An Essay I Wrote A Long Time Ago

This is only partially true now. . . most of the time I try to stay away from "big" shopping trips and macaroni salads, and many of the rituals have changed since early 2005.

Would you mind keeping your slobbery hands off my food?”

It’s 8 a.m. the day before Thanksgiving, and I’m having another argument with Slobbery, the kindly cashier I’ve come to avoid at the local A&P. She likes to lick her fingers before handling cash, grocery bags, and just about anything else. Like so many other finger-lickers, it’s as if without her special mouth lubricant, everything will slip through her fingers. She becomes defensive. I mimic her loud enough that she might have heard. I imagine her telling her son, if she has one, what happened. I imagine them tracking me down, beating me up. It wouldn’t be hard. I’m there all the time. And this isn’t an isolated incident.

I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, and it manifests itself in such bizarre ways, I almost feel like I’m bragging when I talk about my symptoms. I can count letters in words almost as fast as people can say them. I’m strangely adept at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. And, thanks to the rituals I’ve convinced myself I must perform to avoid disease, dismissal from my job, and the end of the world itself, it takes me almost 3 hours each Sunday to buy groceries.

Howard Hughes, the focus of the recent film The Aviator, built a multi-billion dollar empire in spite of his OCD. I’m just trying to navigate the deli counter. It isn’t easy. I’m sure the counterperson (is that what they’re called?) always waits until it’s my turn to sneeze on, sweat on, or just breathe too close to the meat he’s cutting. So, instead of paying for salami that may be infested with anything from the common cold to avian flu, I’ll argue with the counterperson and walk away mid-slice, or take and hide the meat package somewhere in the cereal aisle. . . and worry that I’ll be caught by a manager plenty eager to see me banned from the store. (My mother was convinced I’d going to jail for swiping squirts of Purell there. How could I resist? For someone with OCD, Purell is Penicillin, catnip, and heroin all bottled up into one wonderfully sanitized plastic container.

My germophobia is really only the tip of the iceberg lettuce. When my hypochondria favors heart disease, I cannot buy Hershey’s chocolate, not because it is inherently bad for me but because Barbra Hershey played a character in the movie Beaches who died of viral cardiomyopathy. When I’m leaning towards cancer, on the other hand, I won’t touch anything Nestle. (This is thanks to a made-for-TV movie called The Last Best Year. In it, Bernadette Peters has liver cancer—and a love of Tollhouse Cookies. My compulsions aren’t just irrational and random; they’re also based on some really lousy movies.) Lean Cuisine Meals and Yoplait containers touting breast cancer research send me rushing to the drug aisle to spot the name of another, non-fatal disease. (Seeing Tylenol Arthritis usually does the trick.)

When I pick up any item, I must play a list of words in my head, perfectly, without thinking of any “bad” words. If I do think a “bad” word, like “cancer” or “you’re fired,” the item goes back. If there are no more of that item, I must do without. It’s how I wind up with, say, mayonnaise but nothing to mix it into. (It’s like the scene in Ghostbusters when Dan Akroyd, is told not to think of anything and conjures up a giant Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man. It’s hard not to think of the words you don’t want to hear.)

Having OCD means knowing you are drawing attention to yourself, knowing you look insane, but not being delusional enough not to notice. I am keenly aware that people are looking at me, or getting angry when I pick up and put back box after box of the same pasta. OCD, unlike depression, can’t be described easily in a 30-second Zoloft commercial with a cute cartoon blob. People think it’s all about hand-washing, or they’ll say, “Oh—MONK!” . . . and they aren’t sensitive. (I wanted to pounce on a lady a few weeks ago who demonstrated to her husband how I had touched all the cans of tuna.)

I also know that my compulsions have less of an effect on my health than the globs of trans-fats and simple carbs I regularly inhale. I deal with my OCD by binge eating, and I know that the food I buy on Sunday will be gone by Wednesday. (There have been times when I’ve eaten an entire pound of macaroni salad on the walk home, sans utensils.) Still, it’s hard to let go of the rituals—and the macaroni.
On a typical Sunday, I’ll leave my apartment at 2pm. When I get home, it’s almost dark. I toss whatever meat and fruit has made the final cut into the fridge and leave the rest on the floor. That food has a 50/50 chance of getting thrown out, tainted with kitty litter that’s never touched it or the victim of a cleaning frenzy when my parents visit. It won’t be eaten tonight.

I’m exhausted, I’m starving, and I’m ordering a pizza.