Lauren Takes Leave

by Gerstenblatt, Julie

  Here’s where things go slightly left of center.

  In one fluid movement, Shay reaches out and takes my hand in hers. Then she licks the salt off the pudgy part of my hand, downs her shot, slams the empty glass on the table, and sucks on a lime. “Excellent!” she cheers. “Who’s next?”

  I stare down at the damp crease between my thumb and pointer finger, stunned.

  “Did that really juss happen?” Kat whisper-slurs to me. “Did she juss suck you off?”

  It’s not quite the phrase I would use, but I nod my head. Shay’s tongue felt kind of warm and wet, not unlike a greeting from a neighborhood Labradoodle.

  Though, clearly, this act crossed some line that doesn’t exist when I’m saying hello to mixed-breed puppies.

  I can tell that Kat’s kind of into this round-robin lickfest, while I’m still mentally—and, fine I’ll admit it, emotionally—catching up. She smiles at Shay and watches as Shay pours some salt onto her own soft, tanned flesh. I’ll be damned if Kat doesn’t grab that beautiful hand, with its manicured-in-Mademoiselle fingertips, and suck on it like it’s the last spare rib at a Chinese buffet.

  During this bizarre act of PDA, I can’t help noticing the large (but not ostentatious) tennis bracelet on Shay’s wrist, as it sparkles in the candlelight of Leslie’s dining room.

  Kat eventually releases Shay’s hand, gulps down the tequila, and grabs the lime wedge between her teeth.

  “Now this is starting to feel like a girls’ night in,” Shay says, embracing me with one arm and Kat with the other.

  I’m wondering if that’s innuendo or if I’m just being sensitive and stupid. “You mean, like, hanging out with women friends in a nonthreatening, college-like atmosphere?”

  “I guess, if you’re into that sort of sorority play,” Shay says, in no way helping me make sense of what’s really going on here.

  Shay turns to Kat and presses her forehead and nose against Kat’s forehead and nose. “Your eyes are pretty,” she whispers before sauntering off, leaving the scent of tuberose in her wake.

  “Huh,” Kat says.

  “That’s it?” I burp theatrically. “Huh?” I take a shot of tequila sans salt, not wanting to put my tongue where Shay’s tongue has just been. The alcohol warms my throat but also kind of makes me want to puke.

  “I’m off to the bathroom,” I tell Kat. “Be back in a mo.”

  Kat waves me off, distracted.

  The hall bathroom is occupado, so I head upstairs. Either the entire second floor of the home was built on an angle or I’m drunker than I thought. Steadying myself by running my hand against the wall, I make my way down the carpeted hallway and into Leslie’s master bedroom.

  The room is dark except for the blue glow of the obnoxiously huge flat-screen on the far wall. Lots of women are piled together on the four-poster bed, watching an old-school porno on the television, laughing and talking animatedly.

  I wave in the general direction of the crowd and find my way into the walk-in closet—oops, not it!—and eventually the bathroom.

  Leslie has one of those huge, spa-like bathrooms copied almost tile by tile from the Ritz-Carlton, Naples. It’s all crème- and brown-toned limestone and marble, with an oversized Jacuzzi tub and a walk-in shower big enough for a family of four grizzly bears. At one of the two sinks, I pump some soap into my palm and wash very, very well. Behind me there is a spaceship-like toilet and a porcelain bidet.

  Being in the bathroom makes me realize that I do, in fact, need to pee. I sit on the modern contraption that must be a toilet, and am instantly pleased by the warming sensation of the heated seat. Leslie’s rear end must be pretty high-end, blubber be damned. I sit a little longer than necessary, and then, just as I am ready to stand, I decide to push a button to the right of me on the wall, just to see what it will do.

  A shock of cold water hits me in the privates.

  “Ah!” I call out, surprised. Frantically, I try to turn off the device while instinctively looking toward the door, afraid that someone has heard my outburst. But instead of stopping the assault, somehow I hit a button that turns on a vent. Now cool air replaces the jet spray. Which isn’t bad, actually. It’s rather soothing.

  I settle in for a good long moment, enjoying the York Peppermint Patty sensation of it all.

