Parties are supposed to be fun.
Kristen and I always have a lot to celebrate at the end of June. First there’s Father’s Day, followed by our wedding anniversary and my birthday. But prior to the Best Practices this two-week season of parties didn’t inspire much of a celebratory mood. It always felt strange celebrating Father’s Day, given that my parenting skills had been something of a disappointment for the first three years, and the tears that Kristen had shed on our third wedding anniversary spoke rather poignantly to the fact that our marriage hadn’t been much to celebrate, either. That left my birthday, a day that was all about toasting the birth of the very person who had made Kristen’s life miserable. But after fifteen months of hard work and soul-searching, Kristen and I were finally able to look forward to this season with real anticipation. We were communicating again, and I was beginning to hit my stride as a father and as a husband. I was folding laundry, Kristen was taking her first uninterrupted showers in years, and when America’s Next Top Model wasn’t on during its regularly scheduled hour, I stayed cool as a cucumber. And that gave us plenty of reason to break out the streamers and party hats. Heck, we could have made a layer cake.
In light of all this, I decided that June would be the best time to embark on my most ambitious Best Practice yet: being fun. A few months earlier, during the at-home performance review in which I forced Kristen to participate, she had cited a general absence of fun in our marriage as a major disappointment. “The fun is just . . . gone,” she said, “which is confusing because before we were married, all we had was fun. I thought I married this totally social guy, and then I discovered that’s not you at all, and then I felt duped.”
She was right, of course. She had been duped, though not intentionally. She had fallen in love with the best version of me that I could muster—that charming, fun-loving, sociable character that I truly thought I could sustain. I was now determined to bring him back, to reintroduce the fun in our marriage. Because we’d come so far in our journey, this goal felt like extra credit, and unlike with my calculus exam in high school, I didn’t intend to leave valuable points on the table. I decided to focus my efforts on being fun at parties initially, for two reasons. First, Kristen needed me to be fun in general, but especially at parties, where the only point in showing up is to have fun. Second, it was June. Party season.
In reality, I’ve never been one to extract any measure of fun from a party, and that’s why this Best Practice seemed the most ambitious. When I was very young, for example, and my mom would have kids over to our farm to celebrate my birthday, I thought it was strange and wondered when they would ever go home so that I could finally just play with my toys by myself, the way I liked to. Even at the age of five, I was critical of the behaviors of other kids; watching them tear around our backyard, which was where I liked to sit peacefully with my Tonka trucks and compare blades of grass, gave me the feeling that everything on the farm was running amok. Generally, I liked the other kids; I just didn’t care to have them on my turf—even if I got some cool presents out of it.
Besides the usual birthday parties and family events, I avoided parties until I got to college. Once there, I fell in with a group of nerdy musicians whose “parties” were something I could manage: sing a few songs a cappella toward the beginning of the party while our voices were fresh, then debate the significance of composers like John Cage until someone got so drunk or homesick that they started to cry. That was my posse; that was how we rolled.
I went to college in Miami and never once made it to South Beach. South Beach seemed to be for the population who didn’t tuck their Rush concert T-shirts deep down into their pants, so I figured it was best to avoid it. South Beach was for clubbing. The few times I was invited to go with people, I declined and was branded antisocial. It didn’t seem fair, considering how clubbing is, by its very nature, the single most antisocial activity imaginable. How much interacting and relationship-building can people accomplish standing waist-deep in foam and screaming at each other over Lil Jon?
“I LOVE THIS SONG!”
“WHAT? THE MUSIC IS SO LOUD! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
“HOW ABOUT THAT CHICK?”
“WHAT?”
“THAT CHICK OVER THERE!”
“WOW, THEY’RE DOING MAGIC OVER THERE?! HOW UNEXPECTED!”
But that’s clubbing. At least you can stand for hours without saying a word in a club or sneak out without being noticed. But you can’t do that at a party. At a party, you have to be present. At a party, you have to engage. Mingle. This is where my game falls apart. The social situation at a party falls way outside of my normal daily parameters. Things are not on my terms; events unfold by the terms of the gathering itself. In the midst of this, I feel that all eyes are on me—my own included—monitoring and judging my performance from start to finish. Don’t do anything wrong or unusual, because everyone will think the worst of you for the rest of your life. It’s pretty fucked-up in my opinion.
