The Dictionary of Failed Relationships Read online

  PAIN

  By Leslie Pietrzyk

  pain ’pn noun [ Middle English, from Old French peine, from Latin poena, from Greek poin payment, penalty; akin to Sanskrit cayate he revenges] (14th century) 1: punishment. 2a: localized physical suffering associated with a bodily disorder such as disease, injury, or termination of romantic relationship; also: a basic bodily sensation induced by a noxious stimulus, received by naked nerve endings, characterized by physical discomfort (as pricking, throbbing, or aching), and typically leading to evasive action. b: acute mental or emotional distress or suffering: GRIEF. 3: one that irks or annoys or is otherwise troublesome—often used in such phrases as pain in the neck.

  Want to feel suddenly single? First: Hurt yourself. By accident, of course. Do something stupid—say, use a sharp knife to pry wax from a candleholder and direct the sharp point of the knife toward your hand. Let a bagel slip sideways on a cutting board while you’re slicing it and slice your thumb instead. Try to wrestle gristle from a slick piece of beef with a dull knife. Drop a wineglass on the hardwood floor and step barefoot on a shard as you’re trying to clean up the mess; curse yourself for breaking expensive crystal, for not wearing shoes, for being stupid. There are many possibilities.

  But what’s important is that you don’t hurt yourself badly enough to warrant an automatic trip to the emergency room. You want to think about your injury, to study the flow of blood. Is it a flow? An ooze? A drip? Examine the size of the cut—wider than a nail head? Longer than an eyebrow? Deeper than a thumbtack? Wonder.

  You want to avoid doing something that makes blood gush. Gushing blood may well mean the need to visit the emergency room. Instead, aim for this thought: hospital, followed by a big question mark. Like this: Hospital? Immediately followed by another question: Or will Band-Aids and hydrogen peroxide be good enough? (Make sure you do not have gauze pads anywhere in the medicine cabinet or in your overnight travel toiletry bag. It’s okay to have a roll of the sticky white tape for taping gauze pads, as long as there is no gauze to be taped. Cotton balls are okay, because you aren’t sure if they’re sterile.)

  It helps if you hurt yourself on a Saturday, when your doctor is at home with her husband. Perhaps she and her husband are spreading mulch on their front yard flower beds. Perhaps the two of them are getting ready to go to the mall to buy him a new suit at a store that is having a one-day sale. Perhaps they are upstairs in the guest room making love on the bed up there because it’s someplace different, something meant to be exciting (the suggestion of a friend—you know exactly this type of well-meaning friend—who said something like, “What have you got to lose?”). Actually, it doesn’t matter where they are or what they’re doing, because the point is that your doctor is not in her office. That’s the point.

  What you want, what you’re looking for here, is to achieve the perfect type of injury that should be shown to someone else, someone trusted, that one person who can say with certainty and in a soothing voice, “Yes, you need stitches,” or “No, you don’t need stitches.”

  Of course, the goal here is not the stitches.

  Second: Get sick. Better yet, start to get sick. Have a scratchy throat, glands that are tender when you squeeze them obsessively with your thumb and index finger. A slight fever, ninety-nine degrees perhaps. Struggle into work, anyway, because you think you should. Cough whenever someone intercoms you. Build up a pyramid of used Kleenex in your garbage can. Sneeze into the phone when you have to take a call in someone else’s office. Maybe—if you’re lucky—by lunchtime, the receptionist will ask if you’re okay. By two, your boss will suggest that you go home.

  Go home. Discover that you have no soup in the house. Begin to crave ice cream. Want Jell-O. Need tea with a squeeze of honey from a plastic container that is shaped like a bear. But have none of these things—not in your cupboards or your refrigerator or your freezer. Instead, call the other Chinese restaurant—not the one you like, not the one you used to call all the time, not the one where they know your name and could write out your order at the sound of your voice—no, the other one—and ask them to deliver wonton soup. If you’re especially lucky, they will inform you that there is a minimum order of ten dollars for delivery. How many containers of wonton soup are in a ten-dollar order? Find out when your order arrives. Late. This Chinese restaurant does not take checks the way the other one does. Cough so hard that your eyes water while you dig your fingers deep into the couch cushions, looking for change so that you can tip. Later, run out of Kleenex and carry a roll of toilet paper up to bed with you.

  Third: Work on projects. Decide that the house needs a new roof. Or that the crumbling driveway needs a new layer of asphalt. Or discover a colony of carpenter ants, nesting at the base of the oak tree out front. Let two companies give you estimates with two very different treatment plans with two very different prices; both companies are highly recommended, both have excellent reputations.

  Even better—refinish a bathroom floor. Best—refinish a bathroom. Talk to plumbers and contractors and guys who do tile. Let them ask you what color of tile you want. When you say white, let them spread out six different shades of white tile.

  Bring home a hundred paint-chip samples and set them out on the living room carpet in neat rows. (Maybe you also need new carpet—but don’t be sure if you do or don’t. Wonder if getting new carpet and painting will lead to wanting new slipcovers. Plaid? Flowered? Checked? Is white upholstery chic, or is it a huge, huge mistake that you will regret for years? What about window treatments? Possibly look into putting in a bay window. Wonder if that room is really too small for a bay window.)

