Party Girl

by Anna David

  Chris continues to drone on ad infinitum. Does he honestly think I give a fuck about what he’s saying? More important, does he really think this kind of rap is the way to woo a girl?

  “Look, things are really crazy here right now,” I say to get him to shut up. Even though it couldn’t be further from the truth, it’s my permanent excuse, my go-to line whenever I want to get off the phone—which means, essentially, that Chris must believe my workplace is balls-to-the-walls craziness at all times.

  “Oh, of course,” Chris says, sounding apologetic. “I was just wondering if you wanted to come with me to a Rob Thomas concert on Thursday?”

  Think fast. “Thursday? Oh, yeah, that’s the night I have to work late.”

  “The tickets are free—I got them through work.” He’s clearly not going to make this easy for me.

  “That’s great, but I think things are going to be pretty crazy around here for a while.”

  “But what about dinner? I mean, you have to eat, right?”

  What can I say to this? And why can’t I bring myself to ask him to leave me alone because he reminds me too much of how out of control I can be, and inform him that I wouldn’t hook up with him again even if I was on a hundred hits of Ecstasy?

  “Look, I have to go,” I say, and I hear him trying to say something in response but I cut him off. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

  I slam the phone down, wondering why I always seem to attract guys who are gluttons for punishment.

  5

  “Can we please concoct some reason we have to move in here?” Stephanie asks as we gaze out at the Pacific Ocean on a clear, perfect night.

  We’re in the backyard of this completely grandiose $20 million Malibu mansion where Gus is staying for the time being. Words cannot describe how ostentatious this place is—there are about twelve bedrooms, a sauna, a freaking room for “wrapping presents,” no joke—and it’s right on the PCH. But it seems even more enormous than it actually is because of the fact that it has no furniture.

  “Anthony’s parents were busted for embezzling,” Gus had explained as he showed us the infinity pool, which spills into a Jacuzzi big enough to fit a football team. “Honestly, I don’t know the entire story, but as far as I understand it, they went bankrupt, the bank took their furniture, and they’re planning to unload this to the highest bidder. Anthony was supposed to be showing the place but the whole thing bummed him out so much, he took off for New York.”

  “So you’re house-sitting?” I’d asked him, inhaling on my cigarette. Gus is always lucking into the plushest situations. I swear, the people who live the best in Hollywood are the nonworking grifters, since they’re usually attractive enough to convince horny producers to loan them their Range Rovers or charming and calculating enough to befriend a guy whose parents need someone to show their $20 million Malibu spread. The worker bees, those watching their youth drift away as they do coverage, place calls, and write “Where Are They Now” stories on Doc from The Love Boat, are the ones who seem to live the grifter lifestyle.

  Now that I’ve gotten a look at the place, I’m incredibly pissed that I haven’t called my ever-reliable Mexican coke dealer Alex. Stephanie has brought along her friends from college, Jane and Molly, both of whom do coke, but we’d been so rushed—wanting to get out here before the sun set—that we neglected to bring the evening’s most necessary ingredient. Maybe I’ve watched Less Than Zero too many times but as far as I’m concerned, the sole reason for palatial Malibu mansions to exist is so that coke can be snorted in them.

  The tacky, probably embezzled extravagance surrounding us seems to be having the same decadent influence on Stephanie as it’s having on me. “Hey, Gus, do you have any Jägermeister?” she asks as he turns the Jacuzzi on.

  Gus goes inside to check as Adam and two other guys I’ve never seen before walk out to the backyard.

  I wave at Adam and he walks right up to me and leans over to give me a hug. “It’s good to see you, Amelia,” he says, and I smile. I’m a sucker for people saying my name. Call me an egomaniac, but no one ever says anyone’s names anymore and it makes me feel good to hear mine.

  “Hey, thanks for the ride home that night, Adam,” I say. “Sorry I was a little out of it.”

  “Are you kidding?” he asks. “I got to watch you ‘sleep sing.’ I should be thanking you for exposing me to something I’d never known was possible.”

