Last year there was also a hullabaloo over whether we should spell panty with a y or ie. Carl wanted “pantie,” because the plural of “pantie” is “panties.” He also liked that both “pantie” and “jubilee” end in e. He felt there was a “certain symmetry to it that shouldn’t be overlooked.” Ashley led the panty-with-a-y camp, offering the simple and solid fact that “panty” is spelled with a y in the dictionary. Carl won, as usual, and so all our marketing copy and in-store signage said PANTIE JUBILEE! I jog to the conference room where Ashley and the rest of the marketing department are already gathered.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ashley says, “I am quite happy to inform you, this year we will be going with panty-with-a-y.”
Everyone groans. This means all our signage from last year has to be changed.
“We only had a two-percent increase in underwear sales last year,” Ashley says, “and so this year we’ll be trying panty-with-a-y.”
“Brilliant,” Ted whispers, “that’ll change everything.”
I giggle.
“Jennifer?” Ashley asks. “Something to share?”
My cheeks flush and I shake my head no. She goes on to tell us we have an additional “challenge” this year because Keller’s got the wrong shipment of women’s accessories from Brazil and now we have two thousand extra units of plus-size underwear to sell.
“Two thousand?” someone asks.
Ashley nods. God, she looks perfect today. She told me her husband proposed to her the day after they both graduated from college. He took her out on Lake Calhoun in a rowboat and he brought champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries, which was the only “kooky” part of the proposal. Ashley said after he proposed and she said yes and flung her pipe-cleaner-size arms around him, his knee accidentally bumped into the little plate of chocolate-covered strawberries and he got chocolate on his khakis. Please. If that had been me in the rowboat I would’ve bumped the chocolate, which I would try to frantically wipe off right before I capsized the boat, sending my engagement ring and fiancé into the lake. Of course if David had proposed to me, it wouldn’t have been on a beautiful lake at sunset, it would’ve been in a dive bar at closing time. He probably would have used a beer pull-tab for a ring. “Big panties are hot,” Ted whispers. “Granny panties are hot.”
“The brand name is also a challenge,” Ashley says. “They’re called ‘Guanos.’”
“Isn’t guano bird shit?” somebody asks.
“No,” I say, “bat shit.”
“Language!” Ashley snaps.
“Maybe it makes sense in Brazilian,” Ted says. “Maybe ‘Guanos’ is like ‘suenos’ and means ‘dream weavers’ or something.”
“People in Brazil speak Portuguese,” I say, “not Brazilian. We live in America. Do we speak American?”
“I speak American,” Ted says. “What’s rizzle in da hizzle phoshizzle?”
“All right,” Ashley says, “enough.”
“Shoot,” Ted says to her, “don’t hate a pimp!”
Ashley writes the slogan down. “‘Dream weavers’ is a start,” she says. “Sleeping, dreaming. Good. Is there any way to make them more appealing to young people? To the hip crowd?” This is why I hate Ashley, because she says “young people” and “hip crowd.” She’s always trying to be so cool and it’s like when church groups have hip-hop bands.
Just painful.
That’s one thing, anyway; David might have been an unemployed musician, but he never said stupid bullshit like Ashley and he never wore pleated khakis like Carl.
Never.
He also never played golf or went to country clubs or talked about weird corporate bullshit. He was real. I mean, he was a real jerk, but he never subscribed to anyone’s idea of success. He hated my job. He said marketing was just “putting a shine on shit.” I stood up for myself at the time, but as I look around the table at fifteen grown adults trying to think of a new name for jumbo underwear, I see his point.
Now the table grumbles and the PR girls say something about throwing a granny panty party and someone else says we should give senior citizens an added discount. Ashley flips her legal pad. “What about something like, ‘Dreams come true in your dream weavers’?”
“Or Disney it up,” Ted says. “Call them Bunchies.”
“Bunchies?”
“You know, underwear that bunches up. Put the right spin on it, and people think it’s sexy to have hot granny panties riding up their butt apples.”
