“Aw, that just made my heart smile,” Stacey says, hugging her arms into her chest.
“Doesn’t it? We’ve been hanging out lately, and it turns out she’s the exact same person I always loved. We promised that we’re never going to lose each other again. She was such a positive influence on me, always countering my cynicism with happiness and joy. I feel really lucky to have her back in my life.”
“I suspect she’s got some great stories.”
I snort in an unbecoming fashion. “You think I’m a dumb ass now? You should have seen me at seventeen. Anyway, the best part is Fletch and I went to Joanna’s house last week, and I got to hang out with her husband and kids. She has kids! I’m all ‘How can you have children? You’re still eighteen.’ Her ten-year-old looks exactly like the Joanna I met when we were freshmen and has the same kind of ebullience, too. I told Joanna, ‘All this kid needs is a pair of Keds and a bottle of Little Kings and I’d swear it was 1985 again.’ Now I feel like I should send Facebook a thank-you note.”
“I love when Facebook’s more than just a place to play Mafia Wars.”136
“Or to be stalked by creepy high school boyfriends,” I agree.
“Anything else we need to cover, or are we all caught up?”
“I guess that’s it, except . . . um, can you help me get this pencil out of my hair?”
With my updates complete—and once Stacey stops laughing—we launch into a long discussion of Project Runways past. We should be watching it right now, but with the Lifetime/Bravo legal battle over which network will get the show still not settled, all show fans are temporarily auf’d. As we’re reminiscing about Santino’s brilliant Tim Gunn impersonation, I suddenly snap my fingers. “Oh, my God, I didn’t even tell you my big news! I wangled my way into being invited to Authors Night!”
“Which is?”
“A fund-raiser for the East Hampton Library in New York. But your question should be who’s that because you’re going to die when you hear who the honorary chairmen are. Brace yourself. . . . I’m talking Jay McInerney, Candace Bushnell, and Alec Baldwin! Plus, there’s going to be a hundred other authors there, now including me! And the best part? Bethenny Frankel from Real Housewives is going to be there! Could you die?”
“I could die!”
“You should come!” Yes! That’s brilliant!
She gives me a wry grin before saying, “I spent enough on vacations for a while.”
“Okay. That makes sense. Anyway, after the big book-signing cocktail reception dealie, there are private dinners for some of the featured authors at mansions all over the Hamptons. I’m not a featured author—and why would I be?—but to go to a dinner all I have to do is buy a ticket. No one knows who’s hosting which dinner until all the parties are assigned, but one of the hosts is Rudy Giuliani! I could go to Rudy Giuliani’s house! How surreal is that? I mean, six years ago my electricity’s being cut off and my car’s getting repossessed and I’m being evicted from my apartment,137 and now I’m all, ‘Yeah, havin’ dinner with Rudy in the Hamptons, what of it?’ ”
“That’s absolutely crazy. How will you make sure you get his party?”
“I went through the list of authors and tried to pick which one he’d most likely want. There’s a dinner with this general who was in charge of the armed forces in Iraq. I looked him up on Amazon, and his book was paired with a bunch of conservative books, so I figure that’s my best bet.”
“Smart. And hey, that dinner can be your goal.”
“Exactly!”
As I’ve been forwarding my cultural education, I’ve lost some steam because I couldn’t figure out an end goal. When I was working on Such a Pretty Fat, my objective was to be healthier, and I had ways of calculating that. I could step on the scale, measure my cholesterol, check my blood pressure, et cetera.
“Be less of a lazy dumb ass” is kind of amorphous in terms of goals. How do I measure that? Count all the times I don’t get pencils caught in my hair? Not poisoning myself every couple of days? Actually getting off the couch to find the remote control instead of watching yet another Snuggie infomercial?
Now, “Be able to carry on a conversation at Rudy Giuliani’s dinner table without breaking into terror sweat,” that’s concrete. Plus, at the book event, I’ll see Candace Bushnell and I can honestly tell her, “Oh, yeah, Baudelaire? I’ve been reading him for a while now. Big fan.”
This event will really be my test, my version of the Empire Ball. This will be my chance to move among figurative royalty and see if I can blend in with them.
