If You're Not Yet Like Me

by Edan Lepucki

  Also from Nouvella

  * * *

  Your Rightful Home

  Alyssa Knickerbocker

  The Last Repatriate

  Matthew Salesses

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  IF YOU’RE NOT YET LIKE

  ME

  Copyright Edan Lepucki

  2010 (c)

  ISBN

  978-0-9836585-0-4

  Ebook ISBN

  978-0-9836585-0-4

  A Nouvella e-book / published 2011.

  Cover and typography by Elijah M Jenkins.

  All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may

  not be reproduced in any form without permission from the pulisher.

  For more information visit

  www.nouvellabooks.com”

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  If You’re Not Yet Like Me

  I Am the Lion Now

  Author Interview

  If YOU’RE

  NOT YET LIKE

  ME

  The same day I met Zachary, my landlord installed a new bathtub faucet. All new pipes, too. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Oh, Joellyn, what does that have to do with anything?” To which I reply: Everything, Baby, everything.

  You see, the faucet in the bathroom had been leaking for months, and when the landlord—that cheap bastard from Diamond Bar—finally fixed it, a pillowy silence fell over the apartment. No more ghost creek behind the bathroom wall, no more rusted faucet that drooled water, drought be damned. No more guilt, no more nuisance; at least I could check those off my list. I was so pleased I drew a bath that afternoon.

  It didn’t take me long to notice how great my tits looked in the shiny new faucet, the reflection rounded, as if I were admiring myself in a brass doorknob. My breasts from this perspective were big, far bigger than they were normally. They were girlish and womanly at once, the nipples wide-eyed, like they’d just walked into their own surprise party.

  I know what you’re thinking: “All right already, Joellyn. I get it,” but the emphasis here is important. You must know that I stood up from the tub just as a woman with large, beautiful breasts would. If I’d had an avatar, you could say I became her. If I were an actress, and I had been asked to play a younger version of myself, in a flashback perhaps, my chest would have had to be bound, and it would have been very, very painful. You could say that.

  I imagined this new body as I stepped out of the bathroom and threw on some clothes. I twisted my hair into a sloppy bun, which seemed like something I might do. Women who wear serious bras, outfitted with wire and clasps big as fish hooks, can’t be bothered with blow-driers. When I tie my hair into a knot, it dries so slowly. It’s how I wear it now, now that my body is changed. I think of it as a kind of training ground. By the time you’re born, those rituals will be sucked away altogether, along with sleeping through the night, and dining in dimly-lit restaurants.

  It was in this mood that I went to the corner coffee shop. I refuse to say coffee house, because it’s nothing like a house; it’s not welcoming at all. It’s the kind of place with dumpy brown couches, a perpetually out-of-order bathroom, bad art on the walls, and a front patio littered with nineteen-year-olds who smoke cigarettes and braid suede belts to sell at Burning Man. Once, an insane man came in and threw the gumball machine across the room, and the guy behind the counter just looked up from the milk steamer, bored. I hate it, and I go there all the time. Or I did. After Zachary, I couldn’t go back.

  We were both in line that day, one of those afternoons where only one person is manning the place and suddenly everyone wants a complicated espresso drink, or something blended, or, oh shit, two Sopressata Panini. We were waiting for so long we were bound to start talking.

  He asked me what I was going to order. I was ahead of him in line.

  “Drip coffee,” I said. “To go.”

  Zachary nodded. A computer bag was slung across his chest. He eyed the room, and I knew he was after a table.

  “Go ahead,” I told him. “I’ll keep your spot in line.”

  He thanked me and rushed to deposit his bag on one of the two free tables. It was a black shoulder bag, dust clinging to its underside, and I thought I saw an insignia on the front pocket. The bag had been free, I decided; it was something you might get for volunteering, or attending a conference, a bag that shouldn’t really be used, not seriously at least.

  “Thanks,” he said again, after he had deposited himself back in line.

  A word about Zachary. He’s not ugly. This isn’t about symmetry; his face is fine. It’s more that he is bland, invisible in the way certain men in their thirties are. He has brown hair and brown eyes. He’s a little doughy in the belly. He is neither tall nor short, and his clothes are only distinct in that they’re completely indistinct. The first time I saw him, he was wearing loose jeans and a striped polo shirt. The requisite sneakers. When a man dresses like a boy, turn and run. That sounds like something a mother would say, doesn’t it?

  The coffee shop boasts dozens of men like Zachary. They drink their coffee, they surf the internet, they work on their scripts, their cell phones waiting dumb on the table. Later, Zachary told me he went to the coffee shop occasionally, but if we’d crossed paths before, I don’t know. Like I said, he was invisible. Until he wasn’t.

  On any other day, our interaction would have ended there, but remember, I’d recently had my bathtub faucet replaced, which gave me big lovely tits, even if they were only pretend. I’d practically glided into the place; I could have been wearing a bridal gown, or a sexy Halloween costume, or liquid eyeliner. I was pretty. I was reckless. I carried the conversation further. “You’re here to get some work done?” I asked.

