by Jana Casale
John woke up early for work. He kissed her in her sleep before he left, something she would only vaguely remember later when mentioned.
“You didn’t say goodbye to me before you left,” she’d say when he got home.
“Yes I did. I kissed you goodbye,” he said.
She woke up at 9:28. It was dark despite the shades being drawn. The room was set up like a studio apartment, with a little kitchen and small living space. The bed, pushed to the far wall, overlooked the rest of the room. Leda switched on the bedside lamp. She walked over to the sliding glass door that acted as the room’s only window and led to a “patio” that was a really only a slab of cement with a plastic lawn chair on it. She slid the door open a bit and looked up. The sky was bright and sunny, but the building’s overhang kept the room dark. She leaned out and reached her hand until her fingertips touched the sunlight. I wish there was no overhang. I wish it wasn’t so dark. I think I’ll go have eggs, she thought, and quickly got dressed to make the hotel’s breakfast buffet before it closed.
The inn was divided into little faux townhouses separated by concrete walkways that all led to the main building, which consisted of a lobby and dining room. Out front was a small pool. When she first heard that the inn had a pool, she pictured herself swimming and swimming and sitting by the pool and just swimming, but even in the dark of night when they arrived, she could see that the pool was not much bigger than a large bathtub. It was disappointing, to say the least.
As she rounded the corner of the last townhouse she nearly collided with a housekeeper pushing a cart of towels and toilet paper.
“Sorry,” Leda said.
“That’s okay.”
The girl didn’t look like she was much older than Leda was. Her hair was pulled back and she had a beautifully slender face. Her features looked so delicate, as if they could have almost been drawn on. Leda felt a strange feeling flush over her. It was almost like déjà vu, like she’d known the girl or seen her or bumped into her in this exact same way before.
“Sorry, I’m in your way,” Leda said.
“No, sorry, my fault,” the girl responded, redirecting her cart as Leda stepped aside.
The feeling persisted. She almost wanted to ask the girl, to say something like, “Do I know you? Is this real? Where do we go when we die?” But of course she let the moment, like so many others, just pass into the transient void of it all.
When she reached the dining hall they were starting to put the food away, but she had just enough time to grab what was left of the scrambled eggs and to make herself a waffle on the waffle iron. The hall was empty except for a young family who were finishing their breakfast. The father sat typing on his computer, taking intermittent bites of oatmeal. His wife was cutting up a sausage on one of her children’s plates. Their two boys sat, staring at the TV propped against the wall. They looked almost identical, but one was slightly older.
“Eat your cereal, Aaron,” the mom said. She had an accent that Leda figured must have been from Australia or New Zealand.
“Finn, don’t kick your legs. You’re shaking the table.”
Each boy had platefuls of food and a side bowl of cereal. The little one dazedly chewed on a piece of waffle, but the older one didn’t look like he’d eaten anything. Leda looked at the mother: she had a small container of yogurt in front of her that she hadn’t opened yet. She leaned over to the older one and tried to coax him with the eggs. She wiped the face of the younger one. Her arms looked thin and neat and almost nonexistent as she moved around managing the children. Leda looked at the father: he finished his oatmeal and continued to type. I will never be a mother with a closed yogurt. I will always open my yogurt and my husband will not finish his oatmeal before me. Leda ate all of her breakfast, even the scrambled eggs, which were terrible, in silent protest to the woman’s starvation.
