Seattle Girl

by Lucy Kevin

  He gave me a sidelong glance out of the corner of his eye. “You’d think a twenty-nine year old man would stop worrying about his mother at some point, but I know she can be sort of, well, difficult sometimes. I hope she’s been nice to you.”

  Lying through my teeth, I said, “Oh yeah. Lola and I are buddies. In fact, she was just wishing me good luck on my new show.” I made a show of looking at my watch. “In fact, I’ve got to get going. I’m on pretty soon.”

  The truth was I couldn’t wait to get out of there. How was it, I wondered wildly, that I was hopping from one totally inappropriate, weird guy to the next? Was I a magnet for all of the guys in the reject pile, or what?

  And if Max had sprung from Evil Lola’s loins, wasn’t he one of the biggest rejects of all?

  *

  First thing I did was to head into the 7-11 on the corner to buy a toothbrush and toothpaste. I practically scrubbed the inside of my mouth and my tongue raw. But still, I couldn’t get over how sick I felt at having kissed Lola’s son. Yuck!

  By the time I arrived at the studio I had about twenty minutes to get ready for my show. I was surprised to find Steve there waiting for me.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He stood up and walked towards me a little unsteadily. “I just had to see you, baby. You need to give me another chance.”

  I rolled my eyes and hoped someone would walk into the outer offices soon to save me. “Whatever. I’m not interested anymore, so don’t worry about hurting my feelings. They’re not hurt,” I lied.

  “I know you still want me, baby.” He circled around me until he had me cornered between a wall of CDs and his very unwelcome body.

  “No, I don’t. And stop calling me baby!” I protested, but he had already mashed his lips up against mine, in what I assumed was supposed to be a passionate kiss, but instead reeked of desperation. Oh yeah, and Jack Daniels.

  I tried to push him off of me, but he was too heavy and way too determined. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I suppose, an ear-bleeding screech shot through the air. In his surprise, Steve stumbled off of me.

  “You little bitch!” Lola screamed at me, nearly incoherent with rage. “First you take advantage of my baby boy, and then you’re whoring around with his father!”

  I’m not sure who’s head whipped around faster, mine or Steve’s.

  “My darling little Max just told me that you kissed him,” she wailed. “You! Kissing my darling! You sick, awful girl! Kissing my baby!” She hissed at Steve. “Kissing his father! Slut! Slut! Slut!”

  She was coming at me with such a rabid look in her eyes that it took me several long seconds to regain the use of my mouth, which had fallen open at her incredible declaration.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I was busy chewing on the whoring around with his father part of her speech and I think that’s what made my synapses fire sluggishly.

  “Excuse me?” was the brilliant rejoinder I finally managed to eek out. But I’m pretty sure Lola didn’t hear me say anything, because Steve had just launched him self at her.

  He grabbed her by her bony shoulders and shook her so hard her head looked like one of those dashboard hula dancing girls.

  “Max is my son?”

  Instinctively I got ready to pull Steve off of her – he was so pissed off I was sort of fearing for her life right about then and I’ve always believed in a little thing called female solidarity, no matter how whacky or bitchy a woman is - but I was so stunned by everything that no matter how I tried I couldn’t move a muscle.

  Could it really be true?

  Was Max the spawn of the two most utterly repulsive people I knew?

  Evidently Lola was a whole lot stronger than she looked. Or maybe she had just gotten a jolt of superhuman adrenaline, right before Steve snapped her neck in two with his frantic shaking. She pushed Steve away from her, so hard that he crashed into the secretary’s desk and fell to the floor in a heap.

  Tears were streaming down his face, but Lola looked really calm. Way too calm, in fact, considering the kind of trouble she was in with Steve, having kept him in the dark about his child for twenty-nine years.

  “If it weren’t for her,” she said, pointing at me, “none of this would have happened.”

  Unblinking, she reached into her purse and I swear to god it looked like she was going to pull out a gun. I had kissed a couple of total losers, who just happened to be her son and his father, and now I was going to die.

