As Seen on TV

by Sarah Mlynowski

And? She’s going to make me drag it out of her. “So, what did you think?”

  Pause. “Your hair looked amazing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And you waxed your eyebrows. They’re so thin.”

  Is thin good or bad?

  “It’s a bit freaky, actually. You looked completely different. Nothing like me anymore at all.”

  Dana’s the same height as me, but her hair is lightened with blond highlights. These days it serves to mask her premature gray as well as to brighten her face.

  Two years ago she called me with the news of her first gray hair. “It started,” she said.

  “What?”

  “The curse.” Our mother was fully gray by thirty-two.

  “Don’t worry about it, just dye it.”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Dana? Dana?”

  I heard a sob.

  “Dana, are you crying?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Don’t cry, it’s just hair.”

  “Stupid, huh?”

  Dana has my father’s nose, straight and turned up at the end, and my mother’s eyes, wide, brown, long lashes. I have the reverse, my father’s blue eyes, light, more like ice with a hint of sky, and my mother’s nose, so small it’s barely there.

  But looking at Dana used to be like looking in a mirror. Because of the mouth. We both have small, thin lips and a big smile.

  “Who dressed you for the show?” she asks. “You looked fantastic. Those boots are amazing. Where did you get them?”

  “Kenneth Cole.”

  “They’re even nicer than mine. Are you allowed to have nicer clothes than me? That might screw up the balance in our relationship.”

  I laugh. “You’re psycho. But seriously, what did you think about the show?”

  Pause. “Well…it was a little silly, don’t you think?”

  Silly? Suddenly I don’t want to talk about this with Steve right next to me. I don’t want him to also start thinking the show is silly.

  I lift his head up. “Sorry, honey. My conversation is bothering you, isn’t it? I’ll just go into the bedroom.”

  “You’re not bothering me,” he says sleepily.

  I kiss him on the forehead and close the bedroom door behind me.

  “It’s supposed to be silly,” I say, plopping down on the bed.

  “You’re not embarrassed?”

  “No. It’s just for fun.” Embarrassed? Should I be embarrassed?

  She sighs. “Aren’t you at all concerned about what appearing in pop trash will do to your professional persona?”

  “Isn’t it possible that maybe you’re a little bit jealous that I get to be on television and you don’t?” I ask, a little bitchily.

  She laughs. “I would never want to be on Party Girls.”

  My head hurts. “I have to go.”

  “Don’t be a baby, Sunny. We can talk about something else. So. Are you going to get married on me?”

  The walls are way too thin in this apartment for me to be talking about marriage. What if Steve hears? I’m holding one of my recently purchased multicolored candleholders up to the light. It looks like a kaleidoscope. “We haven’t talked about it much.”

  “I bet he proposes. I can’t believe my baby sister is going to get married before me. It seems anachronistic.”

  “We haven’t even officially moved in together. That’s one of the reasons I called, actually.”

  She snorts. “I knew there was something.”

  “The movers are coming on Friday at nine and I don’t think I can make it back in time. I can’t find a flight. Any chance I can bribe you with Stark’s purchases in return for packing up for me?”

  “Have you sold your car yet?”

  “No.” I don’t know what to do with my car. I’ve been secretly looking for a cheap parking spot in Manhattan. No such luck.

  “Can I drive it until you get very poor and need to sell it in return for packing up? Mine is on its last legs.”

  “Deal.” Putting off the inevitable. Fantastic. “My stuff won’t actually get here until Tuesday. It’s like the movers walk my furniture on their backs.”

  “Do you want me to send everything?”

  “Um…furniture, dishes, clothes….”

  “Even the ugly ones?”

  What ugly ones? “Use your judgment. We don’t need the sheets. Or the towels. Maybe we do need the towels. Men never have enough towels. And they don’t understand the concept that after a shower a woman needs one for her body and one for her hair. And maybe—”

  “You know what I keep thinking of?” she interrupts.

  “What?” The candleholder slips from my hands and it comes a half an inch from smashing me in the forehead. Yikes. I could have had a massive, horrendous, audience-repulsive welt.