As she walked back to her makeshift townhouse Leda decided she would go for a swim. It wasn’t all that hot out, and even though the pool was so small she figured anything would be better than spending the day in the shade of the overhang waiting for John to get home. She got back to her room and jumped in the shower so she could shave all the requisite hair for public viewing. Now that she and John had been together awhile, she no longer worried about shaving her legs every time she saw him or making sure her bikini line was perfect; more often than not she was stubbled. On nights when she knew they were going out and would probably have sex, she’d be sure to shave her vagina into the neat little trim vagina shaving pattern she’d developed over the years. It was a hassle, but fairly early into her pubic hair years she learned that being natural was unacceptable. As far as she knew, all of her friends shaved. It was an unspoken understanding for the most part, although she did have the distinct memory of being thirteen and playing truth or dare at her friend Kristen’s sleepover and someone asking Kristen if she shaved. The girl who asked was kind of heavy and had a mean-looking face. Her name was something like Arugula, but it wasn’t Arugula. Kristen introduced her, saying, “This is my friend, Something Like Arugula, from camp.” The girl didn’t seem all that happy to be at the party. She kept yawning and every so often she’d interrupt the conversation by saying things like, “This party is lame,” or “We should go buy some wine coolers.” She was really into wine coolers. She told this story about how she and her friend Ryan (this boy she knew who she described as “so hot”) would sneak her mom’s wine coolers and get drunk on the back porch of her grandmother’s house.
“Is Ryan your boyfriend?” A sporty, petite girl named Kayla asked.
“No…” Something Like Arugula hesitated. “Well, one time he almost kissed me, but we were really drunk.”
It was Kristen’s idea to play truth or dare. She told Leda about it almost two weeks before, during gym.
“We’re going to play truth or dare,” Kristen said with a kind of nervous resolve.
“That should be fun,” Leda said.
“Yeah, I’m really good at it,” Kristen said.
Leda wondered how exactly you could be good at truth or dare.
At the party she could tell right before Kristen was going to bring it up, because the same nervous resolve came over her as it had the day in the gym.
“Okay, guys,” Kristen said, clapping her hands. “It’s time to play truth or dare.”
Without giving it even a moment to settle in on everyone’s mind, Something Like Arugula jumped on it.
“All right, since it’s your party I’ll ask you first. Truth or dare?” Kristen looked a little shocked. She clearly had anticipated the crowd of sleepover girls would react with the same nervous resolve she had over the idea.
“…Okay,” Kristen said. “Truth.”
“Do you shave?” Something Like Arugula asked.
“Of course I shave. Who doesn’t shave their legs?”
“Not your legs, jeez.” Something Like Arugula rolled her eyes. She took a triumphant pause. “You know…down there.”
Kristen looked a little startled, but she didn’t miss a beat.
“Well, of course I do. Who doesn’t do that?” she said. She really was good at truth or dare.
“Good, ’cause girls who don’t are nasty. Ryan said it smells bad and it gives people crabs.”
All the other girls nodded in agreement.
“Yeah, it’s true,” Kayla said. “It’s really nasty.”
Leda couldn’t help but feel a sense of shame over the whole exchange. She thought of her own vagina tucked away in her striped PJs and floral underwear starting to grow its own mass of nasty, crabby hair. She imagined hot Ryan telling her how smelly she was as he sat on a porch drinking wine coolers. It was the first time she’d ever really thought about her body hair in that way. Something Like Arugula had sparked in her a kind of unforeseen disgust, like there was already something wrong with her for something she had absolutely no cont
rol over. A week after the sleepover she started shaving her legs.
The impression made that night was her introduction to the doctrine that WOMEN HAD TO SHAVE THEIR VAGINAS. From that moment on she’d be reminded of just how crucial it was fairly consistently throughout her life from media, and friends, and guys on rare occasions. By the time she was having sex it wasn’t even a question if she would shave or not, although she really didn’t like shaving. Pretty much every time she did it she’d nick herself and have to wait until she stopped bleeding to put her underwear on. Even if she somehow managed to avoid nicking herself, shaving irritated her skin and she thought the bikini bumps were ugly.
Nearly two years into the relationship she’d mention it to John. “I don’t really get why guys like the way it looks shaved. The bikini bumps are so ugly.”
“I don’t like it,” John said.
“You don’t like bikini bumps?”
“No, I don’t like girls shaving.”