  Another option: Buy a new car. And insurance. (Don’t rely on getting a flat tire. Getting a flat tire is for amateurs. Anyone can get a flat tire. You just call the auto club for a flat tire.)

  Somewhat related: Get involved in a car accident. Preferably, this accident is not your fault. In fact, your best bet is if the other driver takes off after ramming into you. Maybe you’ve parked your car in an end-of-the-aisle spot (even though there are those who warned you repeatedly—though kindly—about the hazards of parking in the end-of-the-aisle spots) and you are returning to your car, lugging several bags of groceries that contain a number of expensive, perishable items (shrimp and three cartons of your favorite premium ice cream), and you discover that someone has bashed in the side of your car but did not leave a note.

  The goal is: not your fault. But there is no one who will listen to your explanations or watch your reenactment with salt and pepper shakers on a restaurant table, no one to appreciate the magnitude of the other driver’s stupidity. The insurance agent is mildly interested, listening politely to your rant, but he is quick to note that you did not pay the extra $2.57 monthly premium that would have given you rental car coverage in the event that your car sustained damage.

  Take the f—ing bus to work. Be late every day for five days in a row. There is no one to drive you, no one’s car to borrow. On one of the days, it rains.

  Fourth: Begin to crave—deeply—a particular item of food that is prepared exclusively in an enormous quantity. (Bonus points if this product is made from a very, very special recipe and this recipe is so special and so right and so perfect that similar products sold in the deli near your office do not at all duplicate this particular product, do not come remotely close to satisfying this immense craving, and the thought of eating the deli version is ludicrous. Extra bonus points if you happen to no longer have access to this recipe.) Examples: bread pudding, mashed potatoes, chocolate soufflé, stuffing, crepes, collard greens flavored with ham hocks and Tabasco, any kind of pie (but a pie such as apple or peach that requires a great deal of peeling and slicing is preferred). Note: These are not foods that produce leftovers that can be popped into the freezer. These are not low-fat, low-cal foods, not foods such as baked potatoes. Obviously. Baked potatoes come in all different serving sizes. You can make one baked potato exactly as easily as you can make two.

 
Fifth: Plan this little adventure of suddenly feeling single around your birthday. Certainly, someone will take you out to dinner or buy you a drink or tie a Mylar balloon to the arm of the chair in your office. Maybe people in the office will all sign a card that insults you—humorously, ha, ha—for turning another year older. (Laugh at this card even if it’s not funny—and it won’t be—and prop it on the corner of your desk for one day. Then you can secretly tuck it underneath other papers in your garbage can.) There even may be a present from somebody, the kind that is dropped into a gift bag instead of the kind that is wrapped with paper and Scotch tape. Perhaps a surprise party will be given, if you have those kinds of friends. Maybe when you are taken out to dinner, waiters in a restaurant will sing “Happy Birthday” and everyone will clap, including the tables of people you do not know.

  But there will not be the present, the thing you’d been dropping hints about for two or three months. That present—opal ring, KitchenAid mixer, Fendi bag—you will have to buy for yourself. Be sure to use your credit card. Be sure not to pay the full balance on that bill so that you can have the pleasure of (a) paying more money than the cost of the item through excessive— but legal!—18 percent interest charges and (b) sensing that particular item lingering, lingering, endlessly lingering on your monthly statement.

  Sixth: Look for ways to fill out lots of official forms, forms that want to know the name of your spouse. Your spouse’s employer. Your spouse’s employer’s address. Your spouse’s work phone number. Some even ask for your spouse’s social security number!

  Bonus points: Have to go somewhere where you have previously filled out those forms (in ink) and tell those people to remove those pieces of information. Smile while you say that. They will smile back, but it will be a different kind of smile.

  Extra bonus points: Fill out a new form that asks who to contact in case of an emergency. Is it so terrible to write down your mother’s name and phone number, even though she lives two time zones away? Do not make eye contact when you hand that form to the person sitting behind the counter.

  Seventh: Go to a wedding. It should be a very romantic, very loving sort of wedding, not the other kind, not the kind where people are snickering behind their hands and reminding each other that according to Emily Post it’s okay to wait a year to give a wedding gift.

  No.

  This should be the kind of wedding where the bride and groom feel like incomplete people unless they’re standing next to each other. And when they stand together, they are always touching—a hand on a shoulder, two elbows rubbing, one foot brushing up against the other’s. That kind of bride and groom. Perhaps they finish each other’s sentences on occasion? Maybe they tilt their heads to the same side when they smile? Both families are very happy; each family likes the other. Sense no brewing arguments about where to spend holidays. Hear someone comment that the honeymoon is a trip to fill-in-the-blank, somewhere you’ve dreamed of going.

  This wedding must have a towering cake (perhaps decorated with real flowers), a band, lots of people taking flash pictures, champagne that is better than average, at least one grandmother on both sides, and a noisy, noticeable, prolonged bouquet toss. There should be one other single person seated at your table. Loathe this person on looks alone. When this person talks, think of fingernails scratching spiral after spiral on a blackboard. Dance with this person anyway. You are the better dancer.

