“I’m not using her. We’re just enjoying each other’s company. Sexually.”
“And at the movies.”
“Prelude to sexually.”
“So what’s wrong with her?”
He pauses. “I shouldn’t say. It’s inappropriate.”
“Don’t be a tease. Tell me. I’m not going to say anything.”
He frowns. “She’s a princess. She expects me to do everything. It’s like we’re living in the fifties. I have to call her all the time. I have to pick her up all the time. She never even offers to pay for anything. And it’s not that I mind calling and paying, but she acts like she expects it. It’s exhausting. And…I don’t think we really click. You know?”
“So why do you keep seeing her?”
He smiles slyly. “Well, she’s really hot.”
“See? You’re a pig. And you’re never going to meet ‘the one’ as long as you’re still seeing ‘the two.’ You should be dating other people. I’d offer to fix you up with someone, but all my friends are presently slightly insane.” I nod in Sam’s direction.
“Sam’s cute.” Sam and Andrew? The initials S and A are just not as amusing as S and M. Anyway, I can’t imagine anyone with her other than Marc.
“Just promise not to try to fix me up with Natalie again.”
“Why not?”
“Too flaky. She’s even more of a princess than Jess.”
Hmm. Why is all this anti-princess talk making me uncomfortable? Oh right. I slide off the couch onto the floor next to him and pick up a screwdriver. “So what can I do to help, kind sir?”
I am an awesome roommate and here’s why:
1. I put all the pictures of Sam and Marc and all the teddy bears he gave her (all eight of them, and not the crappy, carnival kind, either—I’m talking Gund here) in a large green garbage bag, and stuff it in the front closet behind my long black pea jacket that I haven’t worn in years but won’t throw out because you never know, the style could come back.
2. I convince Sam to hang up the phone the three times I have a sneaking suspicion she’s going to call him. I can tell when she’s going to do it. First she starts fidgeting. Then she gets really quiet. A minute or so later, she attempts a casual stroll into her room and closes the door behind her. It reminds me of when my baby sister Iris used to crawl into the corner of a room to go to the bathroom in her diaper. When my intuition tells me that Sam is about to call, I barge into her room just as she picks up the phone, and convince her to hang up, insisting she’ll thank me later. Pretty good system—I’ve only had two misses. Both times she called him when I was asleep, and tearfully confessed the next morning. The both times she spoke to him made her feel worse.
3. I bought five more boxes of tissue and watched at least thirty-five episodes of Beautiful Bride with my broken-hearted friend. “Better to get it out of your system,” I tell her. It’s addictive, this cheesiness. I can’t help but wonder, Who watches this show on a regular basis? Are women that obsessed with getting married? Every episode is about a bride worrying about her flowers and veil and frilly dress. My wedding dress is going to be far more sophisticated than the ones on that show. I think I want a scooped neck, princess sleeves, and a puffed skirt. None of that bow crap. Elegant is going to be the operative adjective. “Don’t worry,” I find myself telling Sam. “There’s a lid for every pot.” I can’t believe I said that. God save me, I’m beginning to sound just like my father.
Week One A.M. (After Marc) seems to go on forever.
On Monday, Natalie comes over for some girl bonding. Her head-cheerleader smile and perky anecdotes are a little too much for us. Sam feigns a headache and goes to sleep. I’m stuck bonding.
On Tuesday, Sam cleans the house.
On Wednesday, I turn on Law and Order by accident. “…the criminal lawyers who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories….” Logan/Mr. Big finds a male body in the trunk of an abandoned car, and Sam gets a sad, wistful look in her eyes. I turn off the TV. Sam cleans the house again.
On Thursday, Andrew and I drag her to half-price night at Charlie’s Wings. I’m not crazy about eating wings in front of a guy, even Andrew, because I have a habit of getting hot sauce all over my face. I stare at Andrew as he holds a wing by its tip and carefully chews off the meat, leaving the bone completely stripped. He then gently licks the sauce off his lips with his tongue. How can anyone eat wings with so much style and sex appeal? I’m perfectly content to sit next to Andrew and study his technique, when boom, Sam sees Marc’s brother’s best friend sitting two tables over. I spend the next half hour trying to coax her out of a locked bathroom stall.