  Damn. I had definitely blown it this time, that’s for sure.

  I couldn’t move. In fact I was pretty sure I was mimicking Steve’s deer-caught-in-the-headlight’s look from the previous evening.

  I know people in movies always say how their life flashes before them when they’re about to die, but I can honestly say nothing like that happened to me. The only thought that kept passing through my otherwise blank and terrified mind was, “I can’t believe I’m going to die a virgin.”

  Suddenly Steve got up off the floor. He threw himself at Lola again. “No, don’t do it. Don’t kill her. It’s all my fault. I should have never left you after our night together so many years ago.”

  Steve and Lola crashed into a shelf of CDs, and as they hit the ground, CDs rained down upon them.

  “I wasn’t going to kill her, you idiot,” she wheezed as she pulled an inhaler out of her purse. “I’m about to have an asthma attack!”

  And as Lola laid there puffing on oxygen, with Steve lying on top of her, trying to, I’m assuming, sort out his life, I realized what else seemed so familiar about Max.

  Not only did he have Lola’s eyes, but he had Steve’s hands.

  Oh yes, I was definitely going to be sick. I ran out of the room and barely made it to the bathroom in time before puking into the sink. Somehow, my little internship had already taught me a hell of a lot more than I ever thought it would.

  The question was whether I was woman enough to handle it.

  Looking at myself in the mirror above the sink, I wiped off my mouth with a paper towel and smiled. I pulled my new toothbrush and toothpaste out of my purse and washed out my mouth for the second time in an hour.

  Things might have been crazier than ever, but I knew one thing for certain.

  Georgia Fulton was just getting started.

  *

  Given that Steve had a twenty-nine year old son, I quickly did the math and realized that Steve was probably close to fifty. This meant that he had not only knowingly asked me out, but he had crawled into bed with me knowing I was thirty years his junior.

  I was totally grossed out. Instantly, the topic of my show that night became crystal clear. It was a good night to be on talk radio.

  Locking myself into the control room, hoping neither Steve nor Lola would bash down the doors with a sledgehammer, and praying that they would work all of their shit out without putting me in the middle of it anymore, I slipped on the headphones.

  I hit the on-air button. “Good evening and welcome to Seattle Girl. I’m Georgia Fulton.”

  Damn but that sounded good, I thought.

  “I’m going to be filling in for James for a while, and I’d love to get to know each and every one of you. Like I said, my show is called Seattle Girl, but boys, don’t let that discourage you from calling in. ‘Cause if there’s one thing a girl wants, it’s to know what boys are thinking about.”

  “My night’s been pretty crazy so far. You see, I just found out the guy I was dating is the father of the guy I just kissed, and the mother is a woman who hates me more than anything in the whole world, especially because she hadn’t told the father yet, not in twenty-nine years, that he had a son, and now it’s all out there, flapping in the breeze.”

  Fortunately, I knew there was less than a zero percent chance that my parents or anyone they knew would be listening to my middle-of-the-night radio show. They would stroke out if they knew any of this.

  “But you know the one thing that really gal
ls me about all of this—apart from what an idiot I’ve been, of course—is that I’m thirty years younger than the first guy I was dating. This means, of course, that he is a pervert, a loser, and really, an overall bad guy.”

  “So my question for you tonight is have you ever had this happen to you? Have you ever done this to someone? And, most of all, why?”

  I was gratified to see every line on the board light up. I pushed down the button for line one. “Hey. This is Seattle Girl with Georgia Fulton. What’s up?”

  “Girlfriend, you are right on about all of the perverts out there who are just dying to prey on young women.”

  “Who’s this I’m talking to?”

  “Jane.”

  “Thanks for calling Jane. I take it you’re speaking from personal experience, aren’t you?”

  “Hell yeah, girl. So, when I was sixteen, my dad had this business partner, and he would come over to the house and act real nice to me. So one night, not knowing any better, I let him give me a kiss. Well, thank god my brother walked in on us, ‘cause I’m sure he would have raped me otherwise.”

