I suffer from peroxide phobia. Every time I've gotten near a blond woman, something of mine has disappeared. Jobs, boyfriends... one time an angora sweater leaped right off my body.

I have a massive phobia for schedules and calendars. I need people to tell me where I need to be. I can't bear to see it in black and white. I think it's a fear of being pinned down.

Compared to other liberal cities like San Francisco and Amsterdam, New Yorkers are always trying to do something, make art or love or money or whatever, and they have this phobia about standing still.

The fear of vomiting, which for me is one of the most original and most acute of my fears, is actually fairly common. Emetophobia, it's called, and by some estimates, it's the fifth most common specific phobia.

I'm also taking singing classes as well, not that I ever plan to sing in public in my entire life. I actually have a phobia of singing, so I decided to take some singing lessons to help me get away from the phobia.

Some people have a phobia of midgets. They're, like, scared of them. I have the opposite - I see them, and I want to hold them down, cuddle them, be like, 'Come here, you little nugget. Who's your mommy now?' So cute!

I'm claustrophobic. I can't go into haunted houses. They have these tight, dark, enclosed space. I freak out. That's my phobia. It gets me out of stuff. Someone asks me to do something and I tell them I can't because I'm claustrophobic.

When I was a teenager, if anyone recognized me for anything I did, it would ruin my day. I couldn't handle it. It was some sort of neurotic phobia. I guess I was paranoid that people would treat me differently, or in an unfair way, because of my job.

I finally overcame my phobia, and now I approach flying with a sort of studied boredom - a learned habit, thanks to my learn-to-fly-calmly training - but like all former flying phobics, I retain a weird and feverish fascination with aviation news, especially bad news.

In Paris, AIDS was dismissed as an American phobia until French people started dying; then everyone said, 'Well, you have to die some way or another.' If Americans were hysterical and pragmatic, the French were fatalistic: depressed but determined to keep the party going.

I do get in the water, but I was ruined by 'Jaws' 'cause I saw it when I was 13. Before that, I used to get in the water everywhere and never thought twice about it. After watching 'Jaws,' I was scared of the water. I have Steven Spielberg to thank for giving me another phobia.

My dirty little secret is I don't drive at all, though I have my license and I renew it every five years. I'm phobic. I keep worrying if I drive, I'll end up killing someone. I hoped that by writing about a car crash, I might understand and heal this phobia, but I didn't! I'm still phobic.

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