I’m sitting in San Juan willing myself not to eat five “gourmet hot dogs” while I sit out my two hour layover waiting for my fiancé. I haven’t had one yet but one always leads to five with hot dogs. Hot dogs should also only be consumed in almost inhumanly industrialized places because they are already inherently disgusting. I don’t like to think about what goes into a hot dog but if in New York City it’s probably 20% pigeon, 15% rat, 30% homeless man’s boot and 35% meat we typically eat, I don’t like to take my chances in places that recognize meats as “typical” that I do not. That’s not racist, it’s just a preference.
This is also a big deal because I’m hungry but recently experienced a betrayal of trust by my body so great, I’m considering divorcing it. Let me backtrack.
My grandparents moved to St. Croix a few years ago. I’ve been down to visit them once on one of my famous “everything-just-fell-apart-it-worked-in-Eat-Pray-Love-so-maybe-it-will-fix-my-life” trips. My graduation present was supposed to be a round-trip ticket but post-school calendars in New York are a black hole. You have nothing scheduled but you tell yourself, “the week I leave for vacation there will be a million auditions, I would have booked ALL of them but missed my window and I’ll officially be a cocktail waitress forever. With a masters. And a hole where my dreams were”. At some point, you have to jump, seize any and all opportunities and just decide to be happy. The deep irony in this is that then, you book jobs!
I picked a week and tickets were so cheap, my grandparents were able to purchase two tickets for the price of one, meaning Matt could join me! Tickets were SO cheap that after a bottle of wine, a close friend decided it was time to redeem her standing invitation with my grandparents and join us. DOUBLE RAINBOWS ACROSS THE SKY!
Funny thing about St. Croix: they drive on the opposite side of the road. Not in a British “our cars match our backwards road, like ya do, guvnah” way but in a “Here’s a totally American car. Now do everything backwards” way. Tourists are the second worst at adapting to this. You know who’s the worst? Drunk tourists.
Choosing a ditch over said drunk tourist was noble of my grandpa, but it resulted in a fractured arm and hip. The best surgical option meant a six week return to Virginia just days before our arrival.
So reschedule the flight, right? Wrong. Your fiancé is a performer whose ticket is from his recent Florida gig. This would require a one-way ticket home out of your price range and another ticket to Florida at some point when rescheduling. Also, your best friend is a DJ who already took the time off work and is using her only other free-time this year for your wedding. However, your trip was supposed to be to visit your grandparents. So, do you want the bagel with lox and guilt or the cinnamon-raisin bagel with unsalted guilt-butter? Oh, also, the bagel is made of seven grain disappointment.
The logical conclusion was to go to St. Croix anyway, check in on the house and enjoy our vacation. Just the three of us. When Matt’s cast mate found out we’d be in St. Croix for a week he gave us an uplifiting, sarcastic toast:
“I don’t hope you get dysentery. At all”.
CURSE YOU, FORESHADOWING CAST MATE!
I won’t divulge the perfection that was our first day on the island. I don’t have to tell you how the resplendent blue sky was only outmatched in beauty by the crystalline, turquoise seas. I don’t have to tell my Manhattan friends how we chortled with rum drinks in one hand, bobbing in coquettish waves when we learned you were being impaled by a hail storm. I won’t tell you any of that because trust me, we got our come-uppance.
Oh, we got our come-uppance. Uppance came and settled in for a nice, long blanket party. *For those who don’t know, a blanket party is an old-school tradition of throwing a blanket over someone’s head and beating them with a bat. **I don’t know if that’s an old school tradition, I just know it’s something my Pop Pop said. Then again, he served twenty plus years in the military, grew up in Brooklyn and has detailed the uncomfortably short number of steps it would take him to kill a man with his pinky.
I’ll spare you most of the details because no matter how funny Tina Fey is, it’s still a little weird for girls to talk about stomach things.
I told my soon-to-be-mother-in-law about the bug and she said, “Oh, that must have been really hard for him because we never get sick”. I have come to learn, over time, that sometime in the next forty years, I will be procreating with a direct descendent of Hercules. I wish I meant this sarcastically.
They’re all tan. They have impossibly white teeth. They have perfect eyesight. They never get sick. When they don’t work out, they get tinier. When they do work out, they get eight packs. Every generation, when the offspring turn eighteen, they are given the same choice as Hercules at the end of Disney’s infallibly, mythologically accurate rendering of the famous hero:
You may drink this elixir and join your god-like relatives on Mount Olympus or stay behind for love.
