played our Best of Bob Marley CD through the open kitchen window, but even that wasn’t improving my mood. My hands were wrinkled and red as I crossed them and leaned heavily on the car roof like a trucker taking a break from his long-haul journey. Our house is tucked within a garden that was, at that time, unruly and overgrown, and that garden is divided by a short avenue on an incline that leads to the front door. I looked down that avenue
at the closed iron gates and felt an overwhelming longing for adventure, for something to happen, anything. This longing was underpinned by a deep sense of boredom, that dark sense unique to teenagers that descends without warning and stays for five years.

  Idly, I imagined my school crush appearing on his bike at the bottom of the hill and shouting my name. It was unclear if he knew my name at that point—we had never spoken—but this was not based in reality. Even in this fantasy, I wouldn’t want to bother him by expecting that he cycle up the hill. I would run to join him, hopping on my bike too, leaving the car’s windshield streaked and Bob Marley singing plaintively after me, “Could you be, could you be, could you be loved?” What would happen next was unclear to me, but scarcely mattered. My main thrill came from getting away from this humdrum rural existence crowded with my five sisters and brother, all of whom had the same face as mine, in a house where I always knew what was about to happen next. Of course, today that sounds like paradise, but back then I resented the predictability and safety of it all, and the only way my little brain could imagine an out was via a man, a rescue, a liberating hero. I didn’t consider the possibility that I could simply do it myself. That I could hop on my bike and find an adventure, unbidden by a man, or a fourteen-year-old version of a man, whatever they are called. I pictured the scene so vividly, him showing up and taking me away from all of this, that I was surprised when it didn’t happen, and quite furious when I found myself jammed in among my sisters in the living room that evening, after the smaller ones had their bath, eating toasted cheese sandwiches and watching Blind Date.

  Over the course of a romantically disappointing adolescence, my hopes for some kind of deliverance-by-a-hero scenario were firmly put to bed—alone.

  Some of the highlights include:

  Slights of the classic “crushes not seeing me at the disco” genre

  Pretty best friend dating crush

  Another pretty, this time male, best friend dating crush

  General unrequited crushes

  Crushing sense of crushes never crushing back

  I couldn’t figure out how to get a boyfriend until I was twenty-three, and in the meantime I developed a very clever and sturdy streak of self-reliance. I call it the “I’ll do it myself,” and it’s a philosophy stolen from a character in a children’s book, the eponymously titled The Little Red Hen. The main character, a little red hen, was very independent and found other creatures frustrating to work with. They were too lazy, and didn’t help readily, so she huffed about, more than a touch passive-aggressive, and did everything by herself. She constructed bridges, won lawsuits, and made entire five-course dinners by herself, pausing only to trash-talk those around her for not being up to the task. In the end, she alone enjoyed the spoils of her labor. The other animals, those layabouts, would try to crash the party after all the work was done. At that point the Little Red Hen would have her sweet revenge, and hold up one feisty wing and tell them no, this fun part? This, too, she would do herself. You can keep your iconic single women, Carrie Bradshaw, Mindy Lahiri, even Liz Lemon; because my model for living as a successful single woman is a fictitious bird from a children’s book.

  To go from being single, meaning one, meaning whole, to being one-half of a couple, which is, whatever way you look at it, one-half, does not sound like a good deal. It sounds like a scam. Or if you’re in an open relationship, as an increasing number of my peers are, it sounds like a pyramid scheme. For most of my adult life, I’ve preferred being single, meaning one, alone, by myself. My modus operandi is mano a mano with Maeve-o. While ineptitude and laziness turn the little red hen and me right off, in her case she seems to doubt that anyone can do anything right. In my case, it isn’t that I suspect the capability of men to make a good partner. There are a million perfectly wonderful men out there. Out of nine billion. Honestly, I mean, look at DJ Khaled—one glance at his social media would restore the most cynical of women’s faith in men. All day long, in between enjoying his garden and doing good work in the community, he sings to and cuddles his wife and their baby. Men can sometimes do a great job!

  Other times, they can’t. Many women have reservations the size of reservations about their husbands or boyfriends, but they put them aside and hold on tight to their man, as if we are still back in Jane Austen’s day. I know some of these women; you will find a list of their names on my website, www.foundmymrcollins.co.conflicted. From my high and single horse, I feel that they would be better off alone, I think they should do it themselves. I get it, though; mortgages are expensive, Sundays are long, social pressure is high. And it’s nice to get that life department all cleared up and ready to hibernate in for the winter, even if it is in the basement and there’s no central heating and one time a crow got in and you’re not sure if it ever flew back out again.

