by Lisa Lutz
However, the next day, my mom pawned off the Warner detail on Dad and Uncle Ray, and returned to the New Century Theatre, wearing a shoulder-length blonde wig and sunglasses. She didn’t expect to see Sean there again, but he returned at precisely the same time and sat in precisely the same spot. Two days in a row at a strip club spurred my mother’s suspicion and she extended her tail on Ex-boyfriend #6 for the next week. He returned to the New Century twice more and frequented a number of sex shops in the neighborhood during the daytime. At night, Mom dropped her tail, knowing that Sean was either with me or at work.
My mother asked me when Sean’s birthday is. I fell for that trick since she was reading the horoscopes and had gone through every member of the family and a few of our seasonal employees first. When she asked about Ex #6, it was so casual, I didn’t catch on. I just assumed she was showing some interest, since Sean and I had been seeing each other for over three months—which, I should remind you, was some kind of record for me.
However, the birth date was not so Mom could buy him a present, but to acquire a Social Security number and run a credit check. (I never fell for that again.) From the credit check my mom used her sources at one of the credit card companies to access his recent charges. The ethics and legality of this move are beyond questionable, but my mom had a question that she needed answered.
Thursday morning, after my mother determined that her investigation was complete, she called me into the office for a debriefing.
“Sweetie, your boyfriend is a porn addict.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said, thinking if she really loved me, she’d have waited until I’d had my coffee. “And you know this how?”
My mother itemized Sean’s behavior during the prior week and then presented me with several credit card bills, as well as his rental history at Leather Tongue Video. I skimmed the titles, trying to keep my expression steady, but it was hard when the list included Tits of Fury; Dude, Where’s My Dildo?; Double-D Inspector; and Sperms of Endearment, among less derivative, but equally X-rated, titles.
“Honey, I got no problem with anyone who wants to give their sex life some spark with an adult video now and again. However, what I have observed points to a compulsive tendency.”
“What do you expect me to do with this information?” I asked.
“It’s up to you, sweetheart. I’m not suggesting you break up with him. All I’m saying is, if you plan on staying with Sean, you might want to learn how to give a first-rate lap dance.”
I made my exit without a sound. I couldn’t give my mother the satisfaction of any response. While I had no previous suspicions of what she had told me, I knew my mother and I knew that she didn’t misinterpret evidence. But I had to see it for myself. I had to assemble my own proof. That same night, I waited until Ex-boyfriend #6 was in a dead sleep and I turned on his computer. If a man’s not careful, you can learn an awful lot about him that way.
I broke up with #6 the next morning. But this time I got to utter the last words: I don’t think we have enough in common.
Lawyer #3
Friday night, an hour before my date with the fraud defense attorney, David called me up and told me to be on my best behavior or there would be repercussions. As I raced out of my apartment to meet Hunter on the street (in an attempt to avoid any parent-lawyer introductions), my mother shouted out the window at me, “Just be yourself, honey.” Contradictions like this have made my family life so difficult.
I knew immediately that this was not going to work out. Hunter is the kind of guy who dates women who wear high heels and a cocktail dress on a first date. I can’t even walk in heels, and I generally believe that someone has to earn the right to see my legs. Besides, I had just broken up with #6 that morning. And while I was not actively grieving over the demise of that relationship, I was still feeling the sting over how it had ended. I had no real romantic interest in Lawyer #3, but I didn’t see any point in wasting an opportunity to study the opposite sex. I decided to come up with a series of questions that would subtly weed out the potential porn addicts in my future and I practiced on Hunter.
Do you like movies?
How important is a film’s plot to you?
Approximately how many videos do you rent a month?
If stranded on a deserted island, would you rather have: a) The Complete Works of Shakespeare
b) The Led Zeppelin boxed set
c) The entire Debbie Does oeuvre
Who’s your favorite actress? a)Meryl Streep
b)Nicole Kidman
c)Dame Judi Dench
d)Jenna Jameson
What is your favorite genre of film? a)Action-adventure
b)Drama
c)Romantic comedy
d)Pornography
David phoned me the next morning with empty threats. He then called my mother to tattle on me. At breakfast, Mom railed against my lack of breeding and suggested that if I ever wanted to date a man who didn’t serve drinks for a living, I might have to take an etiquette class. My dad asked me what I ordered for dinner.
Because of my job, not in spite of it, I have always held a solid reverence for individual privacy and tried to respect it whenever I could—or whenever it didn’t interfere with my work. I used to, that is. Before Ex #6. Before my mother invaded our privacy and told me secrets I should have figured out on my own. After him, I began questioning my own instincts, wondering whether fifteen years on the job had taught me nothing about human behavior.
Three weeks later, Petra called me, insisting on setting me up with her newest client. For the last five years, Petra had been working as a stylist at a trendy salon on Lower Haight. It never occurred to me that going to beauty school could one day pay off with a salary in the six figures, but in Petra’s case it had. Having a way with scissors and a physique that attracted the moneyed metrosexuals of San Francisco, Petra charged over one hundred dollars a head. Her clientele was eighty percent male and no one pretended that the repeat business was purely for the cut. Her leather pants paid for themselves, she used to say. More like the leather pants paid her mortgage.