For some reason, I’ve always linked the idea of being cultured with the notion of having class. I realize they’re two separate entities, yet in my mind they’re inexorably tied. I feel like one can’t be classy if not first cultured. I liken this concept to Maslow’s hierarchy—sure, it’s possible to be self-actualized even when one’s physiological needs aren’t met, but I suspect it’s way easier to reach that point on a full stomach.
In my mind, culture is one of the building blocks of class. And I admit my logic could be specious at best, but that’s what’s guiding me.
“This couldn’t have worked out better. I’m so happy for you.”
“The thing is, there’s one problem. I want to look my best at the event, which means I have to keep this stupid hair on all summer.”
“Hey, sorry I missed your call last week. I was out having an adventure.” I’m in the kitchen, on the phone by the counter.
“Adventure? What kind? You weren’t out chasing down the homeless again, were you?” Angie sounds awfully concerned on the other end of the line.
I let out an exasperated sigh. “Why do you people always assume the worst of me?”
“Because it’s usually true?” Angie teases.
“Well, then maybe that guy shouldn’t have flipped me off when I told him if he’s allowed to throw my garbage around the alley, then I’m allowed to hit him with my car.138 And it only happened once,” I concede.
“If you ever move to the burbs, you realize the homeowners’ association will frown on your attempts to run over children with your riding mower.”
“Then they should stay off my lawn. Anyway, I had an adventure!”
“Are you going to tell me about your adventure, or shall I just turn on the news?” Angie asks.
“No, no, it was nothing like that.” Seriously, you threaten one vagrant with vehicular manslaughter, and suddenly everyone thinks YOU’RE the jerk. “Last week Gina and I went up to Little India on Devon.”
“Cool! You plan to ditch the Lacostes for saris?” Actually, saris come in the most gorgeous fabrics, and if I could figure out how to style a preppy outfit out of one, I would.
“Not exactly. Whenever it gets warm out, Gina goes up there to get a henna tattoo. And then she gets Indian food afterward. She invited me to join her because she thought it sounded cultural. But I told her, ‘I’d love to join you but I hate Indian food.’ And then I thought about the whole ‘diving in’ business and said, ‘Although I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ve ever even had Indian food.’ ”
“Wait a minute. I remember when Fletch went through an Indian-food phase last year. You kept bitching about how your downstairs smelled like grad-school housing.”
“Heh, I completely forgot! You’re right. Hey, you’re a really good listener.” Last year Fletch bought a bunch of Indian simmer sauces at Trader Joe’s because he got on this whole “I’m going to bring my lunch to work” thing. He kept taking these sauces and trying to create dishes around them. Except he’s not familiar enough with the cuisine to improvise anything, and nothing he produced was edible. I tried to tell him it was terrible but he insisted, “No, it’s fine,” and a few days later I caught him sneaking the leftovers into the garbage disposal. We had a little come-to-Jesus meetin’ about it, and I made him promise never to cook Indian again or else I’d make him eat the results.
“Anyway, before we even got to the restaurant, we stopped in this sal
on so Gina could get hennaed, which was fascinating. The girl did this whole elaborate design on Gina’s shoulder with lots of dots and paisleys. She did it completely freehand, and it was beautiful. I wanted one, but I couldn’t figure out a place on me to have it done. Not so much my style. But I figured, hey, I’m here, I should do something, so I decided on threading.”
“Remind me what that is. Central Michigan’s not exactly the threading capital of the world.”
“Most people say it’s an ancient technique using two twisted pieces of string to remove hair in lieu of tweezing or waxing. And yet I maintain it’s an Indian torture device. Remember those horrible Epilady things from about fifteen years ago that ripped each individual hair out from the root?”
“I’m shuddering just thinking about it. The Epilady was as bad as childbirth.” She corrects herself. “No, worse; I had drugs during my C-sections.”
“With threading, instead of tearing out a tiny strip of hair at a time, it yanks a million out. Hard. I had my eyebrows done and it hurt like a bitch.”
