Barbara the Slut and Other People

by Lauren Holmes

  We had a fight about whether to get rustic bread and cheddar cheese or white bread and American cheese, and finally Beth decided she wasn’t going to eat grilled cheese anyway. She only wanted to eat fruit for dinner. So I bought the white and American, frozen french fries, and a six-pack of sugar-free root beer for Kelly. Beth bought a fruit salad and at the last minute, some dumplings.

  The subway didn’t come for a long time. Neither of us was over our fight about the grilled cheese yet. Beth pointed out the rats running around the tracks like she was glad to see them. I missed that about her. Right before Tiffany’s semester in Italy, Tiffany and I stayed on a houseboat in Berlin. It was full of spiders. There were ten or twenty spiders on every surface. The bunk beds. The table. The chairs. Our suitcases. Our shoes. At least two or three hundred total. I counted more than eighty as I threw them out the window. I was sliding them onto pieces of paper and brushing them off into the water. It seemed like as many as I was throwing out were coming back in through the open window and under the door. Tiffany sat on the top bunk, whimpering and flicking any she could see with her long nails. Until she saw the webs on the ceiling, only a foot or two from her head. Her scream shook the boat. If I had been a spider I would have jumped out the window voluntarily. Instead I caught her arm as she threw herself off the bed. I hugged her and kissed her. That night was the last time we had sex. Tiff gave me an amazing blow job. She said it was because I saved her from the spiders, but I think it was because she knew it was the last time.

  Beth and I watched the rats in silence until the subway came. On the subway Beth said, “So, what about your bad dates?”

  “Oh,” I said. “You know. New York is weird.”

  “You should go back and ask that girl out.”

  “What girl?” I said.

  In a deep voice Beth said, “What kind of chair is this? It’s really comfortable but I bet it’s not as comfortable as your vagina.”

  The old man across the aisle looked up at us.

  I started to laugh. Beth started too. We cracked up for a minute. Then we stopped. We didn’t really have anything else to say.

  • • •

  When we got home, Kelly was making lanterns out of jam jars and wire and hanging them on the fire escape with candles in them.

  “That’s so beautiful,” said Beth.

  “Thanks,” said Kelly. “I hope they’re sturdy.”

  “How do you know if they’re sturdy or not?” said Beth.

  “I don’t,” said Kelly.

  “Well they’re beautiful,” said Beth. “I’m very impressed.”

  “Thanks.” Kelly smiled.

  I let Beth ask Kelly a million questions about lanterns and beaded chandeliers and stripping furniture. Since Kelly was Kelly, it was a win-win situation. I put the french fries in and constructed the grilled cheese. I wondered what to do about Beth’s dumplings.

  “Do you want me to warm up your dumplings?”

  “Yeah baby, warm up my dumplings,” she said. “No, I like to eat them cold.”

  When everything was ready she got them out of the fridge and started eating them out of the package. Then she went to the cabinet and took a glass down and held it up to the light and put it in the sink. She took another and did the same thing.

  “Beth,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Are you putting our glasses in the sink because they’re not clean enough?”

  “Yeah, should I not?”

  “No, you should not. It’s rude.”

  “Oh, is it?” said Beth, not sarcastically. “My mom does it to me.”

  “That’s different. That’s your mom.”

  “Okay. What should I do?”

  “If you don’t see one that looks good then wash one.”

  “Okay,” she said and washed a glass.

  Kelly came in and we sat down to eat. Beth asked where the forks were and I got up to get her one.

  “Is this clean enough for you?” I said.

  Beth inspected it. “Yes.”

  “Jason is mad at me because I put some dirty glasses in the sink,” she said to Kelly.

  “Why is that bad?” said Kelly.

  “Not from the counter,” I said, “from the cabinet.”

  “Oh,” said Kelly. “Well that’s probably my fault. I think I did dishes last.”

  It was definitely Kelly’s fault. She did dishes like she was blind and also had no fingers. There was always dried orange juice pulp on the glasses.

