I Like You Just the Way I Am Read online

  I went home to Arizona the following week like a conquering hero. Whispers of Karen were all over school, and before lunch, I’d earned the approval of five different cliques, who all asked if I’d buy them beer. I was too scared to actually use Karen on American soil, but I did practice signing her signature at least ten times a day, just in case. The truth of the matter was that I had no real need for her. My gay boyfriend didn’t want the carbs, and all my other friends were prudes. Eventually, I passed Karen off to my friend Sky, who just transferred to another school and needed an ID to hang out with her Mexican drug lord boyfriend. Even after Karen expired, Sky claimed to have used her successfully all through college.

  I’m thirty-three now, and I can calmly walk into a bar through the front door. Though I have been known to tunnel out on occasion. Especially when my mom’s bra is in sight.

  2.

  Whine Kampf

  Bruno was down on one knee, holding out a ring that looked like it came from an arcade claw machine. His eyes smirked with the confidence of a soap opera bimbo who fucks only in front of a full-length mirror.

  “Jen, will you be engaged to me?” he said, hitting the g’s in the word “engaged” with a little extra phlegm, his guttural German accent showing.

  “I … I hate you,” I said, stunned, before grabbing my purse and searching for mints. I’d just made myself throw up five pounds of garlic knots in the bathroom minutes earlier, and my mouth was still a war zone. I was trapped on the San Diego harbor cruise my mom ostensibly booked as a bon voyage dinner for Bruno. As the ship made its way back into port, I slunk down in my curiously flimsy folding chair and asked the universe three questions: Why the fuck did I just get proposed to? Where the fuck is my mother? And, how the fuck many garlic knots are still floating around in my stomach?

  * * *

  I met Bruno when I was in high school, where he was the creepy foreign exchange student and I was popular (among the nerds). I convinced myself he was a vampire because of his long nails, long hair, obscure accent, pencil-thin mustache, translucent skin, and uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere when I least expected. I didn’t think much of him then—aside from occasionally giving him a lift off campus during lunch so long as he sat in the backseat and didn’t smoke his cigarillos on me. He was obnoxious and disgusting, and he always smelled like ham. The day his exchange program ended, I assumed, would be the last time I laid eyes on him. I was wrong.

  Three years later, I’d just turned twenty and was studying for the summer in Paris. Everything about France was romantic and made me long for a boyfriend who owned a Vespa and couldn’t pronounce my name. I took myself very seriously and would sit in cafés for hours writing hacky Gertrude Stein–esque ramblings about how I hated my parents and held capitalism partially responsible for my anorexia.

  One afternoon, sitting in a park in the sixth arrondissement, pretending to be Anaïs Nin because she seemed hotter than Gertrude Stein, I noticed a series of numbers on the back of a card in my journal. Having never been to Europe, I didn’t know until getting there that these numbers were, in fact, a phone number. The card was from Bruno. He was a classical guitarist (hence the long nails), and this was a flyer for a performance he thought I’d give a shit about that happened two years before I met him.

  Having nothing to lose, feeling lonely and more than a little curious, I went to a pay phone in my hotel lobby and placed the call. It’s been three years, I thought. People change. Who knows, maybe he has short nails now.

  The phone beeped for two long beats before a woman answered on the other end. She spoke German, and I couldn’t understand a word.

  “Calling for Bruno. Ob-sessed-with-me.” I tried to explain, but it was no use.

  We struggled back and forth for several more minutes before she said something and hung up. I placed the phone back on the receiver when instantly it started ringing. Apprehensive, I picked up.

  “Hello,” I said, suspicious.

  “Jen. It’s Bruno,” a voice declared from the other side.

  His accent was thick, more German than I remembered. But there was something else different about him, a confidence I hadn’t noticed before. The more he spoke, the more I felt the old Bruno fade away, giving way to an erudite, worldly young man who most definitely didn’t smell of ham. He asked if I had plans for the weekend and suggested we meet up in Munich. Overwhelmed by his aggressiveness, I agreed.