“Bunchies,” Ashley says, ignoring the fact Ted said “butt apples.” “That’s kind of cute.”
“Why can’t we just be honest?” I blurt. “Why can’t we just say, ‘You’re huge and we finally found underpants that fit you’?”
The table stares at me.
Ted points his pen. “Or, we could shorten it and say, ‘Underpants that finally fit!’ We don’t normally say ‘underpants’ though. We’d have to clear that with legal.”
“Okay!” Ashley says in her sing song voice. “Some nice fresh ideas and a good start. I want a sales idea fleshed out by the end of the day.”
Back at our desks I throw a sleepwear catalogue at Ted. “‘We’d have to clear that with legal’? What’s wrong with you?”
He rubs his leg where I hit him. “What?”
“Oh my God, you had your nose so far up Ashley’s ass I bet you could taste what she had for lunch.”
“I was just helping.”
“I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“I thought I might as well save us some time, you know, not wander down the Jymnastics path?”
I groan. Jymnastics were these horrible cheap gym shoes for teenagers that had rhinestones stuck all over them. We bought them in Ethiopia or something and we worked all month and came up with the slogan GET NASTY JYM-NASTIES! to which Ashley said, “We don’t use the word ‘nasty.’ Ever. We also don’t rename brand products.” She made us stay late for days and rework the slogan and refused to pay us overtime, because we “were idiots.”
After work I have another online date. This time with a guy named AndyMN, who’s a Xerox salesman and plays acoustic guitar. I’m not ready. I haven’t done my hair or nails or anything. I’m still trying to get my head on straight. I mean, so what about David? So what if I’ve failed in the past? What has that got to do with the future? This guy will be different. He has to be different, just by the ratio of odds. People are different, right? There’s no reason in the world to think he’ll be anything like BigKev007 or Hungry_Joe or TigerGuy or OutdoorsyTom or Sixpakabs or LoveOnly4U or BoredofDating or HeyLadeez5.
I have decided he will be different.
Still, in case he’s an axe murderer, I text-message Christopher and tell him where we’ll be. I tell him if I end up dead he can have my antique vibrator collection. He’s the only one I know who would know what to do with it.
I get to the restaurant, La Belle Vie, which AndyMN picked, and I’m intimidated by how nice it is. The long drapes and the crystal chandeliers make me nervous, which isn’t good. Sometimes I have a little problem lying when I’m this nervous. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. The weird thing is I don’t lie in order to make myself look good, I lie in order to adapt to a situation, or make someone feel better, or fill an awkward silence, which often results in me looking quite idiotic. Like I have some unstudied version of social Tourette’s syndrome.
For instance, once at a party where I didn’t know anyone and I was feeling particularly chubby and alone, I managed to join a conversation and the topic of allergies came up. Somebody said, “I’m trying acupuncture for my eczema,” and there was an awkward pause, so I blurted out, “I have eczema, too.” This led to my new eczema-buddy and I talking about eczema and eczema treatment options for the rest of the night, and by “us” I mean the eczema-buddy talked because after my initial cursory comment about my imaginary skin condition—“I soak in milk and oatmeal baths when it gets bad”—I had nothing else to say. Why would I? I only knew about the milk/
oatmeal treatment from an oatmeal Lourdes of London bath powder I use, which says “good for irritated skin!” on the back.
Then there was the time I was on a church-sponsored field trip to Montreal, and totally embarrassed by my churchy American companions. They were so lame compared to the chic French-speaking Quebecois around us. I refused to speak English and adopted the single French phrase I overheard a little girl say in front of a doll shop. “Que très jolie marionette!” which I was told meant, “What a pretty doll!” I would say this and only this if I thought a Canadian was in earshot. I just repeated over and over, “Quelle très jolie marionette!” They must have thought I was insane.
