I Like You Just the Way I Am

by Jenny Mollen

  Fifteen minutes after we peeled my dad out of our backseat, assuring him that Kristen’s new boyfriend was impotent, Amanda returned my call from two days prior.

  “So you may wanna sit down for this,” she started.

  “Okay.”

  “Well, I’m with Larry. And, well, we’re in love.”

  Both my jaw and the phone fell to the floor. Sure, I thought she’d sleep with Larry. But love? Amanda? The only time I’d heard my sister use the term “love” was when she was talking about that Cartier bracelet you screw on your wrist.

  Jason picked up the phone and Amanda explained how instead of going home after Christmas dinner, she and Larry drove up to Santa Barbara and checked into Bacara for the rest of the weekend. Now they had matching tattoos and were considering moving in together.

  Jason hung up and stared at me in disbelief.

  “My best friend is in love with a bitch, and now I’m gonna be stuck hanging out with her forever!”

  “Okay, slow down.… She’s my sister—you were already stuck hanging out with her forever.”

  “So you’re not denying that she’s a bitch?”

  “No. But she’s like a fun bitch.”

  “What’s a fun bitch?”

  “It’s like someone who’s bitchy but still kind of—,” I started before he cut me off.

  “Just tell me it’s not gonna last.”

  “Relax, it’s not gonna last. Amanda is an ice queen. And Larry is a good person. You are working yourself up over nothing.”

  Six months later, Amanda and Larry were engaged. And despite our initial trepidation, the union proved to be extremely convenient. Whenever we had family obligations, Larry was forced to join. Whenever I was pressured into attending random peripheral friend events, my sister was roped into going as well. Our alliance also gave us the manpower to say no to invitations we might otherwise feel inclined to accept. One particular invitation however, left little room for escape.

  * * *

  Just as Amanda’s bridal shower was winding down, my father stood up, ostensibly to toast my sister. (Yes, he insisted on attending the bridal shower. Yes, he was the only guy there. And yes, people gave her lingerie that she was forced to open in front of him.)

  “Well, I broke down and gave Kristen the ring back.” He chuckled, then looked around the room, awaiting applause.

  “That’s great news,” I said, when what I really felt like saying was, Why the fuck are you here? This is a bridal shower.

  Later that night over dinner, Jason said to my dad, “I thought Kristen stopped talking to you.”

  “Nah, she was just playing hard to get. I knew she’d come around, you should see the ring,” he said smugly.

  “We have. It’s the same ring she was wearing nine months ago, right?” Amanda said, annoyed.

  My sister’s wedding was planned for October 24, so my dad decided November 24 would give us plenty of time to regroup and prepare for his wedding.

  “I’m sorry, did you say you are having a wedding? As in, a full-blown, white-dress, toss-the-bouquet wedding?” I asked.

  “This is Kristen’s first marriage,” my father explained. “I can’t take that away from her.”

  “I still don’t get how she started talking to you again…,” Jason said, perplexed.

  “Who’s doing your catering? We wanna do the whole mini burgers and shakes thing. Have you seen those?” he asked my sister, who was now an 11 on the 1 to “rip somebody’s heart out and eat it” scale.

  My dad was literally jacking my sister’s big day, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. Our mom’s marriages, though numerous, were always low-key elopements. Before this, if I got an invite to someone’s fourth wedding, I’d probably assume it was a joke and send back a picture of Jason’s balls. My dad, unfortunately, wasn’t joking, nor did he have any shame in registering for a bunch of redundant kitchen shit at William-Sonoma.

  * * *

  On November 23, my husband and I, along with the newly married Amanda and Larry, boarded a Southwest flight to Phoenix. We got wasted on the plane, and by the time the flight landed, only two of us were in any condition to hail a cab. I was not one of those two.

  The cab dropped us off at Kristen’s sister’s house, where the rehearsal dinner was already in full swing. The place was a mix of second-tier family friends and extras I think he hired for his last wedding. A magician showed up, guessing everyone’s birthday. And at one point, I even thought I saw a belly dancer, but it just turned out to be one of Kristen’s weird aunts from Israel.