  I can’t help but laugh. Something about his tone—slightly nebbishy, mostly bemused—puts me oddly at ease, and I think about how much cooler he is than I realized as he introduces Steph and me to his two friends. When they go back inside, Stephanie turns to me.

  “He’s oddly sexy,” she says and I nod. “And I think he likes you.”

  I consider that, and then shrug. “Too bad I’d never date an out-of-work actor,” is all I say.

  A good three hours later, we’re all draped on these ticking fabric–covered couches in the sitting room off the kitchen. Gus has thoroughly abandoned any notion of making us continue to go outside to smoke, and Amstel Light bottles are being transformed into ashtrays as the bottle of Jager gets passed around. I’m the good kind of drunk—definitely more than buzzed, but not slurring my words or being a fool—so when Stephanie’s friend Jane brings up the idea of us all playing “Truth or Dare,” I declare her a genius and personally convince everyone in the assembled group that they have to play. I always love games where I have to reveal something highly personal to a group of people, but then again, I’ve always been something of an emotional exhibitionist.

  Gus starts off by asking me if I want truth or dare.

  “Truth,” I answer, relishing the fact that everyone’s watching me come to the decision, even though people are sort of having their individual conversations.

  “Have you ever fooled around with a girl?” he asks, and the entire room goes silent.

  “No,” I admit, actually feeling slightly ashamed of my conservatism. Basically every girl I know has slept with a girl, whether it was a “college thing” or “just a wild phase,” and I’ve never even come close. My college roommate used to say that we were a couple of years too old to have been a part of the trend, and that about two years after we graduated from high school, adolescent girls started madly messing around with their girlfriends. “Lesbians have hit on me, but never the cute ones.”

  “So you’re saying you would if she was hot?” Gus asks.

  “Hey, no double questioning,” Gus’s friend Dan—a guy with an enormous dimple in his chin—interrupts. “My turn.”

  Gus shrugs, as he takes a sip from the passing Jägermeister bottle.

  “Amelia, truth or dare?” Dan asks.

  “Dare.”

  He looks from me to Jane, who happens to not only be a gorgeous, statuesque blonde, but also openly bisexual. “I dare you to make out with Jane.”

  I turn to Jane, half embarrassed and half excited, and she’s smiling at me. That song “I Kissed a Girl” flashes through my head, as well as an image of Portia de Rossi. I move my face in close to hers and hesitate.

  “Don’t be scared,” Jane smiles.

  And I just dive in, touching her lips with mine tentatively, then retreating and returning, opening my mouth a bit wider and allowing her tongue into my mouth. The greatest shocker of all is that this doesn’t feel any different from the lifetime of experience I’ve had kissing boys, although Jane’s lips are perhaps the softest I’ve ever encountered and she tastes slightly minty. With the crowd quite literally fixated, Jane and I continue to kiss for a good minute or so. And then I pull away and can’t look at her.

  “How was it?” Gus asks, and I find myself blushing.

  I glance at Jane shyly. “It was nice?” I say, and Jane nods.

  “Want to go in the other room together?” This is Dan, who seems way too determined to have this happen. But the truth is, though kissing her felt amazing, what turned me on far more was the excitement of the crowd watching.

 
Then it’s Molly’s turn, and she dares one of Gus’s friends, a guy who’s been sitting rather silently in the corner, to show us his dick. We all sit back and prepare for him to pull some floppy thing out of his jeans for a second, but suddenly Mr. Diminutive leaps to his feet, takes his penis out, and starts performing some kind of incredibly disturbing little jig, shoving his hairy thing in each of our faces. And while yes, it’s not infinitesimal, the guy isn’t so huge that such a genital dance might be justifiable, if such things could be justified. As he begins to circle the group for the third time—shoving his dick as much at the guys as the girls—I start to literally feel sick to my stomach. He gives us exhibitionists a bad name, I think.

