by Rachel Cohn
"You're the psychic. Is it gonna go okay if I do?"
"No promises, baby. No promises."
"I'm worried," I whispered. Not about the fact of Shrimp knowing about the A-date so much as that for all the time we were going out before, I never mentioned this kinda important piece of information about what had happened to me soon before meeting him. Well, also: guys are just weird about that stuff.
Sugar Pie said, "It's a hurdle to get over, an important one, but not one that should come between you two in the end. This is when you have to remember that some people have no feet."
I looked down at my platform thong sandals, with toe-ringed, black-nail-polished feet. Say what? Call it my blond moment, but it took me a minute to realize what Sugar Pie was telling me: When life deals you lemons, don't make lemonade--get some perspective. BFD.
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*** Chapter 11
The thing about the new peace is that it's actually harder than the old war. Trying to keep my cool with Nancy, now that she's chasing me with college applications (though I'm on record as not wanting to go) or waking me up in the mornings to ask if I want to go to yoga with her (where the Zen teacher man at her yoga studio has a slight boner under his shorts half the time--very distracting), is much harder than the old system. Before I had no hesitation to just scream, "Get out of my face!" and she had no hesitation to scream back, "AHHH!" and then slam a door in my face, after which we could both ignore each other and go about our days, business as usual. In the new regime we're both bound by an unspoken but implicit code to at least try.
So I can't be held accountable that she chose to push our boundaries on my sleep-in Sunday morning, post-Krispy Kreme sugar high and A-date blues low.
"Wake up, honey!" was all she said, very tender, in my ear. I felt her fingers running through my hair and massaging my scalp. But I was startled awake and I muttered, "Get away from me." I brushed her hand from my head, then banged my pillow back into a comfortable position, keeping my eyes closed so I could fall back asleep without the bright morning light waking me further.
She murmured, in that particular Nancy way of hers that grates most when my inner bitch is aching to be let
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loose, "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning."
My eyes popped open to see her lemon face standing over me. "SOMEONE," I hissed, "HASN'T EVEN WOKEN UP YET. GOD, WHAT IS YOUR ANEURYSM? CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE?"
She rolled her eyes and did the Nancy Classic- a shoulder shrug combined with an audible sigh that could register on the Richter scale. "Someone named Helen--interesting haircut--is waiting for you downstairs. Get up, Miss Teenage Mood Swings." My eyes fluttered back closed. "NOW!" Her shrill pronouncement was probably heard all the way over in Ocean Beach. This time she kicked the wood frame on my futon bed. So much for Nice Mommy Wakey.
My morning did not improve after I'd brushed my teeth and was heading downstairs still wearing my cowgirl flannel pj's, only to trip on a toy machine gun of Josh's lying on the hallway floor. Now I understood why toy guns supposedly promote violence in children: I was ready to kill Josh. "FUCK!" I screamed at the sharp shooting pain in my foot. Sid-dad emerged from my parents' bedroom, next to where I was standing. He was wearing his red silk smoking jacket, which I do appreciate for its supreme style, even if it was the wrong time of day and I've never seen him light a cigar before his evening martini. "Cupcake," Sid-dad said, and I admit, for a sec my mood started to improve, "I'm not appreciating the profane language on a Sunday morning, and I am especially not appreciating hearing you scream at your mother all the way from your bedroom. Show some goddamn respect. Got it?" I almost protested but my foot hurt like a mofo and I could tell from Sid-dad's face that he
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wasn't gonna be hearing it. I nodded and mumbled, "Got it." And then he slammed his bedroom door in my face!
Dag, what did I do?
So I was very on the warpath by the time I made it downstairs to find Helen sitting in the living room with the AUTUMN wench. This had to be seriously the worst Sunday morning ever, like, if I had a Do Over card this would be the morning I would choose to use it. I'd go back to sleep and be awoken by the puppy Nancy won't let me get licking my face, psycho Leila would be back in the kitchen making blueberry pancakes, and Sid and Nancy and the little monsters would already be at the zoo or something. I would have the whole house to myself to blast Iggy Pop and the Beastie Boys and Japanese superpop like Puffy Ami Yumi, and I would dance around the house wearing just my boy brief undies and a tank top, like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, but with a much better soundtrack.
'That crib you live in," Helen teased, sitting on the living room chair surrounded by gazillion-dollar artwork and brocade tapestry formations up the wazoo.
"Don't give me shit about it," I spat back. This embarrassing House Beautiful is the reason I've yet to invite Helen over--which of course begged the question, What was she doing here, and daring to tote along the Autumn wench, who was sitting next to Helen sporting that big-tooth smile, radiating sunshine when all I could feel was Sunday morning el niño?
Helen turned to Autumn. "Our CC is quite the gracious hostess, too, as you can see. Phat crib and a lady to boot." Helen kicked her bright Converse All Stars upward from her sitting position, just for the hell of it. She and Autumn, both
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dressed in thrift-store punk threads, did look funny sitting on that plush red sofa imported from France. For the first time I realized how I must appear in this house: total clash effect yet somehow belonging and cozy, too.