I’m not sure if threading’s technically supposed to cause pain or if somehow my extensions and the threader were in cahoots. I get the feeling the woman operating the thread was somehow avenging her distant pilgrim cousin’s sacrifice. In which case, who can blame her?
I continue. “Thing is, she used cuticle scissors to trim down the thicker part of my brows first, so now I look like frigging Carrot Top.”
Angie barks with laughter. “Excellent!”
“And then—then! Because I’m a genius, I told the lady to get all the peach fuzz off my cheeks. But you know what? Those tiny golden hairs serve a purpose. Apparently they act as your skin’s version of pressed powder, dulling all the little lines and imperfections. Now my face is completely naked, and for only seven dollars, I look ten years older.”139
“So you don’t recommend threading. Noted. Was lunch any better?”
“Fortunately, yes. When I told Gina that Indian food kind of scared me, she was this total voice of reason about it. She explained that I’m familiar with ninety percent of the ingredients in most Indian dishes; they’re just combined in a way I’ve never tasted.”
“Isn’t it superhot?”
“See? That’s what I asked. I’m the biggest baby in the world when it comes to anything spicy. I don’t mind the flavor, but my colon is delicate from years of accidentally poisoning myself, and I don’t enjoy crying on the toilet. Anyway, Gina said there are a ton of nonspicy dishes. Do you know much about Indian food?”
Angie guffaws. “We went to Culver’s last night for butter burgers; what do you think?”
“Your seven-year-old isn’t begging for curry in his lunch box?”
“Don’t get me started. I just turned the younger ones’ room into Guantánamo Bay. I spent a week telling them to clean it up because it stank, and they refused. I finally go in there to do it myself because the smell was unholy. Turns out those little bastards had been stuffing their skidmarked undies behind the dresser for weeks, so no wonder I’ve been washing the same three pairs over and over.”
“So you’re waterboarding them? Kind of harsh for someone who doesn’t spank.”
“Ha, no,” she laughs. “But I stripped their room bare. I took out every single item except their beds, a chair, and their dressers. If they can’t keep it organized, I will organize it for them.”
“How’d they react?”
“Don’t know. I’ll tell you when they get home from practice. And I’ll tell you what, if they keep it up, I’m putting them in jumpsuits, too. Anyway, enough about my household terrorists. What’d you eat?”
I glance down at Maisy spread across my feet. Once in a while when Angie tells me heartwarming stories about her kids, I wonder for a minute if we didn’t make a mistake by opting for pets instead of children. Then I hear a word like “skidmark,” and I get real comfortable with our choices.
“Um . . .” I try to recollect all the delicious tastes and scents from that day. “We started with samosas, which are these deep-fried dumplings filled with veggies and spices. I made Gina order everything. She said the rule of thumb was to stay away from anything ‘vindaloo’ and stick with ‘tandoori.’ Then I got this mixed-grill thing that had lamb and chicken—no beef, by the way—done a bunch of different ways, and it was served with this phenomenal bread called naan. Speaking of bread, you know how when you go to dinner, you get a couple of rolls in the beginning, and then it’s never really thought of again?”
“Not at Culver’s, but yes, I understand the concept.”
“Well, it’s a whole different ball game with Indian food. This place had something like fifteen different kinds of bread—some of it filled with herbs and spices, some of it with vegetables, some of it with meat. We got a mixed basket, so I got to try a bunch of stuff. And you know what? In a country with bread that good, I can see why it would be easy to be a vegetarian. That’s probably why they’re all thin.”
Angie snorts. “Uh-huh. That’s why. Not dysentery or cholera or, you know, poverty.”
“Oh. Right. Anyway, I brought a ton of leftovers home, and when Fletch tasted it all, he was incredulous. ‘This isn’t at all like the stuff I made.’ No shit. But the best part is, being there gave me a brilliant idea.”
“You’re going to stop eating beef?”
“Pfft, what am I, Gandhi? No. Consider My Fair Lady for a minute.”
“Certainly, guv’nah.”