  Minutes later, this guy, Eddie, passes out under the couch but the game continues. Molly is doing a striptease from the kitchen counter. Stephanie is putting ice on her nipples. Gus is revealing to anyone who’s listening that he slept with a transsexual in Tijuana. The entire game is essentially verging on pre-orgy. Never one to stand on the sidelines too much, I start doing a sort of impromptu striptease by the fireplace while everyone else in the room is gathered in various places doing their own drunken form of expression.

  I know that removing my top as a party trick is supposed to reveal that I have no esteem or am slutty, but the fact is I’m quite proud of my naturally voluptuous boobs, which I feel I’ve earned. All the silicone and latex girls didn’t have to deal with being teased ruthlessly by Joe Ford for having “boobies,” or have to accept the fact that “braless” was just not going to be a part of their vocabulary, even at age twelve. Is it so wrong that my boobs want a little validation now? My stomach, however, is absolutely from hell. No amount of treadmill time or crunches seems to have an impact on this potbelly of mine. I’m sort of drunkenly pondering all of this, as well as the fact that I never really related to that book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, even though I probably read it close to fifty times, when I notice that Adam—who’s been a somewhat reticent participant in all the Truth or Dare shenanigans—is watching me. I grow horrifically self-conscious, feeling suddenly like any buzz I possibly had has definitely evaporated, and quickly slide my shirt back on.

  “Show’s over,” I say to him with probably more hostility than he deserves, seeing as I was the one performing the spontaneous striptease at a party. But he doesn’t respond and just smiles at me. The smile makes me feel bizarrely comforted, and I find myself flopping onto the pillow next to him and lying down on my back.

  “What are you smiling about?” I ask him.

  “I was thinking about this.” He reaches out and pats my tummy, still smiling, and I’m horrified and offended by the fact that he’s noticing and calling out my most shameful body part, rather than praising my two most revered.

  I sit up quickly. “And what were you thinking about it?” I ask coldly.

  He doesn’t seem remotely thrown by my cold tone, and I like that he’s not backing down the way I thought he might. “I was just thinking how much I’d love to sit and rub it—away from all this. I was thinking how wonderful you’d probably be, completely sober, without all this insanity, by a fireplace, and how much I’d like to be there with you, rubbing your stomach.” As he’s talking, he’s slowly trailing his fingers over my tummy, and for once the stomach from hell doesn’t feel enormous and omnipresent, but sweet and somehow sexy. I wait for Adam to apologize for being so forward, or for me to ask him to take his goddamned hand off me.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” I say, suddenly sitting up when I remember how he seemed to know exactly where I lived when he dropped me off that night. “How did you know my address?”

  He smiles, looking embarrassed. “Oh, God. Here’s where you become thoroughly convinced that I’m a stalker.”

  Suddenly, I’m very intrigued. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s nothing, really. Just a few days after I met you, Gus and I were driving around West Hollywood and he mentioned that you lived nearby. I asked him where and we drove by your place. But I swear I’m not a bunny boiler—in fact, I had one myself as a kid.”

  I laugh. “You have a good memory,” I say.

  He smiles again. “For some things.” He pulls a pillow under his head and lies down, then grabs another pillow and motions for me to lie next to him. I do and he smiles confidently, reaching his hand back to my tummy and starts slowly caressing it again.

  Such surreal things happen during crazy, drunken nights that I often wake up the next morning not quite sure what really occurred and what I’ve dreamt. I must be dreaming, I think as I smile at him while he rubs my stomach, because I abhor sentimentality and this is definitely verging on sentimental.

  I guess I fall asleep for a little while because the next thing I know, Stephanie is shaking me awake and telling me that we’re leaving.

  “Leaving?” I croak. “Christ, what time is it?” I sit up quickly and see Gus and Adam playing cards across the completely trashed room. Adam smiles at me shyly, and as he does, I realize I was dreaming about him, only he was my best male friend from college and we were in love but also flying—and, well, you know how crazy dreams are.

  “It’s four,” Stephanie says, sounding so sober that I immediately know I can’t convince her she can’t drive. “And I have to sleep for at least a few hours if I’m going to be able to go to that event tonight and get my article done by the next day.”

