“No, I just want to know how you know Vicki from dance class. You hadn’t mentioned you knew someone in the class already. Was she there to, to, you know, check up on me? Who is she anyway, your girlfriend?”
“Nah. Vicki’s my little sister. I told her about this gig with you ‘cause of the whole shopping and hair thing. When I told her about the stripping class she said it sounded cool and she’s always thought dancing would be an easy way to make money. So I told her where it is, and turns out she’s been taking ballet class there forever and never knew they did a monthly strip night. Anyway, I told her you were gonna be there but that you were shy about going so it’d probably be best if she lay low and didn’t say anything about knowing me. You’re pissed at me again, aren’t you?”
“No,” I said and meant it. “That was nice of you. I almost ditched the class before I even got to the door, so I’m glad I didn’t know your sister was there. It would’ve made me nervous. What did she say anyway? Did she say I looked like an idiot? She was really good, by the way. Really good. I wasn’t that good. Did she tell you that?”
“Nah, she said you were cute.”
“Cute?” I tossed the small scraggly fish back into the ocean.
“Good,” Mike tried again.
“Did she really?!” I reeled in. “I’ve never done anything even remotely like that before so naturally I wasn’t as good as Vicki or anything. Did she really use the word good?”
“Yeah, she said you seemed a little uncomfortable at first, but once you let go and got into it, you looked sexy, I mean good.”
“No, sexy is good, too,” I said. “Did she actually say sexy or are you just interpreting?”
“Hey, I got an idea. Why don’t you drive your psycho little ass across the bridge and let me decide for myself. I really can’t remember if she said good or sexy, or good and sexy. Who knows? Man’s gotta see for himself.”
“Very cute.” I smirked.
“Cute?! Cute?!” He imitated my voice. “Do you mean cute or do you mean clever? Cute or sexy? I’m not so sure how I feel about cute.”
A rapping on the front door interrupted. “Shit! It’s Greta,” I told Mike. “I’ve got to go. We’re supposed to go running and I’m not even dressed.”
“Mona Lisa, you are a Grade-A cock tease, you know that? Listen, call me later for Vicki’s phone number. She says she’s got time to take you shopping this weekend.”
Running down the stairs and toward the door, I welcomed Greta sheepishly. “I’m sorry I’m late. I overslept. I can be ready in five minutes.”
“Not a problem. Take your time, Mona.”
“Guess who I was on the phone with just now?” I shouted downstairs.
“Your future husband?” she mocked.
“Nope! Mike the Dog. I hired him. He’s my guy coach.” I giggled. “And guess what I did last night?”
“Tell me,” she shouted.
“I took a dance class.” I popped my head down the stairwell to catch her expression.
“Fantastic, Mona!”
“Exotic dancing,” I said, in a Barry White sexy low voice.
“Jesus Christ,” she sighed.
“Totally approves. Really, wait until I tell you what this stripper Kitten has to say about how exotic dancing is really the path to spiritual enlightenment.”
“Kitten?” Greta raised her brows.
“Kitten,” I said as I descended the steps. I felt like sliding down the banister on a single cheek.
“So, Dog’s your guy coach and Kitten’s your stripping coach?”
“Kitten wasn’t the teacher. She was the teacher’s friend.”
“I think you’re missing the point. You’re letting a bunch of house pets run your life. Dare I ask what’s next?”
“Um, maybe more soccer with the Kickin’ Chicks.” I smiled.
“Oh you’re such a little smarty pants.” She chased me, trying to swat me with a dishrag.
Chapter 16
After seven weeks, Greta and I were running three and a half miles every other day. By the last week in January, I no longer felt as though someone was stabbing my right rib while stuffing cotton into my head. With my loss of seven pounds, I also noticed that my ass was joining the rest of my body for the run instead of following in a separate cart known as Hanes briefs. Greta insisted we have Sunday dinner at a health institute in Lemon Grove where people with cancer go to heal themselves with wheatgrass. On Sundays, they open their doors to the public for dinner. Greta seemed to think the three-dollar meal was a real bargain, but when a place is serving raw vegetables, “seed cheese,” wheatgrass juice, and some mucky water concoction called Rejuvelac, how much can they really ask people to pay?
