June 3- 9, 2004

naked city

Obsessions: A Portrait of Engagement

Illustration By: Mike Nawyn

by Rachel Buchman

Editor's note: In conjunction with Blue Sky's First Person Festival (June 3 to 13, see www.blueskyarts.org for a full listing of events), City Paper sponsored a memoir-writing contest with the theme of "Secret Passions." The winning entry is below. In addition you may read the second and third place entries by clicking on the author's name. Come see our winner, Rachel Buchman, and second- and third-place winners Nimisha Ladva and Michelle Johnson, read at Borders, 1 S. Broad St., on June 4 at 7 p.m. It's free!

Tabitha Snyderman and her non-smiling daughter:

Tabitha Snyderman's non-smiling daughter got married on a boat in the middle of the Delaware. Tabitha hired a dresser to help her daughter. The farbisine bride couldn't even go to the bathroom without the hired hand to lift her gown. I looked at her face to see if she was in pain from the house-sized ball of crushed silk weighing on her bony shoulders, but since she always looks like she's just eaten a sourball, I couldn't tell the difference. One thing I could tell, she couldn't breathe. The daughter is frail up top with knobby knees below, but she has a pregnant-looking belly all the time. At the wedding, the belly had given birth to a corset. I pictured the dresser lacing her into it, wedging her heel in the daughter's back and pulling. I could smell the dank air forced from the daughter's small, puckered mouth.

Tabitha herself had selected the lily and bird-of-paradise arrangements for the centerpieces. She was dancing the hora in a heavily beaded purple-and-orange organza gown. Every time she kicked her heels, the entire dress rippled. The movement contrasted with the solidness of her skin. She had seen the inside of so many tanning booths she was actually orange and crispy, like a nicely roasted chicken.

"All right!" yelled the bandleader. "We're gonna take a quick break while you enjoy your entrees."

Tabitha clapped her hands and walked over to me and Larry. "You two will be next!" She reached down and pinched my cheek. "And you're looking great. I think you'll only have to lose about 10 more pounds before then." She cupped my chin, her pointy fingers digging into my neck. I smiled, my teeth frozen in place and pictured myself there in the white, captain-style chair, the tiny diamond on my ring finger, my light-brown curls tangled in the straps of my cotton sundress. "And don't worry, I'm sure your mommy will help you choose a nice dress."

I peeked past the orange haze of Tabitha towards the head table. The daughter's hand lay like a cold fish in her new husband's manicured grip. He was sweating, his Kramer-like bouffant growing ever more frizzy. He looked at her and gulped as the band began handing out giant sunglasses for "Celebrate." When he squeezed her gray hand even harder she tossed her hair, but it didn't even wiggle. She rested her chin on her ice-cube-sized ring and sighed, looking up at the angel moldings on the ceiling of the ship's great room. The rabbi came over to shake the groom's hand, brushing the crumbs from a fake kosher crab cake out of his beard. The corners of the daughter's mouth edged sideways. I thought, this is it, the smile I waited through 10 years of Hebrew school and hundreds of backyard barbeques for. Then she sneezed.

A month later, in my newly painted living room, my mother looked at me and Larry. "I know this sounds crazy," she began, spearing an olive, "but what about, instead of a wedding planner, we ask Tabitha and her daughter for advice."

Old feuds:

There was a golden time when I happily slept on wood floors full of crumbs and dog hair with someone else's crusty feet in my face. That was an era known as college. Somehow, frozen peas and a box fan seemed far superior to central air on even the muggiest August evenings in a one-bedroom apartment housing 10 people. I ate most meals in my underwear. In the winter, my boyfriend couldn't pay the heating bill, so we turned on the oven and slept in the kitchen. I once made an entire dinner for five out of ramen noodles and ketchup. Jennifer and I bonded over thrift-store skirts and lawnmowers. Samantha and I had Bob Dylan. The three of us wore glitter, screamed to Bikini Kill, marched for abortion rights. The thing is, I don't miss college a bit.

