FRIENDS WITHOUT BENEFITS
It was only a fifteen-minute drive to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville from my parents’ house in Farmington, but once I discovered Café Santa Fe’s Long Island Iced Teas served by the carafe, that drive became way too long. I had one of my sister’s expired driver’s licenses but, as usual, I never had to use it since nobody ever asked me for my ID. A taxi was definitely not something that you could just grab, especially to Farmington. In fact, the only consistently reliable source of public transportation in Fayetteville was the Fayetteville Trolley, and that only took you up and down the town square. Fun when you’re drunk, but not functional for getting a lift home. I had another option of a place to crash, since I was having sex with one of the waiters who worked at Café Santa Fe. When you’re eighteen and you don’t have to pay for your own drinks, thirty-something waiters named Gary can be irresistible. Unfortunately that ended abruptly one night when we were having sex and he pulled a gun out from underneath his pillow and laid it on my chest.
“Oh my God, are you going to kill me?”
“No, I just think guns are sexy. Don’t you?”
“No.”
“Well, that’s too bad.”
“So now are you going to kill me?”
We didn’t go out for long.
If I was going to continue to have college-style fun while still maintaining my status as a daughter who had her shit together, I was going to need to get my own place. Plus I was getting too old to be calling my mother and asking her if it was cool to crash on a friend’s couch.
One of the best things about college was the people I met. I had two different worlds. In my classes, I had people around me who had similar dreams of acting and doing stand-up and going to Hollywood. Working at Bert’s, I had a bunch of sorority girls and fraternity guys around me who had similar dreams of finishing our shifts and getting drunk. Like Patrick, who went to the walk-in cooler every Sunday morning and sniffed all of the nitrous oxide out of the cans of whipped cream.
When I hung out with my work friends I went to awful parties and carried around red plastic cups. When I hung out with my theater friends I went to awful parties and carried around badly rolled joints. After play rehearsals we would go to the bar down the street from the theater, named Fuzzy’s, where they had giant frozen beer mugs and served pitchers for three dollars. There was one guy named Marty in our group who only had money once a month, when he got paid from a job. Nobody understood what he did but we knew it involved a tractor. We’d all buy his drinks for three weeks, then on payday he’d take us to Fuzzy’s and spend his entire paycheck. Then the next day he’d be penniless again and the cycle would start all over. After work at Bert’s, we’d go to a place called My Pleasure, a dark and loungey bar that served drinks with various fruit garnishes and you had to sign a guest book to get in.
These were the kinds of people I was dealing with, and I liked it. I never brought a theater friend to a work party, and vice versa. I rarely mixed the two groups together; the thought of it gave me a rash. I discovered that in college, with these two groups of friends, I could be who I wanted to be at any given time. It was similar to having the two different parents. On some nights I was the girl who was serious about theater and life goals and loved to read plays, and on other nights I was the girl who was serious about getting laid and mastering a keg stand. Both of those girls were me but I didn’t feel confident that one side would be accepted by the other. I figured out my own way to balance it all—work, friends, fun, and school. Or so I thought. Later in life I’d find that balancing those things while trying to maintain a real relationship would also be a challenge.
Just when I was about to lose my mind living at home, one of the girls I worked with at Bert’s told me that she was about to have an empty spot in her four-bedroom house. Caryn was a sorority girl, and so were her roommates. Those girls were fun to drink with on a Saturday night, but I didn’t know if I’d want to wake up to them every day—kind of like how I felt about most guys I’d met. What I did know was that these girls lived within walking distance of Dickson Street, where all the bars were.
As far as the house went, everything was perfect. My share of the rent was $150, which seemed like a lot then but now seems ridiculous. The house had the four bedrooms, a big kitchen, two bathrooms, washer and dryer—everything. I was envisioning my first big summer party and how good I’d be at keg stands by October.