  After dinner Kelly got dressed and went out. Beth and I watched a basketball game. I worked on a proposal letter. When the game ended I opened the futon for Beth and gave her a pillow and a blanket. I brought Pammy into my room, closed the door, got into bed, and jerked off.

  The next morning I woke up early by accident. I took Pammy out for a run. On our way out he licked Beth’s feet, which were hanging off the futon. Beth’s feet were like everything else about her. Oversized but fine. She didn’t have anything gross like bunions and her toes were the right length and right width. I started to pay attention to this in high school because the only thing I could say to Kelly that really upset her was that her feet were ugly. They were and she knew it. And then in college I turned into kind of a foot guy. Tiffany’s feet were sexy. They were tiny and she had perfectly shaped toenails, like little shells. She had them done all the time and sometimes I did them for her. She told somebody about that, probably one of the guys she was fucking. My friends asked me if I wiped her ass for her, too.

  I have all my epiphanies when I’m running. I had three contradictory epiphanies on the run with Pammy. I needed one more epiphany to tell me what the real epiphany was. The three options were: 1. The reason I didn’t want to sleep with Beth wasn’t because she kind of grossed me out, or because I didn’t really want to sleep with anyone after Tiffany the life-wrecking whore, but because she was like a sister to me, which explained all the fighting. 2. I actually did want to sleep with her, which also explained all the fighting. Or 3. We didn’t actually have anything in common, and I neither wanted to sleep with nor be friends with her.

  I wanted it to be number 1 so that we could still be friends, and I didn’t want it to be number 3. As for number 2, I really didn’t think I wanted to sleep with her. Although I would have liked for her to know that I was better in bed now. And it would have made sense if the inverse of us hating each other all day was fucking each other all night. And I really did want to have sex. But I just didn’t want to do it with Beth.

  I gave up trying to figure it out. Instead I thought about how I had too many women in my life. Too many women and all the wrong kind.

  On the way back from the run, Pammy and I went to the bodega to get buttermilk and eggs to make pancakes. Beth was still asleep on the couch. I let Pammy into Kelly’s room and I measured ingredients in the kitchen. When the girls still weren’t up I opened my proposal letter but then played Minesweeper instead.

  I heard Beth get up and go into the bathroom. Then she came into my room and said, “What’s cooking, good-looking?”

  “I was going to make pancakes,” I said. “Are you hungry?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Is Kelly up?”

  “No, but she sleeps forever,” I said.

  We went into the kitchen. I mixed everything up and heated the griddle.

  Beth washed berries. We put them in the pancakes. When Beth was looking through a drawer for a spatula she found a bone-shaped cookie cutter. She put it on the griddle and made a pancake for Pammy.

  Kelly got up when the pancakes were ready. She is psychic about food. “Aw,” she said when she saw the bone pancake. “That is so cute. I love that you love my little Muscle-wuscle.”

  “I don’t know if I love him,” said Beth. “I just thought it would be funny.”

  Kelly looked hurt. I laughed.

  They sat down to eat. I made more pancakes. After breakfast Kelly left and Beth helped me do the dishes.

  “I’m sorry about ye
sterday,” she said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Are you still mad about the glasses?”

  “No. It was just a weird day.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “It’s not my fault the glasses were dirty. Kelly can’t do dishes to save her life.”

  I hadn’t planned on throwing my sister under the bus. I wanted to take it back.

  “Okay,” said Beth.

  I was ready for the weekend to be over. But I had already asked Beth to take me to the store to get paper towels and toilet paper, so she did. When we got back she parked four feet from the curb. She got out to open her trunk for me.

  “Thanks for taking me to get these things,” I said.

  “Of course.”

  “Have a safe trip home.”

  “I will. Let’s do this again soon?” She gave me a hug.

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t think it would be soon.

  “All right,” she said. “Back to my crappy fucking life.”

