Amanda Filipacchi - Love Creeps

Nevertheless, he would seek out fullness in his life, even if that meant decreasing his chances for a promotion. He would do things that were enriching. Perhaps he would even try to demand three-day weekends. He wanted to balance work and personal life.

He was standing in the middle of the subway car, holding on to the pole, letting his body sway gently to the movements of his train of thoughts. Feeling uplifted, his eyes naturally lifted, and happened to land upon an advertisement for NYU’s continuing education program. The timing could not have been more perfect for either Alan or the advertisers. Alan got off at the next stop and took the subway to NYU and got their course catalog. He then got catalogs at Parsons, the New School, and the YWCA. And then he got more catalogs from bins on the street for the Learning Annex and the Seminar Center. He went home and stretched out on his couch with Pancake and his catalogs.

He was immediately drawn to classes like, How to Get Anyone to Return Your Phone Call, and Create Your Ideal Life, and The Confidence Course.

But he was also extremely attracted to a section in the NYU catalog entitled “Fire Safety and Security in Buildings,” and particularly to the class called Disaster Management for High-rise Office and Residential Buildings. He dwelled on its description: “This intensive workshop surveys the appropriate and necessary procedures to minimize injury and avoid loss of life in the event of major fires and explosions, bomb threats, terrorist actions and hostage situations, earthquakes, toxic accidents, and nuclear attacks.”

Building safety and getting his phone calls returned were not his only interests. There was a third. He envied artistic people and had a great desire to explore his artistic side, which, as far as he knew, did not exist. He just wanted to poke it gently and see if it moved. He didn’t want to take an art class that was too difficult and would highlight his incompetence. He was therefore delighted to find a fair number of classes that would probably not put too much pressure on him: Tin Decorating, How to Create a Tabletop Fountain Garden, Puppetry, and Potpourri for Beginners, to name but a few.

Alan read the catalogs for so many hours that he began coming across classes that sounded even more intriguing — downright fascinating — and he was always disappointed when, on second glance, he’d realize he had misread the classes’ names, and that the school did not offer courses called Internship in Poverty, Be a Maggot to Money, How to Tempt Your Way to the Top, Decorative Yoga, and Intuitive Poisoning for Beginners. The schools did, however, offer pale versions of those classes, such as: Internship in Property Management, Be a Magnet to Money, How to Temp Your Way to the Top, Restorative Yoga, and Intuitive Positioning for Beginners (also Yoga). Reality is so dull , Alan thought. Any mistake in one’s perception of it is inevitably more interesting than the real thing, and lucky are those who remain uninformed of their error .

When Alan’s bloodshot eyes finally made contact with How to Access the Goodness Within You, in the Seminar Center catalog, he was stunned. Goodness: what an idea. He suddenly felt that goodness was the way to go. What was more, the class met just one time and took place the very next day, which was perfect for Alan, who was eager to begin his transformative journey.

Alan slept well that night and arrived early Saturday morning for class, held at the Hungarian Church, in a room containing a large table around which the students sat. He was the only man. He hoped the women appreciated how rare it was to find a man who had any interest in accessing the goodness within him, and therefore how special a man he was.

The teacher arrived. She was middle-aged, heavyset, nunlike. Her gray hair was pulled back in a tight bun. He could easily picture her helping him access his inner goodness.

She stood at the head of the table, and began: “I will show you how the knowledge, passion, and nurturing of the goddesses can help transform your life.”

Alan didn’t really understand why the teacher was referring to goddesses. He glanced down at his school catalog, which he had brought along. His pupils constricted when he saw that he had misread the title of the class.

He rose and began tiptoeing out.

“Where are you going!” the teacher exclaimed.

“I’m sorry, I thought this class was, How to Access the Goodness Within You, not the Goddess.” He chuckled sheepishly.

“If you leave, you are doing a disservice to the women in this room. You are creating negative energy — the energy of withdrawal — which men love creating, and which is why we need classes like these. And you will certainly not have achieved your goal of accessing the goodness within you.”

“But isn’t this a class for women?”

“Look at your bulletin. It says, ‘A Workshop for Men and Women.’”

Alan found it easier to sit back down than to create the energy of withdrawal.

Everyone was then told that during this seminar they were to address each other by their first names, preceded by the words “Sister Goddess.”

Alan thought they might make an exception in his case and call him “Brother God Alan.” But they didn’t. The teacher said that since gods, in our sexist world, were still considered more important and powerful than goddesses, it would be unfair toward the others if Alan got to be a god. He would therefore be Sister Goddess Alan. No special treatment.

After embarking on a short lecture regarding the Greek goddesses, Sister Goddess Jane (the teacher) said, “Part of accepting who you are as a woman is your crotch. Those confident about their crotches are happy. By the end of this seminar, you all will be.”

The students were then each given a lump of Play-Doh and ordered to make a sculpture of their vaginas, from a gynecologist’s perspective.

Alan sat staring at his clump of pink clay, stunned. He tried to imagine what his vagina would have looked like had he had one. The other women began sculpting theirs right away, and Alan, wanting to fit in, began kneading. When he could no longer look natural kneading, he placed his lump of clay down on the table and, with a trembling finger, poked a hole in it and left it at that.

He sat on his hands, to make it clear he was done. Sister Goddess Jane immediately told him he had to make his vagina more detailed.

So he added a fish tail to the back of the ball of clay.

The teacher loomed over him. “What is that creature?”

“My vagina. If I had one,” Alan mumbled.

“It’s very offensive!”

Alan quickly collapsed the tail against the body and smoothed it out, which shrank the hole, which upset Sister Goddess Jane. She found it offensive that he had made the hole so small. She said it was a typical sign of men wanting to hurt women, of being excited by women’s pain. She added, “You probably wish there was no hole at all, right? Or just a pinprick of a hole, so that you could go in there and rip it open, and have it be tight, tight, because that’s all you really care about, your pleasure.” She walked away.

He applied his fingers to the clay, trying to feel as cool as a gynecologist. In his mind, he told the chunk of clay to relax, to take a deep breath. He even placed a little Kleenex over the back part of it. The goddess came back and pointed to the Kleenex. “Sister Goddess Alan. What is that?”

“It makes me feel more comfortable that way. It’s more … clinical, impersonal.”

She snorted and let him be, for the moment.

He made the hole big. Like a grotto. So big that having sex with it would be like having sex with air. But he had to be careful, for if he made it too big, Goddess Jane would say something. He knew she would say it was offensive. So he shrank it slightly, but still left it quite big.