Caryn was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. She was also one of those people who wore Christmas sweaters with pine trees and bells on them—even in July. She also loved to wear these big cow slippers that went “moo” with every step she took. We shared the same side of the house, along with the same bathroom, yet she would always seem surprised when I’d get up early on days that I didn’t have class.
One morning I was particularly hungover and she found me standing outside the bathroom with a look of death on my face.
“What are you doing up?” she asked me. She was all smiles, fresh from the shower.
“Really?” I asked. “Fucking really?” I had woken up thinking that there was a herd of cows inside my bedroom.
I picked up one of her slippers that was lying by the bathroom door and stuck it in the toilet. Without saying a word, I went back to sleep. From then on Caryn wore normal, quiet slippers—and avoided me in the mornings.
Leanne and Shannon were my other new roommates. Shannon was this blond, sweet girl who fooled you into thinking she was low-key but could drink more than me on a bad summer cruise. We sat up night after night drinking whatever was left in the house. Leanne was the loud one. She was on the rifle team in high school and loved to get drunk and perform her routine to the Grease soundtrack with a broomstick. She’d spin and twirl it until every person and every thing in our house had to run for cover. During our time at that house, we went through a lot of lamps.
Leanne seemed like a lesbian to me and to most other people, but she insisted that she liked men. She always said that she didn’t want a boyfriend because her heart was once broken and that she was just “not interested.” She is now out of the closet, very happy, and can still twirl the hell out of a broom.
I became best friends with one of the guys I worked with at Bert’s. His name was Andy. He and I did everything together, from movies to drinks to taking quizzes in Cosmo. He was the perfect gay best friend, only straight. I couldn’t remember having a friend like Andy since I had graduated from high school. I didn’t even realize at the time that I had already put most people from high school behind me. I had outgrown them in less than a year. You’d think I would have felt more of a loss for the people I’d been going to school with for the past seven or so years of my life, but I didn’t. I just moved on. I’ve never been one to hang on to the past. I don’t have coffee with exes, and I certainly don’t check in from time to time to “see how things are going.” Plus this was the new me, the college me. It was the fall of 1992 and I had college friends. High school was so six months ago.
The only loss I really felt was my friendship with Lindsay. Since we’d graduated, she and I had completely drifted apart. She got pregnant and married right after high school; I don’t remember in which order. We tried to hang out a few times, but her husband would always get mad before she even left the house. He had this idea that I was a bad influence on her, which was stupid. We didn’t urge each other on like some bad after-school special; we were just girls who grew up in a small town. I actually tried really hard to bond with her husband when they got together our senior year. I even had sex with his brother a couple of times, and that guy had some issues and was really into rodeos. I was being a really good friend to put myself in that kind of position. He wasn’t impressed.
I noticed Lindsay was starting to take on her husband’s attitude toward me. She would ask in a really condescending tone what I was doing out so late the night before. She was judging me because I had chosen a different life than she did. One day she ran
domly called and asked me when I was going to grow up.
“I just started college, so probably not for a few more years,” I replied, annoyed.
“Well, don’t you think it’s time you started acting like an adult?”
“I’m eighteen. I’m not supposed to yet.”
“Eighteen is when you become an adult,” she lectured.
“No, eighteen is when some people are forced to become an adult because their boyfriend doesn’t believe in birth control.”
We didn’t talk much after that. I didn’t need or want to be judged by people who were convinced that the way they lived their lives was the only way. To this day I don’t have time for people like that. It stung to lose her, but we were going in different directions.
Andy filled the void I felt that Lindsay had left and suddenly I had the new Thelma to my Louise, although he wouldn’t let me call him that. We were inseparable. The only time I can remember us even fighting was over the name of those Little Debbie cakes that are round and white with black stripes. Zebra Cakes, by the way. And they’re delicious.