On Friday morning I wake up to the sound of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” blasting through my walls.
“Hello?”
“Good morning!” Sam says, throwing open my door.
“Morning,” I say.
“Good, good, good morning!” she sings brightly. “For the first time all week I actually wanted to get out of bed.”
“Good.”
“I’m a new me.”
I’m unsure if that statement requires a positive or negative response.
She plops down on my bed. “I will be less anal, I will have female friends, and I will find a new man. And from now on I will be called Samantha.”
“Good for you,” I cheerlead sleepily. My three weeks of singleness allow me the insight that she is not quite ready for a personality overhaul, but I decide to humor her.
“I’m not wasting any more dating time. Marc is an infant. He wants space? I’ll give him space. He’ll have more space then he knows what to do with when I go fuck every other man on this planet.”
The word “fuck” sounds funny coming from her mouth, almost as if she has a mouthful of peanut butter. “Good for you,” I say uncertainly.
“It’s time to find a mature man.” She pushes up her breasts and stares at the responding cleavage in my mirror. “I’m ready.”
“For what? For sex with mature men?”
“No. For Orgasm.”
Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire. I try to talk her into going to a more shall-we-say sedate bar, like Aqua, an after-work bar on the fifty-sixth floor of the Tyler Building, but she’s insistent. Natalie, thankfully, manages to set her straight later that evening, pointing out that Orgasm is for the under-thirty crowd, while Aqua is the place to meet older, career-minded men. Mature men.
Natalie has consented to be the designated driver, which means she’ll only have one glass of wine. I have a feeling Sam is going to want to wallow, and being the good friend I am, I can’t possibly allow her to wallow alone. Natalie even insists on paying for parking, and because of our perpetual state of brokeness, Sam and I don’t argue.
“These things are killing me,” Sam says. She is referring to the Band-Aids strategically placed over her nipples, in case she gets cold. She’s wearing one of Natalie’s backless tank tops, and she gets too “nippy” when she goes completely coverage-free.
“Wait ’til you take them off,” Nat says. “Now that’s pain.”
“So how do I look?” Sam asks.
“Stunning,” I answer. She does look great. Almost slutty (this is good). Definitely hot, although I’m not sure after-work appropriate.
We’re standing in front of the elevator to the bar, when a short woman standing behind a counter tells us that although there’s no cover charge, we have to check our coats, which will cost us each ten dollars.
All three of us cross our arms in front of our chests. “Actually, I’d prefer to keep my coat, if you don’t mind,” Natalie says. It’s not the money; she doesn’t trust strangers with her possessions.
“So try it,” the woman says. “But they’re going to send you back down.”
“No, they won’t,” Natalie mutters under her breath. “I always bring my coat up.”
So up we go in one of those superspeed elevators that made me wish I was chewing gum to ease the pressure mo
unting in my ears.
The elevator drops us off directly in front of the hostess.
“Hi,” Natalie says. “Table for three, please.”
The hostess looks us over. “Sorry, we’re full.”
I notice an empty place by the window. This calls for drastic measures. The three of us form a huddle, and after an agonizing five minutes of deliberation, settle on the grand sum of ten dollars.
“The table is now free,” says the hostess in a candy-coated voice. “But you need to check your coats downstairs.”
“We’d rather keep our coats,” Natalie says.
“Sorry. I can’t seat you until you check your coats.”
Silently I press the down button on the elevator and pass out sticks of gum.
When we arrive at the bottom floor, we all stare at the ground. “We’d like to check our coats.” Natalie says. Sam and I giggle. I look up at the woman behind the counter and smile. She smiles back.
Five minutes later, the elevator drops us off in front of the hostess a second time. “Our table, please,” Natalie says, pointing to the still-vacant spot by the window.
“Sorry, we’re full.”
We form another huddle, and fifty dollars poorer than when we first arrived, we’re sitting at a corner table overlooking the city.