One thing that I find challenging about a gathering is the disruption to my schedule, my routine. If it’s at someone else’s house, we’re doomed, because that’s not where I usually am at four P.M. on a Saturday. I’m not familiar with their silverware, their hand towels, the sights and sounds of their home. Maybe they make their stuffing differently, or I’ll be forced to sit on a couch where I have to turn my head to watch their TV, which looks and sounds different from my TV, and whatever sporting event or TBS movie marathon they’re watching on mute might not be worth the stiff neck. If it’s a family event, at least it’s not terrible form to flip the channels. Even then, if the family member lives more than an hour away, their newscasters look different, their weather radars show a different part of the state, their local car dealership commercials are jarringly low-budget, and it all messes me up.
If Kristen and I hold a party at our house, then I’m really screwed. My whole environment is disrupted. Guests tend to hog all the good seats. They make the rooms look different, sound different, feel different. On the day of the party, our refrigerator is crowded with large, sealed bowls and dishes filled with prepared foods that I’m not allowed to touch until the guests arrive. And I don’t know what to do with myself between the moment in which we finish our frantic cleaning and the moment the doorbell rings, so I pace by the front door for hours, wringing my sweaty hands and spying out the front windows to see if they’re here yet. I can’t do anything else. I’m anxious to open the door; invite them in with a well-rehearsed, cordial greeting; and then follow them, inevitably, to the kitchen, where I’ll wait on the periphery of their small talk, looking for the perfect opportunity to escape to a dark, empty room upstairs.
There’s only so much relating I can handle. Usually after six minutes, I’ve had enough. I have to get home, to my own thoughts, to my own TV shows on my own couch. That’s where Kristen and I differ. She thrives on interaction. She derives energy from parties and talking to strangers about their recent trip to Vietnam or what it’s like to be an accountant. For all she knew, I was the same way. For all she knew, I wasn’t the sort of person who would shut down at parties, who would insist that visits be limited to one hour, who would cling to her side during a function, demanding that we leave.
As I geared myself up to approach this Best Practice in the months that followed our performance review, I couldn’t help but think that at one time having fun with Kristen had seemed natural and effortless. We had fun together before my misguided persona ever entered the picture (dressed as he was in a toga and beer helmet). I recalled hanging out as friends. Back then, Kristen stirred everything inside of me, and because I made her laugh, made her feel like talking for hours, made her feel good about herself, I was on her mind a lot, too. We didn’t need any particular reason or occasion to get together and have fun.
I’d call Kristen on a Saturday morning. “I’m going to Ikea, K-Pants. Wanna come?”
“That sounds fun. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”
It was as easy as that. Any subsequent discussion about the day’s plans would be mostly for the sake of staying on the phone with each other a little longer. Later, browsing the chaotic furniture displays at Ikea, we would decide we were hungry and have lunch together. We’d follow that up with a two thirty matinee and grab coffee afterward.
Back then I did everything I could think of to get her to invite me places. I probably could have chilled out and let her come to me—a tip that showed up a few times in Cosmo—but that wasn’t really my style. When I like somebody, I’d rather latch on like a crab and not let go. “Oh, you’re going to the ob-gyn? What’s the address? Maybe I’ll swing by and we can people-watch.”
My natural personality suited our friendship just fine. But then we started dating and I began psyching myself out, thinking that now she was mine to impress or to offend, to grow old with or to lose. My friend was now my girlfriend. I’m Kristen’s boyfriend. Every day felt like an audition. The mantra that I repeated over and over was challenging, if not paralyzing: I’m Kristen’s boyfriend, and Kristen’s boyfriend must be perfect. Perfectly dressed. Perfectly groomed. Perfectly behaved. Perfectly fun.