I’m Megara. I greet most situations with inappropriate humor like I’m in a bad film noir. I am friends with many shady, annoying little monsters who work for Hades to varying degrees. I have a dark, pain-filled past that makes people uncomfortable. I have shockingly round hips considering how much more shockingly small my waist is. I secretly think if I learned to swing my hips instead of spazzing all over like a kid who snorted pixie sticks*, I would be UNSTOPPABLE.
I take that back. I still look sixteen.
If I learned to swing my hips like Megara, in ten years and no kids, I COULD be unstoppable.
This metaphor has gotten away from me.
In any case, Matt has clearly chosen the mortal life with me. This denial of deity status means he is unaccustomed to what happens to a person when they get sick. And as they say, practice makes perfect.
Kids…(sometimes, in my head, I’m Bob Saget on How I Met Your Mother. Or Full House. Either way, approaching life-obstacles takes on this calm, acoustic guitar accompanied narrative for me)… when you agree to marry someone, you realize there will be certain milestones that will eviscerate you and your partner ruthlessly until seeing each other as beautiful, attractive beings becomes IMPOSSIBLE for a few days (Full House ep. 502, no? No. Got it). A stomach bug is DEFINITELY one of those milestones. It reveals some crucial points about how you and your partner handle vulnerability.
Our quaint, mountain-top beach house turned into that stomach scene from Alien in the wee hours of the morning. My best friend was also in agony but I only became aware of this after I’d finished attending to Matt. Because I was JOLTED out of sleep several times by his needs.
Close your eyes. Imagine a lost Velociraptor frantically asking a triceratops for directions. They don’t speak the same language and the raptor’s frustration takes his tone from hint of panic to tempestuous font of sputtering rage. (Sputtering. Too soon.) Now, picture a large jungle cat trying to hock up a kazoo it accidentally swallowed.
This is the range of noises Matt makes when he vomits. Is it possible to teach someone how to toss their cookies more productively and silently? For the sake of our marriage, I pray to God, yes. This is what premarital counseling is really for.
I have a history of being codependent. I want to help even when my help is not only unnecessary, it’s a flat-out hindrance. When the sound of Matt’s turmoil echoed down the hall, I sprung to action. I stroked hair, whispered reassurances and backed up when I was promptly told to. Matt deals with uncomfortable vulnerability by turning into a totally cranky superior called Jerkface Bossypants. It’s HILARIOUS. I need you to hear all these phrases as if said in Christian Bale’s Batman Voice. Or just Christian Bale’s Batman if that helps.
- Don’t touch me. GO away.
- Hold me. No, I don’t want to go back to bed. Hold me on the bathroom floor.
- STOP TOUCHING ME.
- Scratch my head.
- I hate this. I HATE THIS. I HATE PUKING MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WORLD.
After each episode, Jerkface Bossypants demanded I let him be the little spoon on the bathroom floor so he could fall asleep. Then, he would shove me off of him at some point and I would roll over. I would float somewhere between sleep and consciousness when I heard tiny moans as if they were coming in over a baby monitor. Then, I would literally be SHOVED awake when he was about to lose it again. This would have made me mad if I wouldn’t have been more offended to be startled awake by his scream-puking. Scruking? (He says he only shoved me awake because I asked him to. This is absolutely true). This happened EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR. Like clockwork. By sunrise, I was a new woman with a new perspective on my impending marriage.
I would also be met with obstinate pouting as soon as I “suggested” things like “water” or “a fever reducer”. He would cave under great duress. There was grunt-whining. This was NOT something that ever happened to descendants of Hercules. Ever. I heard innumerable times how he never gets sick because he hates being sick. I stifled jokes about how millions of American put this at the top of their New Year’s Resolutions (“This year, I need to get totally laid out and remember how disgusting it is to be a human. I just want to know I’m ALIVE”, said no one ever). I finally got him to a place of clear fluids and sleep. Then, around 4 PM…
My time had come.
I do NOT handle vulnerability as openly as my husband to be. I do not. I turn into Christina Aguilera at the beginning of Beautiful: “DON’T LOOK AT ME!!!!” Here, I so happily Florence Nightingale’d myself into his situation and when my time came, I did everything short of throw things at him to get him to leave the room. “I don’t want you to see me like this!” “You’ll never be attracted to me again!” I screamed Jo Jo lyrics (“Get out ‘LEAVE’, Stay out”) at him like I was in the end of Act One of August: Osage County.