"So what's the deal?" I asked.
Helen pronounced, "We've decided to take you on an adventure for the day. Your mom already told us you're not doing anything today, and according to your dad--who has quite the sartorial flair for smoking jackets--you historically never even bother to fake doing homework on Sundays. So your mom said so long as you're home by eight, you can come with."
Hmm, which part to explain to Helen first: that I'd just as soon be in a bad mood all day since I'm already in one now and I don't need some cheerful girly adventure package to help that sitch, or that NO WAY am I hanging with the Autumn wench. She can just take her dreadlocked self outta this house and go off wherever, I don't care, but get outta my space. Also, what is sartorial!
To my silence, Helen added, "Your mom also said she got you a new espresso machine for your birthday, so I'm thinking you could start off our adventure of a day by pulling us a couple morning brews." Helen grabbed my hand and led me away from the living room, while Autumn remained seated.
When we reached the kitchen I told Helen, "Thanks for thinking of me, but I am not hanging out with that girl. I don't like her."
"How do you know? You didn't even talk to her at the party last night. She's, like, the coolest." Helen looked over the immaculate kitchen with the state-of-the-art appliances and the glass doors leading to an outdoor deck overlooking
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San Francisco Bay. "Wow, this kitchen might be bigger than my whole house."
I pointed my index finger and shook my head at Helen, giving her the Don't Start with Me look. I said, 'Autumn's also the girl who fooled around with Shrimp last summer."
"So what? I made out with him once in eighth grade. You oughta know better than anybody, that boy just has something about him. Shrimp is just like a delicacy that every girl should get to sample once in her lifetime, at least on some level. But I think all are agreed that you're the girl who's the permanent fixture in his life."
I'm a sucker; that last line did butter me up a little.
But geez Louise, I had no idea Shrimp was such a slut.
Helen must have sensed a softening of my resolve because she said, 'Anyway that business with Shrimp and Autumn last summer, that was one night, and it was nothing! She doesn't even like boys that way, really. So just deal. You are better than that."
Now I was almost officially Parkay. I pulled the Hershey's milk from the Sub-Z frid
ge to make the Cyd Charisse Special, capps with foamed choc milk, and I turned on the espresso machine to get it primed. I said, "I'm not sure quite what you mean by that."
Helen found the Peet's Coffee in the freezer (as Java the Hut beans are banned in this household until Shrimp has lifted his embargo on me) and she handed the bag over to me. "It means," she said, "I think you are better than being some lamé-ass chick who is threatened by other girls and thinks of them as rivals rather than friends. It means, I challenge you to make friends with Autumn."
Ash was sitting at the breakfast-nook table eating a
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bowl of Cheerios and dipping a Barbie's head into the milk, then swirling the blond tresses around the bowl. "You said lamé-ass!" Ash said. "Good one." Ash's eyes appraised Helen, starting from the star-spangled high-top Chucks on Helen's feet to Helen's red-and-blue plaid bell-bottom pants and up to her white T-shirt picturing curvaceous Lynda Carter in her patriotic but impractically skimpy Wonder Woman bathing suit uniform. Ash's appraisal ended at Helen's shaved head of black hair that had grown to about two centimeters. Ash said to Helen, "What are you?"
Helen's eyes squinted as she inspected the Barbie hair twirl. She said, "What do you think I am?"
Ash said, "I don't know, but it looks like there used to be a hand colored on your almost-bald head."
"Yeah, copper hand is hard to dye out, turns out. And I'm a Helen. CC's friend."
"Ha ha!" Ash laughed. She almost choked on her Cheerios.
Helen looked toward me, confused. I explained, "She's never seen an actual friend of mine that wasn't a boyfriend in this house before."
Ash got up from her chair and went over to Helen. It's cute; Ash and Helen both have the same body type--short and stocky, like round teddy bears. What wasn't so cute was that Ash then pinched Helen's pudgy stomach, as if she had to prove to herself that her sister had an actual in-the-flesh friend in the house. Ash promoted her voice to a scream for the benefit of our brother, Josh, playing a video game in the family room next to the kitchen. "JOSH! COME SEE! CYD CHARISSE HAS SOME PRACTICALLY BALD, PIERCED FRIEND HERE WHO'S A GIRL!"
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*** Chapter 12
The sexual politics of the Shrimp crowd turn out to be quite complicated. If I were a private investigator creating a flowchart attempting to illustrate their love connections, my head might possibly explode.
Start with Shrimp and me. Broke up. There's me with the pseudo-crush on Wallace, and then there's Shrimp with the rebound one-night almost-stand with Autumn (as in no penetration--a minor technicality but an important one, as it allows me to at least consider Helen's challenge to become Autumn's friend). Now I've found out that Wallace used to date one of Helen's older sisters before settling down with Delia, who reportedly once had a dalliance with surfer dude Arran a.k.a. Aryan, who has a crush on Autumn--completely ignoring Helen's crush on him, because he's so shallow he doesn't even notice if a girl bigger than size six has it for him--while Autumn has the same kind of crush on Helen that I have on Wallace: totally benign and sweet and understood to have no basis in a reality hookup.
