Eat Me

by Linda Jaivin

  “Piss off.”

  “Oh, Norma, don’t be like that.” He stuck his tongue in her ear and poked her gently in the ribs with his fingers at the same time. He tickled her ass with his dreadlocks. She reached back to flick them away with an irritated gesture. He nibbled on the back of her thighs. She was furious, humiliated, but most of all—though she was determined not to admit it to him, at least not right away—terribly amused despite herself. She tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he pursued her.

  “I said piss off!”

  “Look at her.” Helen shook her head and laughed. “She’s a million miles away.”

  Julia snapped to. “No I’m not. I was just, uh, thinking.”

  “Why did you say the date was just ‘okay’?” Chantal persisted. “What happened? Didn’t things work out?” Chantal loved her friends and wanted things to go well for them always. On the other hand, she was convinced that all relationships were like the Titanic—no matter how splendid they appeared to be, they would unerringly find an iceberg and sink. And when they did, she wanted to know every detail of the disaster.

  “Oh, yes and no. I think I’m going to give up on younger men,” sighed Julia. “Unstable creatures. More trouble than they’re worth. I’m going to look for a mature specimen next. But I’m thinking of trying radical celibacy for a while first.”

  The other three widened their eyes and looked at Julia with disbelief.

  She and Jake didn’t get out of bed until three that afternoon. She lost track of the condoms. Jake went to the local shop to buy them some lunch—with her money, of course—and came back with strawberries and Homer Hudson’s Chocolate Rock ice cream. They ate nearly the whole container. “Well, I’d better be going,” he said through lips limned with black chocolate. He probed his chin for pimples. “I’ve got to go home and break out.”

  Just as he was walking out the door, Julia suddenly remembered something. “What was that thing about vegetarians?” she asked.

  “Vegetarians? Oh, I used to see this girl who was a vegan.”

  “Yeah?” said Julia. “And?”

  “Well, she refused to have oral sex.”

  “Silly girl. But what does that have to do with her being a vegan?”

  “She didn’t, you know, believe in swallowing animal proteins.”

  Julia snorted with laughter as she shoved him out the door. They were seeing each other again in a few days. But he was to stop calling her Norma, she’d told him, or he’d be in big trouble.

  “Yes, celibacy. Really,” said Julia, straight faced. “I mean it. Besides, why do I have to be the one who has to give a blow-by-blow account—so to speak—of my love life? Philippa’s allowed to be mysterious about hers, Chanties allowed to be mysterious about hers. Helen’s mysterious about hers.”

  “I am not mysterious,” Helen objected. “I don’t have a love life.”

  “Neither do I,” chimed Philippa.

  Chantal arched an eyebrow. “Nor I.”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Julia with a sigh, tipping her cup and studying the dregs of coffee in the bottom. Looking up, she suddenly brightened. “Check this one out,” she whispered. “Looks like Jerry Seinfeld.”

  “I know him,” said Chantal. “He’s a VJ for the Green Channel.”

  “Cool,” commented Julia. “A star.”

  “A star’s a star,” Chantal shrugged. “But he’s the wrong sexual orientation for you, darling.”

  While the others launched into a discussion of why the prettiest boys were always gay, a name bounced around, just out of sight, in the murky regions of Philippa’s brain. Each time she tried to shine her mental torch on it, it hid itself behind another tree. Jason? Jonathan? Justin? Julian? Jeremy? Jay? Suddenly, it popped out and waved. “It’s me, Jake! It’s Jake!” That was the name of the boy she’d met at that party in Glebe, the name that went with the phone number on that scrap of paper she’d found in her pocket a day or two later. She wondered if she should call him.

  “And what are you smiling about, Philippa?” Chantal queried.

  “Oh, nothing,” she replied.

  Chapter Three –

  Roast Lamb

  “Do you fancy Seinfeld then?” Chantal had taken Julia’s glass and was refilling it from a bottle of shiraz.

  “Ta,” said Julia. “Not as much as Kramer. I suspect Kramer’s hair isn’t the only thing that’s kinky about him.”