  “I keep thinking of that Jewish story,” she says. I hear her inhale and then exhale. “What was it, Leah and Rachel? How Jacob was in love with Rachel but then Leah’s father tricked him into marrying Leah because he couldn’t marry off the younger daughter before marrying off the older one?”

  My father sent my sister to Sunday school until she was eleven. I never had to go.

  “Vaguely,” I say. “But—”

  Steve opens the door and wanders through the room.

  “Hold on a sec,” I say. I don’t want him to hear me talking about marriage. Even if I’m not talking about me.

  He looks lost. “Have you seen my flannel pants?”

  “In the drawer?”

  He looks in his drawer. “No.”

  “In the dirty clothes?”

  He looks in the laundry basket. “No. Can you help me find them?”

  “Sure. Can it wait until I get off the phone?”

  He nods and leaves the room, leaving the door wide open.

  Now do I close the door or leave it the way it is? He might find it odd if I close it.

  I decide to leave it open. I pull the covers over my head and whisper, “But I thought you don’t want to get married. No bread-maker, remember?”

  She inhales and exhales loudly. “I want to get married eventually. I think. Why wouldn’t I? I want to have kids. One day.”

  “Dana, are you smoking?”

  Inhale, exhale. “No.”

  “Liar.”

  She laughs.

  “If you get lung cancer, it’s your own fault. So what are you whining about? You don’t want me to get married before you?”

  “Am I the Leah? The sister nobody wants?”

  “You’re being crazy. You never date men long enough to give them a chance.”

  “I don’t see any of them begging me to move across the country. So tell me about everything and everyone. Are the girls on your show really that horrible?”

  Marriage conversation closed.

  “Sure,” I answer. I tell her about the girls and about creepy Howard and about Carrie and our father. I’ve already talked enough about Steve.

  On Wednesday afternoon I’m ravaging the NewYork Post on my kitchen table. Carrie left me a message telling me there was an article in it about the show. My heart pounds as I flip through the paper. What if it’s bad? Could it be bad? Is the show bad?

  Here it is: “Those of you not yet bored of the Sex and the City clones will enjoy the antics of the four women on TRS’s Party Girls. Brittany Michaels is the drunk, Erin Soline the bad girl, Michelle Miles the heartbreaker, Sunny Lang the mother hen. The show is better than a Happy Meal—it has sex, booze, catfights, great bods and loud dance music. If you’re looking for a fun way to waste thirty minutes of your life, this is it.”

  Waste? Happy Meal? I’m not sure if it’s good or bad.

  I don’t want to waste people’s lives. Is that what I’ve become? I’m a waste of thirty minutes?

  Wait. What if there are more articles out there about me? I could have been written about all over the country. I should check the Internet. How did anyone get any work done before the World Wide Web?

&
nbsp; I turn on my computer, which now lives in the spare room, and wait and wait and wait for it to connect and then I sign on to a search engine and key in “Sunny Langstein.” Twelve hits, the screen tells me. Only twelve? Search took 0.11 seconds. But they all seem to be in Dutch. Or maybe it’s Polish, or German, I don’t know. They couldn’t have already translated the show into different languages, right? Someone would have told me.

  I enter “Sunny Lang.” Oh, my. Fifty-nine thousand hits. In 0.46 seconds. I’m sure some of these are about me, but how do I know which ones? I’m not going through fifty-nine thousand sites.

  Next I try “Sunny Erin Michelle Brittany Party Girls.” Results: 78. In 0.23 seconds. Far more manageable.

  The first one is called Anal Girls. I’m guessing that would not be ours.

  I scroll down the Web site until I see the article from the New York Post. I read it to myself. I see the same article repeated a few times and realize that other papers have picked it up. The Sacramento Bee. The Boston Globe. The Hawaii Tribune-Herald. Unbelievable. People in Hawaii know who I am. Someone unwittingly flipping through the sports section might fall across my name.

  Next I see that the official TRS Web site has put up a thread to Party Girls. Why wouldn’t they tell us they put us on their Web site?

