Neurotica

Try, just try, to get me to go out and most likely I’ll say no. I know I live in the biggest city in the country and excitement abounds, but something always seems to come up to keep me down: I’ll be extremely ill; I’ll have absolutely no money; my ex-girlfriend will be in the process of splashing in or out of my life, revving me up for some sort of honest-for-real-this-time renewal, or else telling me to fuck off and never talk to her again, and either way I feel like hunkering down inside myself.

Plus, for the last few weeks--and I'm counting on many more--I’ve been conducting an entirely wholesome life, one full of reading books to children and to myself, and that's pretty much it. I've been employed as a glorified babysitter/part-time surrogate child-rearer, work I’m completely inexperienced but good at and find extremely rewarding, though surprisingly so. Ask anyone who knows me if they’d ever picture me even speaking to a child except to tell it to be quiet in a restaurant, and they’ll laugh and say hell no.

But they'd be wrong. After many days of mostly having conversations only with an eight-year-old--an extremely enlightened and sensitive eight-year-old--I realized I should probably talk to an adult or two. Right after I left my job one night I headed to the nearest random bar on the Upper West Side and had a glass of wine and a giant greasy plate of French fries (my favorite guilty meal), and struck up a conversation with the elderly gent sitting next to me. Now retired, he used to fly private jets for Middle Eastern diplomats.

I asked him if he had any tips on how I could get over my very recent terror when it comes to flying. He asked how old I am. Thirty, I told him. “And this just started in the last year?” he asked.

Yes.

“You’re a genius in your twenties,” he said. “You spend your thirties trying to get it back, so you invent neuroses.”

That bit of pure erudition made me determined to get out of the house more and talk to people I don’t know. If he could with two sentences get to the kernel of my psyche...well shit, what else was I missing out on?

The next night I decided to better target my age and interest bracket. Back to the local lezzie joint with me! My trick is to show up a bit early and park it at the end of the bar; at some point just about everyone will come up to order a drink, and I’ll be sitting right on the edge of the place where they all naturally go to do so, which means I get to check out everyone without being obvious. Plus, it gets so busy that almost everyone has some kind of wait, so I have time to chat a little if someone strikes my fancy. On top of that--and this is the main reason why I do this--I like to imagine this sedentary maneuver makes me look mysterious rather than friendless.

About a half hour in, a draft blew a familiar scent my way: prickly-sweet, lusciously floral, slightly bubble-bathy, borderline tawdry. I could tell its owner wasn’t immediately near me, so it was too strong a dose, but still it was familiar and I liked it. Eventually she, a besneakered and mostly nondescript young lady with long black hair, came up and ordered a drink. I wasn’t physically interested in her, and yes, up close she did smell like she’d bathed in her perfume, but I couldn’t resist talking to her just so I could ask what she was wearing: Michael by Michael Kors.

I felt sort of angry with myself. Michael Kors? He makes a scented fucking roll-on leg shimmer! I liked Michael Kors?

I’d been denying it for the last eight years, since I first started smelling it in magazines and would for a second think, Yum!, and then my overriding sense of what was stylish and cool would turn the page and try to forget about it. It’s been the same thing along the way with J’Adore and Marc Jacobs—and interestingly enough you really do have to administer them all with a feather-light touch. Though technically designer and somewhat pricey, they seem generic and cheap...accessible, I guess, is the word.

Metaphorically speaking, I’ve never been the type to chat around the office cooler; I read fashion magazines partially so I know what to actively avoid so I won't ever look like a trend-follower. I want what I exude, in all areas of life, to come off as unique, distinctly mine, especially when it comes to perfume. So is my inner snob trying to trample what I may otherwise relish, or is it actually indignantly preserving my sense of self? I think if I still had my genius, I probably wouldn’t worry about it.