  Over a week had passed since their meeting at Café Da Vida and the girls were having a TV veg-out evening at Chantal’s place in Potts Point. Seinfeld had just delivered his closing monologue. Julia sat curled up on Chantal’s prize Norman & Quaine zebra-striped armchair. All in black from her T-shirt to her leather mini and opaque stockings, she looked like a panther relaxing on its quarry. Philippa, who was sitting on the floor and leaning against Julia’s chair, had picked up the remote and was channel surfing.

  Helen picked distractedly at a spot of tomato sauce on her favorite beige skirt where she’d dropped a bit of gourmet pizza. Wood-fired, half smoked trout, half Moroccan lamb—and it still left exactly the same sort of spots on your clothing as pepperoni and mushrooms. “So unfair,” she commented to the others. “Whatever happened to value for money?” She sighed. “You might say it’s the perfect end to a bad hair day.”

  “Why?” asked Philippa. “What happened today?”

  “You know the class I teach at the university on feminist theory?”

  “Not personally,” Julia chuckled. “Not in the biblical sense.”

  “Oh, hardi har har, darling.” Chantal rolled her eyes.

  “Anyway,” continued Helen, ignoring them, “we were discussing Naomi Wolf’s The Beauty Myth. There’s this boy in the class, Marc. He’s one of those politically correct and attractive male students who always pop up in women’s studies courses—you can imagine the type. Anyway, we were talking about how society typically rewards women who conform to standards set by the beauty industry. He raised his hand and said, ‘Ms. Nicholls, I think you’re a great example of how women can avoid being trapped by the beauty myth.’ ”

  “He didn’t, darling.” Chantal was shocked.

  “He did,” Helen replied, mournfully. Helen could be a bit sensitive about body issues. On the one hand, she was an intelligent being, a feminist, and a woman of the nineties. On the other, she hated her ankles; worried about her thighs; and when no one was looking, made small but despairing fistfuls out of the soft flesh that had settled, apparently for the long-term, around her waist and hips. “He even said if I’d written the book instead of the naturally glamorous Naomi Wolf, it’d probably have a lot more credibility.”

  “Bastard!” cried Julia.

  “No, I know he meant it as a compliment,” Helen defended. “He really did. He’s not malicious or anything. But it certainly knocked me for a loop. What he’d done, of course, was invite all my deepest insecurities to come out and play. You know: I’m fat, I’m unattractive, I’m unfashionable. I’m a dag.”

  “Hellie, you idiot,” Julia objected, scrambling to sit up straight in the big chair, “you are not fat, ugly, or unfashionable. Or a dag. You’ve got great boobs, sweet looks, and your own sense of style. Anyway, I think you’re gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, but you’re my friend.” Helen moped. “And you can’t be gorgeous when your eyebrows are this close to your eyes”—she pinched her eyebrows farther down onto her eyes for dramatic effect—“and when you’ve got thin lips. C’mon Jules. You read fashion magazines. You know that’s true. And you, Chantal, you edit Pulse for Chrissake. When was the last time you ran a fashion spread featuring models with figures even approaching mine in size? I’ll never be a waif or a gamin,” she moaned.

  Chantal wore the guilty expression of a little girl caught with her hand in the cookie jar.

  “Oh, Chantie,” Helen said. “I know it’s not your fault. We’ve talked about it before. The advertisers would never let you use ‘normal’ women on the fashion pages. I know. Don’t mind m
e. I’m just having a stupid fat attack.”

  “But Helen, surely you should be the last person to be carrying on like this,” Philippa protested. “You’re a feminist, for Christ’s sake. You don’t accept commercially enforced notions of female beauty. You are appalled by anorexia. You are outraged at the fashion industry’s manipulation of women’s sense of self-esteem and confidence. Remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. It’s indefensible. I’d never admit it in public. But, truth is, for the rest of the day I was obsessed by the thought that I really ought to at least update my wardrobe and buy a new lipstick.”

  “Oh, darling, I’ll go with you,” gushed Chantal, relieved. “There are some fantastic sales on at the moment.”