I was, of course, doomed. The house of cards I’d built as a sociable person could never bear the weight of real life. Before we became an item, I had been successful in disguising my social incapacities partially because I could accept or decline any invitation that came my way. Kristen celebrating the first week at her new job? I’m there. My company’s Labor Day picnic? No chance. Fourth of July at Grant Park in Chicago? Please, shoot me in the face. I could go out with my friends and leave after precisely one hour, or sooner if everyone was talking about sports. But when you’re the boyfriend of an amazing woman, you say yes to the Labor Day picnics, you say yes to the throngs of people in Grant Park, and you don’t tell her that you need to leave a party precisely one hour after you arrive. I must be perfect, I thought. Regardless of whether that’s fair to either of us.
After we fell in love I threw caution to the wind and began navigating uncharted social territory (“Sure, I’d like to attend a hippie baby shower. Tell me, will I have to eat the food?”). But I figured that I could force myself to enjoy parties as long as Kristen was there. After all, regardless of where I was, if Kristen was there, I was good. She made me feel so included, so present in social situations. So . . . not lonely. Standing next to her, I would be introduced to everyone in the room, one at a time. She would invite me to share funny stories. She would merge me rather gracefully into other people’s conversations. “Oh, you’re into jazz? Dave and I were just talking about his favorite drummer . . .” I was no longer that weird guy skulking around behind the fern; I was Kristen’s boyfriend, and it was my pleasure to meet you.
By the time we were married, I had come to rely on Kristen to get me through every party and family get-together until we could finally go home, almost like a drug. When she no longer saw the fun in that, we started having problems. She grew tired of carrying every conversation for me, and without her help I would become uncomfortable and want to go home. She couldn’t take the awkward moments I would create—fetching our shoes and coats as more guests arrived, for instance, or sitting by myself, refusing to socialize. We reached a point where if I went anywhere without her—even to the mall—I would feel not unlike a provincial traveler lost in a foreign city without his guide. And when we were out together, I knew she felt as though she were walking across a minefield: Something. Is going. To happen.
After six years, it was enough already. I wanted to be better than that, for her sake. I wanted her to be able to enjoy our relationship.
As luck would have it, my friend B.J. happened to be getting married at the end of June. I was happy for him, but I also couldn’t get over what a perfect opportunity his wedding would be to show Kristen my commitment to bringing back the fun. Call me egocentric.
It helped that he was getting married in Charleston, South Carolina. When the wedding invitation arrived, Kristen asked her mom to keep the weekend clear to watch Emily and Parker. “Mommy’s going on vacation!” she said, marking her calendar. Her message was crystal clear: Mommy needs to have fun.
Unbeknownst to Kristen—had she known what I was up to, she probably would have told me to chill out and stop obsessing—I decided to approach our vacation as an experiment with two objectives. The first was to stop making things less enjoyable, and the second was to actually make things more fun for her. It was a lot to cram into a short vacation, but like anyone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, I tend to overpack.
Most people might have preferred to fly to Charleston, but Kristen was perfectly happy to spare me the agony and make a road trip of it.
Knowing how much they would miss us, and how much we would miss them, it was incredibly difficult to say good-bye to the kids when we left. But once we got on the road, Kristen found her vacation energy and I renewed my determination to be fun. When we reached the interstate about an hour east of home, Kristen plugged in my iPod, kicked off her shoes, and read me the menu of snacks available in our travel cooler. We belted out tunes karaoke-style as we buzzed past the Chicago skyline and started in on the snacks somewhere in Indiana. Kristen was in a great mood and my only responsibility was to keep it that way. I hadn’t consciously done that in six years, so it felt both good and unfamiliar—like working out for the first time after years of putting it off. I didn’t go overboard trying to be fun—the drive wasn’t saturated with corny jokes and slide whistles. I just tried to keep myself from being the opposite of fun.