Nightmares:

For their anniversary, my sister buys my parents The Pop-Up Book of Nightmares. "Oh, I get that one sometimes," says my sister, laughing at the possessed eyes of the pop-up haunted doll. She leans back into the striped pillows of my parents' couch. "Didn't you say you have dreams of being chased, Rach?" I pop a piece of melon into my mouth so I don't have to answer. It's August, and the trees look tired of being green, like a person who's had to smile through too many hours of a cocktail party.

I borrow the book months later and cannot stop reading it. I stare deeply into the red eyes of the snarling dogs, nearly break the binding by opening and closing the page about examination anxiety in order to make the growling teacher's hand pop in and out. An angry girl hides her answers, the clock is on speed, my blue book is blank, my pencil won't write. The text explains I am afraid I can't live up to life's challenges, time is passing me by, I can't keep up with my peer group.

Every explanation offers several variations from the basic dream. If you have the naked-in-public dream, you could be naked at school, while accepting an award, during a baseball game, or at your own wedding. Either way, you are extremely vulnerable. What the book does not explain, but what I often dream, is what it means if you go to the bathroom in public. Is that just an indication of super-extreme vulnerability or is it a psychosis too horrible to put in a pop-up book?

I remember years ago my mother waking but asleep, screaming about rats, not letting my father touch her, unable to calm down. I remember her cutting a pineapple, telling me about the dogs chasing her through her sleep like they once chased my grandfather through the Warsaw ghetto when he stole a sack of rice. I remember long car rides with her, running errands, her hand scrunching her hair as if to pull it out. "Mom!"

"Huh? Right, oh, after school? Oh, sure honey." I thought she was bored by my endless ramblings about play practice, college applications.

Now I'm the one bursting from sleep in the mornings like a drowning man breaking the surface to breathe fresh air. Now I cover my face with the quilt, unable to face the thought of putting on clean socks, eating toast, locking my bike outside the office. "Rach!" calls Larry, pushing my hand away from my hair.

I grab a lock from the side in defiance. "I'm checking my split ends," I tell him.

"You're not listening," he says, and he's right. I am thinking about wedding dresses covered with shit. I am replaying last night's scene, in which my grandfather yells at me about his broken cell phone. I didn't call him on it, and now he is late for my wedding.

"But Poppa," I whine, "I didn't even know you had a cell phone." I can feel pee trickling down my leg and the Lincoln Monument (which is how I have always pictured God) looks down on me with its terrible, bronze sadness.

Trader Joe's, an affordable gourmet grocery store:

For a Barnard graduate (cum laude!), it was too horrible to imagine. The Hawaiian shirt, the timed pee breaks, having to count money, my own personal, detractable razor blade. Worst of all was bumping into people I knew. I remember cleaning the red coffee grinder while a high school classmate followed me around, detailing the advantages of her new Hummer.

"We have an opening at Newman Brothers. I could totally get you an interview," Michelle said, flipping her permed hair.

"Yeah?" I asked, banging the dust brush on the edge of the big metal trash can. "What's the position?"

"Executive assistant to the human resources director."

"Uh, no thanks," I said, jamming my ragged fingers into the back pockets of my stained khakis.

"I don't even have health insurance," I tell Larry at home, choosing a Lucinda Williams CD from the slanted shelf of our broken bookcase, "And I can feel these cavities boring into my teeth!"

"Baby, don't worry," he coos and takes a toke. "We'll put you on my plan after the wedding." He strokes my hair, fingers a loose ringlet, but I twist out of his reach.

"If you still have a job by then!" I yell. He breathes out green smoke. "You better not be late one more day this week."

Larry's face grows cloudy, his cheeks puff up. "I'm outta here," he says and grabs the keys to my Honda.

"If only for a minute or two," croons Lucinda, "I wanna know what it's like to be without you. Wanna know the touch of my own skin. Against the sun, against the wind."

The Phone:

Larry and I got rid of our landline a long time ago. No more telemarketers. The only thing I miss is this bit Larry used to do. He'd answer the phone, "Hello, House of Chen!" and if that didn't get them to hang up, if they asked incredulously, "Uh Mr. Howe?" he'd yell, "Yes! Egg roll, fried rice what you want?!"

