When our friend Amy invites Caitlin and me out one Saturday night, she describes our destination as “Meatpacking.” Just like that. A proper noun all by itself. As though it’s the local supermarket or a small coastal town.
“She’s on a first-name basis with The District.”
“We’re going to need something more specific.”
Caitlin sends her a text message: ok! where? Amy texts her back with an address and approximate time. We’re already getting dressed and then we find ourselves with some time to kill.
I agree to trim Caitlin’s hair on the condition that we do it before we start drinking, which is not how she proposed the project. We open the bottle of wine that I’ve had in the fridge since before Thanksgiving. Saving it for something, for nothing. For when I felt like it. I definitely feel like it as we sit together on the futon, watching Arrested Development on DVD and making up rules to our own drinking game as we go along.
Once, in college, a friend of a friend of a friend set me up with one of his friends on the basis that, “He’s kind of shy. You’re kind of shy. It’s perfect.” In the car on the way home, just the girls, we agreed emphatically that the logic was faulty, but this particular guy was a lost cause. “He turned and faced the brick wall every time I tried to include him in the conversation.” “Is that seriously the type of guy people see me with? Seriously?”
After we turned out the lights, though, I relived the encounter and reconsidered the set-up. Across the blue-black room, I asked my roommate if she thought the fact that I’m deaf in one ear could possibly be an issue for guys. Not that it would be a turn off, but that it could make certain people nervous in certain situations.
“No.” She paused and I waited. “I mean, I really don’t think so.”
I was right though; it does make certain people nervous. It makes me nervous. Turns out, the fact that I’m deaf in one ear is mostly just an issue for me.
All this comes back to me as Caitlin and I trickle down two flights of stairs and then a passageway lined with people texting intently, presumably not to each other. The brick walls smother the music playing on the dance floor beyond, but every few yards we pass an arched opening that leads to the bigger room on our right. Gusts of humidity and sound push against me. The first thing I think of is my right ear, my good one, and out of habit I press the pad of my middle finger into a curved channel in the auricle.
That’s the outer ear—not the part where you’re not supposed to stick anything smaller than your elbow.
We find Amy and her friends gathered around a table in a nook in the back. I guess there are two ways of looking at the aural dilemma of Meatpacking nightlife. On one hand, the high-volume standard sort of levels the playing field. Everybody is hearing-impaired. I shake several hands and wave at a couple of people and everyone asks me to repeat my name.
On the other hand, I’m suddenly hyper-aware of my auditory disadvantage. Two people yell their names into my left ear, my bad one. I realize how much I depend on watching other people’s mouths when I can’t quite hear them speaking, and I can’t see well enough in the shadows around the table. Too easily, I start pretending to listen and faking reactions. I have no idea what’s going on; I just I hope I look like I’m having fun.
I’m reluctant to sit down; it’s so awkward to explain to strangers why I need this specific seat on this specific end of the table. Like, “who’s the high-maintenance chick?” When the waitress comes through the crowd with our drinks, I train my eyes on her. I know I probably look a little psychotic, but I’m scared that she’ll approach me with a tray of full glasses on my left side, where I have practically no spatial awareness.
I need to escape to the dance floor, and once I get a drink in Caitlin and have Amy round up a couple of girlfriends whose names won’t matter once we’re dancing, I make it there. No more screaming and straining to hear. We just shake it and sing. We can’t even hear our own voices. We laugh. We point at each other for no real reason. We’re clumsy. I can’t stop smiling.
So it seems like more fun when a few guys from Amy’s group come out, and it is fun when one of them grabs my arbitrarily pointing finger and spins me. It’s fun when he holds on to my hand and pretends to know the words to the song while I sing them. It’s fun to be appreciated as he watches me appreciatively.
But then the other girls, with their empty glasses poised over their heads, disappear into the crowd and the grabby guy collects me against him without preamble. I’m disappointed; he’s dominating me with his entire lower body and I can’t move. I try to be patient, polite. But I’m bored.
“What’s your name?” I ask. He shouts into my left ear. I press my fingers against his cheek to steer him toward the other side of my face. “What?” He just looks confused. A minute passes before he decides to ask me my name. This time, I anticipate his approach toward my left ear. I put my hand on his face again and dodge my head to the left.
That does it. This is the faux pas I’ve feared since games of Telephone at circle time in kindergarten. I’ll twist my head all the way to the left, catch the kid next to me unaware, and we’ll accidentally kiss on the lips in front of all the other antsy 5-year-olds.
This kiss isn’t as much an accident as it is a misunderstanding. The guy interprets the positions of my hand and my lips as an invitation and he’s not about to pass it up.
Too easily, I give in. I kiss him back for a few moments, faking it. When I break away, I give him a coy smile, trying to trick him into being let down easy. None of the girls have come back for me. I’m desperate for someone who’ll recognize my “I’ve had enough” face. This isn’t fun. I can’t even pretend that it’s fun. I’d give anything for a glass of cheap wine and Arrested Development—with closed captioning.
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