  While Amanda and Larry buried themselves in the buffet, I buried myself in Jason’s coat pocket, looking for Xanax. Unfortunately, all I found was a Ricola.

  “A Ricola? How is this gonna help? I’m off Zoloft and I need soothing!”

  I was always going on and off Zoloft. I initially started meds to counter my eating disorder and then stayed on them to deal with the general depression that comes with being an actress married to her father. Over the years, I’ve vacillated over whether or not I actually need it, and at this particular time I didn’t think I did. I was wrong.

  “Jason, I’m serious. This whole environment is giving me posttraumatic stress.”

  When Amanda and Larry resurfaced, they too had reached their breaking point.

  “Uncle Ernie just pulled me aside and said, ‘You look good. I remember when you were poor,’” Amanda whispered loudly.

  “We have an Uncle Ernie?” I asked.

  “Aren’t you still poor?” Jason continued.

  We were angry, hungover, and in need of reprieve. The four of us were staying at my dad’s, so even if we left the party, it was only going to be to go back to his house, a place where even bad photos of him still found their way into frames. There was no escaping physically, so we had to do so emotionally.

  “Do you think your new stepbrother has weed?” Jason asked, dead serious.

  “He’s ten. Maybe? I don’t know. What age do kids start dealing drugs these days?”

  In L.A., you can buy marijuana as easy as you can a bottle of milk. In Arizona, I think you go to jail for just being Mexican. We couldn’t risk involving my stepbrother—not because we thought it was immoral to corrupt a child, but rather because we thought he looked like a narc.

  “You’re the only one of us who went to high school here,” Amanda said. “Can’t you make some calls?”

  “I haven’t lived here in over thirteen years. And even when I did, the only drug I had access to was Advil Cold and Sinus.”

  “It’s true, you guys, Jenny wasn’t cool. I’ve seen her yearbook. She wore suspenders. I say we go with the ten-year-old.” Jason was pacing anxiously.

  This was all the motivation I needed. I couldn’t let Jason know he was right about my cool status. The fact that my dad completely pirated my teens was a source of shame. The years I should have spent buying drugs with friends were instead spent riding on the back of a tandem bicycle listening to a fifty-year-old man talk about “the market.” I didn’t have time to misbehave because I was too consumed with trying to anticipate his every want and need. I wanted him to love me, to see me, and was willing to do just about anything to make that happen. Sophomore year, I let his barber attempt the “Jennifer Aniston,” leaving me instead with the “Kato Kaelin.” Junior year, I acquiesced and let him get me a personalized license plate that read: STR8AS. These were all things I needed to keep buried in the past. I was going to find weed even if it meant selling my new ten-year-old stepbrother to a Mexican cartel.

  I snuck outside and texted the only person I could think of who might be able to help, my friend Sky. Sky still owed me from hooking her up with the fake ID my mom scored me in Mexico. And though she moved away years ago, I knew she was still Facebook friends with the crowd that made their own acid and had babies at sixteen. Holding my breath, I sent her a text message.

  “Where is there grass in Phoenix?”

  “U R A DORK,” she wrote back
promptly.

  Oh my God, I’m in my hometown for less than twenty-four hours, and already I’ve been reminded of how uncool I was—twice. Riddled with anxiety, I pulled on my hair to make sure my locks weren’t shriveling back up into “the Rachel.”

  Sky then responded with a number and a name: “Joe.”

  Feeling like I’d just received the coordinates to One-Eyed Willie’s hidden treasure ship, I rushed back inside.

  “Guys, guys, I totally got a number!”

  “Let me see,” Jason said as he snatched my phone away. “She did.”

  “Thanks for fucking confirming.” I took the phone back. “Wait, you have to make the call. I’m really awkward with drug dealers.” I hoped that didn’t imply that I’d never actually met a drug dealer.

  “I’ll do it,” Larry said, taking the phone from both of us.

  Larry ducked outside to make the call. While he was gone, my dad zeroed in on us from across the room.

  “This is pretty great, right?” he said, nodding in agreement as if someone else had just asked the question.

  “Totally,” Jason agreed.