  Being alone is great for all the small stuff: seeing whatever you want at the movies, eating in that weird way you can only eat by yourself, going on vacation wherever you like. Being alone is ideal for eavesdropping, for really relaxing, and, at times, for forcing me to be sociable. And, in truth, being alone is great for the big stuff too. I have yet to go through an illness or a loss or a nuclear war, knock on wood, without a partner, and perhaps I would change my tune if I had to. Actually, what am I talking about? At the first hint of real trouble I would immediately step up my campaign to meet and marry Michael Fassbender. Be that as it may, I do know that being alone has been good for my version of big stuff: moving countries, being a writer, and hanging huge portraits of Beyoncé and Serena in my living room.

  I know that many people dread the prospect of being alone; they fear that the solitude will magnify their flaws and force them to face up to who they really are. But the funny thing I’ve discovered is that being alone can actually be a way of escaping who you are, or who you think you are, a chance to make up new versions, better versions. I’m not talking about the witness protection program here, rather the gentle way you can surprise yourself, the way that is too easily undone by a companion with a set idea of how you should be. I’ve found that being alone allows me to become part of a place, to somehow melt into the fabric of it, however foreign I may be to that place. When I am alone, nobody will say, however fondly, It’s so like you to say that, Maeve. Or, Hmm, I didn’t think you’d like Turkish coffee. I’ve been to all sorts of places—a dumpling house in Melbourne, a wedding in Brooklyn, a public park in Shiraz—and I have really been there, really experienced them. Those places have absorbed me without question, because I was able to disperse myself among them. I was not this whole formed thing, this solid block, I was just floating particles that formed and reformed as they wished or needed to, with no clear set of rules, nobody else’s expectations to act into.

  I’ve always been this way, wincing when a barista recognizes me and shouts my order down the line. My nightmare gift is a box of tiny thoughtful gifts collected by an earnest boyfriend. You know, a book I read and loved at fourteen, a handful of all-yellow Jelly Babies, a framed photo of my nieces, and, God forbid, some kind of mixtape! I would say thank you, politely, eyes shining with fear that he would mistake for gratitude, then I’d excuse myself and jump right out of the closest window. I don’t want to be scrutinized like a set of blueprints, I want to be off by myself, alone in my thoughts, able to vanish whenever I need to.

  I grew up sharing a room with three of my sisters, in a house on a small island where both of my parents’ families lived too, all of us just off another small island, Ireland. With aunts and uncles, cousins and family friends, I had a typically idyllic Irish childhood and I was never alone. I still wonder at the relief I feel when I am alone, because I didn’t hate that life at all. Today, it’s a pure pleasure to visit Cobh and have old ladies stop me outside the shop we used to get ice-cream cones from as children, and tell me I look like my grandmother, and ask which one of the Higgins girls I am. It’s incredibly comforting to hav
e a doctor who vaccinated me as a baby, who knows my entire extended family’s medical history, who prescribed me birth control as a teenager (for acne, naturally), ask me how I’m doing, how I’m really doing. So why, then, do I crave a silent apartment, a train crowded with strangers, a forty-block walk where hundreds of people will see me but nobody will really look? I’m not sure what it is I need this anonymity for; it’s not as if I got to New York and felt, Aha, now I’m finally free to kill! But living in this city, so far from where I was born, feels like a rare and precious freedom, one I sense is not afforded to many women in the world. But freedom from what? I can’t seem to say, it’s just that my personality’s instant response to anything and everything is a little-red-hen-style shimmy and a quick, I’ll do it myself.

  That being said, something odd has been happening. On occasion, throughout this past year, I’ve begun to cross over from the highness of aloneness to the lowness of loneliness. It’s a deeply unpleasant feeling, that one of not being enough on my own, of neediness. It lasts somewhere between ten minutes and a day at a time. This loneliness occurs at predictable moments, like an ill-planned holiday weekend when I remember too late that the library is closed, and I have cramps, and I find myself thinking about people who are thousands of miles away, and I badly need a hug. It creeps up on me at unexpected moments and takes what I think are unfair opportunities, like when I’ve done something really great and I want to talk about how great that thing was, and how well I did it, and how nobody in the world could’ve handled it like I just did. I want to relive it and embellish it and have some outside voice comment on just how glorious I am! You know, everyday modest appraisal of my actions. But my friends are caught up in their own particular lives and don’t always have time to amplify mine.