I Like You Just the Way I Am

by Jenny Mollen

  None of us did. Amanda waited for a response, then launched into a detailed account of her sex life past and present. She giggled, entertained by her own story as if somebody else were telling it to her. She sipped on a glass of champagne and would whisper conspiratorially whenever she used the word “fuck.” The group smiled sympathetically, which only encouraged greater detail.

  The meal ended how all group meals end, in a passive-aggressive standoff. Everybody insisted they’d paid, but we were still one hundred dollars short on the bill. Ruthie nudged Garabaldo, who was again properly wasted.

  “Baldo, you sure you paid? I didn’t see you open your—”

  Baldo cut her off by breaking into drunken hysterics. By now, the moving eyelash was resting just above her lip like a fake mustache.

  “Why does everybody hate me!?” she screamed, and ran off to the bathroom carrying the few last sips of her White Russian with her.

  Everybody chipped in a few more bucks and waited patiently for her return. After twenty minutes, Amanda stood up, demanding we leave.

  “Well, why don’t you drag your friend and whatever’s left of her makeup out of the bathroom?” Veronica said. She was still pissed that she had paid over fifty dollars for a personal pizza and two martinis.

  Offended, Amanda marched off to the bathroom. Simone started stress-eating her penis necklace, and Roxy looked like she was about to fall asleep. Five minutes passed before Amanda returned alone.

  “Where’s Garabaldo?” I asked.

  “She’s not in there.”

  “What do you mean? Where is she?”

  “I don’t know, Jenny! God!” She had reverted back into the fifteen-year-old version of herself.

  “Then what took you so long?” Veronica pushed.

  Amanda looked around, beet red. “I was pooping. Okay?”

  With the mention of pooping, the waiter walked back over and promptly asked us to leave. “We’re gonna need this table for another party, sooo…” He was using his fake-nice voice.

  “Um, actually, we’re missing someone. The girl who was sitting on the end,” I said.

  He shook his head, clearly not recalling.

  “She wanted Equal packets for her White Russian?” Ruthie offered.

  Still nothing.

  “I’m covering ten tables per hour, I really don’t have time to remember faces.” The waiter spoke about his job with the kind of gravitas usually reserved for doctors working the ER.

  The group got up and we all headed back to the bathroom to do a final check. Ruthie dialed Baldo’s cell, but it went straight to voice mail.

  “She’s not here. And that was definitely the stall you shit in,” Veronica said, walking out of a stall and lighting an incense match from inside her purse.

  We decided to go up to the room to see if maybe Garabaldo was hiding under a blanket or dead in the bathtub, covered in pills. When we arrived, the cops were already knocking on our door.

  “Excuse me? Can we help you?” Amanda asked, concerned.

  “Yes, we had a complaint. Are you Amanda Mollen?” the first cop asked.

  “Oh Jesus! She’s dead, isn’t she?” Veronica lit another menthol and slid down a wall, shocked.

  I tried to remain calm and position myself to look like the sane one of the group. “What exactly happened, officers?”

  “I think we need to discuss this inside,” Cop Number Two chimed in.

  Ruthie had the keys, so she opened the door. We all closed our eyes for fear that Garabaldo might be hanging from the ceiling.

  Once inside, Cop Number One’s tone changed. “I’m Officer Brooks and this is my partner, Officer Perez. Amanda Mollen? You are under arrest.”

  Brooks grabbed Amanda and cuffed her. “You have the right to remain silent.”

  “What are you doing?” Ruthie cried out.

  “And you have the right to remain sexy.” Brooks pushed Amanda down on the couch and straddled her. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard started blasting out of Perez’s bag.

  Both men ripped off their uniforms, giving way to tiny sock-stuffed Speedos.

  “Stop! Nooo!” Amanda screamed, kicking an undulating Perez away from her crotch.

  “Umm, excuse me, guys, sorry,” I interrupted. “But we have a slight problem on our hands.” I tried to avoid eye contact with Brooks, who was still face-fucking my sister.

  “Let me guess,” Perez said, picking up his pants, defeated. “You want firemen.”