To the great disappointment of my cynical side, I actually liked wheatgrass juice and started ordering flats of grass from the health food store. I bought a viselike contraption to squeeze my own juice and also purchased a vegetable juicer so I could become a devotee of liquid salad.
After our run, I invited Greta in for juice. “So, guess where I’m going this weekend?” I prompted Greta as I fed a carrot into the slot of my juicer. The metal teeth squealed with delight as it pulverized the carrot and spit an ounce of vegetable blood from the chute.
“Okay, I’m game. Where are you going this weekend?”
“Mike’s sister is taking me shopping.”
“So now you need a shopping consultant, too? Can you make any decisions on your own?”
“Says the mental health consultant,” I quipped, hoping to shift gears.
“Oh Greta, you’ve never even met Mike or Vicki. He’s okay when you get past all his bravado, and she’s nice.”
“I don’t need to meet Mike to know him. He’s a classic misogynist,” she said.
“Is that how you treat your patients? You classify them as a type and don’t bother getting to know them as individuals?” I asked.
“That’s a very different relationship and you know it,” Greta said as I watched her scan her brain for a reason. “When people are in therapy, it’s because they want to gain insight about themselves and understand themselves better. Any man who preys on vulnerable women, pretending to have valuable advice on the male mind, is a con artist.”
“Mike hardly preyed on me, and I don’t consider myself a victim of a con artist, Miss Claudia Schiffer’s assistant,” I smugly retorted. The noise of the juicer seemed louder in the absence of conversation. The air was heavy with awkwardness. I groped for any words to break the silence between us.
Greta said softly, “It’s just that I would’ve gone shopping with you for free. Don’t you care for my taste in clothing?”
“Of course I do!” I lied. The truth is that Greta maintains a classic professional style, even when she isn’t working. It worked for her, but I was looking for something in between her style and Vicki’s wardrobe of fireworks.
“It just seems your makeover is all about your appearance, and you’re not spending any time working on your inner life.”
I surprised myself and Greta by slamming my palms onto the brown granite countertop of my kitchen. “I am looking at myself! Didn’t I play soccer with you a few weeks ago? Didn’t I read those goofy pop psych books you bought me, and cull through the mountain of crap to find the few things that were helpful? Didn’t I eat garden scraps because you said a healthy body was important to mental health? What more do I have to do to show you that I am putting as much energy into the inner me as I am the outer stuff?! Just because I want to look better and put a little pizzazz in my wardrobe doesn’t make me shallow. You’re a beautiful woman. You can get all the male attention you want simply by stepping out the door. I can’t. You’ve known me for sixteen years. You know I prefer blending in. But now, for the first time in my life, I do want some attention, and I want it from Adam Ziegler, the man I love. And I’ll tell you what else, I’m going to get it. I’m going to do whatever it takes and get what I want. Greta, I love you dearly, but I make no apologies for what I’m
doing. I’m going shopping this weekend and if Vicki tells me that an outfit makes me look pretty or sexy, I’m going to buy it. For God’s sake, Greta, I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not doing anything illegal or immoral so please, once and for all, get off your high horse and stop acting like I’m committing treason against myself for buying a few skirts and a couple of cute tops.”
Greta looked at the cup of juice, which was overflowing onto the counter after I madly stuffed carrots into the juicer without paying attention to output. I grabbed a cloth and began wiping. Greta placed her hand over mine gently.
“Okay,” she said. “Just promise me you won’t lose yourself trying to become what you think someone else wants?”
“Deal.”
* * *
What I loved about shopping with Vicki was that she didn’t feel any sense of obligation to stay and look at clothing in boutiques if she knew right away that she wouldn’t be interested in anything there. After I’m in the shop I feel as if I have to examine a few items and feign interest when sales women go on about the designer’s artistic genius. Not Vicki. She isn’t at all averse to walking into a store and making a U-turn like a model strutting the catwalk.
