But still, I came back. And now here I was, furtively searching for photographic evidence of Dylan and Kelly while feeling increasingly gross about myself.
It took some work as Dylan had unfriended me when I’d left and Kelly was using a nickname, but eventually I found it: a photo of the two of them sitting on my old front porch, blond and tanned and smiling, holding a couple of Budweisers out to the camera.
She still looked as mean as a scorpion behind that smile, and I was pleased to see that Meghan hadn’t been lying about her overtanning: her face looked like a piece of untreated rawhide. And was she wearing a scrunchie? I leaned in for a closer inspection. Yep, definitely a scrunchie. I had to admit, I felt better. She was still super cute, and I was pretty sure her boobs had somehow grown even bigger, but . . . c’mon: a scrunchie? Who did she think she was, Kelly Kapowski?
I shut the laptop and spread out on the couch, determined to nap my way into oblivion. I figured if I could get a couple hours of sleep under my belt, when I woke up it would be a respectable time to start drinking.
I shifted slightly on the cushions and felt something sharp dig into my thigh.
“What the . . .” I felt around and found the culprit: a long chain with little clamps at either end. I figured it was a necklace of Lucy’s and stuck it on the bookshelf.
I flopped back on the couch and drifted off, dreaming of an army of blond zombies intent on hugging me to death.
August 24
I had gone for my usual Saturday run and was sitting in the living room having my usual Saturday enormous wedge of cake when I heard a noise coming from Lucy’s bedroom. I figured she’d slipped in when I was out running.
I hadn’t seen her in days—she’d been working nonstop and had been sleeping at Tristan’s most nights.
“Luce?” I called. “Is that you?”
More rustling, followed by an agonized cry.
“Lucy? Are you okay?”
No response. I got up and put my ear to her door. “Lucy?”
A whimper, and a bang.
“Luce, seriously, you’re freaking me out. Can you come out here?”
There was a pause. The door suddenly flew open, revealing Lucy in a state of extremely high agitation. Her room, which is normally a bastion of yellow, floral-printed neatness, was a mess. Clothes were strewn across the bed, hanging from every edge of the wardrobe and covering most of the floor.
But that wasn’t the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing was that all the clothes were black and seemingly made of leather or some sort of synthetic. I thought I saw some PVC in there, too.
“Oh, Lauren. You have to help me!”
“What the fuck is going on? It looks like the Addams Family blew up in here!”
“Oh, babe, I’m in trouble. I’ve got to find an outfit for this party Tristan’s taking me to tonight and nothing looks right!”
“That doesn’t sound like such a terrible emergency. What kind of party is it?”
Lucy looked coy. “It’s a special sort of party.”
“That’s not helpful. Wait—is this the party you and he fought about the other week?”
“Yes, and I’ve agreed to go now and it’s very important to Tristan and if I don’t get the outfit right he’ll be so disappointed!”
“Jesus, take a breath! What kind of outfit do you need? Is it, like, fancy? Black tie?”
“Not exactly, though there is an element of fancy dress involved . . .”
I rolled my eyes. “Can you just tell me what’s going on so I can help you?”
“Fine, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. And you can’t let on that you know anything when you see Tristan.”
“Okay! Okay!”
Lucy led me to the couch and sat down across from me. “Tristan has . . . particular tastes in things.”
I thought of Frisco and his hakari. “Rich people usually do.”
“This is a bit different. It’s sort of . . . sexual.”
“Ooh! Exciting!”
“You see, Tristan has a very important and stressful job, so he likes to unwind when he’s at home.”
“Are you doing a magazine profile on the guy or are you telling me what he’s into in bed?”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. “Fine. He’s into . . . spanking,” she whispered. “Whips and leather and all that.”
“Kinky! The old guy has life in him yet.”
“Babe, this is serious!”
“Sorry, sorry. I know it is.” I put my hand over hers. “Are you okay with being spanked? Because if he’s crossing a line and hurting you, I’ll—”
She cut me off. “No, Lauren. I’m not the one being spanked.”
The penny took a moment to drop, and then fell with a clang. “What, so you spank him? He’s into that?”
Lucy looked mildly affronted. “He likes it when I’m in charge. He’s the boss at work so he doesn’t want to be the boss in the bedroom. Or something like that.”
“Huh. So how into it is he? Is it, like, every time?”
Lucy hid her face behind her hands. “He has a room.”
“What do you mean, he has a room?”
“A room! Filled with paddles and whips and things! There’s a little box in there that he locks himself in when he feels he’s been naughty. He calls it Aunt Dorothy’s Cupboard.”
I tried to suppress a snicker. “Why the fuck does he call it that?”
“I don’t bloody know! I think it’s to do with some mean old great aunt of his.”
“Okay . . . so what happens in Aunt Dorothy’s Cupboard?”
“I lock him in there and make him beg to get out. Admit that he was a very naughty boy and all that.”
Suddenly, a lightbulb went on. I ran over to the bookshelf and started rummaging around until I found the chain I’d placed there weeks ago.
I turned and showed it to her. “This isn’t a necklace, is it?”
