One of these things is not like the other.

It’s taken years for my parents to learn that I am not at all like my sister. I’d always grown up in her shadow as someone assumed to be her identical twin—expected to copy her every move and interest. For years, I accepted this title, and even went so far is to order the same drink as her at restaurants, or rip the Rugrats image off of my overalls to appear more adult-like. But, years pass, and after what was probably six billion packets of Ramen, forty pants, sixty-three haircuts, and one Sally, I came into my own.
One thing that immediately set us apart was my unwillingness to work. I’ve always gotten through school without having to try. I never read my books, and spent minimal time on my homework. The worst part of it was, it worked for me. I got wonderful grades, and learned nothing from it but that I could skate by on zero effort. My sister toiled endlessly. One day my mom sat me down and shared some wisdom. “Sally, things won’t just come to you in the future. You’re not just going to be able to sit around and have things drop into your lap. So take a leaf out of your sister’s book, and explore. Put some effort into your life.” I love my mom, but she was half wrong. Sometimes, things just happen. Sometimes, research doesn’t require any sort of searching.
I didn’t expect to do anything that night but see a play. I expected the play to be fairly bad, maybe even terrible, but, as a writer, I’ve always enjoyed bad performances. They’re always a better story to tell. As I entered the modernized barbershop that had been gutted and wrenched into appearing theater-like, I tripped over the scuffed Doc Marten of the girl who would become my most interesting subject.
“Oh, excuse me. Sorry!” I accidentally defaulted to English as I pardoned myself from this faux pas. To my surprise, she responded in flawless American. “Oh hey man, no problem!” She touched my hand, as if apologizing for what was certainly my error. I swerved to avoid an enormous black woman as I walked toward my seat, only to discover that this small American girl was following me. Well, all right then. I offered her the seat next to me and watched her sit down into one of the rusty folding chairs that had been provided for us. That night, my hindquarters were vastly less bruised than my psyche.
First, she was a close-talker. Her face was only inches from mine, and her large black glasses that I suspected were worn only for fashion purposes slid down the bride of her nose faster than an accident-induced apology. But, she was pretty. Not just pretty, but attractive. If I were a lesbian, I thought, she would be my type: small, and with hair like an unwashed pixie. I thought about sharing that thought with her. No. That would be awkward.
“So what brought you here?” she asked.
“Well, my friend suggested this play to me, and I’ve always loved theater. What about you?”
“So last night, right, I was at this party—I’m staying with this anarchist feminist queer collective where there’s twenty-five women and one bathroom. I know, right? Anyways, so I was at this dance party, which was craaazzyy maaan, and I was dancing with this girl who was an incredible dancer, I mean God. Amazing. So, she invited me to her play tonight.”
Well that sure was a lot of information that I didn’t expect. “Awww, is it a date?” I responded as if nothing in her response had jarred me. Apparently, to me, living in an anarchist feminist queer collective was as normal as dipping your fries I a Wendy’s frosty. But, I was certainly uncomfortable. Wasn’t I?
“I’m not sure if it’s a date. I mean, I hope so.” Her lips curled into a lopsided smile.
“I hope so too! So, what have you been up to in Berlin?” I leaned in further. She didn’t lean away.
“Well, man, Berlin is amazing. This is awesome, man! So the other night I went to this other play, I’ve always loved the theater too, right, and this one was soooooo interesting man. So the first act, this nineteen-year-old porn star dressed up like a baby gets up on stage. And we’re all cheering, right, and oh, it was amazing. She just, peed on us.”
“Wh-what? Did…. Did it get on you?” My mouth had been agape, but quickly closed at the mention of a urine shower. The only thing I could think to do was to keep her talking. Surprisingly, I yearned to hear more about her life. Never had I met a person who would volunteer such information, or enjoy, let alone attend, any activity that involved excrement as a form of entertainment. Where the hell does one even hear of such places?
“Oh no, I mean I was way far back, but it was so interesting. Anyway, the second act, another woman came up on stage carrying a duffel bag. She opened it and then walked off stage and we were all like wooaah what’s gonna happen? And then this woman in a burka comes out of the duffel bag and gets totally naked. Then, she brought out this dildo and yelled, ‘Who wants to hear me come?’ and we were all like, ‘yeaaaaaahh!’ Oh man, it was so intense.”
Surely this must be a dream. Surely things like this don’t actually happen. And surely, if in fact they do, then I certainly wouldn’t talk to anyone who would attend these sorts of gatherings. Yet I was riveted. It was like in the Middle Ages where dentists used to perform root canals in the streets and thousands of people would gather to watch. Morbid fascination.
“Have you ever seen a cervix?” She cocked her head to the side.
“Um, well actually yes, I’ve been to the gynecologist, so…” Nothing in me told me to react harshly to her questions. Nothing told me to say anything like “What are you talking about?! Who ARE you? I would really appreciate it if you didn’t touch my leg, and please stop talking about heinous public sexual activity.” I just, kept responding normally. Apparently blatant honesty comes easier than I expected.
“Oh, well then you know. Our insides are just amazing, aren’t they?” Then, she talked about the vagina for about five minutes, all the while seeming as if she were talking about a music idol, or the pope.
“Yeah, they’re great.” Suddenly unable to take anymore, I steered the conversation toward my experience in Berlin thus far. I’m sure she found it shockingly devoid of sexual pee-formances and lesbian dance parties, but she paid rapt attention to my descriptions of Berlin, and even asked questions. She was the most confident person I had ever met, and her honesty and openness were infectious. A little part of me felt uncomfortable in my own skin only because I knew that I would never be as real as she. Maybe, I thought, I am real. Perhaps I’m just different, and I enjoy different things. Maybe I’m just too normal.
