Oh, honey, of course you’re still hot. Men have . . . evolved, is all. Guys just don’t whistle at strange women on the street anymore. It’s like a thing. I saw it . . . on the news.
JENNA
I sat in the front window for three hours today and watched those guys whistle at thirteen women. Thirteen! I counted.
JOE
Well, yeah . . . see . . . that’s because they can tell that you’re different. They respect you. That’s it! They totally respect you in a way they’d never respect some young, hot—oh. Fuck.
JENNA rolls over and sobs facedown into her pillow. JOE looks at the camera, shaking his head, clearly thinking WTF do I do now?
CUT TO:
JOE is on a ladder leaning up against the house, working on the siding, and wearing a tool belt. He’s shirtless and looking pretty damned good for a fifty-year-old, it’s worth noting. JENNA comes walking out of the house, purse over her shoulder, and begins heading toward her car in the driveway.
JOE
[whistles loudly]
Ow, ow, ow! That’s a tight little ass, baby! I’d like to get me a piece of that. Hey, can I get some fries with that shake?
JENNA
[shaking her head sadly]
Thanks, honey. But it’s not the same.
CUT TO:
At the construction site, JOE is chatting with HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKERS 1 and 2.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
So, let me get this straight: When your wife walks or even drives by, you want us to shout vulgar obscenities at her?
JOE
Yes, please!
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2
Every time?
JOE
If it’s not too much trouble, that would be great.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
Do you want, like, slightly vulgar or really nasty?
JOE
Let’s go with really nasty.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
And you promise this isn’t some sort of setup?
JOE
I swear it on my life.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2
And you’re not going to call the cops or come over here and try to kick our asses? I mean, not that you could or anything, but you’re not even going to try?
JOE
[one hand to heart, the other held up Boy Scout style]
I will not summon any law enforcement officers or lay a finger on any one of you, so help me God.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
You said fifty bucks apiece, right?
JOE
I did. But you guys seem legit. Let’s make it seventy-five.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
Sweet, man!
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2
You got a deal.
JOE reaches for his wallet, doles out the cash. The dudes look pretty stoked.
CUT TO:
In a déjà vu repeat of the opening scene, JENNA exits her front door with her darling little dog on a leash and walks up her driveway to the sidewalk. This time she’s wearing high heels, a super-short skirt and a skintight tank top over a leopard push-up bra. She looks fairly ridiculous as she stops and looks purposefully toward the house under construction. JENNA squares her shoulders, sucks in her stomach, rearranges her boobs, and starts marching toward the house, trying to look somewhat young and extremely slutty.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
[whispering to HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2]
Hey, here she comes!
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2
[shouting]
Hey there, pretty lady!
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
[whispering to HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2]
Pretty lady? Really? Dude, you suck at this. The husband said to be nasty!
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2
[whispering to HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1]
I know, but she’s old. I don’t want her to have a heart attack or anything.
[trying again, this time yelling at JENNA]
Nice legs, gorgeous. You want to come up here and wrap ’em around me?
And when you’re done, maybe I can pet your dog!
[winks suggestively]
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 1
[whispering to HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2 again]
Seriously, man, just stop. Stop now.
JENNA hears them, looks around again, this time to make sure they’re talking to her. They are! She tries to conceal her glee and in fact look disgusted. She does a lousy job at both. They continue to catcall, getting progressively more vulgar,* as JENNA oh-so-slowly makes her way past the house. Finally, she is almost out of sight.
HOT CONSTRUCTION WORKER 2
[shouting]
Hummina, hummina! Lookin’ fine from behind, too!
A huge smile breaks out across JENNA’S face. Oh yeah, she’s still got it.
FADE TO BLACK . . .
That would be sad, right?
Although it’s impossible to fathom that it went down more than half of my lifetime ago, one of my favorite attempted-pickup stories happened to me in my twenties. I was at a bar (naturally) with a bunch of girlfriends and this one guy would not leave me alone. He’d asked me to dance, offered me a seat, and begged to buy me a drink a dozen or more times. I had turned him down in each case, because I could tell he’d barnacle himself to my leg if I so much as let him give me his advanced spot in the mile-long bathroom line. At one point in the evening, I was at the bar ordering more drinks (of course), when I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned around. It was him, wanting to know if I was sure I wouldn’t let him get this round.
“I’m good, thanks,” I told him, turning back around and placing my order.
Tap, tap, tap.
“Just one?” he pleaded. “What’s the big deal?”
Having answered this question thirteen times already, I decided to ignore him. Just as the bartender set down my order, I felt a hand slide down my back, land on my ass, and give it a hearty squeeze. Without even stopping to think, I grabbed a full drink in each fist, spun around, and threw them both in the guy’s face.
“Um,” he whimpered, and with alcohol dripping from his hair and eyelashes and lips, he motioned behind him with one hand. “That was your friend.”