She went a deep plum color. “Oh God.”
It was a nipple clamp. I had accidentally sat on a nipple clamp in my own home.
“I thought it was a necklace! I thought you were getting all punk in your old age!”
I started to laugh and Lucy couldn’t hold out for very long; soon we were both in a state of high hysterics.
“I can’t believe you’ve been spanking him all along and you haven’t told me!” I said between convulsions.
“I just couldn’t bring myself to say it aloud! What was I meant to say: ‘Lauren, the love of my life has turned me into a reluctant dominatrix?’”
“Oh my God, that’s it! That’s the name of your autobiography! Reluctant Dominatrix: The Lucy Johnson Story.”
That set us off again for a good five minutes.
“Seriously, though, are you okay with it?”
Lucy shrugged. “Sort of, I guess. It’s kind of sexy being in control. Plus, if he gets on my tits, I can leave him in Aunt Dorothy’s Cupboard for an hour or so and watch the telly. Anyway, enough of this—I still need your help with finding an outfit for this party.”
“What is this party, anyway?”
“Are you familiar with the Torture Garden?”
August 31
In exchange for helping Lucy choose the perfect outfit for the Torture Garden party last weekend (we went with a classic black leather corset and pencil skirt with thigh-high PVC stiletto boots in the end—apparently it was a big hit), she agreed to come with me to Frisco’s big shark reveal at Broadway market today.
We’d been texting all week, so I knew just how excited he was, but I wasn’t prepared for what we saw when we got to his stall.
In truth, we smelled it way before we saw it. It was a blend of three-day-old diapers, teenage boy’s bedroom and pure evil. It was like running an olfactory obstacle course.
There was Frisco wearing a
fisherman’s sweater, overalls and knitted hat (despite the fact that it was boiling out), presiding over a crowd of fifty or sixty hipsters all clamoring for a taste of his putrefied shark.
“Fucking hell,” Lucy said, “I didn’t know it would be such a bun fight.”
“Neither did I,” I said, watching a lithesome twenty-two-year-old with Rapunzel hair and the nation’s smallest denim shorts attempt to choke back a bit of hakari. She swallowed—with some effort—before batting her eyelashes at Frisco and smiling appreciatively at him.
In fact, pretty much the entire line consisted of lithesome twenty-two-year-old women trying not to vomit while eating pickled shark.
Frisco spotted us and waved us over.
“Hey, bud! Glad you could make it! And you must be Lucy! Great to meet you.” He kissed us both on the cheek and I felt fifty-three pairs of young, lithesome eyes glare at us.
“Look at you!” I said. “God, I had no idea it would be so popular!”
“Just wait till you try it,” he said. “It’ll knock you out.”
“Possibly quite literally,” Lucy whispered.
“Excuse me? Sorry, excuse me!” The three of us turned to see a Cara Delevingne–alike in a playsuit standing in front of the stall expectantly.
Frisco leaned over the counter, displaying a stretch of impressively muscular stomach. “Hey, babe,” he said, “what can I do for you?”
“Sorry to interrupt, but I just had to tell you that that was the absolute best hakari I’ve ever had.”
“You’ve had it before?” he asked.
Cara nodded emphatically. “I’ve been to Iceland loads on shoots. I did one for Wallpaper last winter and they did part of it on one of the trawlers. The fishermen were all desperate to feed it to me.”
“I bet they were,” I muttered.
“Yours is seriously the best, though. I just had to tell you.”
Frisco smiled a smile I’d never seen before and leaned farther over the counter toward her. “That’s so awesome of you to say. Hey, I’m swamped here but I’d love to talk more about Iceland. Can I give you a call sometime?”
Cara smiled back at him. “Tell you what, I’ll come back around sixish and we can go for a drink once you’ve packed it in for the day.”
“Sounds great. See you soon.” Frisco watched her walk away, a wistful look on his face.
I tugged on his sleeve.
“Hey, sorry, Lauren! I’m being so rude—let me get you and Lucy some hakari. On the house.”
I glanced at the tray of hakari and, beyond it, at the crowd of fawning young women clamoring to get a piece. It was then, over a pile of noxious, putrid shark flesh, that I knew Frisco was never going to have sex with me.
“Actually, I think I’m all set,” I said, tugging at Lucy’s arm. “I had a pretty big meal before this and I saw a whoopie pie with my name on it over there, so I wouldn’t want to fill up on shark and spoil my appetite.”
Frisco looked momentarily crestfallen. “You sure? You’re missing out!”
“Yeah, I’m sure. Congratulations, though—looks like your dream is totally coming true.”
He gazed at his surroundings and smiled. “I guess it is.”
Lucy and I left him to his adoring fans and went and stuffed ourselves with baked goods before getting hugely and satisfyingly drunk on tequila.
“Thank God you didn’t eat that rotten shark,” Lucy said as we stumbled home. “It looked vile.”
“Yeah, fuck that shark! And fuck him and his billion dollars!” I felt momentarily sobered. Just goes to show: you can give a guy a billion dollars, a perfect apartment and an adorable pug, but at the end of the day all he wants is someone who will appreciate his pickled shark.