After we concluded our conversation, the squeaky makeshift lights dimmed, and I sat back in my seat. It creaked. I was consumed by thought for the rest of the play. I couldn’t believe that my research topic presented itself to me so purely, and so accidentally.
I came to Berlin to study social borders. Before coming, I was curious about the issue of personal space, and the issue of the psychological barrier that prevents strangers from looking at or speaking to one another. My plan was to walk through the crowded streets, bumping in to passersby and noting their reactions. I did do so. It was interesting research, but even running in to strangers felt distant to me. I wasn’t involved enough. I knew that if I wanted to study social borders, I needed to get more social. I knew that I would only truly understand what makes people uncomfortable if I made myself uncomfortable.
Luckily, a man grabbed my crotch on the street. I walked down the streets of Istanbul, perfectly aware that my shorts showed much more than the acceptable amount of leg. Having lived in Turkey before, I expected at most some jeers or perhaps even brief butt-pats, but I didn’t expect a fedora-clad old man to mosey on up to me and get a hearty squeeze in. Well excellent. Now I’m uncomfortable. What was strange though is that after he did his deed, I just stood there in shock. I didn’t yell at him the only Turkish insult I know (“Hey! You’re a rude individual!”), nor did I shout or make a noise of surprise. I just stood there with my mouth agape, watching him disappear, satisfied, into a sea of safe, pants-wearing Turks.
When I am uncomfortable, I don’t act uncomfortable. This makes me wonder: is acting uncomfortable a conscious choice? Is acting uncomfortable merely a façade? Do people act uncomfortable just to seem more normal? Surely, if other people had been listening to the conversation I had with the girl at the play, I would have responded to many of her questions with a much more shocked attitude. I may even have left, and I certainly would have made fun of her and her shenanigans behind her back. But people didn’t listen. So I was just a naked version of myself.
Of course, I’m one hundred percent all right with nudity, both figurative and literal. But consider the classic nightmare: you’re naked in front of everyone. I’ve never had that nightmare, but I know that for many people, being naked is the worst kind of hell. In Istanbul, the girls decided to go to a Turkish bath for the evening. I had been to one before and therefore wasn’t the least bit shocked when we entered the marble steam room and spied a very old (and very naked) woman in the corner holding her phone up with one hand and scratching herself with the other. After being shunted into a changing room with Katie, I removed my clothes and covered myself with a towel. I walked into the steam room and noticed all of the girls glancing nervously at the naked women around us. They hesitated to take off their towels.
I removed mine and began to splash myself with hot water. The other girls followed my cue, and many of them seemed pleased to be doing so. Some others did not. A couple of girls kept their hands across their breasts the entire time, embarrassed to show themselves to the public. Watching them, I decided that it was possible to be actually uncomfortable, and to have that discomfort manifest itself physically. The girls’ eyebrows were curved upwards, and their lips pursed. They moved their bodies as if they were walking through custard, so that their jiggly parts wouldn’t jiggle. They turned themselves away from as many people as possible. But even while actual discomfort legitimately exists, it’s difficult to distinguish actual discomfort from discomfort that’s just for show.
In my sixth grade class, there was a girl named Audrey. At one point, we were very good friends. Every afternoon we used to spent hours on a website called Neopets that was considered deeply un-cool. We never cared. Then it was Thursday. We were in the changing room after gym class, and I started to talk to Audrey about our afternoon gaming plans. She laughed and looked around, shifting her eyes toward the tall bra-wearing girls in the corner. “Sally, don’t be ridiculous. I would never play those games.”
I knew that Audrey was just hiding the fact that she enjoyed such a nerdy pastime so that the cool girls would like her. Sometimes, it’s obvious when discomfort is just a veil. Frequently, however, it’s impossible to tell whether someone is consciously or unconsciously uncomfortable.
I used to spend afternoons on the Berlin U-bahns attempting to make my co-riders uncomfortable. I would talk loudly to no one, or sit very close to other Germans. Most of the time, they would shift to the side, away from me. Other times, people didn’t move. I tried everything I could to find a correlation between those who moved and those who didn’t. There simply wasn’t one. There wasn’t even a clear majority. In my search to find a clear-cut answer, I found nothing but the fact that people are all different, and that we’ll never be able to determine what makes people act the way they do, because more often than not, they don’t even know why.
Why did I act normal around the girl at the play when I felt strange? And why didn’t I act out when I had my lady parts invaded by a wandering Turk? To discover the reason why Germans shove on the U-bahns and yet can’t sit close to each other is impossible. Some things are just strange. I noticed a similar issue in Turkey. When we were at the hamam, the Turkish women were perfectly comfortable being naked around each other. They lay spread-eagled on the marble slabs without a hint of shame. Yet… they can’t wear shorts in public? It’s shameful to wear almost nothing, but perfectly acceptable to be naked?
Perhaps I didn’t get to do enough research to discover cultural causes of these social dynamics. As far as I can tell though, there are stereotypes about the Germans that hold water. Yes, they shove and also scoot away, but as my research showed, when confronted individually by a social abnormality, Germans react completely uniquely. There’s no way to tell whether this reaction is conscious or unconscious. What I did discover, though, is that people are shockingly accepting of social abnormalities. When I acted strangely in front of large crowds of people, the individual people dealt with it by commiserating with their peers. They made faces at each other that expressed discomfort, pain, or humor. When I acted strangely in front of people who were completely alone, they seemed completely okay with it. I’m convinced that the only thing that creates an abnormality is a person’s conviction that everyone else finds it abnormal.