Seattle Girl

by Lucy Kevin

  I felt sick already.

  *

  The next day at noon, Diane, Seth and I met at our usual Sunday spot, Café Café. There was a chain coffee shop across the street, but we disdained it and all of its corporate-ness. Plus, they made their mochas too thick. It was like drinking chocolate sludge. Whereas CC did it just right: A hint of chocolate, a touch of coffee bean, and a bucket of whipped cream.

  (Although on Sunday nights when CC closed early, we had nowhere else to go but the big chain, so just in case you ever saw us there I’ll freely admit that we would lay down our social concerns once a week in our quest for caffeine).

  “Darlings,” said Seth, “I have a toast to make.”

  Diane and I looked at each other over the rim of our sunglasses, already amused by whatever it was Seth was about to dish out.

  With a slight, newly affected lisp, he said, “I’ve given our dilemma some thinking, and…”

  I cut him off. “What dilemma?”

  “Shush!” he said, imperiously. Then lowering his voice to just above a whisper, he said, “The dilemma that involves our virginity.”

  Diane and I grimaced, but nodded for him to continue.

  “I think we should all make a pact right here and now that by this summer, we will have rid ourselves of the nasty little beast.”

  He raised his mug high into the center of the metal café table. “Do you fine young things concur?”

  I rolled my eyes and Diane said, “Honey, the lisp has got to go. It is so lame,” but we raised our oversized coffee cups to clink with his.

  “You know guys,” I said, “and by the way I agree 100% about losing the lisp, I’m not sure about this whole pact idea. Can’t we just let things take their natural course?”

  They looked scandalized. Diane spoke first. “God no! If we do that, you’ll probably hit menopause before you let anyone touch your precious little boobies.”

  Reaching into her purse, she pulled out a sheet of pink notepaper and a pen, which must have set her back at least $100. Clearly ready to ignore any reservations I had, she said, “I think Seth is right. Good job,” she said, like a ruler knighting her favorite petty laborer.

  “Thank you,” he said smiling at the Queen.

  Taking over, she said, “First thing we need to do is make a list.”

  I groaned. Diane loved to make lists. She liked making lists almost as much as she liked reading romance novels. “No, please. Not a list. How is that going to help us?”

  She slipped her fake, but very chic reading glasses on, and peered at me over them. Even though she has perfect vision, she bought the $300 pair of frames because the sales guy convinced her that she looks really smart with them on. And it’s true — they give her this ultra-intelligent, hip, city aura. Consequently, she wears them whenever she wants to make a good impression.

  I’m always shocked by how utterly gorgeous she looks with glasses.

  The thing is, when I was a kid, I wore glasses, and they gave me the world’s biggest ugly complex. Even now, putting on a pair of glasses can reduce me to a pubescent, greasy teen.

  I was diagnosed with crap vision when I was ten and, of course, being a girl on the verge of womanhood, I really wanted contacts. Unfortunately, my mother had read an article in Newsweek or Time or somewhere about how contacts lead to blindness in .00001 of users. So, of course, my mother being herself, took this logic to the nth degree. To this day she holds fast to the belief that contact lenses can and will lead to blindness, no matter what, in every possible circumstance.

  This situation was really a pity. My glasses were truly awful. Big and brown and, well, big and brown.

  I want to be really clear with you here. They weren’t those hip glasses that kids wear now as fashion accessories.

  They weren’t the ridiculously overpriced glasses that Diane showed off.

  These were the kind of glasses that they always put on the ugly girl in the movies and then when she gets contacts and pulls her hair out of its greasy ponytail she magically transforms into the prom queen and makes out with the star football player.

  That never happened to me.

  Surprise, surprise.

  I did finally get contacts, if you were wondering, because I think my dad always felt a little sorry for me. Maybe he could see a pretty girl underneath the clothes and thick lenses and my mother’s fears. Thank god. So when I was packing up for my first year at University of Washington he promised to sneak out of the house and buy contact lenses for me, as long as I hid it from my mother forever.

  Or at least until she found out. Whichever came first.