  Just as Amanda started talking, my dad produced a car key and stared into Jason’s eyes with the urgency of twenty-four-hour palm reader.

  “Ever drive a Ferrari?” he asked, tipsy.

  “I ha—,” Amanda started before being cut off yet again.

  “I’ll let you guys drive this home if you promise to be careful,” he said, pretending to be generous but really just looking for someone to drive his car back to the house for him.

  Jason couldn’t give a fuck about a Ferrari. The only thing any of us cared about was being in a vehicle with an engine that could transport our bodies to a place where giant buds of marijuana would be rolled up, set on fire, and placed delicately in our mouths. We would have driven a Fred Flintstone convertible that could only be operated by barefoot running if it meant getting stoned.

  The party was winding down, and my dad suggested we get a head start back to his place. In other words, he was already growing impatient that his car wasn’t safely back in its garage.

  Larry returned, and the four of us rushed out like we’d just finished cheating on the PSATs. Once both doors were shut and my sister and I were folded into the trunk/backseat, Larry confirmed our wildest hopes.

  “His name is Joe and we are getting pot!”

  “Thank God,” Jason said, peeling out of the driveway and over a curb.

  Joe lived minutes from Kristen’s sister’s place, and I was familiar enough with the street names to start shouting out directions. We took down the top so my sister and I could feel our necks again and blasted the only CD in my dad’s car since 1982, the Rocky III soundtrack. After about twenty minutes of harmonizing on “Eye of the Tiger,” Jason slowed down.

  “Jenny, you clearly don’t know where the fuck you’re going, because now we’re back in front of Kristen’s sister’s house.”

  Shit. We totally were. I reminded everyone I hadn’t lived there in thirteen years while Larry punched Joe’s address into his iPhone. After following the GPS ten miles in the opposite direction, we arrived at our destination.

  Taking in the scene, I started to panic. Joe’s house wasn’t some stucco, cookie-cutter housing development erected during the mid-’90s real estate boom. It was a palatial, newly remodeled spec house at the top of Camelback Mountain. Joe was obviously a kingpin.

  Dubious, Larry checked the address again. “This is it,” he confirmed.

  Jason turned off the car, and the four of us sat silently in the driveway. The landscape lights were off, and we couldn’t make out any activity coming from inside the home.

  “This looks like the type of place where I could get shot with a machine gun,” I whispered.

  “We’ll all go in together, get the weed, and be back in the car in under five minutes,” Jason said to himself.

  The guys pried us out of the backseat like paramedics, and we made our way up the tall staircase to the front entrance. When we got there, Larry pressed the buzzer.

  A friendly voice responded without even asking who we were. “Yo, come on in. I’m just getting out of the pool.”

  “This guy’s drug-dealing skills need work. He didn’t even ask us for a password,” I said.

  Nobody responded.

  The entrance opened up to a large outdoor terrace. We proceeded back past a pool surrounded by looming palm trees and nouveau riche Italian marble. To the right, a sliding glass door was open, and the same voice called out to us from inside.

  “Over here!”

  We walked inside to find Joe, a chubby, white, Jewish kid lounging on a giant leather couch in a chenille bathrobe.

  “Hey, guys, I ordered the fight. What can I get you to drink?”

  Though I appreciated his hospitality and was happy to see he wasn’t polishing a gun or doing coke off a machete, I was still unsettled about hanging out in his Scarface lair.

  “I think we just wanted to grab some pot,” I said uneasily.

  Finally out of patience with what a total amateur I was, Amanda pulled me aside. “Jenny, you have to smoke a bowl with your dealer and pretend you’re his friend before you just bail with his weed like an asshole, okay?”

  Unfazed, Joe walked over to his fridge and pulled out three bags of giant green buds. “What kind of high you guys looking for?”

  “I don’t know, just something that could take the edge off seeing my dad slow-dance to ‘Unchained Melody’ in the next twenty-four hours,” I said.

  Joe weighed out enough pot to last us through my dad’s fifth and sixth weddings, and just to be safe, we bought all of it.

  The five of us smoked, and within minutes Joe’s house seemed like the safest place on earth.

  I kicked off my shoes and relaxed into a small motorized car parked in the hallway.