  “That’d be great, actually.” Helen forced a smile. “You know, the funny thing is, and I don’t want to sound too bitchy about it, but Marc goes to a fair amount of trouble himself with his clothes and his looks. He shaves his head—well, a ‘number two,’ he calls it—leaving only two baby pigtails above either temple.” Helen put her hands up to her head and wiggled her forefingers to indicate their position. “And he’s dyed these lime green. He secures them with little clips—today they were pink ones in the shape of elephants. And he wears things like retro nylon shirts over baggy black trousers and black-and-white sneakers. Sometimes he wears dresses. He talks about ‘gender-free’ dressing. I mean, he’s clearly allowed to buy into a beauty myth of one kind or another.”

  “Typical man.” Julia shook her head. “Double-standards R Us.”

  Helen grimaced. “Yeah, no, maybe I’m being unfair. He’s really quite likable, a bit of a honey, really; and he’s smart; and he actually does all of the reading for the course. Which is more than I can say for some of my women students.”

  “Then again,” Chantal noted, “if you were a man taking women’s studies, you’d look like a real fraud if you weren’t putting in any effort.”

  The same aging pop star to whom Jake had taken exception that night with Julia appeared on the tube again. “Oh, puh-leeese,” Chantal exclaimed, “remove that boof-head from my sight. Now.” She grabbed the remote control and switched to another channel. “I simply won’t have him in my living room,” she declared. A current affairs program was just wrapping up a report from the Paris fashion shows.

  “Do you know what your problem is, Helen darling?” Chantal opined as the catwalk faded from view. “To misquote that mortal pop song, you’re just too sexy for your skirt.”

  Helen looked down at her lap and remembered the stain. “Oh God, that tomato is going to be murder to get out.”

  “I’ll get a wet cloth,” Philippa volunteered, rising and heading into the kitchen.

  Helen studied her whole outfit, seeing it as if for the first time: conservative white blouse, beige pleated skirt of about knee length, brown cardigan, brown leather belt. Maybe the pizza stain was a sign from God. After all, if She created women in her own image, She’d be pretty concerned about what they were doing with it. But hold on, weren’t beige and brown supposed to be coming in again? Chantal had complimented her on her brown leather tie-up ankle boots with the little heels, after all.

  Philippa emerged with a cloth and a glass of water. “Here,” she said, passing them to Helen. “Pat, don’t rub. By the way, did you know that tomatoes were once called ‘love apples’? They were believed to have aphrodisiac powers.”

  “Surely not in the form of pulp on clothing,” Helen replied.

  Philippa shrugged. Helen worried the spot with the damp cloth. “Thanks. That’s a bit better.”

  Chantal, having refilled glasses of red all round, now sprawled decoratively on the sofa beside Helen. “I didn’t exactly have a drama-free day either, if you really want to know,” she announced, hoping they would.

  They did.

  “We were doing a photo shoot with Jessa at Circular Quay. Do you know Jessa, that model with the shaved head and tattooed neck who can usually be spotted mainlining short blacks at Tropicana’s?”

  “I’m sure I’ve seen her,” Philippa said.

  “Anyway, she’s what you might call a cerebro-atmospheric individual.”

  “A what?” Helen asked.

  “Airhead. And she happens to be a paranoid coke addict as well. Charming to work with under the most ideal circumstances, as you might imagine. Anyway, we were planning on posing her with two Dalmatians down at Circular Quay for a series of photos with ferries, the Opera House, and whatnot in the background. She was wearing a series of black-and-white vinyl minidresses. You can imagine the crowd that gathered. It’s not like shooting anywhere else in the city where people actually have lives. You know, where they stop for a minute to look, glance at their watch, and move on? At the quay it’s all either tourists or people killing time waiting for a ferry; and within seconds we had a crowd of, oh, maybe a hundred people watching us set up. Well, I don’t know what that girl douches with, but as soon as those dogs were handed over to her, they both immediately dove for her crotch. I swear, it took both their handlers to pull them out of her skirt. The crowd roared with laughter. She, of course, had a breakdown on the spot. She even accused me and the photographer of trying to humiliate her, of planning it all. It took ages to repair her makeup after all those tears.”

  “Have you ever had a dog lick you out?” Julia asked the others.

  “No!” Helen looked at Julia with intense curiosity. “Have you?”

  “Uh, no, no, of course not,” Julia responded. “Just wondering if any of you had.”

  “Joo-li-ya,” coaxed Philippa. “Tell the truth.”