At every store, all eyes followed Vicki’s monochromatic second layer of skin-tight pink jeans, a pink beaded cropped sweater, and pink platform shoes with bows. Vicki slinked over to items I would have never considered, touched the fabric, then held it up against her chest with a beaming smile that asked what I thought. At a hundred dollars an hour, she would get my unedited feedback. “Too low cut,” I dismissed.
“Low cut? This? You’re crazy. Try it on. You don’t have to buy it.” This was Vicki’s response to all of my concerns with her selections. I said too tight; she said try it on. I thought too slutty; she said slip it on for a quickie in the dressing room. I protested that colors and patterns were too bold; Vicki said I should have a fling with a brazen sweater.
“I hope you won’t take this the wrong way, Vicki, but I don’t want you to make me over into you. I need you to help me figure out my own style.”
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. I hadn’t purchased anything in our first hour and she was in need of a cash register buzz. “Okay, I’m with you on working out your own style and all, but what did you mean by not wanting to look like me?”
It was a horrible time for me to feel a sense of conquest in deflating the pretty girl’s ego. It’s just that women like Vicki never valued my opinion. They never even asked for it. I had to confess that I felt a smidge of vindication that I hurt her feelings. Vicki had been nothing but kind to me, but in a moment she became every bitch at the Academy who called me a nerd, a freak, a hippie drug addict, and a lesbian. Then I looked at her waiting for my response, and Vicki was just Vicki again.
“I’m sorry,” I said as we sat on the wooden benches outside Forever 21, a store crowded with teens and middle-aged women. “Your look expresses who you are, but I want something that says me.”
“God, Mona, you are so full of shit,” she returned neutrally. “Why don’t you tell me what you really think of the way I dress? You won’t hurt my feelings.”
Hadn’t I already? And why was she telling me I wouldn’t hurt her feelings? Was it that I was just a client, not a real friend? Was it that I was frumpy and my opinion was therefore meaningless? Or was she simply begging me to tell her what she already knew—that the way she dressed revealed too much about Vicki’s desperate need for attention. I inhaled, mustering the nerve. “Vicki, you’re a very sexy woman. There’s no doubt about it. It’s just the way you dress screams ‘trying too hard.’ Your whole stomach is showing in that sweater. And that pink rhinestone Playboy bunny hanging from your bellybutton.” I shuddered. “It’s like you have no idea that people would look at you even if you didn’t invite them to. Please don’t take this the wrong way. All I’m saying is that you look good enough just with what you were born with. See these girls?” I pointed to a pack of teen girls with ironed hair and nondescript faces. “They need to try. You don’t. I think you’d be sexier if you went with a more conservative look. Like the really hot investment banker with the black wide leg pants suit and square toe shoes with tassels.”
“I want to look like a woman,” she protested.
“Trust me, no one is going to mistake you for a guy no matter what you’re wearing. Did I offend you?”
“Mona, I am basically unoffendable,” she postured. “Have you ever thought about getting your hair straightened?”
I shook my head, wondering if we’d finished the conversation about Vicki’s clothes.
“Can I ask you a question, Vicki?” She nodded. “What’s with all the pink?”
She laughed. “I had my colors done once and the woman said I should only wear pink.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Vicki, you’d look good in any color. Aren’t they supposed to give you a whole season or something, not just one color?”
She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I got the cut-rate deal. Do you really think I’d look good in any color?”
Could she really not know this? Or does she just need to hear it again? In any case, there was only one answer that I would give. “Yes, Vicki, you’d look good in puce.”
She smiled and bit her lip, then began shooting beauty tips rapid fire. “You’ve got a nice rich chocolate color to your hair. We should get you in for that Japanese hair straightening deal. Hey, after we get your new clothes, let’s go to the MAC store and ask them to give you a total makeover, then we can see what kind of makeup you should buy. Have you ever thought about shaping your eyebrows?”