  She got into her car and lit a cigarette and peeled into the street. The car turned out of sight at the end of the block.

  I went inside. I tried to work on my computer in bed. But it was hard to keep my eyes open. Pammy came in and got under the covers. We slept for a long time.

  MIKE ANONYMOUS

  When Mike Anonymous first called the clinic they made me pick up the phone. I didn’t know what the hell he was saying so I put him on hold. They always made me pick up when someone with an Asian accent called, like I could speak a word of any Asian language, which I couldn’t. This guy was actually Japanese, I could tell that much. I was a quarter Japanese, but my Japanese grandma died when I was five, and I had never been able to understand her either.

  Mike Anonymous was the fourth caller on hold, which was the maximum, so at least all the lines were busy and the phones were going to stop ringing. It was my lunch break but I was sitting at the security window, and people kept calling and coming in and needing things. I was looking out the front door straight into the sun. I wished I had sunglasses or ski goggles or something. Every time someone opened the door, cold air rushed through and made me shudder.

  Louisa was wearing her coat at the check-in desk, but she kept asking me what was wrong with me, like I shouldn’t be freezing my ass off. Finally I was like, “Fat people get cold too,” and she cracked up.

  I picked up line one but the caller was gone, and the phone started ringing again.

  “Hello, thank you for calling Gonorrheaville, would you mind holding just a minute?” Louisa pressed the hold button.

  “Oh my god,” I laughed. “What if someone from administration calls and you say that?”

  “They’d call the private line.”

  “What if they didn’t?” I said.

  “They definitely wouldn’t call the patient line. They know we don’t pick it up.”

  “We try to pick it up.”

  I picked up line four and it was still the guy I couldn’t understand.

  Something something HIV, he said.

  “Do you want to make an appointment?”

  Something something HIV, he said again.

  “Do you want to be tested for STDs?”

  Something something, he said in a high voice.

  “Sex-u-ally trans-mit-ted dis-ea-ses?” I said.

  “Yes!”

  The private line started ringing.

  “Okay, hold on,” I said, and picked up the private line.

  “Viv?” It was my stupid boyfriend Davey. “What time are you coming home?”

  I hung up the phone and wondered if Davey definitely knew it was me who picked up.

  I picked up line four. “Okay, what’s your name?”

  Something something anonymous, he said.

  “You want to be anonymous?” I said. “Fine, but you have to have a first name. What’s your first name?”

  “Ano . . . Mike-des,” he said.

  “Mike Dess?”

  “Mike!”

  “Okay, Mike. Do you have any symptoms?”

  It sounded like Mike Anonymous didn’t have any symptoms, so I made an appointment for an STD testing with no symptoms at seven the next night. I ate the last bite of my eighth brown rice cake with peanut butter and went back to work.

  • • •

  The next day Louisa had to work the front desk with Boss Donna, so she answered the phones, “Thank you for calling the clinic, this is Louisa, how can I help you?” instead of “Gonorrheaville, please hold,” or her other favorite, “Chlamydialand.”

  I was in the dirty lab getting instruments out of the autoclave when Donna paged me. “Vivian to the front, please. Vivian to the front.” Boss Donna loved the intercom.

  I walked to the front, stepping on only the pink tiles.

  “Your patient is here,” Donna said when I got there. “The one that called yesterday.”

  “What?” I said. The waiting room was empty except for a man filling out paperwork in the closest seat to the check-in window. He was sweating and his face was flushed. He looked like he was in his thirties or forties. He wasn’t fat-fat but he had a round face and he filled out his suit.

  “That guy?” I said.

  “No, one of the other guys,” said Donna. “Yes, that guy.”

  I shut the window between the check-in desk and the waiting room.

  “He speaks no English,” said Louisa, “not one word.”

  “That’s Mike Anonymous?” I said. “He’s not supposed to be here until seven. How come he’s my patient?”

  “Because we can’t understand him at all,” said Louisa.

  “Neither can I!” I said.