  In any case, looking incredibly astute and stylish in her fake glasses, Diane removed the top from her Mont Blanc pen, and wrote Seth’s name at the top of the page. “For you, sweetheart, we need to make you irresistible to men everywhere.”

  Seth pouted. “Are you implying that there would be something inherently difficult about that?”

  I laughed. “Nope. All she’s saying is that we need to make it perfectly clear to the world at large that you are, in fact, gay.”

  “Of course I’m gay! I look impeccable all the time, I’m wearing all black with just a touch of color, and my shoe collection is legendary.”

  He kicked his feet out from under the table so that we could admire his chunky-soled shiny black loafers, which were embellished with one red leather flame down the outside of each shoe.

  Smugly he said, “See what I’m talking about? How could anyone think I was straight?”

  Diane let out a yelp, pointing at me. “Try her for starters!”

  I shook my head, giggling. “Don’t remind me.”

  Seth looked faintly ill. “Don’t remind me either. I’m still trying to get the image of your vagina out of my head.”

  I stuck my tongue out at him, but truthfully, I was still trying to forget the whole damn fiasco myself.

  “Tell me the story again,” Diane begged and although Seth and I groaned, the truth was we got as much of a kick out of reliving the epic event as Diane got from hearing about it.

  “Seth and I met at a concert,” I said.

  “Georgia thought I was a total babe.”

  Nodding at Seth, I agreed. “You are! Blonde hair, tall, hunky, excellent fashion sense. Man of my dreams!” Seth beamed and I continued, “Plus, he knew every single word of every song.”

  Diane interrupted. “How could you not know that he was gay?” she said, as unable to believe my stupidity as she ever was.

  “I just didn’t, okay? May I continue?”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt. You were just about to get coffee after the show right?”

  “Right. So, I asked Seth to coffee after the show and we spent hours discussing all of the finest moments on stage. And I figured, here’s this gorgeous guy, who’s easy to talk to, and he has a thing for the feminist, lesbian folk-singers. I thought I had found the guy for me.”

  “Home girl was a little on the green side of the street, weren’t you?” Seth said, snickering slightly.

  Diane concurred. “Hello, earth to Georgia. What straight guy goes to a concert where he’s guaranteed to be surrounded with hundreds of militant dykes?”

  I shrugged. “Anyway, for weeks we did everything together. We drove out to the beach to watch the sun set. We rented cheesy movies and pigged out on popcorn and Ben & Jerry’s Superfudge Chunk ice cream. We laid on the grass in the sun and talked about which diet we should try next.”

  Holding her stomach as she laughed, Diane summarized the situation, saying, “Basically, you hung out and did girly stuff.”

  Grimacing, I said, “Pretty much.”

  “And the whole time, she was waiting for me to make my move!”

  Diane wiped her eyes. “I know. I love that part.”

  “What can I say? I thought you were shy!”

  Seth laughed. “She was waiting for me to try and hold her hand. What a sweet girl you are my little Georgia.”

  I wagge
d my finger at him. “Don’t be condescending. Anyway, since Seth was obviously way too shy to make the first move, I decided it was up to me. So that night we were going to meet at his room after he got back from the gym and-”

  Diane interrupted me and put her hands over her ears. “Oh god, no. I don’t think I can bear to listen to the rest. It’s too painful.”

  I sat back in the chair and took a sip of my mocha. “Fine by me,” I said, knowing that she didn’t mean it.

  “Oh what the hell, I’ve got to get the rest of my fix,” she said, looking at me expectantly.

  “Okay, so I got to Seth’s room fifteen minutes early, took off my clothes-“

  “All of your clothes?”

  I nodded. “All of them. Then I crawled into his bed and promptly curled up, fast asleep with his teddy bear.”

  “Jesus, it gets worse every time,” Diane whispered around her massive grin.

  Part grinning, part grimacing, Seth said, “So then I walk in, all unsuspecting and innocent and gay, and see this girl, this naked girl, in my bed, deflowering my teddy bear!”

  Diane patted his hand comfortingly. “It must have been awful.”