“How can you not like girls shaving? Don’t all guys like girls to shave?”
“I don’t really know what all guys like, but I think it’s stupid. And I think it looks sexier unshaven.”
Leda didn’t really believe John at first. It seemed impossible that any man could love a woman with pubic hair. But even when she finally did believe him (the day she tried a new cream designed to minimize the irritation from shaving and broke out in a rash from it and John said, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. I really like girls not shaved, and it’s making you miserable”), she kept doing it. It didn’t matter that he didn’t like it or that she didn’t like it, she just felt like she had to do it. It was a compulsion so inexplicable and intimate. It ran in her mind like little clicks of things she had to do. Eat. Drink. Shave your vagina. It wouldn’t be until one Sunday nearly eight months later that she would finally consider the absurdity of the compulsion. She’d had the stomach flu all week and was finally well enough to take a proper shower. As she got out of the bath, she felt dizzy from the steam so she lay down in bed and, without meaning to, ended up falling asleep. She woke up feeling disoriented from the unintentional nap, and as she got up to grab the wet towel off the bed, she saw a pattern of little dark stains neatly dotted on the sheet. It was blood from shaving. She looked at herself and saw the smears of red dried on her skin. It looked as if she’d cut herself all over. There were all these little pathways in between bikini bumps where the blood had run. This is ridiculous, she thought. She felt a kind of wave come over her. It was as if one of those clicks that had compulsed her so readily to mutilate her body hair on a near day-to-day basis had snapped into a louder click. A click that said: You are being an idiot. A click that said: Stop being an idiot. A click that said: You are not an idiot. After that she stopped shaving, and it was one of the few best things she would ever do in her life.
Leda found her bikini squished beneath the socks in her big suitcase. The advantage of trying it on in the near darkness of the hotel room was that when she looked at herself in the full-length mirror she looked as best as she possibly could in a bikini. In near darkness I am almost like a bikini model, she thought. Deciding what to wear over her bikini for the sixty-foot walk over to the pool wasn’t easy. She’d forgotten to pack any of the cover-ups she owned or any dress that could appropriately be worn over a bathing suit. She also worried that there was only one lawn chair and there wouldn’t be anywhere for her to put her clothes as she swam. She had a vision of herself taking up the lone lawn chair with her clothes and someone coming over, attempting to sit, and being dismayed by her clothes being there and then saying something like, “Whose clothes are these on the lone lawn chair? I need to sit on this lone lawn chair and I can’t because someone has taken up the lone lawn chair with these clothes.” She had a very specific propensity for worrying over situations where she would be of the greatest inconvenience and some inconvenienced stranger would be outraged by her utter lack of consideration.
“Why do girls always worry so much about being polite all the time? Stop being so crazy!” John would say.
But she couldn’t stop. She once accidentally apologized to a plant for getting into the elevator first.
“But didn’t you notice it was a plant?” John said.
“I thought it was an old lady,” Leda said.
With the lawn chair situation so up in the air, she decided worst-case scenario she’d just fold clothes up and put them beside the pool. She put on a pair of jeans and one of John’s loose-fitting concert T-shirts. She didn’t have a beach towel, so she grabbed one of the bleached white bath towels that the hotel supplied. She looked at herself one last time before embarking on her swim. She had her jeans and her loose-fitting T-shirt over her bikini top and her hotel towel in hand. I look like a crazy lunatic, she thought, and then headed to the pool.