Petra was on the prowl to find me a date—specifically, a non-porn-addicted date. That was when Petra met Zack Greenberg, a walk-in who just happened to arrive during an unusual lull in business. He was polite, soft-spoken, and conditioned his hair regularly.
Petra, without realizing what I would do with the information, provided me with Zack’s home address and birth date. From that, I acquired a Social Security number and was able to run a credit check, criminal history (only in the state of California), and property search. On paper Zack Greenberg was clean and impressive. I pulled his birth record and ran further checks on his parents, two brothers, and one sister. Aside from his youngest brother’s Chapter 11 filing in 1996, the entire family was like a fifties sitcom. It was not until Petra told me that Zack didn’t own a TV that I agreed to the date. The equation seemed simple. No TV = No Porn. Sure, he could have a solid magazine collection and an Internet habit, but a real addict would be a film buff, too.
Our first few dates were a bit dull, possibly because he was going over material I already knew. His parents ran a bakery in Carmel. His sister was a homemaker with 1.8 children (pregnant). His older brother owned a successful family restaurant in Eugene, Oregon. His younger brother owned an unsuccessful used-book store in Portland. By all the evidence presented to me, Ex-boyfriend #7 was a Boy Scout from a long line of Boy Scouts (who occasionally earned the bankruptcy badge). Having never dated a man who had the courage to order wine coolers at happy hour, I was initially intrigued by his milquetoast ways.
On our first date we went to the Castro Theatre and saw a revival of The Philadelphia Story, followed by cappuccinos and a stroll through Dolores Park, where a number of youngsters offered us drugs. Zack responded to the solicitations with a polite “No, thank you,” as if he were turning down the product from a makeshift lemonade stand. Our second date consisted of an hour of arcade games (mostly skeeball), i
ce cream, and a brief soccer lesson, which ended with Zack on my couch, his shin packed in ice and me apologizing profusely. The relationship continued on in its quasi–Norman Rockwell fashion until I mentioned his brother’s bankruptcy (don’t ask) and Zack realized that he had never mentioned it.
Petra told me she would never set me up with anyone again until I “learned to use my powers for good and not evil.” My mother, who had met Zack and promptly begun daydreaming about a wedding, didn’t speak to me for three days. My father offered to pay for a video dating service, then laughed himself silly at that prospect. I, not so politely, declined.
CAMP WINNEMANCHA
Last fall, when Rae returned to school after summer break, she was assigned the customary five-hundred-word What I Did on My Summer Vacation paper for Mrs. Clyde’s eighth grade English class. Instead of writing an essay, Rae (now twelve and a half) turned in a copy of the Merck Investments surveillance report with all the sensitive information redacted. Upon receipt of Rae’s assignment, Mrs. Clyde without delay invited my mother and father for a parent-teacher conference and firmly suggested that next summer Rae go to sleepaway camp.
The following spring, when Rae was thirteen years old, Mrs. Clyde reinvited my parents for a follow-up parent-teacher conference and repeated her original suggestion with as much influence as she could marshal. My mother countered with an offer of swimming lessons and a dance class, but Mrs. Clyde held her ground, insisting that Rae needed to begin socializing more with her peers and participating in activities suitable for a girl her age. My mother made all the camp (said in a whisper) arrangements surreptitiously. She chose the setting, paid the tuition, and purchased most of the packing list, all the while remaining undetected. She and my father decided to wait until just one week before Rae’s departure date to reveal her summer plans.
Mom broke the news to my sister Saturday morning at exactly 7:15. I know this because Rae’s Greek-tragedy wails woke me out of a much-needed slumber. Her desperate protests continued throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, when she began phoning relatives in a quest to find allies in her camp-avoidance campaign. She even threatened to contact Child Services.
Of course she turned to me at one point. My response was, “David went to sleepaway camp. I went to sleepaway camp. Why shouldn’t you?” Then she turned on me, pointing out that I went to camp because it was ordered by the court.1
My mother sent Rae to her bedroom with a box of Cocoa Puffs and suggested she take some time to digest the shocking news. Then Mom sent me to the store to buy more sugared goods to bribe her younger daughter. While I was debating whether to purchase the generic or name-brand Nutter Butters, my cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Izzy, it’s Milo at the Philosopher’s Club.”
“Is everything all right?”
“No emergencies. But your sister is in my bar and I can’t get her to leave. Could you come and pick her up?”
“My sister?”
“Yeah. Rae, right?”
“I’ll be right there.”
I arrived at Milo’s twenty minutes later, stopping in the foyer to overhear the continuation of my sister’s hopeless appeals.
“I have a B-minus average. And that’s not, like, an A in PE and a C in math. That’s a B-minus across the board. I said I was willing to negotiate. I said I’d be flexible with my negotiations. I even suggested we go to a mediator to work this out. But nothing. Nothing. They wouldn’t budge an inch.”
I tapped Rae on the shoulder. “Come on. Time to go.”