  Open new window.

  There we are. The site features pictures of us at the club, as well as profile shots.

  MEET THE CAST: BIOS AND PHOTOS

  Bio? I didn’t write a bio. I click on my name and scan through my write-up. The only disturbing part is the line, “Sunny’s mother, who converted to Judaism to marry her father, died of ovarian cancer when Sunny was only six.”

  Yikes. Nothing like exploiting a mother’s death to make a character more sympathetic.

  I hope Dana doesn’t see that.

  I scan the other girls’ bios to see if there’s anything I don’t know about them.

  Hey. Michelle lost her father five years ago. I didn’t know that. Not that it would necessarily have come up. I wonder what he died of. It doesn’t say.

  Brittany wants to break into movies, Erin into music videos. Boring. I already know all that.

  Next I click on www.theworldofrealitytv.org. On the front page is the standard blurb about the show: party it up, wild and crazy, yadda, yadda, yadda.

  Click here to join the Party Girls Community.

  What’s the Party Girls Community? I right-mouse click and read: “What d’ya got to say about it? Vent your loves and disgusts and everything between in the Party Girls Community! Join a thread or start one of your own!” I almost choke on the choices.

  Best Ways To Avoid a Hangover and Not End Up Puking Like Brittany (5 messages)

  Should Sunny have let Erin go home with Sleazeball? (4 messages)

  How Can I Make My Hair Look Like Michelle’s? (1 message)

  I click on number two and this is how I am rewarded:

  chickita 10:48 pm Oct 12 (#1 of 4)

  Erin is a big whore and Sunny is not her keeper. Sunny could barely enjoy herself—she had to baby-sit the three of them the entire night!

  LSAngler 12:29 pm Oct 13 (#2 of 4)

  I totally disagree. Girls have to look out for their sisters! Erin looked like a moron and Sunny should have dragged her out by her hair if she had to. You stand by your friends!

  Avalanche 07:12 am Oct 14 (#3 of 4)

  I totally agree with LS. Erin could have been date raped!

  WichedWitch 01:00 pm Oct 14 (#4 of 4)

  Are yu an idot? She had a hunded camras on her. How could she have bin date raped? (LOL)

  I should have dragged her by the hair? I don’t think I could carry her, her body is so stuffed with silicone. She was no drunker than I was, and she knew what she was doing. Why is she my responsibility when I’ve only met her twice?

  I guess I can’t comment. There’s no way I’m going to admit that I do Internet searches on my name. Very uncool. I’m a TV star. Jennifer Aniston does not search the Internet for her name. She and Brad do not sit around the computer, betting on who has more hits.

  Not counting a short break for dinner, or another brief catchup conversation with Millie (“You were awesome, Sunny! That was by far one of the best reality shows I’ve ever seen, no kidding. You looked hot.”), or another when I greet Steve after hearing his key in the door, I spend the rest of the night reading the rest of the threads and anything else that is reality TV related.

  At ten Steve pokes his head into the room. “What are you doing in here, busy bee?”

  “Research,” I say, head lost in the screen. “I’ll be ten minutes, tops.”

  At twelve I hear him calling for me from the other room. “Sunny? Come to bed already!”

  If Steve were all over the Internet, he would make me help him search for his name. At least I’m not being annoying. I tear myself away from the screen. My eyes feel bloated.

  I can see how people got a lot more work done before the World Wide Web.

  On Thursday morning I wake up realizing that I haven’t taken my birth control pills in two nights.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Or rather, no fuck, no fuck, no fuck.

  That’s Tuesday and Wednesday night.

  I’ve never forgotten to take a pill before, never mind two. What’s wrong with me?

  I can’t get pregnant, can I? I didn’t have sex Tuesday or even last night.

  I log back onto the Internet to find out what to do.

  Apparently I’m supposed to take two pills today and two pills tomorrow and then one for the rest of my cycle. Also, if I have sex in the next seven days without using another form of birth control I MAY BECOME PREGNANT. I am disheartened at the use of the caps in the message.

