Um…okay, weirdo. You do you.
I’d originally just shrugged off Chad as one of those antisocial video gamers who’d been weaned off the teat not with a pacifier but with a controller in hand. I imagined the poor guy had only recently discovered the outside world. It was a plausible theory, for sure, but it didn’t account for the muscles I spied every time he came home from the gym. Nor did it explain the tattoo sleeve that traveled up his arm and over his broad shoulder. Or those striking golden eyes that occasionally peaked out from under a feather duster of lashes.
Wait. Why was I thinking about my hairy, jacked-up neighbor? Chad was nothing like clean-cut James—my possible genetic twin. Oh man, I had to stop thinking of him in those terms.
Repeat after me: James is not your brother.
I mean, come on. Get a grip, girl. There were four million people living in Los Angeles. What were the odds I was related to a good percentage of them? Deflating at the thought, I realized for the average girl, the odds were very slim; but for me, Danielle Evelyn Malone, the probabilities were surprisingly high.
See, I was the offspring of a woman who was too picky to settle down with ‘just any man,’ so instead, she hand-picked the perfect one—Sperm Donor 649. Don’t get me wrong, I’d never had a problem with my artificially inseminated beginnings. On the contrary, I was proud to share my story, even playing the papa game with the other kids in school until the principal called my mother into the office and put a stop to it. My dad’s a doctor. My dad’s a fireman. Yeah? Well, my dad’s a test tube.
Yep, it was all fun and games until I got an email from a lawyer two years ago warning me that, just as my mother had found Sperm Donor 649’s profile unbelievably attractive, so had lots of other women—one hundred and eleven of them, to be exact. To date, I had twenty-four confirmed half-siblings. Plus, thanks to the rise of the DNA testing sites and our accompanying Facebook page, The Lucky Sperm Club, numbers were continuing to rise. And because three quarters of us had yet to be identified, that made James guilty until proven innocent.
Certainly, my life on the dating front would have been so much easier if my dear ol’ test tube dad hadn’t financed his college education one ejaculation at a time. I don’t want to brag or anything, but my father was a bit of a rock star in the semen-seeking world. Who knew in the mid 90’s that blond, blue-eyed med students with above average intelligence and six-foot-one frames would be all the rage? My prolific pop’s ‘contributions’ were so sought after, in fact, that an unscrupulous doctor kept his seed in rotation long after it should have been retired, making Sperm Donor 649 the unwitting commander of a small army.
Sometimes I imagined my father and wondered if he knew he’d had a part in bringing so many humans into the world; but more specifically, I wondered what he’d think of me. My whole life, I’d tried to live up to his ideals, excelling at school and getting a degree. Would he be proud? God knows, my mother never was. It really didn’t matter what I did in life, it was never good enough for her. Hell, I could bring home Neanderthal Chad to meet the fam and that still wouldn’t come close to the disappointment she’d felt when I failed to get accepted to medical school.
But then I went and totally ripped her heart out by refocusing on another profession—teaching. I swear my mother would probably have preferred I slide up and down a pole rather than have to tell her friends I taught first-graders Common Core curriculum and modeled for them how not to hold their crotches when they had to go pee pee. See, if I was going to disappoint, Mom wanted it to be something grand, something she could then blame on my father’s side of the family. Obviously, Danielle got her severe acne from her father’s side of the family. Or, Of course Danielle is a stripper. What did you expect when her great-great grandmother, on her father’s side, liked the feel of metal between her legs?
Don’t get me wrong—my mother could be sweet and loving. If the sun and moon aligned just right. But it was her disappointment in all things ‘me’ that had led to our mini estrangement and my accepting a job in Los Angeles, where the inflated rents forced me to seek out cost-effective housing and live next door to a dunderhead like Chad.
The blender continued to whirl. Jesus, how long did it take to grind up kale and broken dreams? I got up from my chair, made a fist, and pounded on the wall. In true meathead fashion, my neighbor defiantly switched the blender setting to high and let that baby churn. Such a colossal jerk. Why couldn’t he just fall in line like all thirteen of my sperm brothers?