The book cautions that there are several reasons why a boy might not be interested in dating a particular girl. It could be that he’s shy, or that he hasn’t noticed her, or that he has other, more pressing interests (like spending his billions on pickled shark, for instance).
This left me with the book’s final explanation for a boy’s lack of interest: he’s too popular. If this is the case, the book advises the girl to seek out “some pleasant, shy, interested fellow rather than wistfully pine for an inaccessible man about town.”
I guess I’ll never know what Frisco’s intentions toward me were. Maybe he was just lonely in a new city. Maybe he was looking for an ego stroke. One thing was for sure: my pining days were over.
I got home and jotted down my findings while nursing a large tumbler of bourbon.
Name: Frisco
Age: 32
Occupation: Billionaire, pickled-shark impresario, tech hero, heartbreaker
Nationality: American
Description: Stubbled, dimpled perfection
Method: The Art of Dating
Result: Nice girls (who don’t look like Cara Delevingne) finish last
The Art of Dating in Conclusion
Being kind to my date (for once) had its good moments, and I wasn’t as filled with self-loathing as I was following other guides, but all the research and relentless positivity about his interests (not to mention the time spent pin-curling my hair) wasn’t all that rewarding. Plus, it didn’t get me anywhere. In the end, guys don’t necessarily want a girl to be their best friend (though what they do want still eludes me . . .).
Works best on . . .
Probably the pleasant, shy, interested fellow the book suggests you go out with. Definitely not one for the alpha males.
To be used by . . .
Women in the market for the boy-next-door. Thrill-seekers need not apply.
• • •
I wasn’t quite ready to settle for the pleasant, shy fellow though. Which is why, next month, I’d be harnessing my inner sex goddess with Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men.
BOOK SIX
BELLE DE JOUR’S GUIDE TO MEN
September 1
I charged into the bookstore with a new sense of purpose. Gone were the fifties, gone were the American billionaires who just wanted to be friends and gone was the nice-girl-next-door act. It was September and I was going to get laid this month if it killed me. And I knew just who to help me.
I crept past the bookseller, who was engrossed in a tattered copy of Women in Love, hand wrapped around a mug of tea and hair curling haphazardly across his eyes, and climbed into the attic, where I unearthed exactly what I was looking for: Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men. For the uninitiated, Belle wrote several bestselling books about her sexual adventures as a high-end escort in London. She was later revealed as a research scientist who put herself through graduate school with her earnings as a call girl. So an expert in both sex and science: just what I needed.
I have to admit, I’ve never wanted to be a call girl. I’ve always wanted to be a stripper—just for a night—but never a call girl. I’ve also always wanted to drive (or is it conduct?) a train for a day and live in a lighthouse for twenty-four hours. Stripping, train-conducting and lighthouse-keeping are three things I would like to try. Prostitution: not so much.
First of all, moral and ethical problems with the sex trade aside, it feels like a lot of pressure. Sex can be stressful enough, never mind if someone’s paying good money for it. Can you imagine how mortifying it would be if someone asked for a refund? I mean, I guess I could get my pimp to break the guy’s kneecaps, but it would still dent my confidence.
Secondly, there’s a lot of upkeep involved in high-end prostitution. A lot of grooming. Normally I work off the assumption that if I turn up, get naked and have sex with a man, he will be grateful regardless of the state of my bikini line. Not so if you’re an escort: it seems you’ve got to be as plucked as a Christmas goose.
But desperate times called for desperate measures, and it was time to pull out the big guns in the form of Belle. If she couldn’t get me laid, what c
hance did I have?
I clattered down the stairs with my prize, startling the bookseller in the process. He looked up from his book with a start and nearly knocked over his tea. “Oh, it’s you,” he said, turning his attention back to D. H. Lawrence.
“I’m here to make a purchase!” I said, presenting the book with a flourish.
He picked up the book and let out an enormous sigh. “Belle de Jour’s Guide to Men?” he read with impressive incredulity. “For fuck’s sake. What are you buying these awful books for? You seem like a sensible girl—”
“Woman,” I said. “Girl is patronizing.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. You seem like a sensible woman. You know a bit about football. And yet here you are again, buying some load of old bollocks about dating.”
I felt a little spark of anger flare up in me. “You see, this is exactly why people don’t come into bookstores nowadays: because people like you stand around all day with your tweedy jackets and your old copies of Dickens and you judge people like me on our choice of books!”
“One of the only perks of owning a bookshop, apart from a lifetime of penury, is indulging in a level of curiosity and—yes—judgment about the literary preferences of our all-too-few customers. So I am well within my rights to tell you that this book is a fetid pile of shite and should be burned.”
I let out a harrumph—an actual harrumph!—and said, “Well, not that it’s any of your business, but it’s actually for a research project I’m working on.”
He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
I explained the project to him and, by the end of it, he was holding on to the desk for support as he was laughing so hard. I tried not to get too offended, but of course I did.
“Christ,” he said between guffaws, “that is the biggest load of horse bollocks I’ve ever heard!”
Love by the Book Page 18
