Isaac Oliver - Intimacy Idiot

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Copyright 2015 by Isaac Oliver

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First Scribner hardcover edition June 2015

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Interior design by Jill Putorti

Jacket design by Spencer Kimble

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014038829

ISBN 978-1-4767-4666-1

ISBN 978-1-4767-4668-5 (ebook)

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

For my mother and father

Online Dating Profile

Gender

Male

Height

5' 9"

Ethnicity

Tilda Swinton Caucasian

Body Type

Old Lady, Slouchy, or Itll Do

Last Online

N/Athis presupposes that there are times when I am not online

The first thing people notice about me

If I play my cards right, nothing

Diet

Dairy and its consequences

Religion

Chris Pine

Sign

Scorpio, Nausea Rising

Education

The Hard Way, summa cum laude

Occupation

Narcissism, full-time unpaid internship

Turn-ons

Chest hair, indifference

Turn-offs

Affection, purpose

Exercise

Panic attacks

Have Kids

No, only Chipotle babies

Want Kids

Quiet ones

I am most passionate about

Dinner plans

I spend a lot of time thinking about

When I can sit next

Something no one knows about me

If you have a shirtless picture on Facebook, Ive jerked off to it

Four things my friends say I am

Hungry, impatient, neurotic, and, why, what have you heard them say?

My typical Friday night

Wine in mouth, dick in hand, hope in heart

Im really good at

Sleeping, worrying, busying myself between the thighs of men who have little to no regard for me, eating, ugly-crying to late-career Joni Mitchell, self-sabotage, being at home

Im really bad at

Cooking, banking, respecting my therapists boundaries, small talk, big talk, public displays of affection, movies that seem like work to watch, quitting while Im ahead

My ideal day

I wake up in a room thats rapidly filling with Pringles and in order to survive I must eat my way out

Three things for which I am most thankful

Company, a dictionary, Tina Fey

You should message me if

You enjoy moods and trust levels that shift without warning and board games

How I Didnt Learn to Drive

A fter using his little emergency wheel to pull the car over from the side of the road I was driving onthe wrong onemy instructor sat back in his seat, rotated his clipboard in four clockwise angles, and, once my sobs had quieted, very measuredly said, You know, there are some people who just dont drive.

I can just imagine him going home that day and saying to his wife, I told a student not to drive today, Ruth, collapsing into heaving sobs, choking out, Im a man who teaches. I thought I could teach anyone, butoh, god, Ruth, I cant , while she, with her back to him, lets her pots boil over and stares out the window at the line of woods along their property, longing to run into it and never come back.

How I wish hed pushed me to try again, to try harder, because if youre in the business of making metaphors, my not being able to get myself anywhere is pretty rich. But at the time, it felt like divine intervention. I made eye contact with him for the first time since the driving school parking lot, before hed become what might in some states be considered my hostage. Really? I asked.

Sure, he said. You said you want to live in New York, right?

* * *

I didnt get into New York University, and I bet they are really kicking themselves now, but I did get into Sarah Lawrence, which was only forty minutes north of the city. I spent my freshman year bouncing back and forth on the Metro-North between Manhattan and the dorm room I shared with two straight guys and the ghost of a Lawrence family servant.

Id spend weekends in the city, visiting my friends who did get into NYU. Wed wait in line for discount Broadway tickets, eat in shitty chain restaurants because we didnt know any better, and just walk around, because theres nothing better than walking in New York. A friend and I were wandering aimlessly near her dorm above Washington Square Park, and I suggested that we go to the top of the World Trade Center. You can always go up in that, she said. The next week it was gone.

I still felt too much like a visitor, like the citys houseguest, so the following summer I transferred to Fordham, a Jesuit university right next to Lincoln Center that would only every now and then have a pro-life rally out front. Cramming my hippy-dippy Sarah Lawrence credits into Fordhams very square core curriculum was a hilarious task shouldered by my bone-dry admissions counselor. What was the name of that class again? she asked, her fingers hovering above her keyboard.

The Civil War: A Crisis in Gender, I repeated meekly.

She shook her head. Lets call that history, she said, and hit the return key.

* * *

On my first night as a real New York resident I cried in bed. Earlier that day, my parents and brother had helped move my friend Melanie and me into our very first apartment, in a Brooklyn neighborhood called Windsor Terrace, with a super who dealt drugs and a homeless man who regularly went through our garbage and tried to sell it back to us. This area was terrorized a few summers ago by a man who kept sneaking up to unassuming women, groping them, and running off. Neither of us was groped when we lived there, but as they say, you cant grope the willing.

Lying there that first night, I thought of my parents and brother in the car on their way back to Baltimore and felt alone and scared. Much like when I sat in the drivers seat and put my foot on the gas pedal and felt the car lurch forward, a murderous mechanical mass, I, too, in that bed felt my life lurching forward, picking up speed.

Suddenly I heard a rapid thumping against my bedroom wall from our next-door neighbors apartmenthis bed. My neighbor, whom we quickly nicknamed The Jackhammer, was less making love to his girlfriend and more belaboring a point. I listened for quite some time, appalled and comforted by it, until I heard his girlfriend shout, Slow the fuck down!

For the first time that day, I laughed. I stopped crying and I laughed.

* * *

The city hazed me quickly. On one of my first mornings a woman ran into Starbucks and shouted, Scram, you fucking losers!

You in line for the phone? a man asked me in front of a bodega on Varick Street.

I shook my head no and stepped away from the payphone.

He put a quarter in and dialed. You fuckin proud of yourself? he said. Dont you fuck with me, kid. You think I wont break into your place and start a fire? You ready to watch every single thing you love fucking burn?