My phone buzzed on the kitchen table. I picked it up and raised a brow. Well, I’ll be damned. Speaking of sperm brothers, a text had just come through from possible number fourteen: James.
Had a great time last night, he wrote.
Really? How? If my excessive incestuous sweating hadn’t turned him off, I was sure the Ancestry.com survey request of his mother’s sex life just before his conception would have done him in. Wow, James was a hardy fella—like a drought-resistant weed.
Yes, it was fun
Can’t wait to see you again. How about tonight? Does a movie sound good?
Tonight? Huh, let me think. I did have plans to practice knuckle-knocking Morse code on the wall I shared with Chad, but I supposed I could put it off for one more day.
Um, okay that sounds fun, I typed. What theater? I’ll meet you
Are you sure I can’t come and pick you up?
That was not going to happen. If we were still together at the end of the year, sure, maybe; but no way was I inviting him to my place after the considerable amount of time James had spent detailing his high-end apartment. The last thing I wanted was for him to come here and see how the other half lived.
No. I prefer to just meet you there
The two of us exchanged theater information before he wrote out his last text:
I dig you, Dani. Haven’t stopped thinking about you since last night
Oh, I hadn’t stopped thinking about him either. Did he have banjo toes like me? Did he grind his teeth in his sleep?
Stop, I chided myself. This was going to be great. James was great. There was absolutely nothing to worry about.
Again, repeat after me: James is not your brother.
RJ
Post-It Notes
Damn that Dani. She thought she owned the wall. And the balcony. And the world. The woman had an opinion about everything and never passed up a teaching opportunity. Needless to say, we were not Mr. Roger’s sugar-swapping neighbors. Before either of us had moved into the apartment complex, some corporate genius had decided that it would be more cost effective to erect a wall the length of a single 1150-square-foot apartment and call it two. Dani’s side got most of the square footage, along with the bedroom, the original kitchen, and the bathroom. I got the paint-by-numbers version on the other side.
Still, the cramped quarters and paper-thin wall separating us weren’t the reason for our feud. That honor went to our shared balcony. See, before Dani, I’d never once seen the person living next door. Whoever it was had kept their blinds drawn at all times, so that meant the balcony had essentially been mine alone, and my stuff was strewn everywhere—up until the day she moved in and turned my bachelor oasis into an Urban Outfitters outdoor living space complete with a Boho wall tapestry, string lights, and an organic vegetable garden.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t opposed to a little luxury, but Dani wasn’t inclined to share. In the middle of our balcony, like she’d actually measured the length with a yardstick, she’d erected a barrier in the form of a brightly colored masking tape strip dividing our two sections. She’d even taken the initiative to stack my shit into neat piles on my side of the line with a Post-it Note attached reading, ‘Please respect my space.’
I responded with my own Post-it Note reading, ‘I’d rather be drilled in the ass by a woodpecker than respect your space.’
To which she responded, ‘I don’t care what sort of kinky shit you’re into, just don’t touch my basil.’
And so beg
an our passive-aggressive Post-it Notes war. At any given time of the day, I could expect to find notes on my door or out on the balcony alerting me to her disappointment in my existence. She didn’t like my music or my smelly gym shirt hanging over my chair on the terrace or my trash bag that had been strategically placed outside my front door to remind myself to take it to the garbage chute in the morning.
I winced at the memory of the garbage chute misstep. That incident had led to an entire novel of one word Post-It Notes pasted all over my front door that read, ‘Your’ ‘stinky’ ‘trash’ ‘belongs’ ‘in’ ‘the’ ‘dumpster’ ‘Chad.’ ‘Do’ ‘better!’
I wasn’t sure what the woman did for a living, but I was fairly certain it had something to do with torturing small animals. Or maybe she worked at the DMV. All I knew was I needed to avoid her this morning at all costs, because after Alexa’s heartless Nickelback diss, I didn’t have the patience to deal with picky women today.