Then I met some stylish, sexy Brazilian students who had high-tech cameras, really cool backpacks, and spoke English. They were way cooler than my youth group, so I ditched my church friends and ran around the city with them all day, taking pictures and horsing around. We were having a great time, at least I was, and when the sun started to go down and I felt their interest in me was waning, I said, “I know where the best bar in Montreal is.”
I was sixteen at the time.
Why I would say this I have no idea, because not only was I too young to get into a bar, but the Brazilians naturally decided we should go there. I should have just admitted to my lie right then, but instead I chose to dive deeper and take them on a circuitous, serpentine tour through the city. I thought for sure we would happen across a great place and I could simply say, “See? Here it is!” But around ten o’clock, one of them thought to ask what the name of the bar was and I said, “Cirque du Monde,” which I think loosely means, “Circus of the World.”
I knew at this point, statistically speaking, I was screwed. Because we were now not only walking around a dicey residential neighborhood looking for the best bar in Montreal, we were walking around a dicey residential neighborhood looking for the best bar in Montreal called Cirque du Monde. But I didn’t give up. I didn’t say a word. I don’t know what I was thinking, I was becoming hypoglycemic and tired and confused. They, too, were starting to figure out I was full of moose poop and finally one of them stopped in the street and said, “There is no Cirque du Monde, is there?”
I told them, no, there wasn’t.
They hailed a taxi right there on the spot, climbed in, and left me behind. I couldn’t find another cab for hours and it was three in the morning before I made my way back to the dormitory where my church group was staying and I got yelled at for wandering off without telling anybody, and the next night I was not allowed to go to the hockey game.
AndyMN the Xerox salesman spots me right away and waves. He seems like a genuinely nice guy and not in a bad way. He’s not mousy or submissive, he’s just friendly and secure. Plus, he actually looks like his photograph: thick sandy-blond hair and sweet brown eyes.
Andy offers to check my jacket, but for some reason I say, “No thanks!” and stuff it under the table instead. I’m sure he noticed this, but he didn’t say anything. Everyone notices everything on a first date, actually, in the first five minutes of the first date. All critical observations, interests, and judgments will be made then. Andy, however, is gentleman enough to pretend to ignore my odd behavior. Another point for him.
Everything starts pleasantly enough. We chat about the icy roads and the terrible driving conditions. Things are going good. Andy is attentive and interested and reminds me we’re having dinner, not just drinks, if that’s okay with me. I tell him that’s okay with me. Definitely. The waiter brings us a nice bottle of Chianti and after perusing the menu, I order the duck.
He orders the succotash crepes.
It’s only after the waiter leaves, Andy tells me he’s a vegetarian. At first I think he’s kidding, and then he assures me he’s not. Great, now he’s going to think I’m a heartless monster who enjoys ripping the face off something before I gobble it up. I think I might like him, so in an attempt to show him I, too, am an animal lover, I say, “You know, I love ducks. We used to have a pet duck.”
We both stare at each other.
I can think of about a thousand things wrong with what I just said, including but not limited to the fact I never had a pet duck. Eventually Andy picks up his wineglass and says, “A duck?”
“Yes. We used to have a pet duck.”
He frowns. “A duck,” he repeats.
This is not good, because as any seasoned liar will tell you, when people repeat your lie, nothing is going to make them believe it. I try to remember which way people look when they’re lying. I think it’s to the left. So I look deliberately to the right and say again, “Yes. A pet duck.”
Andy raises an eyebrow. Another bad sign. “What was his name?”
Now, I realize here I have an out. A chance to right the wrong, to stop and say, “I’m kidding! Who would have a pet duck?” and we would both laugh and go on about our superfun dinner, but I don’t do that. Instead I choose to go deeper into the lie and say, “His name was Quackers.”
“Quackers,” Andy repeats.
I only have one option now. Elaborate. It’s the only way out of a lie. Make it so detailed it has to be true. I begin to describe Quackers. I talk about his cute black feet and his bright orange bill. I say he slept in the house and he’d follow me from room to room. Cute Quackers! I say we had one neighbor who liked him and one neighbor who complained. Andy listens to me dig myself deeper and deeper, answering questions no one is asking. “No, he wasn’t really housetrained,” I say, “but we did get him to crap on cardboard.”