“I’m not done with my drink yet,” she coldly replied. I looked down at the amber-hued beverage and turned to Milo.
“Ginger ale,” he said, reading my mind.
I finished Rae’s drink for her.
“Now you’re done. Let’s go.” I grabbed her by the back of her shirt and yanked her off the barstool.
In the car, Rae was suddenly silent—hopelessly and pathetically silent.
“I’m going to camp, aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s nothing I can do about it?”
“Nothing.”
Rae calmly and suspiciously accepted her fate. She did not utter another word of protest for the rest of the week. She made casual small talk during the two-hour drive through the wine country and up the gravelly dirt road to Camp Winnemancha. My mother always taught Rae to choose her battles and her opponents wisely. It would take some time to realize, but Rae had learned this lesson all too well.
It began with phone calls—hourly messages, uncalculated and desperate. “Get me out of here or you’ll blow my college fund on mental health care.” “I’m serious, if you know what’s good for you, you won’t make me spend another day in this pit of hell.” Then Rae’s emergency cell phone was confiscated, which gave her some time to regroup and develop new tactics.
The letter-writing campaign was next. In the evening my dad would unwind while drinking a beer and reading aloud from Rae’s epistolary pleas:
My Dearest Family,
In theory, I’m sure that camp is an excellent idea. But frankly, I don’t think it is right for me. Why don’t we cut our losses and call it a day?
I look forward to seeing you when you pick me up tomorrow.
I love you all very much,
Rae
Rae’s second letter arrived on the same day as her first:
My Dearest Family,
I have skillfully negotiated with the camp director, Mr. Dutton, who assures me that if you pick me up from camp tomorrow, he will refund half of your investment. If you are still more concerned with the money than my mental well-being, I am willing to repay the remainder by working the rest of the summer for free. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow when you come get me out of here.
Love always,
Rae
P.S. I’ve enclosed a map and a $20 bill (gas money).
A second wave of phone messages began with a decidedly different flavor. Tuesday, 5:45 A.M.:
Hi, it’s me again. Thanks for the candy, but I’m on a hunger strike, so it’s useless to me. If you get this message in the next ten minutes, call me at…
My father skips to the next message. Tuesday, 7:15 A.>M.:
I think they’re running a white slavery ring out of this place. Use that information however you see fit. Uh-oh, I better run—
The next message didn’t arrive until Tuesday, 3:42 P.M.:
Hi, it’s Rae. I changed my mind. This place isn’t so bad. I just snorted a line of cocaine and things are looking much brighter. I could use some more money—like a grand. And maybe some cigarettes.
The last message made my dad laugh so hard, he choked on his coffee and then spent the next ten minutes recovering from a coughing fit. He said the messages alone were worth the cost of camp. But then the phone calls to Spellman Investigations halted abruptly.
When I arrived early, for an 11:00 A.M. meeting at David’s office, Rae was already into her fourth phone call of the day to our brother. It was the first time that I noticed David spoke to all his family members as if we were well-funded but extremely difficult clients.
“Listen to me very carefully, Rae,” my brother said. “I’m going to have my secretary send you a care package today—let me finish. In it will be all the crap you like. You’re going to eat it. You’re going to share it. And you will write me a letter—one letter only—thanking me for my thoughtful gift and informing me of at least one friend you’ve made. If I receive the letter and you refrain from making any more phone calls to me during the duration of your stay, then I’ll have a nice fifty-dollar bill for you when you return. Got it? I will not accept any more phone calls from a Rae Spellman.”
David hung up the phone, satisfied that he had made his point.
“For fifty bucks and some candy, I’ll stop calling you, too,” I said.
Five minutes later, David got another phone call. The interim receptionist buzzed through.
“Mr. Spellman, your sister Isabel is on the phone.”
David replied, “My sister Isabel is sitting right in front of me.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Put her through.” David paused before he picked up the phone, still deciding what tack to take, presumably.
“That’s it, Rae. No candy and no money,” David said in his most hardball lawyerly manner and slammed the phone into the receiver.
“It’s hard to believe I’m related to her,” David said. Then, after he thought about it, continued, “Or you, for that matter.”
What I found hard to believe was that Rae never called David back. I didn’t realize until much later that Rae had chosen a new opponent and an entirely different battle.
Weeks later, Rae told me precisely when the tables had turned for her, when she knew that “this was a matter of life or death.”
“At no point was it a matter of life or death, Rae,” I said. To which she replied, “If that’s what you have to tell yourself.”
Semantics aside, the turning point was the Camp Winnemancha talent show.
Kathryn Stewart, age twelve, was singing that annoying song from Titanic. Haley Granger and Darcy Spiegelman had just performed a tap dance duet to some crappy showtune. Tiffany Schmidt lip-synched and pranced around to a Britney Spears song. And Jamie Gerber and Brian Hall performed an original hip-hop number “so embarrassing it hurt.” Rae claimed that the talent show was the first thing that had made her cry in over two years. She responded with a talent act of her own: nicking one of the camp director’s cell phones and stealing out of the auditorium undetected.