  “Leave me alone,” Julia protested, blushing. “If you want to know the truth,” she said, changing the subject, “I haven’t exactly had a model revolutionary opera of a day either.” She sighed dramatically and took a sip of her wine.

  “What happened?”

  “Well, I was racing to finish up some photos for a magazine story on Chinese artists in Sydney.”

  “You’re getting obsessed with China, aren’t you, Julia?” Philippa interrupted. “When is it you’re going on that cultural exchange program?”

  “January. Can’t wait. Anyway, would you believe, I dashed into the magazine offices at four fifty only to learn that the editor was canceling the story because some idiot had told him that Vietnamese were the new multiculti flavor of the month?”

  “Bummer,” Philippa sympathized. “But don’t they have to pay for the photos anyway?”

  “So you’d think,” Julia said, nodding. “But no, the bastard sleazed out of paying me a kill fee. He claimed he hadn’t actually commissioned them, that he’d just said he’d probably be able to use them.”

  “Asshole!” Now Helen was outraged.

  “Quite. And then he fobbed me off, saying he had to get the magazine to bed, and that he’d talk to me some other time. I exploded at him.”

  “Good on you!” Philippa approved.

  “Yeah, but I was really unprofessional. I called him a fuckwit, a shit-for-brains, a sleazebag, and worse. Then I burst into tears and stormed out of his office.”

  “Oh, darling, you poor thing,” commiserated Chantal.

  “So I raced home.” The Surry Hills warehouse where Julia lived was a low-rent, high-status place with poor plumbing; worse lighting; a few sweatshops; and a resident tribe of artists, photographers, and designers who wore nothing but black. “I waited for ages for the lift. It never fucking comes when you want it to.” It was one of those old-fashioned industrial lifts, a large cage in the center of the stairwell. “To top it off, Sarah, that pretentious performance artist, artiste, whatever she calls herself—I know for a fact that the only real job she’s had for ages has been checkout chick at a Kings Cross supermarket and that she’s addicted to romance novels—opens her door and this acid jazz floods out of her space. I hate acid jazz! I don’t give a stuff how sophisticated or trendy it’s supposed to be! Well, I started to sob all over again, and I decided not to wait for the lift. I pelted up
the stairs to my studio.

  “Slamming the door behind me, I flung myself down on the bed. Chocolate, I thought, I must have chocolate. I got up and did a search and destroy in the kitchen. You know, opening cupboard doors and banging them shut again, trying to find just a morsel of chocolate. Then I remembered I had some Chocolate Rock ice cream in the freezer. Wouldn’t you know it, the container was caught in the jaws of this major stalagmite-stalactite situation, and I had to chip it out from the ice. There were only about two scoops of ice cream left, and I was spooning them out and cursing and about to burst into tears again when the penny dropped.”

  “Don’t tell me . . .” Helen had guessed.

  “Oh yes. PMS. Isn’t that terrible? I’m so embarrassed about what I did with that editor. I mean, I was right and he was wrong, but still. I’ll never be able to work for them again, I’m sure. Do you think I should go back and admit I was suffering from premenstrual stress?”

  “Don’t be stupid, Julia.” Chantal shook her head. Her bobbed red hair—it was now bobbed and red—swung like something out of a mousse ad. “Never ever, ever admit to a man that your bad behavior was caused by PMS. It only reinforces stereotypes. Which isn’t a good thing even if they happen to be true. Besides, it confirms their sense of superiority.”

  “I agree,” Philippa had chipped in. Philippa was sitting back down on the floor, nibbling contentedly from the bowl of roasted peanuts on the floor beside her. She listened sympathetically to the others, but had no tragic stories of her own to contribute. If the truth be told, she’d actually had an excellent day. But she didn’t want to spoil the general mood by saying so. She’d done an entire draft of the second chapter of her novel. And she’d called Jake.

  A commercial came on for lamb. Julia turned to the others. “Remember that old advert where the girl passes up a date with Tom Cruise for a roast lamb dinner?”

  “Certainly do,” said Chantal. “Could you believe that?”

  “Actually, I could.” Philippa wrinkled her nose. “I’d take lamb over Tom Cruise any day. He doesn’t appeal to me at all. That’s because he looks so stupid.”