Since Andy also worked at Bert’s, he knew Caryn. I started to notice a spark between them, so I got really excited at the idea of setting them up.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in love with someone, not realized it, and then set them up with your roommate. I don’t recommend it. The second Andy and Caryn started to date, I was in hell. The two of them together were nauseating. I asked everyone else I knew why they were so annoying, but nobody seemed to see it. I was the only one bothered by their union. Oh, shit …
As girly as Caryn was, she loved to fart. I’ve never understood that. I won’t even talk about going number two if a guy is around, let alone do it. I’d prefer to suffer silently and cause permanent damage to my colon. Caryn was the complete opposite. She farted all the time around Andy, and I could tell he hated it. It really seemed to turn him off, so I encouraged her to keep doing it.
“Guys love when you are just yourself!” I told her. “Don’t hold back anything—he wants to feel like you’re one of the guys. Plus I’ve read that it’s bad for you to hold it in!”
One day Andy told me he was starting to feel like Caryn was just one of the guys rather than his girlfriend. He told me she farted in front of him. I told him she was probably manic-depressive. I was doing all I could.
I attempted to keep my mind off being in love with my best friend by sleeping with other guys. The first guy I used as a distraction was named Max. He was flawless. Gorgeous. Complete with a blond ponytail (when that was in). He was a frat boy and he waited tables at Fuzzy’s, so flirting with him often landed me a free pitcher or two of beer. I guess I had a thing for waiters when I was in college, but at least this one never pulled a gun on me.
I noticed that broke Marty would always offer to pay when Max was working, even when it wasn’t his pay week. Obviously he’d caught on to the freebies I was getting and figured that if he offered but there was no bill to pay, he’d still get credit for offering. I couldn’t get mad at him. It was actually kind of ingenious.
Max was the unattainable hot waiter to pretty much everyone who went in to Fuzzy’s. It never even occurred to me that he would look my way, especially then—I had a particularly awful haircut. I have thick, curly hair so cutting it off above my ears was a terrible mistake. My friend dubbed it “The Ma’am,” because it looked just like Ma’am’s haircut from the TV show Webster. Google it—not pretty. At some point Max asked me out and I accepted, but I was still confused. All I wanted to do was find and tell Andy. Now I would have a hot guy and Andy would have Caryn and her flatulence problem, along with the latest fabrication I’d told him about her: a history of gout.
Max and I went on our date. He turned out to be pretty dumb. He was really, really sweet, but then again most dumb people are. He didn’t get my sense of humor at all, which was a real bummer considering at the time it was my best asset. During my date with Max I made several cracks that fell flat and he stared at me like I had just given him a math quiz. It was so frustrating. That was the first time I’d experienced how disappointing it can be when the only good quality a hot guy has is that he’s hot. That had always seemed like it would be a great thing. I even started to resent his ponytail, which thus far had been one of my favorite features. I began to tune him out and stare at it. I wondered why he had such a luxurious mane when my hair was too short and was growing up toward the sun like a mushroom. I finally decided that since this was going nowhere we should just get back to his apartment and have sex. That seemed like the least I could do for the other girls and gay men who hung out with me at Fuzzy’s and wanted to know all about his penis. It was pretty great, but I still didn’t go out with him again. I did hold a lot of pride knowing that I was the only theater girl who could land this guy, though. The next morning I’d woken up in a frat house positive that no other girl from my “Acting Shakespeare” class ever had.
Shortly after that, I dated a guy named Tom, who was on the swim team. He was a diver. He had an ass like a grapefruit. Screw it, I thought. Maybe this haircut is really working for me. I couldn’t wait to have sex with Tom so that I could tell Andy about it. That’s never a great sign. He and Caryn were still dating, although I was pretty sure that the new information I had just given him about her genital warts was starting to get to him. He really wanted to talk to her about it, but I assured him that she had them frozen off so he wasn’t susceptible to them.
“It’s best not to bring it up. It’ll just embarrass her.”
The first time I slept with Tom he told me he didn’t have a condom but that he did have shampoo.
“Most of the ingredients in shampoo are the same that are in spermicide,” he explained.