  My initial distress now replaced with curiosity, I decide to touch another dial on the wall and mistakenly force the air up to Mach 5.

  I don’t think you’re supposed to touch that particular dial while sitting, because my butt feels like it’s in the eye of a small hurricane. It’s suctioned to the seat and takes all the strength I have in my upper torso to oust myself to safety.

  And, now that I’m sprawled on the floor, I can tell you that Leslie has radiant heat under her marble floor tiles.

  Why does she also have a bidet when that Get Smart toilet does it all? I wonder.

  The next thing I know, someone’s pounding on the door.

  “Just a minute!” I call, snapping to and quickly dressing. “Shit!” I slip on the tile while trying to stand and bang my knee. That’s gonna leave a mark, I think.

  I wash my hands so quickly that I spray soap and water everywhere. Grabbing a decorative hand towel, I begin cleaning up the mess as best I can. Then, with bionic speed, I manage to make myself somewhat presentable and swing open the door.

  Leslie’s kohl-rimmed eyes meet mine. “Who’s in there with you?” she demands.

  “Who?” I ask, trying to remember how to form words.

  “Yes,” she snaps impatiently. “Who. I was in the living room and I heard banging and shouting coming from above.” She glances past me, her eyes sweeping the empty bathroom for clues.

  I try to relax, but I can feel my cheeks get hot under her scrutiny. “Was it Tasty? Salty? Or Try Me?” she asks, referring not to Snow White’s dwarves, but to the waiter/models serving downstairs.

  I say nothing, merely trying to blink myself out of this situation.

  “Well,” Leslie concludes, seemingly satisfied with my lack of an answer. “As long as you didn’t touch Eat Me, because I’m saving him for dessert, if you know what I mean.” She raises one eyebrow to prove her point.

  I cough out a laugh of sorts in response, move past her, and drunkenly saunter away, leaving her leaning against the doorjamb.

  If you’ve never tried an elaborate, specially outfitted toilet, I suggest it highly. Aside from being a rather astounding force of nature, it leaves you feeling fresh and clean. Like a car wash for your hoo-ha.

  I head back downstairs to find Kat, a spring in my step.

  Chapter 14

  Music is playing pretty loudly now in the kitchen and family rooms, and a lot of partygoers are dancing with the hired help.

  “Have you seen Kat?” I ask a few women huddled around one of the possibly gay waiter/models. I don’t know half of these women and they don’t know Kat, so the whole effort is somewhat futile. “Petite, with black curls? Green eyes? No?” I have to shout to be heard, but the answer is still no.

  Although I know I shouldn’t, I grab a cosmopolitan from a passing waiter with his tray aloft, and enjoy it in a few gulps. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was. Probably from all that alcohol. Very dehydrating.

  In the living room, I spot that giant pole where Leslie’s overstuffed couch used to be. Several guests are gathering around a really skinny woman with fake boobs barely encased in a shrunken black T-shirt. The rest of the outfit is comprised of tight, black boy short–style underwear, and chunky silver platforms. I’m hoping she’s the instructor.

  “Where does she find these people?” I wonder aloud. But without Kat beside me, there is no witty repartee in response.

  The hottie blows a whistle and the group gets quiet. “Hi, girls! My name is Lola, and I’m from the Copa, Copacabana,” she sings, imitating that Barry Manilow song.

  Which answers that question, I guess.

  Lola starts showing us some basic pole-dancing moves. She hooks h
er leg around the pole and then tosses her hair back theatrically.

  I’m pretty sure I could do that.

  Then she ups the ante a bit with slightly more complicated twists, turning her body around the pole while gyrating her hips. She dances around that thing ten, twenty times. Her moves are mesmerizingly sexy, especially with this heavy beat in the background, with some guy singing, “Come, my lady, come, come, my lady…”

  Her legs are really long and perfectly toned. And she’s so flexible! I suddenly understand why men like to watch this. I like to watch this! I feel both dizzy and embarrassed. I have to look away.

  “Get in touch with your inner diva,” Lola says. “Find your sexy.”

  This is misogynistic garbage, I remind myself, created by men for men who want to objectify women.