Natalie and Sam place their cell phones directly beside their napkins. In case. “So has he called?” Natalie asks. She is referring to Marc, of course.
“No.”
The moment is punctuated with silence. What can be said after that? On one hand, you want to cheer her up and tell her he’ll call, but on the other hand, you want to tell her he’s not worth it, he’s a jerk, and she’s better off if he doesn’t call—but what if he does call? If he calls, then they’ll get back together and hate you for saying all those horrible things. Remember How to Recover from a Breakup rule number three? Only mediocre friends should say terrible things about ex-boyfriends.
We order three glasses of wine—red for Sam and Natalie and white for me.
“He likes being tied up,” Sam announces.
“Excuse me?” I choke slightly on my wine.
“Tied up. And he especially likes handcuffs. He likes being spanked, too.”
I am unable to swallow my wine. I guess Sam did understand the S-M significance of their names after all.
Natalie laughs. “Do you get off on that stuff?”
“Sometimes. Kind of weird, though.”
I will never again be able to look at Marc in the same way.
“Do you think,” Sam wonders aloud, “he’ll use his handcuffs with another girl?”
“You don’t buy a new box of condoms every time you sleep with a different guy,” Natalie offers wisely.
At this point, I feel compelled to add my two cents. “I think you should buy a new set of handcuffs for each partner. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Handcuffs, I assume, are so personal, so individual, but it stands to reason you wouldn’t buy new condoms if you still had some left over. It’s only the used ones I’d object to.”
“I don’t know,” Sam says. “I’m going to keep my vibrator.”
Sam and I are on our second round of drinks when we notice the two GQ-ish men at the bar, both in their early thirties, both wearing suits, one talking on a cell phone, the other slightly in need of a shave, both very sexy.
“Let’s call them over,” Sam says, downing her wine.
I’m not sure how you’re supposed to call men over. You can’t wave and shout, Come and get it boys! Wouldn’t they sense our desperation? “Maybe we should just stare them down.”
“Definitely not,” Natalie says with disgust, tapping the rim of her wineglass. “We don’t call or stare.”
Well, excuse me. “So what do you think we should do?”
“We laugh a lot and look as though we’re having the most wonderful time. And we ignore them completely.”
“That’s the plan?” I think it’s time Nat started paying closer attention to Fashion Magazine Fun Facts.
“That’s the plan,” she says.
Sam sticks her finger in her glass in an attempt to suck up whatever alcohol might be left. “I’m going to need some more wine.”
“Just finish mine,” Natalie offers, handing over the glass.
I see the mental turmoil on Sam’s face. Should she take the wine along with all of Nat’s potential germs? Or should she give in to her anal ways and pass up the free beverage? I put my hand on her shoulder. “The new fun, fearless you, remember?”
Courageously, she nods. “Thanks.” At first her facial expression reminds me of someone drinking toilet water, not that I’ve ever had the good fortune to witness such an event. But then she relaxes and I feel like a proud aunt.
Natalie throws her head back and laughs out loud, startling me. Apparently, the let’s-pretend-we’re-having-fun-so-we-can-attract-men show has begun.
Ten minutes later, the GQ men are sitting at our table. Natalie is flirting with Needs-a-Shave and Sam is flirting with Cell-Phone. I would have thought that watching Sam flirt would be like spotting a girl on the street with her dress tucked into the back of her panty hose, but she is surprisingly talented. Once she introduces herself as Samantha, she morphs into a nymphet. She starts off with the pretending-to-be-interested-in-what-he-says technique and asks a dozen questions, and then subtly turns the spotlight on herself.
“I teach fifth grade,” she says in response to the standard so-what-do-you-do. If he asks what sign she is, I swear I’m going to throw up.
“You don’t punish your students, do you?”
“Not usually. The girls are pretty good. The boys sometimes misbehave. But that’s okay. I know how to handle naughty boys.”
Is that a cell phone he has in his pants or is he just happy to see her? Hmm. Maybe there’s something to this spanking thing after all.
