An even bigger humiliation came at a sneak peak of "Nightmare: Face Your Fear," a TIMOTHY HASKELL–created haunted house at CSV Cultural Center, based on polled New Yorkers' admissions of their 13 deepest phobias. (The other four boroughs have a Nightmare: Face Your Fear too, but I'm afraid to leave Manhattan to see them.) The brilliantly conceived spook house led you from dank room to dank room, each one dotted with people in surgical masks and blood-soaked aprons, forcing you to act out all your worst-case scenarios. Some of these motifs—fear of rats, clowns, and being home alone—were things New Yorkers confront every day, so that was no sweat. But once we were ordered to run on a shaky, strobe-lit ramp, then climb into a dark hole in the wall, I started crying and had to be escorted to the exit as one of the blood-soaked droogs generously dropped character and said, "That's OK, honey." Now I'm living with disadumbassophobia—a deadly fear of being made fun of for being a wuss.

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