Dear Girls Above Me

by Charles McDowell

  The girls above me behave differently behind closed doors, in their own personal space, than they do in front of other people in their own personal living room. Just when I thought I had them figured out, a curveball. Their little social inconsistencies were twisting my brain like a pretzel. Who were they? In a matter of moments, I went from annoyed to intrigued.

  As I was trying to put this puzzle together, the girls ushered me onto what I’d once overheard them call their “gossip couch.” Then they offered me a fancy kind of wine called “Pinot Grigio,” which I politely declined. “So, what’s your name?” Claire asked.

  “My name? Oh, it’s Charlie.”

  In unison, all of the girls let out an adoring “aww.” How was their timing so impeccable? They weren’t just finishing each other’s sentences, they were each other’s sentences. Maybe my first instinct was right; this was a cult.

  “Well, I’m Cathy, and this is Claire. We both live here. And these are some of our sorority sisters from our college days.” All I could think about was how far Darwinism would be set back if these girls were all actually blood related. I also found it strange that after being out of college for a couple of years adults would still refer to their friends as “sisters.” I don’t go around telling people that the guy who makes my coffee every morning at Starbucks is my brother. And I guarantee that Alejandro and I have a much tighter bond than these girls could ever have.

  Over the course of the next few minutes I was catching glimpses of the girls I’d been overhearing every night. For example, hints of their vocal fry (a way of talking in the lowest vocal register, making the words sound like a creaky vibration; think Kardashian-speak). As well as the unintended “ah” after a word. Such as “Thank you-ah.” Or “Nooo-ah.” This way of talking would sneak its way into the flow of the conversation like Anthony Hopkins’s British accent whenever he plays an American. Also, at one point, Claire wondered if some businesses were closed on 4/20. There were the girls I knew. They popped out from time to time.

  I became so enamored that I forgot to even mention what I was doing there in the first place. It was evident that they just assumed I was a new neighbor introducing myself to the tenants. My God, do people actually do that? Sounds exhausting. Anyway, I was debating bringing up the noise complaint when one of their “sisters” looked over at Claire and said, “You think Charlie would wanna play?” I was just hoping it wasn’t another round of FMK, or in their case, FFF.

  “Oh my God, do you want to play the texting game with us?” Claire blurted out.

  “Umm, I’m not familiar with that game,” I regrettably said out loud.

  They began explaining it to me, as if I were five years old. The idea was one of them would come up with a random text message for me to send out. It could really be anything, but their example to me was, “Ugh, I want a baby!” I would then start scrolling through my cell phone contacts, until someone yelled “stop.” I would then have to send that text message to whomever I landed on. The girls admitted to me they had been routinely playing this game since college and that “It’s literally the best game since Alex Trebek invented Wheel of Fortune!” I could think of at least fifty games off the top of my head that were better than this one. Like Jeopardy!, for example. But if there’s anything I learned from growing up with three sisters, it’s that you never argue with a pack of girls. With one girl, you might win an argument every so often, but you shouldn’t expect favorable results. With two girls, chances are very slim. Only a few men have ever pulled that off. With three girls, forget about it. Zero chance. I don’t care how slick or good-looking you are, no man has pulled off a dispute against three or more women. No matter what, the women are right.

  Cathy and Claire begged me to play. Perhaps I said yes because I was severely outnumbered, but before I knew it, my cell phone was out. I also realized another problem that might occur: The more I bonded with these two, the harder it would become to discuss the noise issue.

  “Okay, here’s your text message. Are you ready?” Claire asked.

  I thought about quickly deleting a few numbers from my contacts list, but I didn’t want to get penalized before I even started. So I anxiously nodded.

  “You have to text … ‘I’m stuck on the toilet; can you bring me some toilet paper?’ ” All the girls erupted in giddy laughter. If they thought I was going to send that text message to any of the people in my contact list, they were bat-shit crazy.

  “I can’t send that out. I have many colleagues’ numbers in my phone,” I informed them.

  “Colleagues? What are you, friends with my dad or something?” I did not believe I was friends with their dad. Also, it’s hard to have colleagues when you’re unemployed, but I was grasping at straws.

  “You have to send the text! That’s the game!” The game? That’s not a game. Pictionary, Taboo, Scrabble, Words with Friends—these are games. But I knew I wasn’t going anywhere until I sent out that text message. So, I began scrolling through my contacts. The girls cheered and clapped as if I were doing something of much more importance. Oddly enough, I got a bit of an adrenaline rush from the anticipation of who I was going to land on. Please don’t be my cable guy, please don’t be my cable guy.

  “And … stop!” Cathy yelled out. I lifted my thumb off of my BlackBerry and prayed for a landline or any other non-textable number. I looked down.