  “It was,” Seth said, at which point I smacked his shoulder.

  “You’re not the only one it was awful for,” I said, shaking my head at the memory. “I got the pleasure of waking up to the ear-piercing sound of Seth shrieking, “Girlfriend, what are you doing?” at me from across the room.”

  “I was kind of upset,” he explained for the millionth time.

  “Georgia, you swear to god that you didn’t notice how he was staying as far from the bed as he could and eyeing your piles of clothes with horror?”

  “Nope. Didn’t notice. What can I say? I was focused on my goal.”

  “Obviously,” she said, then leaned forward and tilted her sunglasses up onto her head. “Now tell the rest slowly so that it lasts.”

  Grinning at her enthusiasm, I lowered my voice and said, “I kicked the covers off of my body and said, ‘Take me Seth! I can’t wait another second.’”

  Diane’s lips mouthed the words as I said them and then she squealed with delight. “God, that story is almost better than ice cream.”

  “I was so insulted when you screamed,” I said, pretending to have a wobbly lower lip at the memory.

  Seth hugged me and said, “I didn’t mean to scream ‘Ew!’ and run out of the room. It was gay male instinct.”

  Diane tapped her pen on the table to refocus our attention on her. “Thanks for that, you guys. I needed a little pick me up today.”

  “Anytime,” I said, glad that I had finally learned to laugh at my pathetic adventures with men.

  “So now that we’ve confirmed that Seth is attractive to women, we have to figure out how to make him attractive to men. The question is, how? Any ideas?”

  She looked around the small table at us hopefully. We both gaped at her. Diane had never been the most subtle person, but even I thought she was pushing it this time.

  “You’re such a bitch,” I said to her, but I didn’t mean it in a bad way, I just wanted to let Seth know that I was on his side if she’d unthinkingly hurt his feelings.

  I turned to Seth and supportively said, “She’s such a bitch.”

  He nodded. “Totally. You’re a bitch, honey,” he said to Diane, but he was halfway smiling, so we would know that his feelings weren’t completely obliterated.

  She held her hands up, ready to defend herself, obviously not the least bit perturbed by being called a bitch by her two closest friends.

  “Look, don’t get your panties in a wad, both of you. It’s not like you two are the only ones who need to change. I’m not getting any either, am I?”

  She had a point and Seth jumped on it, grabbing the paper and pen, and writing her name below his with a flourish. He winked at me.

  “It’s time for us to figure out what’s wrong with Miss Fancy-Pants.”

  “You’re not really a bitch, Diane,” he said to her. “Is she, Georgia?”

  “Not really,” I said, stifling a giggle into my mocha.

  Apologies made, he looked her up and down. “Nothing wrong with your fashion sense,” he said, admiring her skinny jeans and form-fitting long-sleeved top.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  She looked so smug that I couldn’t keep from saying, “Well, if it’s not the looks, must be the attitude.

  Diane tried to pretend she was hurt by my comment. I didn’t buy it. Especially since the bitch thing had rolled right off her.

  Neither did Seth. “Give up the act, girl.”

  She shrugged and gave it up. “Yeah, so I’m all fucked up. What can I say?” She bared all of her perfect teeth to us in a wide grin.

  Right then and there I fell in love with her all over again, my perfectly gorgeous best friend who really shouldn’t have been my type at all, but was all the same.

  Studying her, I had an idea. One I knew she was going to Hate, with a capital, bold, italicized H.

  “Maybe you should stop reading romance novels for a while.”

  “No way. Never. I couldn’t!”

  Everyone on the sidewalk stopped talking to see if we were torturing her. You see, Diane was a romance novel junkie. She devoured them at a clip of about one a day. One wall of our apartment was a shrine to her collection. I lived in fear of an earthquake coming and being buried alive by her smut.

  “I’m serious. How are you ever going to settle for a real guy when you’re always waiting for Fabio to break into our apartment, steal you away, and imprison you in his medieval tower so that he can swirl your love-nub, or whatever they call it in your books?”

  Seth delicately took a sip of his latte. “Fabio did used to have it going on, you know Georgia.”