“What did Eliza Doolittle have to do to pass herself off as a lady? Think about it. She had to shake her accent, right? But remember when she’s having tea for the first time with Henry Higgins’s mom and friends? She had the accent down, but her conversation was way inappropriate. She kept talking about her dead aunt and how someone had ‘done her in.’ ”
I pause so Angie can drink in the genius of what I’m saying.
She neatly fills in the gaps. “And then they all went out for tandoori chicken. And had their eyebrows threaded before getting hair extensions. The new version’s a smash hit on Broadway. People say it’s better than Cats.”
“Shut it, smart-ass. I wasn’t done. I said I wanted to include a fine dining element as part of my whole cultural Jenaissance, but that may be shortsighted. Sure, I’d like to use the right knife when buttering my bread in public, but that won’t resolve how picky and narrow-minded I can be about food. With a couple of notable exceptions, I ordered the same exact meal in restaurants until I was eighteen years old—a cheeseburger, fries, and an orange soda.”
“Kids like burgers. They prefer simple. That’s why you see fish sticks on the little menu and not smoked salmon.”
“Yes, but eventually they grow out of it. I’m not sure I did. I just upgraded my love of burgers to steak and of fries to au gratin potatoes.140 But I don’t want to be Miss Mayonnaise McWhitebread of the Connecticut McWhitebreads, getting all grossed out or throwing a fit if I don’t go to a steakhouse. I don’t want to be the asshole ordering chicken fingers when everyone else is having chicken tikka.”
“Makes sense. You can only claim that you’re ‘allergic’ to food that scares you for so long.”
I love how Angie gets it even when I’m not sure I can explain it. “Exactly, and from what I’ve seen, dining’s becoming more of an art form. With food, the envelope is perpetually being pushed. I mean, people watch shows like Top Chef and No Reservations and a million other programs on the food networks, and they’re constantly trying new stuff. Me, I’ve always been so afraid to taste anything I haven’t already had, but really, what’s the worst that can happen? I miss a meal? I’m a little hungry? I get food poisoning? Not like that hasn’t happened before.”
I hear her trying to muffle a giggle. “Yeah, weekly.”
I’d argue but she’s not really exaggerating. “My plan is to open my mind and palate to different cuisines exactly like I’m trying with the arts and literature. So . . . I’m going to EAT THE WORLD!”
I wait for her to showe
r me with kudos for this breakthrough. She doesn’t. “Meaning?”
“I’ve looked up every kind of ethnic restaurant in this city, and I’m going to hit them all. Do you know how much I’ve never tasted? I mean, there’s Serbian and Colombian and Malaysian and Afghan and Armenian, and I have to look at my list for the rest of them, but you get the gist. And maybe this isn’t keeping with My Fair Lady word for word, but it definitely is in spirit. The bottom line is, if Eliza hadn’t learned to dance at some point offscreen, she’d never have sold her total transformation at the ball. So, what do you think? Sublime or ridiculous?”
“Sublime. Definitely sublime.”
“Cool, because first up, I’m slated to go out for Ethiopian food with Gina and Stacey. Which is weird because, not to be an asshole, but it didn’t even occur to me that they had food.”
“Is it too late to change my answer to ridiculous?”
ALTGELDSHRUGGED TWITTER:
Never in the history of ever has one person stuffed so much crap in a single carry-on bag.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Wickedly Imperfect
World, prepare to be eaten!
When I ran my “eat the world” concept by Fletch, he was not without questions. Or doubts.
“You’re going to write a book about food right after one on weight loss? How does that work?” he wondered, running his hand down his face.
“Number one, opening myself up to new flavors isn’t exactly the same thing as deciding to ‘SuperSize Me,’ and number two, there was a book in between this one and that one, so . . . shut up. Plus, I’m trying to broaden my palate, and maybe other cultures have really delicious foods that are also superhealthy?”
He grudgingly admitted, “I guess it’s possible.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I’m not.”
I waggled a finger at him. “Listen up, mister. The next time Top Chef is on, watch it with me. You’ll see that almost every single gourmand on that damn show is thin. Plus Padma? The host? Is like one of the hottest women on the planet, and she eats everything!141 Way I see it, there’s got to be a correlation between satisfaction and not overdoing it. If so, I intend to find it.”
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