Sure enough, my pal Allison was standing directly behind him. Allison raised her hand as if someone had asked who was responsible for this situation. She looked simultaneously horrified, guilty, and as if she was doing everything in her power not to break out into a fit of hysterical laughter. I apologized profusely to the sticky stranger and wound up buying his drink. As I’d feared, that soaking wet SOB totally took advantage of the situation and clung to me like an injured tree frog all night. Lesson learned.*
A decade later in my thirties, when I was still occasionally getting asked to show my ID to buy booze, I’d always think, “I wonder if this is the last time I’ll ever get carded.” Eventually, it was. Now I think, “I wonder if that’s the last time I’ll ever get to throw a drink in someone’s face.”
So far, it is. But you never know.
CHAPTER 21
The Big Chill Was Bullshit
Despite my affinity for profanity (or perhaps because of it?) I never had any trouble making friends when I was single. After all, it wasn’t impossibly hard to find somebody I liked well enough to go to a yoga class with or sit next to in a movie or maybe even go away with for a weekend. If I met a woman who was funny, prompt, smart, not too political or religious, and could fork over her half of the dinner tab, she’d probably at least make it onto the long list.
Then I met the man who would become my husband. Of course I kept all of my old friends and Joe kept his, and everyone was welcomed warmly into the growing fold. We got engaged, bought a house, and moved in together, then we embarked on that obnoxious new-couple nesting phase where
we wanted to be alone together morning and night, and had little need for outside interference or entertainment. We had everything we needed, and “make fun new friends” slid to the very bottom of our collective to-do lists.
While we were extremely busy inspecting each other’s every pore and making googly eyes at one another, our friends were out trolling the streets for life partners of their own. Because that’s what you do. Joe and I were excited about this because, frankly, after a while tables for two get old, and when you both know every answer to every question in Cranium, the game sort of loses its appeal. We wanted other cool, like-minded couples to do exciting and adventurous new things with, and we clung to the hope that one of our many friends would come through for us and bring some fun, fresh blood to the mix. We pictured traveling dinner parties and potluck barbecues and that dancing-around-the-kitchen-island scene from The Big Chill (minus the dead guy), because that was totally grown-up and sophisticated and so were we. It was only a matter of weeks before our fantasies promptly began the journey to hell in the proverbial handbasket.*
“Bob’s engaged,” Joe announced in a neutral voice one night.
“Not to Shelby, I hope,” I replied. Bob had been dating Shelby for as long as I’d known him, and nobody liked her. Not his parents or his siblings or any of his friends or even our dog Sam, who loved everybody. Clearly, Bob had had the good sense to dump her ass and find a more likeable replacement, whom I couldn’t wait to meet.
“Yup, to Shelby,” Joe said.
“But why?” I wanted to know. Shelby was uptight and pinch faced and hanging out with her was about as enjoyable as a cold bikini wax. The first time we had her over to our house—which was 1,100 square feet of pure charm, I might add—she looked around haughtily and said, “I wish I could live in a tiny house. It must be so nice not to have to walk very far to get anything.”
I am not making this up. She said that. To my face. In my home. Clearly Bob and Shelby were never going to be invited over for game night or even a Super Bowl party. It was too bad, too, because Bob was funny and smart, and he had a boat.
The thing was, I discovered, when you’re half of a couple, finding another twosome to hang out with is approximately forty-seven billion times harder than finding a partner was. You pretty much have to weed through the planet’s entire population to unearth two sets of previously paired people who enjoy spending time with each other equally or at least close to it. I don’t exactly know how to calculate the chances of that happening, but for comparative purposes, consider that the odds of rolling a four of a kind with four dice are 6 in 1,296, or 0.005 percent. In other words, you’d be a fool to bet the house on it.
Despite those abysmal odds, Joe and I eventually managed to find a handful of couples we both enjoyed socializing with in our newlywed days. We had dinner parties just like we’d fantasized about and took lake and ski trips and shared holiday meals with this posse of like-minded homies, and once when a group of us were cleaning up the kitchen, “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” came on, and we all nearly lost it. All was well and right with the world, and even though all of our biological relatives were far away, Joe and I had created for ourselves a hybrid family that was entirely of our choosing. We stopped short of drawing blood from our wrists and comingling the fluids (you did this with your best girlfriends in elementary school so that you could be “blood sisters” too, right?), but we were nevertheless fully and forever committed.
And then everybody started having babies, and it was like somebody strapped a turbo jetpack onto the back of the handbasket and it blasted our friendships straight to the bottomless pit of the netherworld.
I might be being slightly melodramatic there, but honestly, nothing can break up an ongoing platonic orgy faster than suddenly finding yourselves on opposite sides of the parenting chasm. Teetering on one edge you’ve got your couple who’s so utterly engrossed in this new baby world that they don’t realize that a mere year ago they would have been repulsed by any conversation that had the words mucus plug or placenta in it, too. They refuse to go anywhere loud or crowded, their minivan smells like moldy milk, and they have to be home by seven p.m. to protect their tot’s precious sleep schedule. On the other side, you’ve got your freewheeling, unencumbered, still-spontaneous pair who try their best to dote on the adorably dressed blob in the room but frankly can’t wait to return her to her parents and belly back up to the bar.