  “Wow,” I said, stunned by her story. “That sounds pretty ugly.”

  “And he’s not the last old guy to try something with me. But I learned my lesson early. Stick with guys my own age. They’re easier to control.”

  I laughed at her droll summation of a horrid incident. “Thanks Jane. I like your upbeat take on the situation. Let’s see, who’s on line two? Welcome to Seattle Girl.”

  “Yeah,” a male voice said. “I know you think it’s just old men who are sick, but I’m telling you not a day goes by that some old lady isn’t trying to stick $100 in my pants so that I’ll sleep with her.”

  “Where do you meet all of these women?” I was thrilled by the turn my show had taken.

  “I’m a lifeguard at the beach.”

  “Are you hot?” I asked mischievously.

  “What is this? The reverse of the Howard Stern show or something?”

  I laughed again, immensely pleased that my caller had just compared me to Howard Stern. “I’m just messing with you. So, even though I’ve always thought guys were willing to do any available woman, even though my male callers have told me flat out that they’re just after a, quote, wet hole, are you’re saying you actually feel objectified by older women?”

  “Hell yeah. I mean, I guess if it were some fine young thing in a thong plopping the money into my waistband I might take her back to the lifeguard stand and do her. But these women are heinous!”

  “Point well taken. So ladies, if you’re young and hot it sounds like you should definitely try slipping some dineros into the waistband of your local lifeguard. Otherwise, lay off. He’s not for sale. Thanks for the call.”

  By the end of the night, it’s not that we had figured anything out, but hearing everyone else’s stories was incredibly therapeutic. Somehow, my little tale of lust and intrigue didn’t seem so bad anymore.

  Who needed $300 an hour therapy? I had talk-radio.

  *

  The next morning Seth, Diane and I had an emergency meeting at Café Café. They were agog over the events of the previous evening at the station with Lola, Steve, and there secret love-child.

  “So he tried to force himself on you?” Diane’s eyes were round as saucers.

  “And then she came in and it looked like she had a gun and was about to shoot you?” Seth asked, his mouth puckered into a little “o”.

  I nodded and Diane said, “Oh my god. This is the most exciting story I’ve ever heard. You are a modern day Helen of Troy. And everyone is fighting over you.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if you have the myth quite right, Diane. They were fighting over her because she was so beautiful. I, however, just got stuck in between the warring parties by accident. Like, ‘Hey, who’s that plain girl trying to mess up our war? Where’s the hot chick?’”

  Seth rolled his eyes. “Plain, my ass. The only reason things got so out of hand, honey, is because you are sizzling hot.”

  Grinning over the top of my mug, I added, “But I appreciate the comment about how hot I am. Ya know, I sort of felt like I was on fire there for a while. I just don’t know about it, though, you guys.”

  “What’s not to know?” Seth asked, cocking his head to the side in question.

  I shrugged. “I just feel like I was the geeky Georgia all through high school, and then I came to college and got less geeky, and then you guys made me over into sexy Georgia, but that when you get right down to it I’m still geeky Georgia pretending to be sexy Georgia. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t know if changing who I am is as easy as new clothes and less body hair. Especially when I feel like I’m just faking the new attitude all the time.”

  Diane, looking rather serious, nodded. But then she said, “I know what you’re saying, Georgia, but sometimes I think we have to pretend to be someone new for a while before we can actually become that new person.”

  Yet again, Diane was proving to be a mystery to me. When had she ever had to pretend to be anything other than the gorgeous, rich, intelligent, funny woman that she already was?

  “Maybe that’s why I haven’t told my parents that I’m gay yet,” Seth said.

  “Because you want to own it first all by yourself before you try to own it in front of everyone else?”

  Seth blinked hard a couple of times. “Yeah. I think that’s exactly what’s going on.”