  “We’ll let you know when his chart is ready,” said Donna.

  His chart was ready quickly because he didn’t answer any of the questions on the questionnaire. I brought him back to the bathroom to pee in a cup and told him to leave the cup in the window and meet me in the lab. But when he came into the lab he was holding his urine cup. He was still sweating. I smiled at him but he didn’t smile back.

  He sat in the blood-drawing chair and I asked him all of the questions he hadn’t answered. I rephrased them so that he could answer yes or no. His breathing got heavier and he answered the questions in gasps. When I got to the questions about who he had sex with and how, he said yes to being married. He didn’t answer how he had sex, and I wasn’t about to ask yes-or-no questions about whether he had oral, vaginal, or anal, so I skipped that part. He shook his head like he didn’t understand again when I asked him whether he had had more than one sex partner in the last six months. Two drops of sweat fell onto his shirt. I wondered if it was possible that he understood me perfectly.

  “We’ll test your urine for gonorrhea and chlamydia and your blood for HIV,” I said.

  He took some gauze from the supply table and dabbed his chin and then his forehead. Now I was pretty sure he actually had no idea what I was saying. I pricked his finger for the rapid HIV test, set the timer, and sent him back out to the waiting room.

  • • •

  I started working at the clinic after I graduated from college. I was supposed to do some other stuff, like med school, but I kind of crashed and burned in the fall semester of my senior year, and now I was trying to figure out what to do about my life.

  My childhood dream was to be a girl-scientist. I started conducting chemistry experiments in the kitchen before I could read. My parents gave me a drawer to keep my potions in, and the only rules were that I couldn’t use anything with a green Mr. Yuk sticker on it, and I couldn’t use anything from the garage. In first grade, my half brother Charlie got sick, and I imagined that if one of my potions cured him, I would be such a famous girl-scientist that I would have to wear disguises when I went outside. I made more and more potions, and when Charlie came to visit he tried the ones I picked out for him. He took a tiny sip from each, and once he threw up from smelling one.

  Charlie was eighteen years older than I was, and he l
ived in New York City. I remember thinking that he was the person who knew me best in the world, because he sent me fancy dresses for every holiday except Halloween, when he sent me costumes. Later my mom told me that he bought them at a special store and cut out the tags, but at the time I thought he made them for me. My mom said she told him to stop sending them because she knew he couldn’t afford them, but he didn’t care what he could afford. When my dad sent him money for food and bills, he used it to buy dresses, records, and pieces of china for his Royal Copenhagen collection, which he left to me.

  After that, I started thinking I might become a girl-doctor instead of a girl-scientist. I thought that through high school and most of college. And now I was supposed to be applying for something for next year, but I didn’t know what. I didn’t know if I still had it in me to study medicine, or even chemistry. I was thinking I might want to study public health, but I was also thinking I might want to move to the forest and eat berries and mushrooms and hibernate with the bears in the winter.

  • • •

  Mike Anonymous’s test was negative. I called him back in. His shirt around his neck and under his armpits was see-through with sweat. I showed him to the closest counseling room. I could hear him breathing as he went into the room in front of me and sat down, and I told him it was negative before the door even closed, because I thought he was going to pass out if I didn’t. But instead of being glad, Mike Anonymous stood up and slammed his hand on the table and said, “No!” I jumped. Then I think he said the test was wrong, or I did the test wrong. He wanted the traditional test, and he wanted to see a doctor. I was starting to understand him better but I was also starting to get scared of him. I told him he couldn’t see a doctor unless he had symptoms, and he said he did have symptoms.

  “You told me on the phone you didn’t have symptoms,” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Okay fine,” I said, “what are your symptoms?”

  He showed me a dot on his hand that looked like a freckle but was black.

  “Are you sure that’s not ink?” I said.

  “What?” he said.

  “Ink,” I said, “like pen?”

  Mike Anonymous shook his head and waved his hand in my face so that I could get a better look at the symptom.