We stopped to eat somewhere in Indianapolis. By that point in the drive—the four-hour mark—Kristen was in an even better mood than when we left. I’d had exactly the same number of negative, anxious thoughts as I would have had in any four-hour period, but I had chosen not to dwell on them (this was hard but so worth the trouble), and I had chosen not to voice them. I had also had the exact same number of happy thoughts, and I’d made the same number of lighthearted observations about the things happening around us that I normally would have made (“How do sneakers get wrapped around those overhead power lines? Do you think the utility crews go out and install the shoes themselves? Is there a guy radioing back to his foreman requesting a pair of size elevens?”). The difference was that I chose to dwell on those things, because positive things kept Kristen in a good mood. Reinvesting all that energy kept our conversations positive and exploratory, rather than depressing and angry sounding. It was enjoyable.
Over lunch, I thought about the fact that all of our lives cannot be spent avoiding the negative things. We had to be able to talk to each other about things that were bothering us. We had to be able to give a voice to our frustration from time to time. But not right then. Not on vacation. Not during my experiment.
It was late in the evening when we arrived in Greenville, South Carolina. Charleston was only a few hours away, but we were tired and happy and decided that Greenville would be a good place to spend the night. We had been in stride all day—not a single freak-out from me and two of the most relaxed bare feet I had seen in years resting on the dashboard above the glove box. I had remained faithful to my experiment, and I’d stumbled upon a very important discovery: Kristen is perfectly capable of having her own fun, and if I prevent myself from derailing it, then she stays happy. Is that what she means when she tells me to stop worrying about stuff and just let it be?
As we got ready for bed in the hotel room, I made my second discovery of the evening.
“Kristen, did you happen to pack my syringe before we left?”
“No,” she said. “I thought you packed it with your stuff.”
“Hmm,” I said calmly, though my head was starting to stir a little bit. “That’s a shame. I forgot to pack it.”
Kristen stood next to me, finding herself on eggshells for the first time in almost twenty-four hours. She had every reason to feel that way. Normally, this would have become a highly dramatic situation, even though I probably didn’t even need the syringe.
Three weeks before the trip, I had had my wisdom teeth removed. I would have preferred to wait until after our trip, but the pain of my impacted teeth warranted an immediate extraction. The holes were stitched up, my mouth was stuffed with gauze, and I was given very clear instructions: “Use this special syringe to flush the sockets out with water after every meal for two to three weeks to avoid any complications such as dry sockets.” Dry sockets? Good God, that sounds terrible. I followed the instructions exactly every day for almost three weeks, until that day.
“I’m sure it will be fine, Dave,” Kristen said as reassuringly as possible. “You shouldn’t have any problems at this point. I think most people stop using the syringe after a couple of weeks.”
“Right.” But the doctor said two to three weeks. Wait, don’t tell her that. This was exactly the sort of thing that would send me into a tailspin and more than ever, I needed to prevent it. I pretended not to care at first, but an hour later I was lying in bed, unable to sleep. I didn’t even know what dry sockets were, yet they were all I could think about.
“Kristen,” I whispered, waking her up. “I’m going to run out and find a Walgreens.”
She mumbled something that ended with “drive careful” and went back to sleep.
I hated myself for worrying about something as stupid as a syringe on our first day of vacation, but I figured it would be best to just find one and buy it so I could get the matter off my mind. I found two twenty-four-hour pharmacies within ten minutes of our hotel, and neither had the kind of syringe I needed, so I returned to our room and tried to calm myself down. Waking Kristen up to tell her about the fruitless search would not have been uncharacteristic, but I knew a vacation was all about doing things differently. The stores didn’t have a syringe, I thought. Kristen can’t snap her fingers and make one appear, so why wake her up and bother her with it? I climbed into bed, curling up behind her, and as I kissed her cheek, her mouth curled into a little smile. So worth it. Day two starts in a few hours. I fell asleep praying, asking God to stand by me and guide me as I worked on being fun.
The next morning, I awoke with unbelievable confidence in my transformation (it certainly helped that Kristen woke up, rolled over, and held me tight for a while). By midmorning, confidence had turned into near-cockiness; I was cracking jokes and taking turns leading our conversations. It felt like friendship. As on day one, a tremendous amount of effort was required to pull this off. It didn’t feel natural, but it did feel like an accomplishment that we had been talking for hours and I hadn’t annoyed Kristen once.