  “No. No. No. You’re perfect. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you guys. And you’re doing a great job, it’s just we have a friend who’s missing and—”

  “It’s just not the right time to be getting our pussies eaten,” Veronica said, cutting to the chase.

  Ruthie and Roxy scanned the rest of the suite for signs of Garabaldo.

  “I don’t think she was here.” Roxy walked around the room like a dog sniffing out a bomb.

  “I think we should go talk to the front desk,” Amanda said, shimmying out of her plastic handcuffs and away from Brooks’s sock-cock.

  “We’re coming with you,” Perez said directly to Simone’s tits.

  The eight of us walked through the lobby with purpose. Neither Brooks nor Perez had a change of clothes that wasn’t a banana hammock, so they had no choice but to stay in uniform.

  Amanda and I approached a red-haired concierge who was busy playing some sort of prepubescent iPhone game.

  “Hi, I need to report a missing person,” Amanda said.

  “Umm. Is this person missing or are you just split up?” he asked.

  Amanda looked at me, confused. The truth was, we didn’t actually know if Baldo was missing, per se. She could have just been pissed off, wandering around the food court, or stuck in a high-stakes craps game as the designated dice kisser.

  “Why don’t you give us a description and a phone number, and we’ll call you if we see her. Big groups get split up all the time.”

  We took turns rattling off a rough description of Baldo.

  “Okay, umm, sort of stout,” I said.

  “Big hair,” Amanda chimed in.

  “One eyelash.”

  “RuPaul makeup.”

  “Penis necklace. Oh, and was last seen carrying a White Russian.” I was certain I’d just cracked the case wide open.

  “Can you describe the Russian?”

  “Small. Like two or three sips left.”

  “It’s a drink. Not a person,” Amanda barked.

  The concierge looked back at our group, then again at us. He leaned over his desk and whispered, “You know those guys aren’t real cops, right?”

  “Yes. We know.” We turned and walked off self-consciously, like we’d just been caught leaving our twenty-two-year-old neighbor’s apartment at 6 A.M.

  Once we rejoined our group, we told them the situation.

  “Before we can report Baldo missing,” Amanda explained, “we have to try to look for her.”

  “Wait, you guys haven’t looked for this girl yet?” Perez pulled away, like someone in a position to judge others’ life choices.

  “We called her cell,” Roxy said, defensive.

  “I’m sure she hasn’t gotten far. She has a blood alcohol level of roughly .20 and really short legs.” Veronica lit her last menthol, offering to share it with Brooks.

  Ruthie and Roxie felt someone needed to call hospitals and wait in the room in case Baldo returned. Perez grabbed Simone and volunteered to search neighboring hotels. Amanda, Brooks, and I took the casino while Veronica offered to go buy herself more menthols.

  The three of us walked the casino for hours into the early morning.

  “This could be the worst night of my life, you know.” Amanda sat at a slot machine and started to cry.

  “I’m really sorry. I thought I was planning something you’d enjoy. I never expected things to get so utterly fucked.” I tried to hug her, but it got awkward when Brooks piled on top.

  “Aw, guys, if it mak
es you feel any better, I worked a party last week where a lady got a microphone stuck in her vagina.”

  Just then, my cell rang. It was Roxy.

  “Do you have her?” I asked.

  “No, but the rest of us are up in the room stoned. Oh and I’m pretty sure your friend and Officer Perez are fucking on your side of the bed as we speak. Do you guys wanna get breakfast?”

  Amanda’s feet were bulging out of her Barbie-pink Louboutins like she was having an allergic reaction. Whether she wanted to or not, her body was telling her it was time to stop.

  A hostess reunited us with the rest of our search party at a large booth in a nearby diner. Veronica, Roxy, and Ruthie were stoned. Simone was braided around Perez like a friendship bracelet and demanded we sit down.

  “Why do you guys look so miserable?” Simone asked as Perez dropped an ice cube down the front of her shirt.

  “Well, we came here with six girls and we’re going home with five, for starters,” I said.