I just wanted to have sex with him. Andy and I had plans the next day and I needed the story. So I accepted his explanation and we went at it. I kept thinking about my friend Kristy from high school and how she really did believe that baths helped to prevent pregnancies. Somewhere, somehow, the school system was failing us. Tom wasn’t a dumb guy, though. He was just using the same strategy to get me to have sex with him as I was using to get Andy and Caryn to stop having sex: lying. For that reason, I couldn’t blame him. I’m just grateful that the only thing I got out of that night was a well-conditioned vagina.
Tom was cute and fun, passionate and smart, and he thought I was funny. It felt like maybe he was the kind of guy I needed. Perhaps he could get me over Andy. I appreciated that he had focus, even though I felt that diving was an unreliable choice for a college major.
The next day at lunch Andy asked me how things were going with the diver.
“Amazing,” I exaggerated. “We had sex last night. He’s really got some moves. I guess all that underwater breathing pays off.”
“What does that mean?”
I wasn’t expecting that. “Um, you figure it out!”
“Well, I’m glad it’s going well. But do you think that diving is really a great life plan?”
“I don’t know. Is not diving a great life plan? Because that’s what you’re doing!”
“What?”
“Exactly.”
At one point there was some sort of uproar regarding the swim team. They weren’t getting funded, or they were losing their funds, or maybe they just weren’t fun. I never really knew what the problem was, I just wore a button that said SAVE OUR SWIM TEAM (SOS for short) and got really mad when people didn’t know why I wore it. Those people would then ask me to explain what was going on and since I couldn’t I’d just say, “Try paying attention to what’s happening at your own school!” I didn’t even know we had a swim team until I met Tom, so I was definitely the asshole. It didn’t really matter; if I wanted to keep my cute new boyfriend to combat my feelings for my roommate’s boyfriend, whom I had set her up with and who was also my best friend, I needed the swim team at the University of Arkansas to get whatever the fuck it was they needed.
I wore my SOS button li
ke my life depended on it. I even attended a couple of rallies where I yelled out things like “You got that right,” even though I didn’t know what “that” was. It was all becoming a little daunting. I wasn’t even that into this guy and now I was running around like Sally Field in Norma Rae but unlike her I didn’t give a shit about whatever my cause was. In only a matter of weeks, I started to get annoyed with Tom. Watching him in his Speedos at practice went from adorable to stupid to gross. I couldn’t take this guy seriously anymore. I was nearing the end of my years as an official teen and I needed to find a provider, not someone who could simply nail a pike position. I ended things with him and went back to focusing on my classes and school. This relationship crap was not working out.
Caryn and Andy continued to date. I continued to get drunk. I found myself crying when they were together at our house parties, claiming that it was because we had run out of onion dip. I mean I was always really disappointed when that happened—it is my favorite party dip—but the tears were not from that. I could tell that Andy wasn’t really happy in the relationship, but some part of him thought he had to continue to date her. I don’t remember if he ever seemed very happy, though. He was pretty lost. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do with his life and it bothered him. Maybe he didn’t really need to know at the time, but I felt like he never would.
The night he told me he was going to break up with Caryn I was confused. I expected to be really happy, but I wasn’t. I looked at my friend, who I loved, and thought about how now we could have our chance. Then I pictured my other friend, who I also loved, and thought about how sad she was going to feel. I knew she really cared about Andy, and I certainly couldn’t blame her. I ruled out telling him we should see what it felt like to dry-hump and tried to focus on giving him good advice. I needed to put my own feelings aside and be a good friend to both of them. I suggested he just be honest. We talked for a long time, and he seemed satisfied that he knew the right way to let her down gently. He got up to go, but I grabbed his hand and stopped him. Shit. I was doing so well at being neutral. Now his hand was in mine and he was waiting to hear what I had to say that was so important that it made me stop him on his way out the door.
Life As I Blow It Page 6