Pressing my eyeball to the peephole before exiting my apartment, I searched for a little five-foot-two spitfire on three-inch heels. On workdays, Dani always wore her hair pulled back into a high ponytail and was clad in smart casual clothing. She was pretty in a pretentious, know-it-all sort of way. She had killer hazel eyes and long, caramel-colored hair that reached all the way to the small of her back when she let it down at the end of the day. I’d admit to accidentally spying on her on occasion when she was out on the balcony soaking up the sun. That was when I liked her best—when her mouth wasn’t moving.
After taking the necessary precautions, I determined the coast to be clear and pushed open the door, breathing a sigh of relief. The day was looking up. But then, like a bomb blasting it off its fucking hinges, the door beside mine burst open and out tottered Dani. Goddamn, this woman couldn’t do anything subtle. I held back my whimper.
“Oh,” she said, startled. “I didn’t see you.”
Clearly, she’d been doing her own keyhole surveillance.
“Did you get my note?” I asked, without looking up.
Feigning ignorance, she replied, “What note?”
“The one I pushed all the way through the crack in your door last night until it disappeared inside your apartment.”
“Oh, that note.”
“Yeah, that one. Did you read it?”
She skipped answering my question in favor of her own inquiry. “Did you run out of sticky pads, Chad?”
“Actually, I did—I’m surprised you haven’t run out yourself, given how liberally you abuse them.”
“I bought in bulk after meeting you.”
“I’m sure you did,” I sighed. “Just answer the question, Dani. Did you read my note or not?”
“Yes, I read your note. But then I was forced to burn it because I don’t want there to be any evidence pointing toward me when management finds your dead body.”
See, this was the attitude I dealt with on a daily basis. It was like living next door to a disgruntled postal worker, only more hostile.
“And? Did you?” I asked, careful to keep my face covered in my pullover hoodie.
“Did I what?” She spun around to face me, and my pulse quickened. God, how I loved riling her up. Dani was one of those law-and-order girls who thought the universe revolved around her, but in reality, she was just getting in its way. How she’d ended up here, on the edge of extinction, I couldn’t guess, but I’d watched her thrive with fascinated ambivalence. This was not a woman who hid out and felt sorry for herself. She was a go-getter, even if, based solely on her living conditions, she wasn’t really getting anywhere.
“Are you asking me if I stole your package, Chad?”
“No. I’m simply following the evidence. According to the delivery information sent to my email yesterday, the package was left on my doorstep at 9:15 a.m. Saturday morning, but by the time I got home at 11:35 a.m, it was gone.”
“Wow,” she said in sarcastic amazement. “Your detective skills are spot on. Where did you learn your trade? From Riverdale?”
“I don’t need high quality investigative training to tell me you’re the most obvious suspect,” I countered.
“Oh, yeah? And why is that? Please provide details.”
“That’s confidential.”
“Oh no. If you’re accusing me of kleptomania, I have a right to know your evidence.”
“Look, Dani, I don’t care if you’re into whips and chains. Your private life is none of my business,” I replied, scratching my temple. I knew damn well what she was talking about, but I also knew I’d be lighting her fuse.
“No, Chad, kleptomania—a compulsion to steal. Seriously, dude, your teachers need to line up and apologize to you.”
We have a flame.
“Or, at the very least, pummel you with a bat, dumbass.”
And boom!
She was just that easy. In some ways, making Dani crazy took the edge off. By stripping her of her sanity, I was restoring bits and pieces of my own. My eyes narrowed in on her. Obviously, she hadn’t comprehended the joke. Typical. Fancying herself a scholar, Dani regularly chose intelligence-shaming as her weapon of choice, but seeing that she’d graduated from one of those Varsity Blue campuses where the rich mommies and daddies routinely bought their children’s way into the school, I wouldn’t put it past Dani to have a fake athletic profile floating around out there somewhere with her face photoshopped onto a rower’s body.