Eventually though, the partiers probably decide to procreate, too, and once their own bundle arrives, they get it. They laugh with the duo that trod the parenting path before them, and apologize for being so insensitive that time they didn’t give their pals enough lead time to find a babysitter for their New Year’s Eve party. The forerunners forgive them, of course, and show their amnesty by inundating the initiates with a nonstop parade of gently used bouncy seats and baby monitors and travel cribs. The four adults, high on bonding hormones and lack of sleep, take a zillion pictures of their offspring together, fantasizing about a new generation of lifelong friendships and—in the happiest and most perfect of all worlds—marriage.
“We could be in-laws!” they cry, propping little Piper up against Preston for another photo shoot. “Ooh,” the photographer squeals, showing the group the money shot where Preston is holding Piper’s tiny hand and looking sweetly into her eyes. “This one will be perfect to blow up at the wedding!”
The happy-family bliss bubble continues to grow exponentially, up until right around the time Preston starts walking and talking. Hopefully everyone is wearing safety goggles and raincoats when he does, because this is when that deceptively delightful bubble pops. And it turns out, the bubble is filled with several shit-tons of bitter envy and resentment.
“That Preston is a goddamned animal,” Piper’s dad grumbles through a fake smile as he waves good-bye to Preston’s family out the front window. “Did you see him jumping on my new leather chair in his filthy shoes?”
“I did,” Piper’s mom replies. “And you missed it when he was hitting Piper on the head with his stuffed dinosaur. He could have given her a concussion! And the worst part was those parents of his didn’t even try to stop him! They have no rules whatsoever. How can you have no rules? Mark my words: Preston is going to grow up to be a nightmare, a total nightmare. Maybe it’s best if we don’t have them over anymore.”
Meanwhile, over in Preston’s car, his mother sits smugly in the front seat, shaking her head and tsk-tsking.
“She’s bottle feeding Piper, can you believe it?” she sighs. “It wasn’t easy, you know, but I nursed Preston for twenty-eight weeks. Breast milk is so much better for babies; it really is a shame she didn’t even try.”
“Did they even thank us for the soothing tropical rain forest sounds CD we brought?” Preston’s dad wants to know. “I made that myself.”
“Not that I heard,” Preston’s mom says. “And I hate to say it, but I think there may be something wrong with Piper, too. Did you see how she just sits there like a lump, doing nothing? And she’s four months old! Preston was rolling over and clapping his hands at that age, remember? It’s probably because they never turn their TVs off. Did you notice that, too? They have a TV in every room, and they’re all blaring constantly. All of that stimulation isn’t good for a child. I don’t know if we should hang around with them anymore.”
That lucky sonofabitch does have a TV in every room, doesn’t he? Preston’s dad thinks, but he says nothing. Obviously he is going to need to bring this up at a much more opportune time.
From here, the group lovefest is on a downhill slippery slope paved with disparate views on spanking, vaccinating, and buying organic, on Ferber’s versus Sears’s approach to sleep, cloth versus disposable diapers, public versus private education, hand sanitizer versus germs as immunity boosters, listening to your body versus cleaning your plate, and what exactly is the right age to get your kid a cell phone. And even though every child is differe
nt and there is no one perfect way to parent,* tensions rise and tempers flare every time there’s a parental impasse. All four parties sit and marvel at the fact that these people they thought they had so much in common with could turn out to be colossal flops in such an important department.
Once your spawn start talking and having opinions and playmates and a far busier social calendar than you’ve got, it gets even harder. Now you don’t just need to find a couple that you and your partner like equally and whose parenting approach you both approve of; now you’re tasked with finding all of that plus these people must have the perfect children who must be roughly the same age(s) and exactly the same gender(s) as yours. Sure, you could go ahead and plan an evening of fun for your four- and six-year-old girls and their nine-, eleven-, and seventeen-year-old boys. Just be prepared to be interrupted every thirty seconds to deflect another complaint of “we have nothing to doooo” and “when can we go hoooome?”
Eventually you may just resign yourself to the fact that it’s easiest if your pals are your children’s friend’s parents. It’s almost a default setting, a path of least resistance. These friendships build slowly, mostly by sitting next to the same faces at 2,394 spring sings, potluck picnics, back-to-school barbecues, soccer games, dance recitals, PTA meetings and promotions. “Hey, I forgot my camera,” you might lie to the seemingly normal woman whose name you can never remember and aren’t sure which kids she goes with (but pray it isn’t the twins with the deadly nut allergies). “If I give you my email address, would you mind sending me copies of yours?”
She actually follows through, and you wind up exchanging some witty emails. After she drops the f-bomb in one and alludes to being hungover in another, you decide to get serious about the pursuit. Now that you are officially courting her, you suggest to your husband that you should have them over for dinner.
I've Still Got It...I Just Can't Remember Where I Put It: Awkwardly True Tales from the Far Side of Forty Page 20