When we arrived in Charleston, we had a little bit of time to walk around and get acquainted with the town before B.J.’s wedding began. We ate lunch and did some window shopping, and as we strolled from storefront to storefront, Kristen took my hand and held it; it tingled as if she were holding it for the first time.
The wedding ceremony was beautiful, of course—held in a timeless old church that we were convinced was haunted.
“So beautiful,” Kristen whispered during the vows.
“And so spooky,” I replied.
“Oh my God. Totally.”
Then it was on to the reception, which was held not far away, in the decidedly not-haunted South Carolina Aquarium.
I had little time after the ceremony to regroup and prepare for the remainder of our evening, but to my own surprise, I didn’t feel as though I needed to. Positive energy, I was learning, is rather sustainable. I figured that a couple glasses of wine would help, too.
I stood in line at the bar, watching from across the lobby as Kristen introduced herself to an elderly couple standing near a large fish tank. Though there were swarms of strangers milling around, and sharks swimming overhead, all I saw were Kristen’s smile and her eyes and her beautiful hair. She’s here with me and having fun! Whether she knew it or not, Kristen didn’t have to worry about me melting down or begging her to leave early. She wasn’t going to have to deal with me hovering behind her or clinging to her side all night, as I had made a conscious choice to be fully autonomous during the reception.
Kristen saw me and gave a little wave, and I was transported back to an evening that I had spent with her when we were first dating. Her best friends, Valerie and Meredith (who would later become our roommate), were getting together after work, and Kristen had sent me an e-mail at lunchtime saying she’d love for me to come along. I just love the time that I get to spend with you, she had written.
I flipped out.
Andy and I were supposed to hang out after work, but I called him and canceled. I started organizing things on my desktop: lining up the edges of the papers, straightening the telephone cord, repeatedly tapping the keys on my calculator. Because they had nothing better to do, people in other cubicles had the nerve to answer their phones and talk to one another. Such distraction, while I struggled to pull together a mental game plan for my upcoming evening. A night out with friends. With her friends. Okay. No problem. Four people, three of them talking a lot. Figure we’ll meet around eight thirty, maybe stay out until midnight or so . . . I should really need only about an hour’s worth of stories and maybe a handful of wisecracks . . . that would be more than enough. What could I do tonight for an hour?
I opened my lab notebook to jot down some ideas for anecdotes. Fun anecdotes, to be specific. Spotting a guy at the gym yesterday—no good ending. Dropping my glasses in the toilet—strong stuff. Getting chased by a goose last week—good for a few minutes, will work in a pinch.
In my mind, I envisioned the four of us sitting in a pancake restaurant. (Why pancakes? I don’t know.) I imagined Valerie telling a story from their college days, her recollection furthered by my line of thoughtful questioning. Meredith and Kristen would exchange knowing glances, silently saying to each other, “Such insightful questions! This guy is the real deal.” Yeah. I can make it work. I have to make it work, there’s no other way.
Satisfied that I had enough material to be good company for her and her friends, I began writing my response to Kristen, a note that took me close to an hour to complete. The first draft included a few drawings to supplement the jokes—dumb little stick figures that I could have attached to the e-mail as JPEGs. I took a moment to read it over, trying to imagine her reactions, and though I couldn’t gauge precisely how she would react, I did have the good sense to remove the jokes and drawings altogether. I will seem like a normal guy, busy at work, if I keep this short. The final draft read something like “That sounds great! Your friends are so much fun.” Then I added, “How’s your day going?” before clicking “Send” and downing a fistful of Advil.
The evening with Valerie and Meredith went perfectly well; I’d have given my performance an A+. Kristen would have, too. I was ecstatic that night. I knew that since they were Kristen’s best friends, I needed to earn their approval—not unlike how a presidential candidate needs to win Iowa. No one that I know can explain why it is so important; you just have to win it to be successful. Without the approval of her friends—the Asshole Identification Council, as they were—Kristen might have begun to doubt what she saw in me, her interest in me would have evaporated, and then I would have lost my best friend and my girlfriend. I would have been forced to return to my pre-Kristen life, which was rather lonely.