Within minutes we were flipping through outfits at Ann Taylor. I bought a form-fitting black cotton sweater with a white embroidered looping design and matching pants, three spring button-down linen tops, a tasteful denim skirt, and a spunky little pair of wedge heels. By the end of the day, I had five shopping bags filled with outfits that were my brand of sexy—not Vicki’s. And she had a few new pantsuits that showed less skin and more Vicki. She dropped the pink and went from stripper chic to elegant sexy with an ease I envied.
“Wanna catch a movie?” Vicki offered as we walked to the mall parking lot to deposit our purchases in our respective car trunks.
“Off the clock?”
Vicki smiled. “Definitely off the clock. I had a good time today. I wouldn’t charge you unless I had to, but I’m strapped for cash right now, which is why I’m doing the whole stripping thing. I don’t want you to feel like we’re not friends or anything. I feel kind of bad charging you.”
“Vicki, I was just kidding about being on the clock. You provided a service today. I’m happy to pay you for it. Really. Are you really going to get a job dancing?” I giggled nervously at the thought that one of my classmates was going to take her rhinestone-studded diploma and put it to use.
“Got an audition tomorrow. Manager said to come on in, he’ll take a look at me and if he likes what he sees, I need to be ready to give him a three-song routine right there and then.”
“Wow. Maybe our class should take a field trip and watch you some night,” I elbowed her.
“Assuming I get it,” she said, genuinely unassuming.
“You’re kidding, right?” I raised my eyebrows and opened my eyes wide to suggest her doubt was completely unfounded. “You are exactly what they’re looking for. You’re gorgeous, plus you picked up every dance move like it was second nature.”
“Thanks.” She smiled, realizing I was probably right that she’d ace the audition. “But don’t bring the class. Can you imagine Olivia there, ‘Errr, uh, excuse me, but I brought my own CD the girls could dance to. If anyone’s out sick today, I would just loooove to fill in.’”
We laughed conspiratorially. “I’m so sure a group of women would be welcome at a strip club. Can you imagine?” I tried my best old drunk guy voice, which for some reason came out sounding like Shrek. “Ah, come on now, ladies. First The Citadel, then Augu
sta, now strip clubs? ‘Ow ‘bout lettin’ us boys keep one safe ‘arbor, ay?” We giggled like Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble—chirpy and playfully contemptuous of the cavemen with whom we share the planet.
“Speaking of chauvinist pigs, how’s it going with my brother?”
“So far, all he’s done is sign me up for the stripping class, which I have to say was not an altogether terrible idea. He was right about me getting in touch with a different part of myself. Can I tell you something?” She nodded. “I have been having the hottest dreams since I took that class, not just when I’m sleeping either. For like two days after that class, all I could think about was sex.”
“I take it that’s not the normal state of affairs for you.” Vicki smiled.
“That’s an understatement.”
“Going through a dry spell?”
“Yeah, like a sixteen-year dry spell.”
“Sixteen years?!” She gasped. “Why? Do you have the world’s best vibrator or something?”
“I just never really got close to anyone after my first boyfriend. I just could never ...,” I trailed off.
“Broke your heart?”
“No, he died. He was killed, actually. Him and the rest of my family. There was an accident. No one survived.” It felt weird to say this aloud.
“Whoa!” Vicki absorbed this. “That’s horrible. I mean, you hear about things like that, but I’ve never met anyone who ... ” her voice trailed off. “I’m so sorry, Mona. How awful for you.” She paused, knitting her brow. “So you had sex with, I’m sorry what was his name?”
I hadn’t said it since the last time I spoke to him. “Todd,” struggled to escape.
“So you had sex with Todd, he was killed, and you haven’t been with a guy since?” I nodded. “I hope I don’t seem too crass here, but you’re not thinking you’re like the fuck of death or anything, are you?”
I burst into laughter. “The fuck of death?! Oh my God, Vicki, I can’t believe you said that!”
Reinventing Mona Page 10