  He was looking for jobs. “I don’t have internet at home,” he admitted. He’d been a temp for the last eight months, he said, since moving to L.A. from up north, where he was from, and where he had also gone to college. He asked me what I did, and I said I was a freelance graphic designer. I wish it were a lie, but it isn’t.

  “I’ve been thinking about going back to school eventually,” he said.

  “Oh yeah? For what?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Not sure yet.”

  “You’ll figure it out,” I said.

  When I got my coffee, he gestured at the table and his sad shoulder bag. “You can join me if you want.” He blushed. “Oh, but you said ‘to go,’ didn’t you?”

  I nodded. “Thanks, though.”

  The next moment, he was slipping his hand in his back pocket, pulling out a business card. “If you want to … you know … get together.” I realized he still hadn’t placed his order; he was waiting for me to respond.

  This guy, I thought, he has no idea how invisible he is. Meanwhile, I’m invincible. It’s funny how close those two words are. For a moment I imagined myself whispering into his ear: Why don’t you just follow me home, big boy? Sometimes I do this, imagine myself intimate with men I’m not attracted to. As if getting a loser laid would be a good deed on my part. And maybe it would be. I’m not conceited, I’m not a bitch. I’m a woman. I’ve slept with men because I feel sorry for them, and if any other woman tells you differently, she’s lying. You’ll do the same thing someday.

  I know what you’re going to say: “That’s enough, Joellyn.”

  And also: “Go on. Tell me more.”

  I took the business card from between his fingers and I smiled. The smile is the most meaningless of gestures, because it can convey so much, and so little. I w
anted Zachary to hold out hope that I might contact him, but I also wanted that hope to be shot through with doubt, even shame, so that if I did call him, he would be humbled. Humility is the height requirement to ride this ride, so to speak—I don’t mean to be crass. The point is, I smiled as I took his card and read it. It was plain white, with his name, Zachary Haas, written in a nondescript, serif font. Black ink, of course, and certainly not embossed. Predictably, his contact information was in the lower right hand corner. I figured he must have designed it online, or at one of those business card machines at drug stores. Do they still have those?

  Before exiting the coffee shop, coffee in hand, I smiled once again. “Goodbye, Zachary Haas,” I said, and glided to the door.

  If someone had asked me right then, “Do you plan on calling that guy?” I would have said no, and laughed big, my head thrown back. But I see now that there was something else tugging at me as I walked away from Zachary that day—a different intention, an opposite feeling. I won’t call it desire.

  When I was a kid, I wasn’t sure what kind of woman I would become, but I had a hunch. I dreamt of Valkyries, warriors. I stole the belt from my father’s bathrobe and used it to tie saucepans to my chest so that that no sword could pierce my heart. I used the saucepan lid as a shield. I imagined that my fingernails were weapons, and my teeth too. On long car rides, I saw myself running along the freeway shoulder, or in the brush, barefoot but in full armor. I assumed the woman I’d become would be vicious and beautiful, the roar of some exotic animal made physical. It’s not so strange, to have high expectations.

  Once, my mother made me some soup from a can, and without thinking, she left the serrated lid on the counter. I thought it might make a wonderful belt buckle, or a deadly Frisbee, and I picked it up. I was careful because I knew that if I wasn’t, the lid’s sharp metal edges could bite into my fingers, and it would hurt.

  I took the lid to the backyard, where I imagined my army waiting for me: they were already bruised from battle, and hungry, and some of them were limping. Gangrene threatened one soldier’s leg, and amputation was imminent.

  I held the promising new weapon aloft for my legions. All four hundred of them leaned forward to get a better view, and I felt the air shift. That’s what hope feels like.

  “We shall win this war!” I called to them. I felt very strong—unstoppable, in fact. I imagine, if you’re not yet like me in this way, that you will be.

  The soup can lid glistened in the sun, its sharp edges singing for blood.

  And blood it got.

  Somewhere in my fantasy, I forgot that my hands were bare, and that I was holding not a weapon but a soup can lid. I ceased to be careful. The spiked edges dug into my fingers and palm, so deep that it didn’t hurt at first. I must have been in shock.

  I forced myself to cry out. “Help!” I might have screamed. I ran to find my mother. When she saw my hand, striped red as a barber’s pole, she wrapped a dish towel around the wounds and held me close. To staunch the bleeding, she pushed hard on the cuts, and with that came the familiar sting and suck. But my hand kept bleeding, and I began to feel woozy. My father called an ambulance. My army found a new leader, or they surrendered, or they dissolved.

  It wasn’t a tragedy. I was stitched up fine, and the scars are hardly noticeable. But I remember the way my mother picked up the lid and tossed it into the trash can. I was home from the hospital by then.

  “Enough of that,” she said. I had been too stupid to deserve a real talking-to.

  The lessons here are clear: No one is free from physical pain. (“No one is invincible, Joellyn.” Yes, thank you, I realize that.) And: Girls who want to be warriors can’t afford to be so careless. And: Girls will bleed, and then they will cry.

  It was a Saturday night when I decided to call him. I didn’t have plans. The company I’d designed some pamphlets for had compensated me for my labor with a sum so meager I’d already spent it and re-spent it hundreds of times in my mind. I had a crick in my neck and a pimple on my chin. My pretend breasts had deflated days ago. I knew he would be home, which is why I didn’t email him. It was a bold move, but with a woman like me and a man like Zachary, it would be perceived as sexy rather than desperate.