There is a clear distinction between being alone and feeling lonely. Being alone is not so bad. Most often, I’d prefer to be alone. It’s peaceful with no one around. I can enter the world of the mind—a decidedly more comfortable place to live, since I am in complete control there. I can dream, reflect, ponder, fantasize, or just replay images and sounds in a constant loop. It’s my world, my way, and because no one has access to it, it can’t be contaminated, altered, or ruined. It’s not a lonely state, being alone. To me, being alone is quite comforting.
Feeling lonely, on the other hand, is the worst. Logic would have it that one feels the sting of loneliness the most when one is all alone, with no one around. That’s the loneliness we all know so well, the loneliness that appears when we’re by ourselves, wrapping its strong arm around us, providing us, at least, with some company.
But there’s a different side of loneliness, one that I see very often, and it’s much more sinister. Far from consoling, this side of loneliness savors every moment of our abandonment. I see this side of loneliness when I’m out with a group of people without a prayer of being able to relate to any of them. Loneliness is being the only guy in the pub who might honk like a goose at the bartender, and knowing you’re that guy. Worse than not fitting in, however, is finding someone you like and annoying them. This is part of the Asperger’s package—our exuberance around people we like sometimes pushes them away. Ironic.
As a result, I’m often conflicted about going out with people. Every friendly get-together feels like the evening when my performance could make or break the relationship, and the pressure freaks me out. For neurotypicals, going Out seems to involve looking forward to a great evening of sharing, gabbing, and going with the flow. They’ll enjoy themselves in clothes that look good on them without fretting over their itchy collars and cuffs as they raise their glasses and lean forward into their tables. They’ll talk about sports, husbands, about other times they’ve been Out together. In short, going Out seems to be all about being in a moment together and having a great time. It sounds horrible.
I like In. I can’t screw up In. Stay in, shut in, turn in. Unlike the people whom I meet when I’m Out, I get all of my jokes. I don’t have to explain to myself why a horse driving a high-speed train would be a riot. It’s easier to internally recite a phrase I heard a decade ago than it is to have a conversation with someone, and sadly, it’s sometimes more satisfying. Why go to a party and suffer overwhelming real-life anxiety when I can sit on the edge of my bed and imagine myself being the most happening guy in the room? “When the boat capsized,” I imagine myself saying, looking out into a sea of admiring faces, “I knew that I’d be okay, but I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t swim back under the bow and rescue those very frightened orphans, many of whom I’d taught to read. Who wants more champagne?”
The problem, of course, is that in real life, I’m not suave. I haven’t rescued any orphans, nor have I taught any to read. I am difficult to talk to sometimes. And you know what? I thought, waiting in line at the bar at the South Carolina Aquarium. Oh well. That doesn’t have to mean I can’t enjoy myself when I’m around people. Socializing wasn’t my strong suit, true, but I realized I could find a way to have fun and be fun at parties by contributing in my own way. My contributions wouldn’t look like everyone else’s, but that didn’t necessarily matter. I think I’m onto something here.
Prior to my diagnosis, such a revelation would not have been possible. Perhaps that’s what a diagnosis does: it helps you to understand that you have unique operating parameters—unique limitations and preferences. Knowing why you don’t naturally fit in alleviates the shame and embarrassment. (That’s my brain, folks. Can’t help it. Who wants more champagne?) My diagnosis gave me an explanation as to why I was relatively alone in my circumstances whenever I went places, and that knowledge somehow made me feel less lonely. Best of all, I wouldn’t have to use a persona anymore. I could just be me. These people don’t realize how interesting I am! I need to show them.
Determined to keep the magic rolling, I spent a good amount of time at the reception introducing myself to people and talking with them. There were stretches of time when Kristen got pulled into other conversations, and I consciously prevented myself from clinging to her. Let her talk. Stand here with B.J.’s coworkers as if you need nothing from her.
She didn’t have to ask me every five seconds if I was okay or if anything was bothering me. She didn’t have to manage me. Instead, we were dancing! In an aquarium, no less! At one point, a stingray floated by and I said, “Oh, there’s that stingray I wanted to introduce you to. Friend of the bride, total history buff.” Kristen wrapped my tie around her fingers, saying, “Look at you, party animal!”