Unsurprisingly, no one was swimming. Leda was happy to see that there were in fact two lawn chairs, and so she didn’t think it would be an issue if she left her clothes on one. The pool looked out onto the parking lot. A large man was loading the back of his truck with some luggage and what looked like fishing gear. Seeing him, Leda suddenly became very aware of herself. It seemed foolish to be in a bikini pretty much ever, but given the context of the pool, the absurdity of it all was palpable. She stood beside the lawn chair and used it to steady herself as she slipped off her jeans. She folded them neatly in a perfect little jean square that would wait for her primly as she swam. Perfect, she thought. In the midst of her fantasy fold she noticed something squished up on the ground by her feet. What is that? The thought sort of clamored in her mind, it was so quick, and then it rose from confusion to resolve in such a fast and hideous way: My bathing suit! She’d accidently untied the side string of her bikini bottom as she folded up her jeans—she was naked from the waist down in a Residence Inn parking lot pool. Her life was about to end. She quickly grabbed the bathing suit and jumped into the pool still wearing her oversized T-shirt. As soon as she was concealed by the water, she put her bottoms back on. Her hands shook as she tried to tie the bow. Faster, tie it. Oh Jesus. Tie it, you idiot!
Covering her genitals, and regaining her bearings, Leda looked around for any witnesses. The only person she could see was the man with the fishing gear, but he was leaning over the passenger seat of his truck. She and her nudity and soaking oversized T-shirt were alone. She thought it was best to act as if nothing happened, as if she were just a regular girl going for a swim in this parking lot pool of the Residence Inn, so she took off her soaked T-shirt and tried to lay it neatly enough by the pool. She smiled a lot, as if she were enjoying the sunshine, and swam forward a bit and then did the backstroke for a few strokes, paying very close attention to having her arms come out straight and then go back close up by her ears, just like she learned in the three swimming lessons she took the summer she was seven. The pool was so small that it only took about five strokes to go from one side to the other. She looked over at her jeans folded so neatly on one of the two lawn chairs, just mocking her in their order, her towel on the ground beside them, unapologetic evidence to the whole incident. How long can I stay here pretending to be happy? she thought. It turned out she could stay pretending to be happy for twenty-three minutes. She finally decided it was time to leave when the New Zealand or Australian family arrived. As they walked toward the pool, the older boy who hadn’t eaten stopped suddenly and said, “I don’t want to swim,” and then threw up all over the sidewalk. Leda took this as her cue to exit the pool. It turned out that it didn’t matter how neatly her jeans were folded after all, since she doubted the couple noticed as they were cleaning up vomit. As she passed she heard the mother say, “It’s okay, baby.” And even though it obviously wasn’t directed at her, Leda felt calmed by the sentiment.
When she got back to the room she showered and changed into PJs. She watched some bad scripted show on MTV and ate the microwave pizza. By three o’clock it was nearly p
itch-black from the overhang shadow, and she had to turn on all the lights. John got home at 5:30 and she told him about the breakfast and the pool as if so many things had happened to her that day.
“You didn’t say goodbye to me before you left,” she said.
“Yes I did. I kissed you goodbye,” he said.
“I wasn’t awake, though. Don’t ever leave for work without waking me up first.”
“But I figured you’d want to sleep.”
“Yeah, but still, just always wake me up.”
After that he always woke her up before leaving for work, and even though sometimes she couldn’t fall back asleep, she still preferred it.
CHAPTER 24
A Room with a View
It took them three weeks to find an apartment in the city. The search had been an exhaustive one, which consisted of scouring listings on Craigslist, making countless phone calls, and driving an hour to the city nearly every night to make open houses and showings. Formerly Leda had romanticized the idea of searching for an apartment with a man. It seemed so adult and chic. There would be white fences and granite countertops and her just spinning around living rooms with high ceilings. Her naïveté was unearthed after walking into the very first apartment. It smelled like cat pee and had a bedroom that was completely taken up by the fairly small bed.
“You just buy an armoire and put it right out here in the hall. It has a beautiful hall,” the Realtor said. She had a desperate smile and an older-looking suit. “Do you have an armoire?” she asked.
“We don’t…It doesn’t have a closet?” Leda said.
“No, no closet, but you know…you just buy an armoire.”
After that both she and John dramatically lowered their expectations.
“I thought we’d be in a Victorian. What’s the point of living in San Francisco if you can’t live in a Victorian?” she said.