I'm so glad I no longer have to hear that old shrill ring. My cell phone sounds like a spaceship landing and it lights up disco blue. Best of all, it has a "deny call" button so I don't have to hide my head under the pillow until the caller hangs up. I have learned to value caller ID ever since my mother phoned to tell me how disappointed she was I scheduled the wedding during the counting of the omer. Apparently ancient Hebrew wheat-counting rites interfere with marriage.

My friend Kathryn can even set different rings for different people. The one she has for her imposing mother sounds like the approach of a Chinese dowager. I am very jealous.

There are so many calls to fear. There's the you're late call, with the slight variation of you're late for work. That usually comes a few days after the can you come in early tomorrow call. There's the you don't spend enough time with me call (usually from grandparents or elderly aunts), the come to a social function where you'll feel awkward and drink too much call, the I can't make it tonight even though I promised and I know you need me, and the you generally suck. Then there are the really bad calls, the ones you hope never come: Your brother probably needs his leg amputated, Your sister tried to kill herself, Your grandmother died.

Worst of all, since the wedding planning began, my mother calls every day, usually when I'm on deadline at the radio station where I now work, but still have no health insurance. She wants to inform me of dates she has time to select stationary, cake decorators she's interviewed, and centerpiece themes. If I don't answer or don't call her back she'll keep at it. "What?" I'll finally shout into the phone, my thorny voice sucked into the cloth-covered cubicle walls. My hand grabs my greasy bangs, my elbows splay out across the mountain of folded tinfoil, empty diet-iced-tea bottles, reams of papers highlighted, scribbled on and translucent with pizza grease. "Paradise Island sounds very nice. Yes, I'll be sure to mention it to Larry. I'm sure he'll like it. No I don't think his mother will mind at all. Yes. Tomorrow. OK, 7 o'clock." This is about the point in the conversation that I ponder the suicidal possibilities of a microphone, a minidisk player or XLR cords. "No, Ma, 3 o'clock's no good. Because I have to work until 5:30 at least. Yes, every day. Saturday? All day? Yeah, I know it takes a lot of time to make things nice. Fine, Saturday then. Yes, meet you there. Bye."

Novels, daydreams and dark chocolate:

I bike home from the public library after hearing Azar Nafisi speak. She has just read from her new book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, about women surviving the Iranian revolution with the help of fiction. I pedal through the soft, cold night, the sky a thick purple, like bruised fruit. The wind whips against my face. I try to picture red and yellow tulips growing in Logan Circle. I try to remember what it looks like when the fountain is running. Philadelphia is a city of hunched shoulders, failure to exhale. Sounds crisscross in the dark, making muted plaid patterns on my ears: steam hissing through vents, taxis shooshing toward the train station, the hum of the streetlamps.

My sky-blue couch is a refuge. Larry is at a meeting. I leave the lights off, let the dark house sink in around me, eat bite-sized Dove bars. I picture the Alborz mountains outside of Tehran, green with spring, peppered with laughing young women hiking in black robes, their denim calves and Adidas-shod feet poking out the bottom. I picture the sidewalk cafes downtown, the noises, bright and sudden as fireworks, of conversations, cars honking, police whistles, silverware clinking. I can smell the delicate teas, taste the light, crinkled Napoleons, feel the sun pulling the skin taut on my forehead.

Larry comes home and the light fills the room like water. I could drown in all the light. "I didn't even know you were home," he says, his voice froggy. I can tell he's been smoking pot again. I try not to think about his drive home in my car. I try not to look into his eyes to check if they are red.

"I wish it were spring," I say. And then I start crying.

"Hey," he says lightly, sitting down next to me, taking my rough, swollen hand in his enormous, soft one. "Is it the wedding?" I nod, knowing it's the easiest thing to do. "We'll find a place to have it. We'll figure out the flowers. Don't worry, baby."

I look up at him, vertical lines incised on my forehead, my eyebrows raised practically to my hairline. He kisses a tear off my cheek, his deep dragon breath spicy on my face. "Yeah," I say. "I'll be better then."