Andy blinks.
“Yeah, when I think back on all the animals I’ve loved,” I say, “I mean, you know, not biblically! Just as pets—I think Quackers was my favorite.”
Andy sips his wine.
“It was so tragic when he died. He got caught in the swinging door. Tore his beak right off. We buried him in the backyard.”
Andy looks at his watch.
Then the waiter comes and sets down my plate of duck. We both stare at it. I have been describing a beloved pet duck and now I am about to eat a duck.
Brilliant.
I try to redirect the conversation but it’s already over. I can see it in Andy’s body language. He’s listing to the left, he’s looking at the door, and he’s fidgeting. I pick at my pet duck dinner. He eats quickly, he hails the waiter over to take his plate, he hardly talks, which makes me chatter like a macaque.
Andy is true to his word. We eat dinner and he pays for it, all seventy-two dollars, even though I put up a really good fight for the bill. He does not want coffee or dessert, which I also offer to buy. Really, I’d buy him anything at this point, including a helper monkey or a set of radial tires, if only they would set things straight. But of course, they will not.
At the door of the restaurant he shakes my hand good-bye, which we all know is just as good as spitting on it. Despite wanting to yell at him for making me feel so awkward, I also want to give him his seventy-two dollars back. I don’t even deserve a decent boyfriend.
On the way home I start crying in the car. Not bawling, just a steady weep. I call Christopher and leave a message. “It’s not them,” I say, voice wavering. “It’s me. I’m the problem. I’ve been saying guys are jerks and dicks and insensitive and stupid when actually I’m the jerk! I’m the dick! I never act like myself and then I can’t keep up the act, or worse, I do act like myself and they get the hell away from me! I am going to be single forever. That’s it! No more dates, no more online stalker chats, no more anything! A girl can be happy with just a cat! She can!”
I’m so sick of the wanting and waiting and wondering. Of harboring old wounds and guarding deep secrets and nursing along emotional injury after emotional injury. When does it stop? What did I do to deserve this? I storm into my apartment and hunt down everything that reminds me of David, every photograph of us together, every matchbook from our favorite restaurant, every piece of clothing he bought me: two sweaters, a white nightie, and an unworn string bikini. His tatty old black jean jacket
, which I told him I didn’t have but did. And I even unearth the dog-eared journal I filled up writing about our painful demise. Then I stack it all in the bathtub.
I should have done this a long time ago. Dr. Gupta recommends creating signifier icons for past relationships, too, and then burning those up, so I get a piece of paper out and draw two pieces of a broken heart on it, along with a guitar that looks like Mr. Peanut and then, because I don’t think the pictograms are really doing it for me, I just write DAVID in big block letters and then SUCKS.
I go down to the backyard and dig out the frozen can of lighter fluid from under the ice-encrusted barbecue and carry it back inside, tossing it from hand to hand as my fingers freeze. In the bathroom I set the can down, ceremoniously draw the shower curtain back, and roll up the squidgy bath mat, the backside of which looks like a potato field. Then I stand over my mound of misery memories and squirt every inch down with lighter fluid.
Now for a match.
You’d think I’d have a match, wouldn’t you? Possibly plenty of matches? But I look everywhere and I don’t. I have to dig out a sodden matchbook from inside the heap. Fine. I think I can make that symbolic somehow. One of our matches is destroying our memories. I think that works. I take my piece of DAVID SUCKS paper and set it on top of the pile and say, “With this fire I release you,” and strike the match.
When I light the match, however, I also accidentally light the entire book of matches. My auto-response is to do a little shriek and kick and throw it at the tub. Hard. I miss the memory heap completely and the flaming matchbook lands on the edge of the tub, where it licks at the canvas shower curtain. I use my foot to try and knock the matches down into the tub, but that just shoves them up against the shower curtain, which now catches on fire.
Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Single Page 7