  Stop being such a buzzkill, Lauren, I scold myself. You’re only upset because you lack the balls to get up and do something like this.

  But then another voice arrives to weigh in. Where’s your sexy at, girl?

  A third voice joins the party in my head, asking, Why are you thinking in bad grammar? And where is Kat when you need her? She could get up there and then push you to do it, too. You’d get to be all shy and coy and like, “No, no, not me,” and then she’d be like, “Yes, Lauren, you!” so you’d do it, secretly stoked. And then, if you look stupid or come off too slutty, you could blame it all on Kat and walk away clean.

  There are too many people in my head right now.

  A few brave souls come up and spin while the rest of us cheer them on. One woman even manages to hoist herself up and spin right down like she’s in Cirque du Soleil.

  She doesn’t seem objectified.

  She smiles and high-fives Lola at the end of her turn. “That was a blast!” she tells us. “I’m totally getting a pole for my office.”

  I wonder what she does for a living.

  I grab another drink from a passing waiter and watch the entertainment for a while, as three more women try the pole. It does look like fun.

  Maybe even more fun than washing one’s bottom in Leslie’s bidet.

  I mean, I’m not completely uncoordinated. I was a gymnast in middle school, for goodness’ sake. I can totally handle this.

  “Okay people.” I stand, swaying slightly. “I’ve got some dance moves, and I’m prepared to use ’em!”

  There are cheers all around.

  Next thing I know, I’m up at the pole and pelvic-thrusting to the beat. “That’s it,” Lola coaches, “Now try to spin, one hand here, the other here.” I follow her instructions, and…I do it! I actually spin around the pole. My hands are slippery from nerves, but that only seems to make my movements work better, faster.

  I mean, not to brag, but I look hot. I can tell from the silence that has overtaken the room. The group is so jealous of my awesome moves, it has been rendered speechless.

  After a few more turns, it’s just so natural.

  “Honey, let someone else have a chance,” I hear Lola say, but I’m not ready to let go quite yet.

  Leslie catcalls to me from where she has joined the group on the sofa. “Hey, bitch, it’s my turn now!”

  I wave to her, like, just give me one more minute.

  “Plus, you suck,” Leslie adds, standing up and coming toward the pole. A chill settles over the group.

  Shut up, Leslie, I think. All night, she’s been the killjoy to my good time, ruining her own party by yelling profanities and making me—and probably everyone—feel like shit.

  I’m totally not giving up the pole now, partially to prove to her that I’m good at this, but mostly just to spite her.

  For my next go-round, I have to pull an Emeril and kick it up a notch. I need something exceptional, something to make the crowd go wild.

  Something that Leslie will always remember.

  Unfortunately, there isn’t much in my bag of tricks. Think Striptease, Lauren. Find your inner Demi and let her loose on Leslie.

  Suddenly, I’ve got an idea. I look her way and wink, thinking, Try to top this, bitch.

  Then I hook my left leg around the pole like I saw Lola do in her demo. An anticipatory “Whoo” comes from the onlookers. Yeah, ladies, dat’s right. The feisty black-girl rapper in my mind is speaking to me, and she’s gonna help me spin.

  And right before I black out, I think: Leslie is going down.

  There is just so much blood.

  I’m not sure where it’s coming from or how it ended up on my hands, since I don’t see a cut anywhere on me and I don’t seem to be hurting. I check my head, my legs, my arms. No signs of injury anywhere.

  My legs are splayed at an awkward angle, though, so I try to move them. The spiky heel of one of my awesome Louboutin shoes seems to be caught in a net. A black net, like the kind to catch fish in. Yes, that’s right—the word for that is fishnet!

  The best way to get my shoe free from this fishnet seems to be by tearing a hole in it, which I do.

  Ah. My black stiletto comes loose. I check to see if it’s damaged, but it seems fine.

  Right now my life is like a movie I’m watching on pay-per-view, except that the volume’s on mute. Then someone comes into the living room and clicks the remote, bringing the sound back in full force. Noise is all around me.

  “You bitch!” someone yells.

  “Back off, get off her!” someone else says, not too kindly.

  All these people bark directions my way. “Get off” and “move” seem to be the two most prevalent comments, so I figure I’ll follow those commands and see if the noise stops.