  “Aunt Nancy,” I said out loud. By the reactions I got from the girls, Aunt Nancy seemed to be quite a good pull. I was dreading having to send her a text about needing some toilet paper. I definitely didn’t have a “poo-talking relationship” with my aunt. Plus, she lives almost two thousand miles away in Arkansas, and knowing her, she would probably do everything in her power to get me some toilet paper. But without putting any more thought into it, I typed out the sentence and pressed SEND. A couple of the girls gallivanted their way over to me, giving me multiple high fives. Bridget even wrapped her arms around me like a boa constrictor, not giving me the opportunity to breathe. Is this what it’s like to be a girl? I wondered. When I’m with my guy friends, we pretty much stay in our own quadrants and only communicate with one another through inaudible grunts. I was happy “the guys” couldn’t see me now.

  My cell phone buzzed. It was a text back from my aunt already.

  I read the message out loud: “Honey, I’m in Arkansas, but don’t worry! I’m gonna call my friend Sherry who lives an hour from you and see if she can help out. Sit tight.” The girls fell on the floor laughing. I must admit, I found it rather funny myself. I couldn’t help but let out a chuckle in an Ebenezer Scrooge sort of way. The texting game was marvelously immature, but because all the girls found it so amusing, I found a soft spot for it.

  “Do it again! Do it again!” The girls egged me on. Luckily, I was immune to peer pressure. I had already made it through the tyranny of high school and college having never smoked a cigarette or done drugs; this was going to be a piece of cake.

  I shook my head. “Nope, I’m done.”

  “Oh, come on! But you’re so good at it. Like honestly the best player ever,” Claire said to me.

  All right, fine. Why not? I was practically a pro at this point. I whipped out my phone and began scrolling.

  “Okay, the text is … ‘Are you as sweaty as I am right now?’ And … stop,” they called out. Bam! Phil Salazar, my old violin teacher to whom I hadn’t spoken in at least eight years. No problem. And sent. I was on a roll.

  “Next,” I barked out.

  “ ‘Do you consider me a limber person?’ ” Claire said off the top of her head. “And, stop.” Jen Keeler. The hot mom who cuts my hair and sometimes trims my unibrow. I didn’t even hesitate. Boom. SEND. I was Michael Jordan and this was game six.

  “Oh, I know! Text someone ‘I love you,’ ” Bridget said, challenging me. I’ll do that; no problem, I thought to myself. What’s the worst that can happen? If I land on someone I barely know, they will probably just think it was meant for someone else, and if
I happen to land on my mother then it will make her entire month. A win-win situation. Weirdly enough, this was the most fun I had had in quite a while. So, I shuffled through the contacts once more until someone told me to stop. I let my thumb off of the scroller and looked down to see my next victim. Finally it settled.

  My ex-girlfriend.

  A powerful wave of sadness ran throughout my body. I could feel it in my fingers, my toes, my ankles, even my thigh muscles, pretty much anywhere that experiences feeling in the human body. The energy in the room shifted, and the girls could sense something was wrong. They didn’t pry or ask questions. We all just sat there in silence. It was beginning to get a bit awkward, considering I had only just met these girls. But somehow they could sense how uncomfortable I felt, again showing an acute awareness that was a stark contrast to who these girls turn into after midnight. But at this particular moment I had bigger fish to fry.

  “You don’t have to send it. It’s just a silly game we play,” Claire said to make me feel better. And she did. But at this point I had become a devout player of the texting game and decided it was only right for me to be gallant and play by the rules we had established. I typed those three little words and felt the mechanical ball roll beneath my thumb. I pushed it. Message sent. In my head I tracked its journey into space, watched it very briefly ricochet off a satellite, then make its way back down to our planet and into her phone. I wondered where she was at that very moment. Did she look the same? Was she still wearing that moisturizer that I didn’t like the smell of at first but grew to love? Maybe her new boyfriend was smelling it right now. Was she happy? I hoped not.

  “I don’t remember your name, but I want you to know that you’re totally hot,” Bridget interjected in order to break up the pathetic reminiscing in my head. Clearly she had gotten past the sandals.

  “Yeah, but you’d be way hotter if you shaved your beard,” Cathy said, weighing in with her two cents. The rest of them nodded, agreeing with her. So did the manifestation of my mother. I didn’t want to get into a discussion with strangers about my facial hair choices, so I just grinned.

  “Thank you for an interesting afternoon. I’m sure I’ll see you around the apartment building,” I said to them as I headed for the door.

  “Wait. We’re having a party tomorrow night, you should totally come!”

  My brain frantically searched for the perfect excuse, but the pressure of sixteen eyes focused on me longingly made it difficult to assemble one. I started speaking before I had any idea what I was going to say. “Tomorrow night … is a night … and the weather is going to be … good … so … I’ll be there.” Damn it. Maybe I wasn’t as good at dodging peer pressure as I thought.

  “And just so you know, the theme of the party is pastel-colored shirts, so wear your favorite one,” Claire said in full-on vocal-fry mode, which could only have been a result of the three bottles of Pinot they’d all drunk to kick off “Sunday Funday.” “We got the idea from US Weekly. Ryan Gosling has been wearing them a lot lately,” Cathy announced. Yup, the wine had turned them into the girls I knew them to be. Or maybe it was my Hall of Fame–worthy skills at the texting game. I won’t give the wine all the credit.

  On my way out, I was reminded of the real reason I was there in the first place. Funny enough, Claire herself reminded me:

  “Hey, are we ever too loud? Like you can’t hear us talking, can you?”