  The nine-hour train ride to Munich was intimidating and more than a little sexy. I listened to Bjork and pictured myself in the “Jóga” music video—whenever I wasn’t mentally counting my daily caloric intake. It was pitch black when the train pulled into Munich Central Station. “Ach Ich Ich Ick Ack Euch…,” was all I heard blaring out of loudspeakers through the terminal. I translated this to mean, “Greetings, Jew-spawn with a shiksa nose.”

  As my anxiety mounted, I walked faster. Suddenly, a hand reached out and touched the back of my shoulder. I turned around to see a mini Joseph Fiennes circa Shakespeare in Love smiling at me with a bouquet of daisies in his hand. Bruno was a man now—a little man, with daintier hands than me, but still a man. His hair was cut short and his face was clean shaven save for two thin strips of muttonchops framing his cherubic jaw.

  “Jallo, Jen,” he said in a tone that made me forget he used to pin his bun up with chopsticks.

  I smiled and followed him to his car, debating in my head whether or not I’d make out with him later that night.

  By day, Munich was vast, green, and hotter than a packed boxcar. It was July, and the streets were filling with tourists. The city itself was stunning, and for me and my anorexia, the beer gardens proved infinitely scarier than any concentration camp. Bruno showed me castles and concert halls as he caught me up to speed on the last three years of his life. He told me how he was getting a master’s in economics in Germany while simultaneously getting a master’s in classical guitar in Yugoslavia, his parents’ native country. He told me how he was trapped in Belgrade earlier that year when Clinton “drop bombs” on Milosevic to encourage his withdrawal from Kosovo.

  “Nobody in Belgrade even knew what was going on in Kosovo. And yet, innocent people, women and children, lost their homes … their lives.…” He trailed off into a posttraumatic trance.

  When he came to, he went on to describe how the German embassy vanished overnight and how he was forced to escape Serbia by boat to Hungary with a fake passport and a loaf of bread. Bruno considered Americans ignorant of the world outside, as he put it, “their little island.”

  Hypnotized by his filmworthy story, I never wanted to set foot on American soil again. I wanted to run away with Bruno and right every wrong ever inflicted upon anyone ever! This was intense shit, and there was nothing left to do but embrace it fully. Perched under a tree in a giant beer garden full of simple sugars, I leaned in and kissed Bruno on the mouth.

  Later that night, I was completely smitten and past the point of making logical sense about anything. Bruno stood on the platform watching me board my train back to Paris with damp eyes and a heavy heart.

  “I’m ashamed of my country and I want to be with you! Maybe forever!” I screamed out my window as he jogged alongside me. Seconds later, he jumped on the train, grabbed me again, and made out with me until we reached Stuttgart.

  “When will I see you?” he screamed, waving his fanny pack.

  “Soon!” I promised.

  * * *

  Back in Paris, I looked at all the American college boys and scoffed. I thought about how prosaic their lives were. What war did they ever find themselves stuck in? Bruno and I transcended summer-love bullshit. Together, we were going to save the world and start a revolution. My cause was still unclear, but in time I had no doubt the universe would reveal it to me. So in the meantime, I just accepted that I was a great humanitarian and lay low while I awaited further instructions.

  After my studies ended, I took the first train out of Paris to Mannheim, Germany. Bruno, along with his par
ents, greeted me when I arrived. We went back to Bruno’s house (yes, he still lived with his parents) and had cake and cigarillos. Not only was I an amateur smoker, but I’d also never smoked in front of anyone’s parents in my life. It was sort of liberating how they didn’t seem to give a fuck and even offered me a pipe for my tobacco, as if I were Sherlock Holmes. So maturely European, I thought. Neither of his parents spoke English, so the conversation was mainly just a series of head nods and giggles. At one point I drew a stick figure of my father, then exed out three different wives. Bruno’s mom gasped and shook her head, thinking I was saying that my dad killed the women. Through the gift of interpretive dance, for which I have zero gift, I managed to clarify that he was just divorced but that there was one step-mom I wished he’d killed because she was a cunt. As the night drew to a close, Bruno’s mother escorted me to Bruno’s bedroom, which she tidied up with new sheets and bedding. She tucked us into bed and turned out the lights as she left.