  Send a present from the registry to this couple. Do this with one phone call and a credit card. The person on the other end of the phone will ask, “What would you like to say on the gift card?” This is what you should say: “May you have many happy years together.” But this is what you actually manage to say: “Congratulations.”

  Of course, these are just suggestions to get you thinking. There are more. But the important thing is this: It all starts with injury. Start with pain.

  QUEER

  By Pagan Kennedy

  1queer ’kwir adjective [origin unknown] (1508) 1a : differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal. b (1): ECCENTRIC, UNCONVENTIONAL (2): mildly insane: TOUCHED c: absorbed or interested to an extreme or unreasonable degree: OBSESSED. syn. see STRANGE.

  2queer transitive verb (circa 1812) 1: to spoil the effect or success of . 2: to put or get into an embarrassing or disadvantageous situation.

  3queer noun (circa 1812): one that is queer; politically re-appropriated so as not to be disparaging: HOMOSEXUAL. Related issues, especially concerning sexuality or gender identity, can seriously interfere with a relationship.

  The Anatomically Correct Irishmen was the name of his band, Janet told me, as we scooted into a booth at the back of the club. We ordered home-brewed root beer that had silt floating in the bottom of the glass, and we watched four guys and one woman huddle together on the minuscule stage. They played songs by Public Enemy on pennywhistles and Autoharps with so little skill that it was obvious they’d obviously started practicing that afternoon, probably in somebody’s kitchen.

  Seamus lurked in the back, drumming on a collection of ten-gallon buckets that, according to the labels still clinging to their sides, had once held bulk tahini. He managed to be handsome yet also goofy—at first I might have classified him as an Asian-American surfer dude, because he’d bleached his thick hair and let the jet-black roots grow out, and he wore about fifty Mardi Gras bead necklaces around his neck.

  “He’s getting his Ph.D. in Celtic Studies,” Janet whispered to me.

  “He is?” I whispered back.

  “Yeah, I know. He’s Japanese-American, but he says he feels Irish. That’s why he changed his last name. Now he spells it like this.” She pulled a pen out of her backpack and printed some block letters on a napkin, then twisted the napkin around so I could see: O’SHIMA.

  “Wow,” I said. “I guess he has identity issues. Like me.” I had decided to become a lesbian. My friends scoffed. They told me I was deluded. They tried to set me up with men.

  Onstage, Seamus thwacked his buckets so hard that the Mardi Gras necklaces windshield-wipered across his chest. He struck me as already broken in, like a pair of jeans that you buy used at the Salvation Army, soft in all the right places. If I squinted, I could almost imagine that he’d been my boyfriend for years.

  I felt this way until the lead singer—a black guy who also did not appear to be genetically Irish—announced, “Well, that’s all the songs we know,” and the band threw their instruments into some milk crates, and Seamus O’Shima stepped off the stage and headed, bearlike, toward our booth.

  That’s when I decided I hated him. I’d just started to get the hang of being single, and now this. Seamus O’Shima marching toward me, determined to rob me of my calm and my newfound lesbian identity.

  He would ask me to go out, the jerk. Bowling—that’s the kind of date he’d suggest, and he’d crack jokes about the rental shoes and I’d laugh too loudly. Afterward, he’d walk me to my front porch and hug me tightly enough that my breasts would mash against his chest, but his demeanor would be buddy-buddy. “You’re a good sport. Let’s do it again,” he’d say.

  For days, I would have to obsess on those moments at the door. Had he wanted to kiss me? Did he find me attractive at all? Why hadn’t he called already? I would force my friends to listen to a detailed account of the date and demand them to tell me what I should do. Each one would offer completely different advice: call him, don’t call him, sleep with someone else to make him jealous, meditate, eat kelp, get drunk, masturbate, breathe.

  When my friends would fail to comfort me, I would consult some of the great minds of Western civilization: Heidegger, Foucault, Simone De Beauvoir, W. E. B. DuBois, Hannah Arendt. The simple question—why hadn’t he called?—would lead me to reexamine the most fundamental questions of self and other. I would consider DuBois’s and De Beauvoir’s ideas about the political construction of identity and the ultimate unknowability of an Irish-identified Japanese-American drummer to a Jewish eco-feminist. But my t
heories would trail off into dead ends. Finally, I would shake my Magic 8-Ball and wait until the little plastic hexagon swam up from the inky depths to announce, “Ask again later.”

  Then he’d call. Then we’d kiss. But none of this would provide any relief. I’d have to lure him into bed, coax his clothes off, instruct him about the best methods for touching me, figure out which positions he preferred. Then, the clothes would have to be picked up, washed, dried, folded, placed in bureaus. Condoms would have to bought and thrown out. Keys to apartments would have to be copied and exchanged.

  By the time he walked across the club and slid into the booth next to Janet, I was heartily sick of Seamus O’Shima and all his demands. He seemed to sense this. Wisely, he chose to ignore me.