  Great. Condoms. I’m sure Steve will be thrilled. He once said that making love with a condom is like peeing through your underwear.

  A poet he’s not.

  Steve nudges me awake Friday at noon. “It’s gorgeous out,” he says. “I’m going to shower and then let’s go for a long walk.”

  I nod facedown into the pillow.

  He turns the lights on as he leaves the room. Was that really necessary? Couldn’t he have let me sleep the last precious minutes?

  Ten minutes later he sprints across the bedroom, butt naked. “I don’t know where my towel is,” he says, shivering and wet.

  “On the kitchen chair,” I mumble.

  As soon as I’m naked and under the stream of hot water, I notice that there is no soap. It was down to its last measly flakes yesterday, and apparently he finished it off without replacing it. He never replaces anything. Orange juice—empty carton still in the fridge. Toilet paper—brown cardboard leftover, mocking me. Toilet seat—obviously never goes down, as if he’s oblivious to the ugliness of the open canyon. At least twice, I’ve fallen right in.

  I think I would forgive it all if he could just answer me this one question: How on earth does he miss the bowl? It’s right there. Steady. Aim. Go.

  We walk through the West Village toward the pier and spend an hour strolling up the boardwalk. If it weren’t for the skyscrapers in the distance, when I watch the ripples of the water I think I could forget what city I’m in.

  The cold air blows through my coat, but Steve warms me by putting his arm around me. When we reach Chelsea, we turn back into the island. When we pass a magazine store, I pull him inside.

  “I just want to check for something,” I say.

  He rummages through the sports and news magazines and I poke around the entertainment ones. I just want to check in case there’s anything about the show. What if there is something and no one saw? Jennifer Aniston, J.Lo, Eminem, blah, blah blah—why is no one writing about Party Girls?

  A teenager is watching me from behind a Cosmopolitan magazine.

  “Sun, can we go now?” Steve asks, impatiently.

  “In a sec,” I mouth.

  I bet she recognizes me. Maybe she’ll say something. She could come up to me and ask m
e if I’m one of the stars on Party Girls. Maybe she recognizes me but can’t place where she’s seen me. I’m surprised no one has approached me yet. Do I look that different in real life? When will I have to start wearing Jackie O sunglasses and wraparound scarves?

  She’s still staring at me. Uh-oh. I’m not exactly in movie-star attire. I’m wearing jeans, a hooded sweatshirt, sneakers and an un-glam very windblown ponytail.

  What if a tabloid reporter snaps my picture?

  “Sunny, let’s go.”

  The girl pays for her Cosmo and leaves the store without giving me a second glance.

  That night, when I exit the bathroom after washing up, Steve is spread-eagle on the bed, in his boxers. A cooler containing a bottle of Dom Perignon and two champagne glasses is on the floor.

  Last night, because of the pill fiasco, I avoided sex by pretending to fall asleep while the TV was still on.

  He pops the champagne and pours it into the glasses.

  “We have champagne glasses?”

  “Borrowed them from the restaurant.”

  “And the champagne?”

  “Borrowed that, too.”

  “I bought you a present, but you’re not going to like it.” I take a box of condoms out of my underwear drawer (purchased earlier in case avoidance didn’t work) and place them on the bedspread.

  He recoils in horror. “What…why?”

  “I forgot to take my pill. We have to use a backup for seven days.”

  “But I hate condoms,” he whines.

  “No glove, no love, mister.”

  He starts laughing. “But isn’t the whole point of a long-term relationship that I don’t have to wear condoms?”

  I punch him in the stomach. Lightly.

  “Ooh, I like it when you’re rough,” he says, and rolls on top of me. I can feel that he’s turned on and, after a few minutes of kissing and fondling, I take off the rest of my clothes and his boxers. I open the condom box, rip open the wrapper and slide it on him.

  I’m surprised I haven’t forgotten how to put on one of these suckers. I guess it’s like riding a bicycle.

  He puts his hands on my breasts and squeezes and thrusts into me. Once. Twice. Three times. Fouuuuuuuur.