Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions

by Lisa Scottoline

  “I’m twenty-eight,” I said.

  “Wow. You look twenty-six.”

  This made me laugh—such precision!—but Darren looked at me quizzically. But I guess pro athletes meet enough women to easily size up our player stats. He probably knew my height, weight, and cup size too.

  It was time to bounce.

  But not before he got my number.

  We moved on to a different bar, where a group of my girlfriend’s childhood pals were hanging out. “They have dancing,” my friend said.

  I didn’t know if I was up for dancing in the sky-high, mint green, strappy heels I was wearing.

  Then I had a beer—nature’s dance instructor.

  So I broke it down on the dance floor, but mostly by myself. No one would dance with me. Even the friends I came with had formed a circle that I ended up outside of.

  The men at this new bar were apparently immune to my twenty-eight-looks-twenty-six mojo.

  Maybe everyone was twenty-five and a half.

  But tonight was the night of flipping my thinking. So instead of viewing myself as radioactive, I decided I was a free radical.

  Either my attitude adjustment improved my dance moves or I looked like a weakened gazelle, but I caught a guy looking at me from across the room. He was tall, thin, and blond, and his long, angular limbs gave his dancing a comical bent. I thought he looked like Gumby, but not unattractive. He was Hot Gumby.

  When I met his gaze, Hot Gumby did the double-fisted point at me. In a generous mood, I pointed back and mimicked his silly dance moves, which I became increasingly unsure were silly on purpose. He shimmied over to me like one of those blow-up tube-men at a car dealership.

  He introduced himself, but the music was so loud, I had no clue what he said, even after making him repeat it twice.

  Hot Gumby, it is.

  “Where do you think I’m from?” he asked, grinning.

  I had no clue, and I told him so.

  “Guess!”

  Outer space? “I really have no idea.”

  “GERMANY!” he cried.

  Okay, German Gumby.

  This guy was not my soul mate, but he was sweet, in a foreign-exchange-student way, so I gave him my number.

  (We’ve since been platonic text-message pen pals. I’m helping him with his English, and he tells me what’s happening in soccer whether I care or not.)

  But that night, talking with Gumby had broken the seal, and suddenly a lot of dudes wanted to dance with me—all creeps.

  Men are like magnets, you need one to repel one.

  I tapped one of the guys in our circle of friends who I had met a few times and liked. I thought he looked like a ginger Matt Damon.

  “Will you dance with me for a minute?” I asked.

  “Me? Really?”

  I mean, how charming is that?

  Dancing with him, I had more fun than I had had all night. Making the first move is awesome—no wonder men do it.

  We danced until my feet hurt, and I’d forgotten all about the missing patch of hair at the back of my head.

  You can’t control if a guy lets you down, or if the boy likes you back, or even if a psycho pulls your hair.

  You can only control the rebound.

  I’m gonna play.

  Birthday Present

  By Lisa

  It was my birthday this week, and I celebrated by almost getting arrested.

  Our story begins at three o’clock in the afternoon, on a day that was blazing hot—eighty-seven degrees to be precise. I pulled into a parking lot and noticed that the black car next to me had an adorable little white dog inside. But the car windows were only cracked an inch and the dog looked frantic, jumping around and panting profusely. The car seats were dotted with saliva. You didn’t have to be a vet to know that the dog was in obvious distress.

  I didn’t see the dog’s owner anywhere. I hurried into the store, looked around, and told the shopkeeper. They made an announcement, but the dog’s owner wasn’t in the store. I went back to the car and stuck my hand in the cracked window, and it barely fit. I could feel how ungodly hot it was in the car. The dog pawed the window, frantically.

  So you know me, I called 911. Amazingly, the police arrived in about ten minutes, and by then I was frantic, too. “Officer,” I told him, “can you please get one of those tools you guys use, to open the window and unlock the door?”

  “No, I’m sorry, I can’t. Our procedure is to find the owner.”

  “But I tried and this dog could die.”

  I was already taking off my clog and trying to figure out if it could smash a car window.

  “Let me try to find the owner,” the cop said.

  So I ran back inside the store, to look for a blunt object, but when I came back outside, the dog’s owner had returned, a thirtysomething man who sauntered slowly toward his car, his pasty face expressionless. This, even though his dog was in obvious distress, a police officer and his cruiser were on the scene, and a small crowd had gathered.

  By the way, the man was sipping bottled water.

  His dog had no water bottle.

  So you can imagine how this went down.

  I didn’t get arrested, though I tried.

  The cop said to the man, “Sir, it’s very hot to leave a dog in a car.”

  The man answered coolly, “I was only gone half an hour. I was at the gym.”

  I yelled at the man, “A half hour is too long for a dog to be in a car in this heat! A dog can die in a car in only five minutes! Are you a complete idiot? What is the matter with you? Don’t you watch the news? Open the door! This is animal cruelty!”

  I also added a lot of really good profanity, and even so, it wasn’t as much as the man deserved.

  The cop asked me not to make a scene.

  I told the cop he hadn’t seen anything yet.

  The cop asked me to back away.

  I told the cop I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Then the cop backed me away, gently.

  Gulp.