  The three of us sat in silence for a second. I, for one, couldn’t believe how serious our conversation had gotten. Knowing Diane, however, who had always been rather uncomfortable with deep discussions, it was just a matter of seconds before she pulled us out of it. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. Five, four, three, two…

  Diane flicked her hair back and smiled knowingly at me. “Well, who knows. None of us have managed to lose our virginity yet, but you got pretty damn close with this one. Even if he was a too old, loser, stuck-in-the-seventies pervert.”

  Talk about a non-sequitor. Somehow she had gone straight from self-acceptance to sex. Gotta love her, don’t you?

  “I have a good feeling about you, Georgia,” she added with verve.

  I groaned. “Please, spare me your good feelings. I am so off of guys from now on. I’m going to concentrate on my show and that’s it.”

  Both Seth and Diane rolled their eyes. “Yeah right,” they said in unison.

  “No, really, I am,” I said with complete sincerity.

  I couldn’t wait to prove them wrong.

  After all, I didn’t need to be in a relationship with a guy to feel worthwhile.

  Or did I?

  DILLON

  I was brought up to believe that life came in neat little doses. The basic theory being that if I did X and then qualified for Y and then graduated from Z, not only would utter nirvana be the result, but I would be guaranteed absolute happiness.

  Which, surprise, surprise, has turned out to be utter bullshit.

  Over and over again I’ve learned that there aren’t many straight lines in life.

  And what if it turns out that a life well lived is the one where we take as many alternate, or as my mother would put it, “wrong” forks in the road as we possibly can.

  Now, I’m not saying that based on either of these theories I should have acted differently with Dillon. All I’m getting at is that, frankly, our relationship surprised me as much as I’m guessing it surprised him.

  How is it that two people can work closely together and never once notice each other, until that split second when the earth tilts on its axis and all sorts of new unexamined worlds open up?

  Worlds which, by the way, all revolve around someone that you have never even had one single erotic thought about before.

  Not one.

  What if absolutely everything you want can change in an instant?

  Let’s say, hypothetically, that all the days of your life you have known that you want A. Not B. Never B. Frankly, y
ou don’t even get the point of B, so B has never even come onto your radar screen. You know it deep within your soul that A is what you want, no doubt about it, that’s what you’re heading towards.

  Then, Bam! Out of nowhere, from the corner of your eye you see B and you’re practically drowning in a flood of all that B is making you feel. Instantly, it’s crystal clear that you want, you need, oh god, you have to have B.

  How could this have happened, you ask yourself when you finally come up for air? After all, you didn’t plan for it and you sure as hell didn’t see it coming.

  Welcome to an unexpected fork in the road.

  Now, for the big question: Was I going to go after it with all of my heart, or was I going to stay stuck exactly where I was before?

  *

  We have to go back several weeks to my first day on the job at the casino. I was hiding in the back room and spent the better part of fifteen minutes trying to pull my damn skirt down lower and my bustier up higher.

  Thank god I’d already had some experience wearing almost nothing at the exotic erotic party on campus, or I would have been really freaked out my uniform. At least with this one I got to wear something other than hair over my boobs.

  That’s me, always looking on the bright side.

  Anyway, a husky middle-aged woman in the corner noticed me and immediately took me under her wing. She motioned for me to come over.

  “I’m Sandy,” she said, as we shook hands. “You’re Georgia, I take it?”

  “That’s me.” I grinned, liking her already.

  She had barely said two sentences to me, but she was a welcome breath of fresh compared to Lola. She patted the seat next to her and I sat down, alarmed by the way my outfit rode way up and way down when I was seated.

  “You ever served drinks before sweetie?”

  “Actually, no,” I admitted a little sheepishly.

  She patted my knee. “You’ll do fine, a cute girl like you. Just remember, if you mess up on a drink, give them your prettiest smile, and they’ll happily choke down whatever you brought them.”

  I laughed. “It can’t be that easy!”

  She snorted. “Of course it can. The customers are the easy part of this job. It’s the bartenders you’ve got to watch out for.”