  Maybe this isn’t totally fucking weird. Maybe in Europe all twenty-year-old men live with their parents and get tucked into bed at night by their mothers. Maybe, but I didn’t care either way. I was too caught up in the idea of Bruno, the brooding musician who caused me to forsake my American ideologies and question everything I ever believed in. I wasn’t going to let a little infantilizing dissuade me.

  That night, with his parents mere feet away, Bruno and I made love. It was unique for several reasons:

  1. He wasn’t circumcised. His penis looked like a normal penis wearing a skin turtleneck.

  2. He had a tramp stamp tattoo, just above his ass, of a dolphin jumping into a cluster of stars.

  3. I was apparently Bruno’s first.

  The next day Bruno and I walked around Heidelberg with our tongues stuck eight inches down each other’s throats, only breaking hold for rehydration and bathroom breaks. As dusk settled over the city, Bruno seemed to be growing more and more anxious.

  Dear God, was I right about him all those years ago? Was he a vampire? Was our consummation morphing him back into the monster?

  I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to keep my cool. Sweat seemed to pour down his face every time we made eye contact. We met up with some of his friends at a discotheque called Bikini that was straight out of 1989. I assessed the scene and instantly determined I was the coolest person for miles. Dudes were wearing neon gummy bracelets and high-waisted Guess jeans and the women all had side poytails and looked like they were being roofied with human growth hormones. Partying in a sea of people who would have gotten stabbed at my high school helped me momentarily forget about Bruno’s anxiety and my eating disorder. I basked in how superior I was to everyone else in the building. I’m the hippest, skinniest girl here, and I fucking love my body! I thought, dancing around like I was Kate Moss in a CK One ad. When it was time to go, Bruno tapped me on the shoulder with his baby hand and helped me down from the giant birdcage I was swinging in. We hopped in his car and prepared to leave when suddenly, he slammed the brakes and jumped out. I sat there confused as he bolted back into the club filled with Hypercolor T-shirts. Through the front entrance, I could see him talking frantically to some guy. He returned to the car with his friend Leo, a Mohawk in a fishnet tank. They mumbled back and forth in hushed tones for several minutes before addressing me directly.

  “We have to go to the hospital,” Bruno said.

  “Wha—? Why? For who?” I was scared.

  “For you,” he stoically replied.

  I thought, I’m sorry, what the fuck are you talking about?

  “Meine Mutter is eine Krankenschwester komm vorbei,” said Leo.

  I still didn’t speak German, so I didn’t know what was happening. Was it time for my steroid injection? Was my boyfriend an incubus? Would I eventually look like a total cougar dating an ageless undead boy with porcelain fingers?

  Leo accompanied us to a small house mere blocks away. He walked in front and greeted the woman standing in the doorway, who I eventually gleaned was his mother. More German was exchanged as she appraised me like a piece of meat. The only thing preventing me from having a panic attack was the pride I took in knowing I was definitely the hottest/skinniest girl Bruno had ever been seen with. Bruno explained that Leo’s mom was a nurse, and they were inquiring where we could find some morning-after pills.

  Apparently, Bruno was concerned he’d knocked me up. And now, apparently, everyone in his goddamned village was concerned he’d knocked me up.

  When you can’t speak a language, the impression you make on others is really determined by how your translator presents you. And my translator was presenting me like a fucking asshole. As soon as it dawned on me that Leo’s mom wasn’t checking me out because I was an adorable specimen clearly out of Bruno’s league, but because she thought I was some mail order cum receptacle, I was pissed.

  “But you wore a condom and didn’t even cum inside me!” I explained.