  Okay, so I stayed backed away, but I kept yelling at the man. From a distance, which was even better.

  The cop asked the man his name and address, and even as the man gave the cop his information, he refused to open the door for the overheated dog.

  I kept yelling at the man and I told the cop I wanted to file a complaint of animal cruelty.

  The cop told me that wouldn’t be possible, and since I was already yelling at the man, I didn’t start yelling at the cop too, because that would ruin my credibility. Also, the cop was just doing his job, unlike the psychopath who had left his dog to suffer in a car.

  In the end, the psychopath drove away, and his poor little dog went with him. And I can only hope that one night, when he’s asleep, the dog bites him.

  And if the dog doesn’t, I will.

  Because it’s taken me fifty-nine years to learn that sometimes, you have to stand up.

  And yell.

  Happy birthday to me.

  Rescue Me

  By Lisa

  I just wrote about a villain.

  Now, I’m writing about a hero.

  And an incredibly good-looking one, which figures into the story, as you will see.

  We begin on Sunday morning, when I meet my bestie Franca for a bike ride. We’ve been friends through thirty years, and between us we have four divorces, which is a nice even number.

  We love to do things together and are very much alike, except that Franca is an incredible athlete and runs five miles every day.

  That would be the end of the similarity.

  There is nothing I do every day that lasts five miles, if you don’t count running back and forth to the refrigerator.

  Nevertheless, Franca and I have become bicycling buddies, which means that we meet at a parking lot, lather up with sunscreen, hop on our bikes, and ride side by side on the trail, yapping the whole time.

  I consider this exercise, and as you can imagine, my tongue is in incredible shape.
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  Anyway, this particular trail is paved the whole route, and it leaves from the Wegman’s, which makes it the perfect trail, because after the ride we get to have lunch, food shop, or have lunch while we food shop, which we have actually done.

  In any event, Franca and I were riding our bicycles along the trail, and we were almost six miles out when I got a flat tire. Actually, it took me a few minutes to notice because I was working out my tongue.

  This presented a real problem, because neither of us knew what to do next, and we would have to walk all the way back to Wegman’s, which would take about eighty-five hours and be no fun at all.

  We had barely pulled over to the side of the trail and started whining to each other when a man who was riding his bike in the opposite direction stopped and asked us if we wanted help.

  This is where you find out that even though I’m a feminist, I’m a bad feminist.

  Because I not only wanted help, I wanted to be rescued.

  I wanted somebody to make it all better, so I didn’t have to figure it out myself, even if I could.

  I wanted a white knight, and for once in my life, there he was. He even had a white helmet on and his bicycle was white, too. Also his shirt, and his coat of armor.

  So I answered, “Yes, please help us, kind sir and liege lord.” Or words to that effect.

  He got off his bike, leaned it against a tree, and strode over, and as he got closer, I knew I couldn’t look at Franca or I would burst out laughing because we were both thinking the same thing—that this was easily the best-looking man on the planet.

  Okay, it least, it was the best-looking man I’ve seen in a long time, if you don’t count Bradley Cooper.

  And I can’t tell you the last time Bradley Cooper fixed my flat.

  No joke, this guy had gorgeous blue eyes, beautifully chiseled cheekbones, and a confident, dazzling smile. Not only that, he was six-foot-five inches of pure muscle, his biceps rippling under a tight cycling jersey that was unzipped to reveal the perfect amount of chest hair.

  I know that we ladies have varying opinions about chest hair, and I don’t impose my view on you. You just fill in the blank about what is the perfect amount for you because I’m telling you right now, no matter what you think about chest hair, this man would’ve changed your mind.

  As for the rest of his body, I am not going to tell you what he looked like in spandex bicycle shorts, because you’re not old enough.

  Just use your imagination.

  All I can say is he is the reason God made spandex.

  And when he came over and took my flabby tire in his strong and manly hand, I spotted his wedding ring and blurted out, “Of course you’re married.”

  “What?” He looked up, slightly puzzled.

  Franca burst into laughter. “She’s just kidding. She likes to joke around.”

  “Not all the time,” I tell her, and we both laughed like idiots.

  I’m not sure what happened next, and Franca couldn’t tell you either, because we were both woozy from the fumes off his testosterone, but he changed the bike tire in three minutes, explaining to us what he was doing, as if we could concentrate on anything he was saying.

  And he even gave me an innertube, which I will treasure forever.

  Or at least until I get my next flat tire, as soon as possible.

  Rite of Train Passage

  By Francesca

  My friend invited me to her rental house in the Hamptons for the Fourth of July.

  Fireworks went off in my heart.

  I’ve been dying to go to the Hamptons ever since I moved to New York five years ago, and I’m so proud that my friends have now reached a level in their careers where I can mooch off them.

  But in order to experience this quintessential New Yorker getaway, one must endure the rite of passage that is getting there.

  I left Thursday night via the Montauk line of the Long Island Railroad, or the LIRR. I felt young and fabulous leaving for my classy holiday. I carried a floppy straw hat as unofficial passport.

  But the aura of glamour disappeared once I boarded, because I was sharing a train car with some of the most dangerous thugs on earth:

  Teenage girls.