  Event tonight? Article? Tomorrow and the day after? Jesus. Before I even have time to resent Stephanie for dosing me with so much reality, she literally yanks me to my feet.

  “But Molly…and Jane…”

  “They’re in the car passed out,” she says, suddenly the very model of a Stepford wife, only with three wayward girls in place of a husband. “Come on.”

  Adam stands up, as if he’s going to either try to stop us from leaving or at least try to hug me good-bye and ask for my number, but then he sits down again. It’s kind of a relief because my breath probably smells like a hundred drunkards smoked several hundred cartons of cigarettes over a period of a year inside my mouth. But I have to admit I’m a little disappointed. Maybe I was imagining this guy had a crush on me. Then again, that whole speech about my rubbing my tummy, while original, was surely his lame rap. I mean, he did get up and leave me passed out on the floor without even thinking of putting a blanket on me. I’m about to say something to him, something cutting just to show him that I couldn’t care less about him, but Stephanie grabs me by the hand and starts marching me out before I have a chance.

  “Thanks, Gus!” she yells. “Call me if you want to hook up at an after-party tonight!”

  I sleep most of the drive back to West Hollywood, only waking up when we stop so that Molly and Jane can pee. Though my throat feels like someone carved their initials on the side of it, I open the extra pack of Camel Lights I’d left in Stephanie’s car, wordlessly handing cigarettes to Molly and Jane when they get back in the car.

  “This is disgusting,” Molly says, taking a long drag.

  “Horrible,” Jane agrees.

  “It’s making me nauseous,” I chime in. We continue to smoke.

  “Me, too,” says Molly.

  “Not me,” says Jane. “But I almost wish it would.”

  Stephanie glances in her rearview mirror so she can look at Jane and Molly in the back. “I’m sorry, but I will never understand the compulsion to take a burning stick and suck on it, especially when it doesn’t even do anything to you. I can’t imagine anything more foul.”

  “There’s no rest for the truly sick,” I say, and Molly laughs so hard she ends up throwing up out the window.

  After Stephanie drops me off and I start walking up the building’s entryway to my apartment, it occurs to me that eventually we all get old and die, and the sadness I feel over this thought seems wholly debilitating. Sometimes I just become so overwhelmingly depressed by my thoughts—like when I’m watching movies from the ’70s and ’80s and they’re starring and costarring people I�
�ve never heard of, and they’re directed by people whose names don’t even sound vaguely familiar, and I think, These people were once this town’s big deal. They ate at all the right restaurants, and got invited to all the right parties, and had their names in Variety and were adored, and I’ve never even heard of them, and now they’re gone and who the hell cares about them today? When I used to say things like this, my college roommate would tell me I sounded tired or hungover, and I should never come to massive conclusions about life when I’m tired or hungover, and alcohol is a depressant, and blah blah blah. I’m thinking about this and about how much it sucks that my college roommate and I had that falling out so she’s not around to say things like that anymore.

  The cats moan in their catlike way, seemingly berating me for leaving them alone for the past thirty or so hours while I got drunk and kissed a girl and did an impromptu striptease at a party. I feel so depressed, I know that throwing their food in a bowl and diving into bed is all I can manage at the moment. Someone told me at a party recently that L.A. is number seventeen on the list of most depressed cities, based on the number of prescriptions for antidepressants and the number of days people say they’re depressed in a calendar year. I don’t think he told me what the sixteen depressing cities that preceded it were, but I know he said Laredo, Texas, was supposed to be the happiest city on earth. I feel too depressed to have a cigarette and ponder moving there, and that seems like the most depressing thought of all.

  6

  When I wake up later that afternoon, things seem a bit brighter. One of my cats is sitting on the pillow next to my face and she looks so adorable and innocent, I realize I can’t be as despicable a person as I feel like. I mean, I could still be horrible and have a cat like her, but she surely wouldn’t choose to sleep right next to me if I didn’t have some redeeming qualities.