  They couldn’t have made it any easier for me. It was as if they were psychic. They lobbed me the perfect pitch, and all I had to do was smack it out of the park. Now it was just like telling an old friend to politely keep it down. Every high-heeled stomp, sleepless night, mind-numbing pointless conversation, gone forever if I wanted them to be. All I had to do was say yes.

  “No,” I replied.

  Maybe I felt sorry and didn’t want to embarrass them? Maybe I was self-destructive and this was my form of “cutting.” Or maybe there was a smidgen of a possibility that I actually wanted to keep listening to the girls’ conversations.… Uh, doubt it. Regardless of my nonsensical reasoning, there was one thing that was for sure: At first, I’d entered the dragon’s den as a knight intending to behead the fire-breathing beast, but I may have left looking like the dragon’s gay bestie. Regardless of how you want to describe it, my new “roommates” were here to stay, and I had better get used to it.

  THE GIRLS ON MOVIES

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “Seeing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo has made me wanna get a badass tattoo.” The Girl With the Star on Her Foot isn’t “badass.”

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  (Watching the Hunger Games trailer) “I play very different hunger games.” Yes, but anorexia doesn’t make for good cinema.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “There are these billboards everywhere saying the world’s coming to an end on Friday!” Does Harry Potter happen to be on them?

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “No! The ‘which Sex and the City girl are you’ survey I took said I’m Samantha. I’m so a Carrie!” Don’t beat yourself up, I got Miranda.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “How do I vote for Best Actor? If Bieber doesn’t win for Never Say Never, I’m done with movies.” Oh God, please be done with movies.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  Thanks for leaving on the DVD menu to 27 Dresses while you’re out of town. I’ve been meaning to listen to that loop 5,473 times.

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  I know you “like seriously love black people movies,” but that doesn’t make you “practically besties with Precious.”

  THEY WATCH SHARK WEEK

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “Shark Week is over!? But it was only on for like a week! Oh, wait a minute—” Nope, you already said it out loud!

  Dear Girls Above Me,

  “It’s Shark Week and the gays can finally get married?! Best. Week. Ever.” I’m glad you got your priorities in order.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  As I approached the door to my apartment with much trepidation, a hideous image flashed before my eyes. It was of Tania lying on my bed in the nude with Marvin and Penny by her side. In this fantasy nightmare from hell she looked at me and, in an awkwardly forced seductive whisper, said, “How about we show these pups who the real lovers are?” The imagery alone made me want to throw up a little bit in my mouth, but the audio I heard in my mind’s ear made me want to projectile-vomit. I listened for the chime of Penny’s collar but heard nothing. I knew I was in the clear.

  I opened the door and found my sweet little Marvin standing eerily frozen directly in front of me, not even a wag of his curly tail. He looked up at me with his watery eyes with such sorrow. I couldn’t tell if he had been hysterically crying or if his eyes were just glossed over like those of a prison inmate who just got a new three-hundred-pound cell mate.

  I distracted him with a treat, and he instantly forgave me. I wish humans would react as easily to such rewards. Can you imagine if you were in a spousal quarrel, on the verge of splitting up with your partner forever, and all you had to do was pull out a Snausage? It would be incredible. Any pent-up anger would be forgotten and all focus would be put into the glorious Milk-Bone or Greenie. And once the treat had proven successful in domestic partnerships, the military would want to get in on it as well. The Israelis could lob Dentley’s Meaty Whole Femur Bones over the Palestine border, and the Palestinians could shoot Jakks Pets Wrizzles across Israel’s border, and bam, I just gave peace to the Middle East. Perhaps I should’ve been an army general. But I have a deviated septum, so, you know, boot camp would be a problem.

  I sat down at my desk in hopes of actually getting some writing done. It’s just hard when the Internet has so many enticing popup ads, such as “Top Celebrity Beach Bods.” Even though I knew I shouldn’t click, I just got so much joy out of confirming that Matthew McConaughey was still number one. There are certain constants in life you don’t want to ever see change because
you find them so refreshing. I just hope to be long in my grave the dark day he’s replaced by Channing Tatum.

  But before I even allowed myself the chance to get Internet-distracted, I realized I was already reality-distracted. I looked down at my phone and was immediately reminded of the mortifying text I sent to my ex-girlfriend after falling victim to the girls above me’s texting game. I was curious if she was going to respond. And every second that ticked away lowered the likelihood that she’d text me back. Just like how the police say that after a kidnapping you have a two-day window to get your child back, and then each passing moment after increases the likelihood that you’ll never see your kid again.… Well, actually, I’m not sure if police say that; I’m just quoting Delroy Lindo from the movie Ransom. Regardless, she had yet to respond to my text, and I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. She was the type of girl who never looked back once her mind had been made up. I wished I had known that a few weeks ago, before I had come up with the ingenious idea to write her this e-mail:

  Subject: Food for thought …

  I have emotionally accepted that we are over (although I still cradle hope); however, we should have sex a couple times a week to smooth out the transition, don’t you agree?

  Her response:

  Subject: RE: Food for thought …