“You want evidence?” I said. “Fine. There are two reasons why I’ve concluded you’re the culprit. One: we’re at the end of the hallway, and no one comes back here. And two: you’re the only person who wishes me dead.”
“Oh, Chad, don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure there are plenty of people who want to throw you over the balcony.”
I laughed at her snappy comeback, the first chuckle to pass my lips in months. Dani rolled her eyes then returned to the near-impossible task of fitting her key into the lock while agitated.
After witnessing several failed attempts, I stepped forward to offer my assistance.
“Back off!” she hissed, angling her hip to block me from advancing.
Holding my hands up, I took a step back. “Whoa, I can see that stuffing holes isn’t your thing. I was just trying to help.”
She glanced up at me, blowing a strand of hair from her eyes. “Clever word-play there, Chad. I can see you’ve been practicing. Bravo. Oh, and if that hair on your face is any indication, I can’t imagine little Chad is doing much stuffing himself. He probably can’t see over the shrubs.”
“Don’t you worry about little Chad. He’s a grower.”
“Well, that’s good, because he certainly isn’t a show-er,” Dani said, shifting her eyes downward and over my gym shorts before turning and walking away. “Have a shitty day, Chad.”
“Thanks. You too. Oh, and Dani? I’ll expect my package to be waiting for me when I get home.”
She spun back around to face me. “Yeah? Well, you’ll be waiting a long time because…say it with me, Dickweed—Dani. Did. Not. Steal. My. Package.”
“Dani did for sure steal my package,” I repeated after her…sort of.
“Uhhh…” she roared. “I can’t even. Think whatever you want but just know that I have no interest in a box stuffed with lube and tube socks.”
Oh, damn. Shots fired.
“Actually,” I volleyed, “it was a box of loneliness and desperation. I ordered it as a gift for you.”
My neighbor’s eyes widened. She was reaching her limit; and yet still I kept poking. Dani was the only thing in my life that made my pulse race the way it had when I was on stage. I needed her anger like I needed my life back.
“Ooh, you’re hysterical,” she replied, employing jazz hands just to showcase how unamused she really was. “Can you do me a huge favor, Chad? Can you never speak to me again?”
“Sure, I’ll give it a shot,” I said brushing by her in the hallway. “Oh, and can you keep the noise down this evening when you gobble up that Ben & J
erry’s ice cream? I can hear your spoon hitting porcelain every fucking night, and it gives me headaches.”
“Sure. I’ll try to be more considerate.” She smiled through clenched teeth.
“Awesome, thanks.”
“Oh, and Chad? You be sure to hydrate properly after aggressively masturbating tonight.”
“I would,” I called over my shoulder, “but you stole my lube.”
Dani
Not Chad
Tapping my fingers on the steering wheel, I spewed impatient curses at the woman callously making me wait for her parking spot. I’d been in a temperamental mood ever since my run-in with Chad. How dare he accuse me of stealing! Or of being some old maid just because I enjoyed the occasional night in with a bowl of ice cream. I mean, please. Not everyone needed to live on the edge with 650% more protein than the recommended daily allowance.
I actually wished I had stolen his package, so I could then stomp it into submission. Then I’d submerge it in water and allow it to dry out before setting it on fire. Finally, I’d deliver his precious package all bloodied, bruised, and smoldering to his doorstep. Chad didn’t deserve nice things.S
Movement drew my attention back to the woman in her car, taunting me with her lack of consideration. She knew I was waiting, but clearly she didn’t care about other living, breathing human beings. Her tire would roll a half a rotation and stop. Half a rotation and stop. Oh, yeah, she was wearing on my last nerve. Maybe she was related to Chad. I normally considered myself a very patient person. I even owned a crock pot and everything. But this stop-and-go action was just uncalled for. I should already be upstairs reapplying my makeup and getting dolled up for my date with James, not down here in the parking garage slowly dying.
My Night with a Rockstar Page 5