Girls with nose rings don't write thank you notes, explains Jess Holly Bates.
Listen to the story as it was told at The Watercooler storytelling night or read on ...
This is the story of how I got my septum pierced. Or a cautionary tale on grammar school education. Or a treatise on cleaning your chicken bones. Or just a thing that I happened into, on the other side of the world.
It was a cold Monday in New York. Having accidentally purchased my first 100%-American-made-never-touched-by-slave-hands-hipsters-look-better-in-indigenous-ponchos-Urban-Outfitters top, I felt sufficiently attired to walk along to the Louder Arts spoken word night. I did a gender fluidity piece to a bunch of dykes and made some new friends. Win.
My friend Sarah joined me afterward. After trotting up and down the Ave a number of times, we settled on a sports bar. We were only having one beer. We sat on a vinyl couch opposite two other guys. Sarah is incredibly reserved on first meeting - she’s a redhead page poet with a passion for talking about SubDom politics and owns an unusually comfortable couch if you’re ever in the heart of Brooklyn. Her shyness has the inevitable effect of making me drink faster, talk louder and eat more.
On arriving, ‘Matt’ and ... well I forget his name, but he looked like Steve Carrell with a monobrow, glanced up at us. We asked if we could sit down and Matt and Steve seemed about as interesting as Judith Collins’ perm count. In the armpit of our conversation, Matt talked at me for at least an hour.
“I’m about to have a photo I took published in a magazine, which is a pretty big deal.”
“I like to read philosophy, I guess I think pretty hard about things, I’m reading this book that was published in the fifties.”
“I could waste you on the dancefloor, actually.”
Steve Carrell bought us another round and the chicken wings they ordered also arrived.
Incredibly forthcoming, Matt had the conversational sensitivity of a 1945 aerial assault. I was left scrambling to shelter from the self-interest pelting down in excruciating and thorough detail. By the by, his mother is Czechoslovakian, his father is Chinese. Don’t care? Yeah, I didn’t ask either.
Steve Carrell put another beer for us on the table. Dinnerless, I start to gnaw on the old chicken bones. Yes, I’m aware that this appears vaguely like flirting, but I was hungry, and it really fucks me off that people don’t eat the gristle. If you’re going to eat meat, at least honour as much of the beast as you can. Plus it’s one of my arsehole detectors. “Oh ho! She’s sucking on the bones … weird.” Right, arsehole. On the plus side, I happily finish the leftovers.
You should never presume that someone isn’t acting out of kindness, mainly because it’s impractical, but also because it’s largely untrue.
By the time the fourth pint arrived on the table, these are probably the most interesting people I have ever spoken to and I am having a whale of a time. It’s 2am on a Monday and so Sarah makes her apologies and we make tracks to leave. We are down on 2nd, and I’m staying up in Inwood, which is like a two-hour subway ride away, because you have to catch the J line, and then the A/C, and they haven’t changed the lines since the 1800s.
I’m having a sweet whinge, when my new friend Matt pipes up and tells me to sleep on his couch, which is a 10 minute walk away. God, people say New York is such a dangerous city, but the incredible generosity of complete strangers was totally astounding when I was there. You should never presume that someone isn’t acting out of kindness, mainly because it’s impractical, but also because it’s largely untrue. He isn’t the only person to have selflessly offered me his lounge, and so with all that in mind I say, “okay, but you can’t rape me.”
Apparently, that hits a cultural nerve. Sheesh. I feel like it’s pretty common fodder here, but Matt can’t handle it. He kept pacing around and saying “oh my god” and I replied with “I’m sorry, I’m from New Zealand, my mum would want me to say things like that.”
Safely assured I’d cleared the air, I give him a good ribbing on the way home. We arrive at his apartment, but he wants to go onto the roof to show me something first. It turns out to be an attempted pash under the stars.
I tell him that I want to just go into his apartment and then he insists that I sleep in his bed. It’s much more comfortable and he’ll give me some pyjamas, he says.
Why do I pick up my stuff and follow him? I think it was the pyjamas. Universal sign of safety. Plus people don’t insist in New Zealand, well, not to me they don’t, and I’m a guest. So I go.
His room is tiny - a throwback to my first boyfriend, with pottles of hairwax on every surface, cologne holding down bank statements, minibar bottles as the centrepiece and a massive screen at the foot of his bed.
He puts on a casino movie with Matt Damon in it. Safe, I think. In his bad shorts, and trying to pick up the plot, I slide into the escapable side of the bed. And then, I discover he’s a groaner.
Like any good deflating kiwi girl I tell him, “bit weird with the groaning, mate”, but next he’s insisting that I give him a back rub.
I hate you, Epsom Girls Grammar, for giving me manners.
This time, I decide it’s his use of the word rub. It’s demanding. So he’s lying on his front, I am lying on my back, and with one hand, gingerly, I claw at his shoulders and watch Matt Damon. When it feels like enough, I retract my hand. He must be asleep.
And then I spend four hours battling hands lifting my shirt, and a semi on my thigh, yawning at how boring it is to have to police my own clothes, and I think about how it’s guys like this that keep crappy spoken word being made. “I sleep ... with one eye open, and his hands, like a butcher…”
At first light I am relieved. He tells me I can sleep there as long as I want, but I tell him that I’ve got things to do. He gets in the shower, and I grab my stuff to go before he gets out. I want to leave, but I can’t. I fold the clothes and I write a note that says, “Thank you for the chicken wings, have a great day.” I hate you, Epsom Girls Grammar, for giving me manners. In yesterday’s clothes I catch the subway of shame with the morning commuters, and feel utterly horrible.
I receive a message from Sarah saying she hopes everything went all good. I reply saying, “It was not all good - he was a total creep, I had to hold a pillow to my front all night, my body doesn’t feel like my own, and I clearly need to get my septum pierced.” Because girls with nose rings don’t write thank you notes. And girls with nose rings don’t listen to guys they’ve just met. And girls with nose rings remember to eat before they drink in a sports bar. Like any true friend, she told me “your logic holds up, go for it.” And so I did. And that’s why I wear a nail through my nose.
This story was originally told at The Watercooler, a monthly storytelling night held at The Basement Theatre. If you have a story to tell email thewatercoolernz@gmail.com or hit them up on Twitter or Facebook.
Illustration: Hadley Donaldson
This content is brought to you with funding support from New Zealand On Air.