  “I’m sure she’s going to turn up,” Perez said. “She most likely fell asleep somewhere. Did you tell them about the chick last week who got the microphone lodged in her hoo-hoo?” He looked up at Brooks, who nodded yes.

  I ordered pancakes, hash browns, and a side of french fries and tried to forget about a future, specifically one where anybody referred to a vagina as a “hoo-hoo”

  “If anyone asks how this weekend went, can we all agree to lie? I have some people I need to impress on Facebook.” Veronica pulled out a compact and started fixing her makeup for a selfie.

  We all agreed that lying made the most sense. Amanda wanted to make sure her fiancé, Larry, thought she enjoyed herself as much as he did at his bachelor party. I wanted to look like someone responsible enough to organize an event. And Simone wanted to avoid the reality that she had “sort of” protected sex with a male stripper.

  * * *

  Maybe it was in honor of Baldo, or maybe it was because there was still male stripper cum all over our sheets, but I woke up that morning on the floor covered in hangers and shoes. The rest of the group was awake and sitting in the living room. When I walked out, Baldo was sitting with them. She was in the exact same outfit she left us in only now it was splattered with blood and ranch dressing. The forty pounds she’d recently lost she seemed to have gained back overnight. Her one eyelash was still attached, and her hair looked like it got teased and set on fire.

  “Baldo! What the fuck happened to you last night?” I really wanted to say, “I thought you were dead, cunt!”

  Baldo packed her trunks for the airport as she launched into a crazy story about her dysfunction with men, her overbearing mother, and how she accidentally won three grand playing blackjack. She didn’t remember the night in detail and only knew where she’d gone based on the chips still in her pocket. She said she woke up in a hotel room fully clothed next to an elderly man and his wife, who helped her get in a cab and find her way home. She also recalled winning a giant stuffed animal on the ring toss at Circus Circus but then traded it to a family outside the Hard Rock in exchange for the rest of a corn dog. The blood was from her nose, which she attributed to her high blood pressure. As for the ranch, she had no idea.

  Brooks and Perez were long gone, and the suite looked like Simone’s future abortion. The rest of us gathered up our personal belongings and headed downstairs, hoping to return to the lives we had before. In the elevator, each of us reflected silently. Then just as we were about to reach the lobby, Amanda turned and faced the group.

  “I really appreciate you guys coming here for me. It was a strong effort.”

  I couldn’t help but be touched by my sister’s graciousness.

  “And I think it’s probably best if we don’t see each other again until the wedding,” she continued.

  The doors opened to the bustling lobby and we all went in separate directions. Ruthie, Roxy, and Amanda headed out to the parking lot. Simone and I hailed a cab to the airport with Veronica. And Baldo walked into the casino and let it envelop her, like someone taking their final suicidal steps into a vast ocean.

  The fact that Baldo didn’t die on my clock seemed like a win. I couldn’t help but be slightly pleased with myself for pulling off a weekend that was at the very least memorable, if not perfect. And just like any good bachelorette party should do, the seven of us were bonded for it. Not because of our shared memories, but because we’re still arguing about who should cover the hotel-room damages.

  12.

  Botoxic Shock Syndrome

  Here’s the deal, ladies—eventually we are all gonna look like our grandmothers. Everybody gets older. Everybody falls apart. And for most women, turning thirty means admitting that despite our best efforts to keep dating club promoters, wearing short shorts, and doing the occasional line of cocaine in a public restroom, we aren’t kids anymore. Society and our weird uncles no longer look at us like nubile pieces of ass fresh out of college who can get away with not wearing bras. College was over ten fucking years ago, and your boobs look like shit.

  It starts to dawn on you that people around you—driving cars, making deals, and dancing in cages—happen to be an entire generation younger. This displacement causes some of us to question where we fit in. We’re not quite our mothers, but we also aren’t the sheltered princesses whose fathers are still paying our rent. (Well, at least not all of it.) While we were settling into emo music, skinny jeans, and dye jobs that accentuated our roots, frown lines were settling into our faces, sunspots were showing up on our skin, and our ass cheeks decided to grow hair. For a lot of us, these changes were subtle enough to ignore. But even in great lighting, it’s undeniable that middle age is on its way.