  Two of them. A pack.

  These two girls were talking very loudly, which sounds like a real Grandma complaint, but I’m telling you, they were projecting for the stage—and Shakespeare it was not. I believe they were performing the play, Talking Sh*t About Everyone.

  Based on the swearing, I think it’s an early work of Harold Pinter.

  While I struggled to read my book, I dug deep to summon goodwill toward these girls. They’re young, they’re having fun, I’m sure I was like that once.

  “What I don’t get is like, people who say big is beautiful. Like, fat is not healthy. And you look ugly.”

  Never mind. I would’ve hated these girls when I was their age, too.

  When one let out an earsplitting squeal, I glanced back and locked eyes with a curly-haired woman unfortunate enough to be sitting behind them.

  The woman made a face like, Can you believe them?

  I returned the sentiment with eyes like, I know, right?

  But then something awful happened. The curly-haired woman gave me a nod, and before I could stop her, she scolded the girls with a loud, librarian-ish, Shhhh.

  The Heathers were silent for a beat before redirecting their laser-snark at the poor woman. They mean-girled her for the rest of the ride.

  “Wait,” my friend interrupted as I told him the story. “Did you step in to defend her?”

  “I didn’t tell her to do it!” I cried.

  “But it was your validation that inspired the shush. She thought you had her back.”

  “I was two rows away! I was out of the zone of responsibility!”

  But he was right. Knowing I had many more stops to go, I was a coward. I had spent enough time hiding in the bathroom in sixth grade.

  Mercifully, the woman’s stop came soon after, and she was free to leave and call her therapist.

  Meanwhile, the girls expanded their abuse to the entire train car.

  “BRR!” one girl yelled, turning shivering into an interpretive dance. “THIS TRAIN IS TOO COLD FOR US SKINNIES! ALL THESE FATTIES DON’T UNDERSTAND!”

  Charming, no?

  And from their endless “Are we there yet?” whining, I ascertained their stop was the very last on the line.

  We can only hope they were going to the moon.

  So instead of feeling young and fabulous, I spent the rest of the ride feeling both frightened and old.

  Once I made it to Sag Harbor, I had a wonderful July Fourth weekend with my friends. We barbecued every food group, pretended to be soccer fans, played stupid drinking games—everything our forefathers would have wanted. But come Sunday, I had to again brave public transit back to the city.

  I knew the LIRR would be crowded the Sunday after July Fourth, but this was Xtreme Train Riding. It was as if the entire population of Manhattan had squeezed into eight train cars.

  Every seat was taken and the aisles were packed with people, standing room only. Even the short staircase between the upper and lower levels was stacked with squatters. One woman crouched on the stairs shot daggers to anyone who dared try to go up or down, as if they were being unreasonable.

  This train would make a sardine can look like the Ritz-Carlton.

  I snagged a spot to stand near the doors. For the first hour and a half, there wasn’t enough room for me to fit both legs on one side of my suitcase, so I was forced to straddle it.

  The Hamptons didn’t seem so classy anymore.

  Clown cars have more leg room.

  I’d say there wasn’t a spare inch, but when a visibly drunk young man with a hat reading #YOLO squeezed his way to the end of our car and slurred, “Where’s the bathroom?” our collective recoil revealed a bit more space.

  I bought a ticket for this?

  So there was no question the train car wa
s at capacity, but when we hit South Hampton, a mother and her teenage daughter decided they were going to fit on. Believe and you shall achieve, kids, because, somehow they did it. As I was the closest to the door, that meant we stood nearly nose to nose.

  I’ve never been so close to someone I wasn’t about to make out with. If the lighting had been better, we just might have.

  And this is when I realized the LIRR is the great equalizer of the Hamptons’ varied inhabitants. The mother was dripping in diamonds. Diamond-stud earrings so large they pulled at her earlobes. A chain of linked diamonds draped over her tunic as casually as a lanyard. Stacked diamond rings on her fingers, each as big as a signet ring.

  Having just helped my best friend’s boyfriend choose an engagement ring, I am now a certified amateur gemologist, and by my estimation, her diamond earrings were about a gazillion carats.

  I confess I was so curious about these people that when I spotted their name on their luggage tag, I Googled them on my iPhone.

  Yes, standing right next to them.

  Rude, I know, and risky, but if the mom turned out to be a publishing tycoon, I might try and make out with her after all.

  She wasn’t.

  But they turned out to be very nice. As we were practically chest bumping the entire drive, we struck up a friendly rapport. We commiserated about the slow train, our travel connections, I had an Amtrak to Philly to catch, they had a plane to Paris to board.

  I have a hunch it was private.

  But for the next two hours, we were all equal in the eyes of the Long Island Railroad. One train car, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

  Recycled

  By Lisa

  More misadventures on a bicycle, from your favorite rookie cyclist.

  If you recall, I went bicycle riding with my best friend Franca about a week ago, and I got a lucky flat tire that gave me the opportunity to meet the handsomest man on earth, my Knight on the White Bicycle.

  He fixed my tire, and by that I mean he fixed my tire.

  Nothing else happened.

  Recall that he is married and I am the most middle-aged woman on earth.