  Diane grabbed her paper and pen back. “Enough about Fabio. We’re getting off track here. We need to talk about Georgia.”

  I felt my heart start to pound. Please be nice, I prayed inwardly. I didn’t think I could bear it if my best friends in the whole world thought I was lacking in some way.

  Seth tilted his head to the side. “Let’s see: funny, sexy, smart. It’s all there.”

  I couldn’t help it, I beamed, hardly able to believe that Seth was actually describing me.

  Diane nodded her head in agreement. “The only problem is that you and I are the only people who ever get to see her that way.”

  “What do you mean?” I protested, my bubble of excitement now burst.

  Seth snorted. “It’s true. You totally hide all of your assets when we’re around other people.” Diane just kept nodding, so he continued. “You are one of the funniest people I’ve ever met, but if there’s a good looking guy around, you totally clam up, or get all sarcastic and testy.”

  “Yeah, and you never let me make you look as gorgeous as you could be,” said Diane.

  “Whatever,” I said, wishing that they would just drop the whole thing.

  Diane and Seth gave each other a potent look, but thankfully, an incredibly good looking man in biker shorts walked past our table and into the café, so I said, “Hey, he could be the perfect man for one of you. Or both, if he’ll go both ways,” I said playfully. And just like that they both jumped up to hit on the guy.

  My plan to distract them was successful, but I knew it would only be a short term reprieve.

  *

  Saturday night, I planned on avoiding Diane altogether. I was going to go to the library to study, knowing she’d never think to look for me there. Unfortunately, she knew I planned on avoiding her so she stuck with me for most of the day.

  “Tonight’s the Exotic Erotic ball at Alpha Sig. It’s the perfect place for you to make good on our pact,” she said while we were washing the dishes.

  “Your pact,” I clarified.

  “Our pact,” she insisted, and I knew I was in trouble. Big trouble. And when she said, “I’ve been planning your outfit for tonight,” I desperately wished we weren’t three floors up.
I would have gladly jumped out the kitchen window to run away from her, if I could have.

  “Diane, I told you. I’m so not into this right now.”

  “Why not? “Anyway,” she said, seeming to give it more thought, “The James Dean look alike really is kind of cute, you know.”

  She pulled me into her bedroom. “Put this on,” she said, handing me a short, tight sequined skirt.

  I shook my head. “I’m going to look like The Little Mermaid in this!”

  “She got some action, didn’t she?”

  “Good point,” I said, grabbing the skirt from her and sucking everything that could be sucked in to get it on.

  “You need a thong with that,” Diane said, rummaging around in her drawer for one and tossing it to me.

  It landed on my foot. “Yuck. I’m not wearing your thong,” I protested.

  “Don’t be such a baby.”

  “No. It’s too gross. Way too gross,” I said.

  There was no way I was going to wear her underwear. A girl had to have at least one intractable rule to get through life and mine was, No Wearing Of Anyone Else’s Underwear.

  “Fine,” she said, rooting around in the bottom of her drawer. “This one still has the tag on it.”

  I caught the pathetically small scrap of red lace when she threw it at me. “If you’d bought some thongs the last time we were in Victoria’s Secret we wouldn’t have this problem.”

  “Well excuse me if I don’t like having my ass flossed all day.”

  Diane suddenly looked prim. “I told you, you get used to it.”

  “Whatever. I’ll wear it tonight. Happy?”

  She grinned, certain that she had finally infiltrated the final vestiges of my underwear drawer.

  To her credit, Diane was responsible for introducing me to the wonders of Victoria’s Secret. One day she had just up and said, “We have just got to do something about your underwear. It’s so lame.”

  As you might have guessed, given what you already know about my mother, my underwear was the same style and brand as my mother’s underwear. This meant that I wore those big, tummy tucking, low rise on the thigh panties.

  I suppose you can’t really call them panties. More like armor. In retrospect, it was probably a wily and brilliant plan of my mother’s. Just in case some guy did manage to get me out of my pants, he’d run screaming at the sight of what was underneath.