  When you’re an actor, the deck is shuffled even faster, and by twenty-eight, you’re pretty much old enough to play Ben Affleck’s mom. One day, you’re cast as the sexy girl next door, and the next, you’re the crazy widow who wanders the cul-de-sac with her Ugg-boots-wearing dog. It’s a harsh reality that a million miles on the elliptical and a thousand quarts of StriVectin can’t undo. Culturally, whether we like it or not, young is beautiful and old is irrelevant. Now, I guess I could be one of those really strong women who embraces my wrinkles and lets one streak of hair go gray, but let’s be honest, those women are annoying and probably don’t wear deodorant. I wanna look cute until “cute” is pried from my cold dead fingers, and if that makes me a shallow bitch who allows mass media to dictate my self-worth, then I wear the title as a badge of honor.

  At thirty-three (I’m thirty-four now, but let’s pretend this chapter was written a few months ago back when I was still thirty-three because why not?), I feel like I’ve done everything under the sun to maintain my youth. I’ve been conned into ridiculous workout programs, manipulated into buying salt from the Dead Sea, and in my darkest hour, even let my hairdresser give me bangs. I wasn’t at the point where I needed anything drastic, but I was at the point where when I looked in the mirror I saw my dad in a wig. That’s where Botox came in.

  Here’s the deal with Botox: It’s awesome. The only people who don’t like it are people who don’t get it—like my husband. He thinks freezing your face muscles with bacteria scraped from improperly handled meat products is a gateway procedure, and something that will eventually lead to surgery, and lasers, and me looking like Joan Rivers (which is completely ridiculous, since I was using lasers way before I discovered Botox). So in a selfless effort to appease him, I don’t tell him about it. And aside from the one or two occasions when I pretended that the environmental stresses of our home life had resulted in a mild case of Bell’s palsy, things have been pretty copacetic. My husband is happy and completely in the dark, and I look ever-so-slightly Photoshopped.

  The fact that both my parents are body-conscious nut jobs probably didn’t help my obsessive need for physical perfection. I’m also certain that watching both of them dabble in face work before forty did, in a way, anesthetize me to the idea that it could be dangerous to start young. I
grew up with the understanding that I’d eventually need a second boob job after breastfeeding, the fat pads under my eyes removed when they started to look too bulbous, and a face-lift when I hit seventy. These were commonplace procedures that were just part of growing up. I always felt more or less blessed that I inherited my mother’s Irish nose and my father’s olive skin. I knew there would be things to fix in the future, but thankfully most of those things were minor.

  At twenty-nine, I was the first of my friends to take the plunge with Botox, but over time, I’ve watched almost all of them succumb to the delicious temptation to stave off nature with injections. Americans spend over $50 billion per year on beauty. And as technology advances, so do our expectations. It’s hard for even the strongest of us not to take advantage. It’s like steroids in baseball. Sure, nobody is admitting to juicing, but the fact is, the players that are abstaining are finding themselves competing against the players that aren’t. But the point of this essay isn’t to encourage you to use steroids. It’s to encourage you to use Botox—if and when you need it. In small, conservative doses. Administered by a licensed physician or really well-kempt nurse.

  * * *

  My friend Candice is one year older than me. She’s one of those purists who never really bought in to the whole “fucking with her appearance” thing. She doesn’t wear makeup, and her eyebrows naturally grow in a perfect arch. When she has a zit, she has the willpower not to touch it. When her hair is a mess, she twirls it into a ponytail and doesn’t think about it again. She eats whatever she feels like. She works out when she has time. Candice is the type of chick I hate because everything about her is effortless. Nothing is forced or overthought. She’s never had surgery, braces, or even colored her hair. What you see is what you get.

  I met Candice for brunch one morning about six months ago (back when I was still thirty-three). After two hours of me bitching to her that my Instagram account was shut down because I posted a picture of my fingers between my legs, resembling a dick, I let her speak.