  While Jason and Larry got sucked into the boxing match, Joe took Amanda and me on a tour.

  The place was huge but primarily empty. The light fixtures were nowhere to be seen, closet doors were missing, and even the stove was pulled out. Joe explained that the house wasn’t actually his. He was just a squatter, staying there until his friend, an investor, got his money out of the place. Due to the housing crisis, the property had sat dormant on the market for just over two years before the contractor started selling off bits and pieces to make the mortgage.

  Five or six rides in the elevator that only covered three floors later, Joe excused himself to the restroom. When he reappeared, he was dressed as a giant pink bunny.

  I knew I was stoned. But not that stoned.

  “Did we take acid?” I asked earnestly, trying to throw my minicar into reverse.

  Wide-eyed, Amanda approached Joe slowly like he was E.T. and started petting his face.

  “It’s cool! He’s real!” she exclaimed through bloodshot eyes.

  The bunny suit was left over from Halloween, and Joe thought we might want to take some pictures of him in it.

  “Um … Yes, please!” Jason said, now standing in the hallway, eating a giant bowl of Oreos drenched in milk with a spoon.

  Abandoning my mini vehicle in the elevator, I escorted Joe outside for a photo shoot.

  Larry and Jason hoisted him onto the hood of the Ferrari, and Amanda started snapping shots. Next, we positioned him under the front wheel as if he were roadkill.

  “Does anyone have any fake blood?” Jason asked.

  “Just put some Oreo juice on him!” Amanda suggested.

  Jason drizzled milk over Joe’s chest as he made a valiant attempt to be America’s Next Top Model. And for a few brief minutes that seemed like a stoner’s hour, I started to get a sense of what a normal adolescence felt like.

  Suddenly, the car phone started ringing. It was my dad.

  Looking at my watch, I noticed it was now two in the morning. We’d been with Joe for over four hours.

  “Who still has a car phone?” Joe asked.

  “The guy who still list
ens to the Rocky III soundtrack on disc,” Larry explained.

  “We have to go! We are gonna be in so much trouble, and we can’t take Joe with us! Joe get away from the car!” I sounded like a paranoid nineteen-year-old waiting for the results to an HPV test.

  “Everyone shut up,” Jason said, helping Joe up and nibbling an Oreo crumb off his chest. “Joe, look, dude, we’ve given you four hours of our lives for an ounce of weed. We gotta get home.”

  “That’s only an ounce?” I asked.

  “An ounce is a lot,” everyone said in unison.

  “Fine! I was a dork in high school. This is the first time I’ve had fun, okay?”

  “She and my dad were married, she didn’t get out much. I lived with my mom. I totally know what an ounce looks like.” Amanda fixed Joe’s ears and kissed him on the cheek.

  We bade Joe farewell and drove home.

  “It’s two A.M. He’s getting married in less than eight hours. Why is he still awake?” I rambled as we pulled through the security gate of my dad’s house.

  “Maybe it was a pocket dial,” Larry offered reassuringly.

  The house lights were out and everything seemed quiet. With a renewed sense of victory, we pressed the garage door opener to go inside. There, standing exactly five feet eight in slippers (with lifts) was my dad. He was wide awake.

  “Hey! Where have you guys been?” he said. He was completely sober now.

  Reeking of marijuana, none of us had an answer. I started to make up some ridiculous story about taking Jason to see my old high school but got distracted by a framed photo of my dad holding another framed photo of my dad. Amanda walked straight past us and went to the fridge to make a sandwich.

  All my dad seemed to want to talk about was the Ferrari, so it fell on Jason and Larry to indulge him. I just stood there nodding until eventually, Larry’s true understanding of something my dad actually knew very little about put him to sleep.

  The four of us snuck upstairs to my high school bedroom and passed around the first joint ever to arrive on the premises. Kristen’s son slept soundly in the room next door, and on more than one occasion we were tempted to wake him and ask if he wanted a toke. We decided against it because we figured he was too young. Also because in time, he would have to learn that finding weed isn’t always easy. Kids need to work for things in order to appreciate them. Jason was the first one to say out loud what I think all of us were thinking.