Stuffed Animal (bull), acq. 2002, Madrid

On giving and receiving gifts

I bought this in Madrid, after spending a weekday afternoon getting unexpectedly, painfully sunburned at a bullfight. I planned to give it to a woman I’d been dating, back in D.C. Actually, dating may be the wrong word. We hadn’t defined things, which made it difficult to know what sort of gift to bring her. Inexpensive artisanal jewelry? An art print I could roll up in my backpack? A couple pounds of Iberico ham, the kind from pigs who are allowed to roam free in the woods and then, in the last months of their lives, are fattened up on a diet of chestnuts?

I’ve always considered myself a good gift-giver, though like anyone I’ve had my hits and misses. At the tail end of college I bought my girlfriend a Banana Republic pantsuit, which at the time seemed thoughtful—she’d mentioned needing clothes for job interviews—but in hindsight I suspect she would have rather picked out her own. For Christmas that year she gave me a fountain pen, which is how I learned she’d never seen the movie Say Anything. But she also gave me a first edition of Raymond Carver’s Cathedral, which is still on the bookshelf in my study.

The bullfight was actually a series of bullfights, all featuring novilleros, or novices, which made the tickets cheaper. So did my willingness—short-sighted, it turned out—to sit on the “sun side” of the small stadium. I was only in Madrid for a couple days, in between Seville and Paris, part of a month-long solo backpacking trip I’d quit my job to take. I figured there’d always be other jobs. Probably it should have given me pause when I saw how sparsely populated my side of the stadium was, compared to the “shade side,” tickets for which were only a few euro more.

I think the strangest gift I ever received from a girlfriend was a DVD copy of The Reader, a movie I’d never seen and, to my knowledge, had never expressed any particular desire to see. That girlfriend also gifted me a set of bath towels, because apparently she found mine wanting. Which seemed like an odd gift, too, though I have to admit, they were pretty great towels.

The woman I bought the stuffed bull for, we worked in the same office, or at least we did until I quit. I worried that a month away would give her enough time to lose interest and move on to someone else, which only made the gift-buying more fraught. I’d convinced myself I was in love with her, but it’s possible I only wanted to be in love. She’d told me on multiple occasions that she didn’t believe in love, which at 25 I found intriguing, rather than irritating.

I had mixed feelings about going to the bullfight. It seemed rather barbaric. But also it was something to do, something I could later tell people about doing. In Seville I’d spent a lot of time reading in parks, which was a nice way to spend an afternoon but didn’t make for a compelling travel story.

The first couple novilleros were fumbling and awkward, never seeming to catch the rhythm of things. The third novillero got himself out of position and realized, too late, that he needed to run. The bull lowered its head and sunk its horns into his backside, lifting him by the pants, like something out of a cartoon. The crowd fell silent. But once he got up and brushed himself off, and we could see that his injuries were minor, people started to jeer and boo. That seemed cruel to me. He’d put himself out there, taken a risk, which was more than a lot of us could say.

When I was in second or third grade, my dad was at sea during Christmas, so my mom and I drove down to Florida to spend the holiday with my grandmother. On Christmas morning we watched my mom open her present from my dad, which turned out to be an oversized sweater, the kind meant to be worn long, over leggings.

“Is it inside out?” my grandmother asked.

My mom felt around inside the collar for the tag. “I think that’s just the style.”

“Is there something else?” my grandmother said. “Surely there’s something else.”

Later, that became a running joke between my parents: the year he bought her a sweater so ugly that her mother felt the need to console her.

When you’re dating someone, especially in the early going, gift-giving is a delicate dance. Too big a gift, or one that feels too intimate, can scare the person off. But something too impersonal—a DVD copy of The Reader, say—can bring on an existential crisis. Does this person even know you? Have they been paying attention? I wasn’t sure about the bull, to be honest. But at least it would come attached to a story. It was small enough I could stuff it into my backpack, provisionally, and make a final decision later.

The last novillero of the day was much better than the others. It was obvious right away. He had a confidence, an ease, that retroactively highlighted how anxious and tentative the others had been. The crowd roared as he led the bull around the ring with his cape and his shuffle-steps, adding his own little dramatic flourishes here and there. When he killed the animal, driving a sword into its upper back while leaping away from its final, swerving charge, the act was a brutal one, for sure, but the speed and skill with which he carried it out gave it a certain dignity. As a reward, he was handed the bull’s ear, which he held aloft like a trophy. People threw flowers, and hats. I remember wondering if they’d get their hats back. I remember wondering if I should be worried about how hot my face felt.

My dad’s mother, when she was still alive, each year for Christmas gave my mom fancy underwear. This always seemed strange to me, underwear from your mother-in-law. “At least it’s practical,” my mom would say. When I was younger, I had the bad habit of buying my parents books I thought they should read. Which I’m still reminded of, on trips home, because many of those books live on a shelf in the spare bedroom where I sleep. Sometimes my parents liked one of those books in a way I could tell was genuine, but still, you shouldn’t give people homework disguised as a gift.

I never gave the stuffed bull to the woman in D.C. At the end of the trip I emptied my backpack and realized I’d bought her too many things. I had to pare back. Which was just as well, because a couple weeks later she told me she’d been sleeping with someone else. At first I mistook this for a confession. But as she kept talking, the truth of what she was saying gradually dawned on me: she intended to keep sleeping with this other guy, which was why she had to break things off with me.

In a week I’m getting married. A couple Christmases ago, my soon-to-be-wife gave me an electric toothbrush, which struck me as a funny gift. “I mean, you’re pretty into brushing your teeth,” she said. Which was true, in a sense. A couple months before, I’d gotten a root canal, and I was trying to make sure that didn’t happen again.

She gave me other gifts that Christmas, to be clear. The toothbrush was only a minor, secondary present. But it’s the one I still think about, probably because I use it every day. Also: pretty nice toothbrush.

When I asked her to marry me, she had follow-up questions, which caught me off-guard. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was a press conference,” I said. Which made her laugh, but also she was serious about the questions. What did marriage mean to me? Why did that feel like a necessary step? We already lived together, with our shared furniture and cats. We weren’t religious. What would a ceremony and vows change about the equation of our life together? I didn’t have good answers right away. I told her I’d have to think on it.

Someone told me once that a good gift solves a problem the recipient didn’t realize they had. I’ve also heard people say the best gift is the one you want, but would never buy for yourself. A luxurious robe. An indulgent bottle of wine. A Kitchen Aid stand mixer in one of the limited-edition colors.

I’ll be honest, it kind of irked me when my partner didn’t immediately say yes. But I’m glad, now, that she forced me to think more deeply about what I was asking. She’s more thoughtful than I am in that way. She likes to do her research, consider her options. But once she makes a decision, she doesn’t second-guess herself, hardly even thinks about it again. If she’d been with me that afternoon in Madrid, we never would’ve sat on the sun side of the stadium, I can tell you that.