  He picked up on the third ring. “Hello?” he said furtively, as if he were answering from a movie theatre, or a war trench. The memory of him came back to me all at once: his terrible shirt, the utilitarian haircut. Had I noticed a splinter of shaving cream by his ear?

  “Zachary Haas,” I said. “This is Joellyn. We met at the coffee shop last week.” I was very careful to keep my voice controlled. I didn’t want anything to come out as a question.

  “Joellyn—hi.” I heard the surprise in his voice, and the attempt to mask his pleasure. I imagined him standing from his spot on the couch, silencing his about-to-bark dog, or his neighbor, who has stopped by to return a few DVDs. He smoothes his terrible shirt with one hand and covers the receiver with the other so that he can catch his breath.

  “I wondered if you might like to grab a drink tonight,” I said.

  “Tonight?”

  “That’s right. I hope you don’t already have plans.”

  Zachary wasn’t so naïve as to answer right away; he waited the appropriate number of seconds, to convey that he had a schedule that required juggling, shifting.

  “No, no, nothing important,” he said finally.

  “Wonderful.” I named a bar. “See you there at 9?” This time, I asked it as a question, because I wanted to convey choice, however illusory.

  Zachary said it sounded great. “Thanks for calling.”

  I almost said, “You’re welcome.”

  For the occasion I wore a black dress, and beneath that, the ugliest pair of underwear I own. It’s my modus operandi for first dates, as it keeps me from taking off my clothes. This way, a man learns he can’t get into my pants so easily; what he reads as my morality, some admirable standard of purity, is actually the threat of my own mortification. It’s classier than the infamous lie: “I’m on my period,” and anyway, the problem with that is there are plenty of men who don’t care, who will pull your tampon out with their teeth if you let them. I have revealed my hideous granny panties just once—real, unquenchable lust is the best and only exception.

  On my drive to the bar, I held out hope that Zachary was better looking, more compelling, than I’d initially assumed. Maybe he wasn’t good at first impressions, or my ego, my sense of invincibility, had infected my objectivity. I know you’re thinking, “Bingo!,” and I can’t blame you.

  But, alas, when I glimpsed Zachary, standing by the valet, I nearly cringed. He spotted me and waved. I held up my hand slowly, as if his greeting were a baseball I wasn’t too keen on catching.

  Not only did his belly look chubby, but his thighs too. There’s nothing more tragic than a man who gains weight like a woman does. But no, I realized, his thighs were okay; it was his pants that were the problem: cargos. He’d at least worn a button-down shirt, which showed some effort. And the sneakers, they were the same. I liked them. They seemed to smile at me the way some cars do with their headlights. I could date those shoes, I thought. You want to say: “Isn’t that a touch pathetic, Joellyn?” And maybe it is, but what’s pathetic about us also makes us human.

  “Hi,” Zachary said as I approached. I smiled and he leaned in for a quick hug; he smelled of toothpaste and recently-applied deodorant, and possibly the stale damp of a hamper. Maybe he had paused on the phone not because he had plans, but because he needed to do laundry.

  Once we’d disengaged he said, “This looks like a cool place. I’ve never been.” He flashed me a goofy grin, as if to say, So sue me.

  “You’ll like it,” I said. “Come on.”

  The bar was brick-walled, with high ceilings and tattooed bartenders, most of them female and a couple of years away from the too-old-for-this-job category. Hung above the tables were large chalkboards, a menu scrawled on each. This was a “gastro-pub,
” meaning you could eat mussels with your pale ale or a burger with your martini. I’d been here on a previous date for dinner, but I hadn’t invited Zachary for a meal. I headed for the bar.

  “They’ve got food?” he said, climbing onto the stool next to me.

  The bartender nodded. “You can order from me.” She slapped two coasters in front of us.

  “I’ve already eaten,” I said.

  “Me too, but I’m still a little hungry. Before I drove over here, I had a personal pizza.” He laughed. “I almost just said personal computer.”

  “Maybe that would have filled you up,” I said, and he laughed again. He probably felt elated, thought we were getting along swimmingly.

  I ordered a vodka tonic and Zachary got a local beer on tap. And then, to my surprise, he ordered food. He went with a salad. An effeminate choice, I thought. He talked me through the menu as if we were going to share. The salad he settled on had red onions—raw, I was sure. It was as if he had never been on a first date, as if he didn’t care about matters of breath. Perhaps he’d already decided he didn’t want to kiss me.

  There’s always a moment on a date with a man when I am reminded that he’s been with other women before me. This was the moment it happened with Zachary: he ordered that salad with impunity, as if he lived without self-consciousness, as if I weren’t even there, and I reminded myself that most men, no matter how bland, or how unemployed, have been with beautiful women, have touched them, made them laugh (probably got to touch them because they made them laugh). I was not special. Go ahead, say it: “You are not special, Joellyn.” Zachary had been on dates before. Most of the women were probably plain, but a few—a few of them could take your breath away. The question was: Was I one of the few?

  I would find out.