Then, through eyes tired and sparkling with champagne, she asked me a great question.
“So, are you actually having fun tonight? Or is this just an act? Are you just playing a character right now?”
“No,” I told her over the music, “I’m actually having a good time. I don’t want you to be married to a character, I want you to be in love with the real deal.” And I meant it. I was having fun! I didn’t feel lonely, and she didn’t feel trapped. I wasn’t worried about my performance—hadn’t even given it a second thought. I told her in general terms about my epiphany in line for cocktails earlier in the evening—that I can do my own thing—but I decided not to let her in on the fact that I was hell-bent on not being clingy or depressing. Doing so would have ruined my experiment.
Admittedly, standing around in an aquarium, eating bacon-wrapped sausages and talking to complete strangers about how they all know one another, wouldn’t have been my first choice. It probably never will be. But Kristen had fun, and watching her made the evening a better time than I could have imagined.
Then I thought, Why stop at parties? Why not be fun everywhere?
The third day of our trip presented us with some minor challenges—little tests of character to see if the daily seeding of being great company was actually starting to take root. Bring it.
It was pouring down rain, for starters, my wet T-shirt no less a constant reminder of that fact than the slow, percussive rhythm of rainwater crashing to the wet Berber carpet in pea-sized droplets: bloink . . . bloink . . . bloink. I was standing by an unoccupied reception desk in the smallest and most depressing office lobby I’d ever seen. My cheery floral-patterned swimming trunks and sandy flip-flops seemed ironic, as did my fresh suntan. Perhaps the setting was depressing because we were on vacation and I was wasting precious time standing around in a reception area, or maybe it was just because the walls were the color of a tobacco stain and there was no one—I mean no one—around to help me.
There was a silver bell on the deserted reception desk, and next to it a handwritten sign reading RING BELL FOR ASSISTANCE.
I did. No one came. Next I called out, “Hello?” No response. Thinking I must have the wrong office, I stepped outside to read the placard mounted beside the hollow, wobbly door. DENTAL SUPPLY SUITE 1A. This is it. I looked out into the parking lot, through the rain coming down in gray sheets, and put my hands up as if to signal to Kristen, I don’t know what the hell is going on in there. From inside the minivan, she shook her head and raised her hands, as if to ask me, What the hell is going on in there?
I went back inside—wondering why in God’s name I decided to have my wisdom teeth removed three weeks before a vacation—and made sure to slam the door shut. This got someone’s attention, apparently, because I heard a voice, some shuffling around, and finally, a short, bearded man emerged in a Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans.
“Hi,” he said with an inquisitive smile. “I’m Ed. Can I help you?” The good news was that he didn’t offer to shake my hand. The bad news was that it was because he was holding a dusty surgical mask in one hand and a white plaster mold of someone’s teeth and gums in the other.
“Yes,” I said. “Uhh . . . My wife and I are on vacation, and I just had my wisdom teeth taken out. I’m supposed to be using a special syringe to clean the holes out after meals, and I forgot it at home.”
“Oh,” he said, concerned. “Where’s home?”
“Illinois.”
“Oh my.”
“Anyway, I’ve been trying to find a fine-tip syringe here in town and haven’t had any luck. I saw your sign out front, and I’m hoping you might have something like that.”
“Oh, like a fine-tip syringe? Like, something you’d use after a tooth extraction, you mean?”
I flashed the broad, fake smile I typically reserved for business discussions, the one I’d rehearsed maybe a million times, the one I used to ingratiate myself to someone who could help me, but only if they wanted to. “Yeah, Ed. That’s exactly what I mean.”
He took a moment to scratch the back of his neck with the surgical mask (because, I suppose, using the teeth would have been bad form). “You know, I think I do have something. Give me a minute, I’ll be right back.”
He gestured toward the rumpled green sofa behind me—the one that he had clearly brought from home, or perhaps picked up on a curb somewhere along with a floor lamp, a broken microwave, and a sign reading FREE—suggesting that I take a load off.