  “Jen, women can get pregnant with what happens first, ‘before-cum,’ you know?” he said condescendingly.

  He insisted we go to a pharmacy the next morning for, as he put it, a “baby-killing pill.”

  The next day, as instructed, we went to the pharmacy and got a pill. I swallowed it and waited for Bruno’s nonexistent child to die inside me. In retrospect, I probably should have extricated myself from the relationship after that. However, the drama surrounding our union was enough to hold my interest for another two and a half years.

  Every three months, Bruno and I would take turns flying to see each other. After the first year and a half, I spoke fluent German, was completely anesthetized to goatees, and loved weighing myself in kilograms. I’d graduated college a year early and was content with a geographically unrealistic partnership that enabled me to avoid reality. The majority of our relationship took place over the phone, saving me tons of calories in unswallowed semen. Bruno lived on another continent, where he couldn’t see the effects of my now massive eating disorder, and thought my being in a commercial meant I’d made it in Hollywood. The truth was, I was freshly out of rehab for anorexia, being supported by my father, and not even a SAG member. But Bruno helped me see how trivial my problems were in juxtaposition to those of the rest of the world. Whenever I tried to talk about being afraid of cashews, he’d say something like, “I’m afraid of flagrant Western interference disrupting the political process in the Balkans.”

  What I’m trying to say is, he could kind of be a dick. But at this particular time in my life, I told myself that I needed my worldview broadened by a dick, even if he did wear ascots and stonewashed denim jeans jackets. I believed in him, trusted him, and subscribed fully to his rigid ideals, including his belief that Kylie Minogue was the next John Lennon.

  But for all the insights Bruno offered, he was still just twenty-two. And ours was the quintessential young love destined for a fiery plane crash into a tall building.

  * * *

  It was late July, Bruno and I had just spent two weeks together pretending to be an autonomous adult couple in Los Angeles, and now it was time for him to head back to his parents’ basement in Deutschland. His flight departed out of San Diego, so we decided to spend our last few nights at my mom’s latest condo, in the Gaslamp Quarter. She welcomed us down and was more than happy for the excuse to spend a few days living with her new boyfriend across the hall.

  Craig was fifteen years her junior and closer to my age than to hers. He was a strapping Navy SEAL type who, if he didn’t already have a tribal tattoo, was definitely sketching one. Craig had a naïveté that screamed “one day one of my totally hetero guy friends is going to try to suck my dick and I’m gonna be completely shocked but probably not stop him.” I knew he and Bruno would have zero in common, so I kept their interaction brief in the hopes of avoiding another lecture from Bruno about the merits of socialism. My mom was constantly introducing me to new dudes who I knew I’d be lucky if I saw more than once. I found the best way to deal with this was to act really
interested, talk about the future a lot, then erase them from my memory the minute they were out of arm’s length.

  Bruno and I spent the rest of the day shopping around town and talking obnoxiously loudly about how offended we were by SUVs. Who knows where my mom went. Much like the high school vampire, Bruno, I just assumed she morphed into a bat, a wolf, or a mist, and I’d catch up with her later.

  That night, she did reappear (after sundown conveniently), and the three of us went to dinner.

  “Are you two just gonna miss each other soooo much?” she asked, as if she had any concept of love.

  “So much!” Bruno said. He gripped my hand like I was a child about to step in front of a bus.

  “I was thinking tomorrow, for Bruno’s last night, we could do the San Diego harbor cruise. Great appys, great view of the city skyline…” My mom trailed off, suspiciously avoiding eye contact.

  “That sounds great,” Bruno said.

  The San Diego harbor cruise was a dinner cruise I’d gone on once when I was in eighth grade and still thought choker necklaces were cool. It was more or less a ferry that offered food, music, and a chance for people to get super wasted before fucking the same person they’d been married to for over a decade. I wasn’t thrilled about the idea of spending the last night of Bruno’s visit on a booze pontoon, but it did seem less macabre than making each other tear lockets, something he suggested the last time we parted.