All the while, apparently, I looked like I was waiting for someone to break into my house. The down side to anime eyes is that when you’re pale, sweaty and about to lose it I look like Gollum sans-precious. So yes, I am totes adorbs when I’m sick.
The upside to my experience was that I have weathered this storm before. I would not go down. I know how to let the Bronx rumble until it all comes out once. I’d spent the last night as Cersei in the Sparrow’s Prison being poked awake every hour to the point of insanity (the show is highly rated, so I read the books. Sue me.) I would not do it again! Thanks to some terribly bad TV, I slept for twelve hours with only one horrific visit. At the end, I managed a guttural laugh because I was so shamed and terrified of my own body. But I made it. I didn’t go through it over and over and when push comes to shove, I started a day late and am crossing the health ribbon a day sooner than my comrades. Professional sick person.
So as I sit here, waiting for Matt to board a plane from St. Croix to San Juan, nibbling my cuticles instead of hot dogs, I can’t help but wonder:
If I can normally be so emotionally open, why did I eat Matt’s dust in this vulnerability contest?
He was a little bummed (see what I did there?) that I wouldn’t let him be there for me like I was for him. He has absolutely every right to feel that way. No, that’s something condescending people say when they’re not really sorry or they don’t agree with you but know that feelings are never “wrong” so… here’s some verbal candy. He doesn’t have every right to feel that way...he’s right. I have some theories.
I know there’s nothing Matt could do that would make me stop being attracted to him. Gain weight, lose weight, lose all his hair and teeth (I KNOW! HE WON’T! HERCULES GENES!) I would still think he was incredibly sexy.
“But why wouldn’t you assume that works both ways?”
This is not the cue for a feminist rant but it’s the remnants of sexism that I realized infect my brain. I don’t have anything but perfectly normal feelings about my body. I have photo-shopped proof for work that I’m a beautiful girl and I can biddie up with the best of them (her name is Briana Marcantoni, by the by). Sure, the occasional H&M fluorescent dressing room lighting can send me into heaving sobs but that’s just because they’re designed to make Kristen Stewart’s pinky look great in a sack dress. In general, I am proud to be a beautiful girlie girl.
I’m doubly proud to be one of the guys. I can smack talk your terrible Fantasy Football lineup with a whiskey in one hand sounding like Vince Vaughan pens my daily scripts. I get guy humor. I LOVE guy humor. I’m also aware that MY guy humor has to come from the double standard vantage point of being witty and above it all but NOT a participant.
I grew up with brothers. They didn’t operate under any delusions that girls don’t do certain things. However, they’ve never hid their genuine disgust. One time, at a desperation point because none of the men in my family would wear clothes, I came downstairs in underwear and a tank top. The deluge of screams would have belied a robbery. I thought I was going to have to grab the smelling salts (we’re from the south so some relative definitely has them). Who knew I was raised with such delicate flowers? I casually sipped my water, slammed my glass in the sink and said “THIS IS HOW I FEEL WHEN YOU WALK AROUND IN YOUR BOXERS! PUT. ON. PANTS. NOWANDFOREVER”.
It didn’t work.
The point is, I was shocked at how even boys raised with girls see a clear line in the sand on what’s gross for girls to do but acceptable for guys to do. For whatever reason, girls grow up knowing boys are disgusting but we miraculously rise above. Guys grow up to have their Disney Princess Paradigm shattered when they have firsthand evidence that girls do “gross things”.
I’m 90% sure any crime committed during a stomach bug is one of these gross things. I’ve seen the look as the glass shatters. I’m too young and too hot for the unsexification to begin! I’m getting MARRIED. My body needs to remain a beautiful place of mystery, rainbows and unicorns for as long as possible.
That means my fiancé can’t see me go through a stomach bug. Not the puking, sweats or anything else. He can see me adorably drunk vomit on a tree on the rare occasion it comes to that. And that’s it. And I can scratch his back and laugh at his raptor sounds. Because he’s a boy and I’m a girl. It’s totally sexist. If sexism remains, I will bend it to my advantage.
And this is one of the things I learned in St. Croix.
PS: I just found out Matt rode in a six person plane to San Juan and got to sit in the co-pilot seat. He totally sucks.
*My original metaphor involved Honey Boo Boo. Matt locked eyes with me intensely and said, “Don’t you EVER compare yourself to Honey Boo Boo”. I’ll never know if this means raising or lowering my standards.
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