“Fantastic!” I said, though I had no intention of sitting on Ed’s personal effects, no matter how friendly he seemed. I opened the front door and gave Kristen a big thumbs-up, and she laughed and rolled her eyes.
I was there because Kristen had caught me on the phone in the hotel room earlier in the morning, trying to get ahold of my oral surgeon. I thought Kristen was showering, but when she stepped out of the bathroom to grab her contact solution, she heard me ask in a near whisper if Dr. Bressman could advise on my situation. “See, I left my syringe at home . . .”
This seemed to have triggered a number of memories for her: our Door County vacation undermined by my fixation on avoiding West Nile virus; our Cape Cod vacation severely burdened by my obsession with the property’s outdoor shower; every family gathering since 2004 ruined by, well, you name it.
“I’ll call back,” I said, quickly hanging up. I wanted to think that I wouldn’t have turned the matter into a full-blown obsession capable of ruining day three, but Kristen wasn’t prepared to take any chances.
“Dave, if you’re still worried about dry sockets, we’ll just find a place that sells those syringes,” she said.
“But I don’t want to blow our vacation. I didn’t want it to be your problem.”
“It’s not going to blow our vacation. But if we don’t find one, then I want you to stop thinking about it. Deal?”
I agreed. Leaving the third pharmacy without a syringe at around ten A.M., I called the search off, and we headed for Folly Beach, which was about a half hour from our hotel in downtown Charleston.
We sat on the sand, watching people in the water splashing one another and getting stung by jellyfish, until a thunderstorm blew up, clearing everyone from the beach. Rather than heading back to the hotel, we decided to drive around for a while, and we got lost. Happily lost. “Turn down this street,” Kristen said. “I want to see those houses.” After dozens of random turns, we passed by this little office complex and the sign jumped out at us: DENTAL SUPPLY.
So there I was.
Twenty minutes passed with no more sign of Ed and I started going mental. Every now and then, I could hear pounding and the unsettling sound of hacksaw-against-plastic. Did this guy mean that he’ll find me a syringe . . . when he’s done doing whatever he’s doing with those teeth and gums? I don’t have time for this! I rang the bell, and he didn’t emerge. By that point, I figured Kristen would be massaging her temples with her fingertips, just barely keeping herself together, intensely regretting the fact that she was sitting in our minivan in a flooded parking lot in a downpour, married to a syndrome. I figured that my experiment was over. I figured that we were right back at square one, that my glory had been washed away.
I opened the office door and looked out into the rain. There she was, her head swaying back and forth as she sang along with some music. She spotted me, smiled, then lifted the iPod to her mouth, as if it were a microphone. Her singing gestures became more and more elaborate until she busted up laughing, and I thought, All is not yet lost.
Friendly Ed finally surfaced, marching almost, as though he had solved a great mystery.
“All right, he we are,” he said, handing me something that looked like a small NASA-designed turkey baster. “How’s that?”
It was a hand-cobbled syringe. Wow. I had been expecting something a little more hermetically sealed. A little less touched by human hands. But he seemed proud and handed it to me with a smile, so I took it.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Wasn’t any trouble. Just had to use the tube from a larger syringe, and glue this other tip onto it, which meant I had to join them with this middle piece here. Careful you don’t tip it down until the glue dries.”
I asked him how much he wanted for it and he gently refused my offer to pay him. “Free of charge,” he said, opening the door for me.
I thanked him again and then dashed out to the car, eager to show Kristen my custom mouth squirter.
We decided to wait out the weather over lunch in a bar on Folly Beach. The clouds overhead were wispy and full and the color of dirty snow. But our veggie wraps were phenomenal and Kristen’s face was pure sunburned happiness. Beneath a high-definition television playing reruns of dirt bike races, we shared our favorite moments from the vacation, reliving them during the rain delay. She reached for my hands from across the table and said, grinning, “This is what I remember us being. This is how it used to be.”
Outside, the sun broke and the clouds rolled away, so we took our drinks to go, excited to see what fun was in store for us.