  I crawl away and something frees underneath me. The mass that I was resting on turns out to be a person, which strikes me at this very moment as sort of funny and also quite weird. How did that happen?

  Then the person moves a little. And then the person speaks.

  “Fucking bitchwhoreasshole!” It’s Leslie, her voice muffled by the Oriental carpeting.

  She really is rather awful, isn’t she?

  She sits up and turns toward me, clutching her cheek.

  Ah! There’s the source of all that blood.

  I must have kicked her in the face with the heel of my shoe as I got airborne around the pole. Which is, you know, sobering news.

  “I am so…so very…very sorry!” I say, reaching my hand out toward Leslie and standing up unsteadily, my wayward shoe tucked under my left arm like a football.

  “Don’t you fucking dare come near me, you fucking bitchwhoreasshole!”

  What have I done? I am stunned into inaction as I survey the horror of the scene that’s unfolding all around me.

  I catch another glimpse of Leslie’s beaten-up, pulpy cheek, and I’m afraid of retribution both immediate and calculated. In this instant, a crowd of drunken women in lingerie could turn on me, like something out of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, and scratch me with their manicured fingernails, throwing their fruity drinks in my face. And tomorrow? What if this story leaks to the community and everyone at school finds out? I’ll be known as That Teacher at the Sex-Toy Party Who Bashed in the Hostess’s Face with the Heel of Her Louboutins. That’s not the kind of title that inspires confidence in parents, right? I can picture them whispering about me on the sidelines of soccer fields throughout the county, saying, I don’t care how talented she is with iambic pentameter, just keep your kids away from that delinquent, pole-dancing drunk with lifetime tenure.

  Luckily, people ignore me as they tend to Leslie’s wound. Gauze and towels and bandages of all shapes and sizes appear from the hall closet. A bag of frozen peas is passed in front of me.

  “For the swelling!” handholding Pam instructs. “Put the bag of peas on your face, Lez. You don’t want to end up purple and swollen.”

  “Let me help!” I plead. I’d really like to be useful in some way, instead of feeling rooted to the floor like another pole in the living room. Plus, maybe taking some positive action now will help soften their gossipy blows about me later. People might say, She r
eally screwed up, but then she came to Leslie’s rescue like Florence Nightingale. Or, Lauren may be uncoordinated, but she has a gift for healing. I’m definitely going to request her as my daughter’s sixth-grade English teacher, and I suggest you do the same.

  But it’s like I’ve become invisible. No one pays any attention to me, or even seems to hear me. The sacred womanly wall of the Silent Treatment has been invoked, and it is impenetrable.

  I’m dead to them, cast out of the tribe.

  This absolute exclusion feels even worse than being screamed at. So I try again.

  “I said I was sorry! It was an accident, people!” I yell to no one in particular.

  “There are no accidents, only major fuckups,” Kat says, materializing next to me and looking totally freaked out. Her hair is standing up funny, and she’s missing one of her large hoop earrings.

  “Thank God you’re here!” I hug her. “To rescue me! I’ve got to get out—”

  Kat cuts me off and grabs my wrist, giving a furtive glance toward the stairs. “Me, too. Like, yesterday.”

  “Okay. Let me just say good-bye to Lola…” I start.

  “No!” Kat snaps, whisper-screaming at me. “There is no time for good-byes, Lauren. We’ve got to get out of here now!”

  Her eyes are glassy, her skin pale and clammy. She looks possessed. For a split second I think, Kat’s been bitten by a vampire! Then I remember that my life is not a part of the Twilight series.

  “But I really have to pee again!”

  “Squat outside,” Kat says.

  “Fine.” I grab my purse and make my way to the front hall, Kat still dragging me by the wrist.

  Word of Leslie’s fate has spread quickly. Women are pouring into the living room from all parts of the house, including the master suite, proving that juicy gossip trumps vintage John Holmes videos.

  There is whispering and mumbling and a sidelong glance or two my way. I’m nervous to stay, anticipating a barrage of insults, but I worry that leaving Leslie like this will only make it worse for me in the long run, like leaving the scene of a car crash and turning it into a hit-and-run.