In the elevator, Needs-a-Shave asks when they can see us again.
“Unfortunately, that won’t be possible,” Sam says, surprising the rest of us. “It was nice to meet both of you.” She kisses both of them on the cheek.
Huh? Did I miss something here? “Didn’t you want to meet them?” I ask when they’re out of earshot.
“Forget it. They didn’t even offer to buy us drinks.” Sam waves her hand in the air as if to shoo away an annoying fly.
“But we didn’t say we wanted anything,” I protest.
“Cheapskates,” Sam adds, and Natalie nods her head.
“Besides,” Sam says, “what kind of sleaze hits on a girl at a bar?”
Fifteen minutes later, Natalie lets us off at the apartment, and as I turn the key into our door, Sam says, “Guess what we’re doing tomorrow.”
“Sleeping in?”
“Yes. And after that, we’re getting belly-button rings.”
This Samantha character is beginning to scare me.
10
Fifty Bucks to a Whole New You
NATALIE TELLS US THAT HER PIERCED friends got it done on Willington Street.
“Maybe we should find out the exact name of the store,” I comment as we peer through the dirty windows of a used clothing store.
“If we wait, we’ll never do it,” Sam replies. “There’s no time for extensive research.”
“I’m not asking for extensive. Superficial will do.”
“Let’s try here,” she says, and I follow her into a place called Spider. The tattoo machine’s reverberating buzz makes me think of a sixteenth-century torture chamber.
Sam asks the scary alternative man at the desk if he performs navel piercings.
“No inglés,” he replies.
“I think the possibility of having the wrong body part pierced here is alarmingly high,” I whisper, my voice coated with nausea.
Sam thanks the man, not that he understands, and we slip back out the door.
Further down the block a window advertises “expert exotic piercing” and a “reputation that is earned, not assumed.” Ho
ping that their reputation goes beyond the local panhandlers, we enter.
The expert, I use that term loosely, looks a little wild—with various insect tattoos and nineteen pierces that I can see. I’m guessing ten is the minimum for employment. He convinces us that a navel ring is well worth his fifty-dollar quote.
Being the responsible millennium-girl that I am, I ask him about his hygiene practices.
“I always wear fresh plastic gloves, and all my needles are disposable,” he answers.
This is good, I think. Disposable needles. Wait…needles? What needles? What happened to the good, old-fashioned piercing gun? When I got my ears pierced way back in the third grade, two women used a gun on each ear, and it was over in a momentary thunderous explosion.
“Would you kindly both sign these waiver forms?” he asks nonchalantly. Forms? What forms? Why do I need to sign a waiver form? I read: “…in the unlikely event of excessive bleeding, permanent scarring, loss of consciousness…” Loss of consciousness?
Somehow it is decided that I should go first, possibly because Samantha looks more like an about-to-be-sick Sam. Lucky me. I sit in a big black leather chair and without going into details here, I tell dear Samantha it only hurts for a second.
Her turn.
Screams from the leather chair.
I lied.
The Reaction—Scene One
Natalie: You really did it?
Me: Yeah. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do up a pair of pants again.
Natalie: Maybe I’ll get one, too.
Me: You should. Didn’t hurt a bit, although it’s a little sore now.
Natalie: Maybe I will. But it’s kind of cheesy, don’t you think? And everyone has one.
Me: (Muttering.) Thanks a lot, Nat. I guess I’m a conformist with bad taste.
The Reaction—Scene Two
Iris: That is so cool! I want one. Is it red? I bet it’s red. The red will go away, won’t it? My friend Mandy got one and she didn’t tell her mother, and now whenever she takes a shower she has to wear a bathing suit just in case her mother barges in or something, and she doesn’t know what she’s going to do in the summer; she has a pool and won’t her mother think it’s weird she doesn’t wear bikinis anymore? I asked Mom if I could have one but she said no, not a chance. I’m so getting one the second I turn eighteen. One year, five months and three days left of a belly-pierce-free me! It’s not going to get infected, is it?
Milkrun Page 14