If I learned all that just on the bus over to Haight Street, I shuddered to think of all the sexual histories I would discover should Helen, Autumn, and I actually hang out longer than a day. By the time we hit Amoeba Records, I considered it a miracle the whole Ocean Beach crowd at Java the Hut isn't one mass STD invasion.
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One of my favorite noises in the world is the rapid-fire sound of customers browsing CDs at Amoeba Records, a rhythmic sound throughout the huge used record shop that almost sounds like it comes from an automated machine: clickclickclickclick. Over this noise Autumn was explaining to me about her new vow of celibacy. She's not dating and she's not looking--she's just trying to have fun her senior year. Next year she'll get back in the game, when hopefully she'll be going to Cal, if she gets accepted, which she surely will because she's this brainiac who could be the poster girl for the dream candidate at the Berkeley Admissions Office-, part African-American, part Vietnamese, part Irish and German, and a lesbian. But for now, Autumn says, she can't find a high school girl she's attracted to who will actually admit to being gay, and she's tired of hanging out with the surfer dudes because they're all, except for Shrimp and Wallace, basic sexist pigs who let her surf with them even though behind her back they snicker that chicks aren't strong enough to ride the harsh Ocean Beach current. And the reason they let her surf their waves with them is the remote fantasy that said permission will somehow allow them later access to some girl-girl action. Boys truly are idiots.
Helen was trading in some CDs in another part of the store so I asked Autumn, "But what about Helen? Why don't you date her?"
"She claims not to have decided but I am here to tell you--she's not gay. She might be bi a little, but I'm pretty sure her very few girl-kissing adventures have been mostly for the benefit of making her mother crazy. I mean, have you seen Helen with the Irish soccer guys?" We looked up
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to see Helen flirting with the sales guy at the trade-in counter, their heads both tipped back in laughter because something about the Patti Smith CD was either hysterical or sexy. Even on Haight Street, where grunge Gen Xers + hippie throwbacks + homeless punk kids + yuppie chic = a street with great stores and a lot of scary attitude, Helen could make friends. Maybe that's just Helen--she's one of those rare people like Shrimp who just knows everybody, talks to everybody, likes everybody: a natural extrovert.
"You can't be completely gay," I said. "What about Shrimp?"
There is something about Autumn, how she looks you straight in the eyes, how she projects this natural warmth, that I couldn't doubt the sincerity of her answer. "Shrimp was this one-time thing. Like, I needed to be sure about my sexual preference, and he was just this very safe person to experiment with. And he was feeling kind of sad and confused and..."--her hand touched mine over a Smiths CD import--"...I really am sorry it happened if it's hurt you so much."
Autumn does make it difficult to dislike her. It's a very annoying trait.
I shrugged off her hand but said, "Don't worry about it." I may, in fact, even have meant it.
Helen popped up next to us. "Guess who's over in the jazz section? Aryan! And guess what section he's flipping through? ACID JAZZ! He needs to be brutalized for that. C'mon." Her wide pink face glowed as she stared into the next room. We lingered at the entrance to the other room long enough to see Aryan finger a Kenny G CD. This was just too much, and we all three started laughing so hard we
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nearly doubled over. We laughed so hard people around us started laughing too, for no reason other than how hard we were laughing. Not that the situation was that funny, but somehow our mutual giggles fed and built off each others', the fact of our laughter becoming funnier than the joke, until all three of us collapsed in hysterics on the hardwood floor.
I had probably met Aryan before Shrimp's party when I was working at Java the Hut, if he's part of that whole crowd, but I didn't remember him--after a while all those beautiful surfer guys, with their amazing bodies, identical vocab, and substandard intelligence (but who cares, see Amazing Bodies, above) kind of meld into one, except for one-of-a-kind Shrimp. Usually if you remember one surfer dude you're really just remembering their collective unit. But now Aryan surely stood out of the crowd. He looked up at all the noise and, seeing us, his sun-kissed face went totally pale and you could almost see his mop of curly blond hair turning into fried frizz.
"Hey, Aryan," Helen called over to him from the floor. "I think I see the Yanni CD you dropped on the floor. It's just to the left of your Vans, like next to the Mannheim Steamroller vinyl LP."
I have no idea what a Mannheim Steamroller is, but just the sound of the name was enough to send Helen, Autumn, and me into a deeper round of laughter. We were now laughing so hard tears streamed from our eyes.
Aryan stomped over to where we were lounging on the floor. His eyes were mad but that did
n't stop him from checking out the rear-end view of Autumn's denim miniskirt flailing on the floor from our hysterics. Up close and in
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daylight, I could see that Helen's nickname for him was just right. He was tall, lean, and perfectly proportioned, blond-haired and blue-eyed, but with a determined jut to his walk, like you could see him in a uniform saying "Heil!" but his uniform would be a skateboarding one and his "Heil!" would be pledging loyalty to some Left Coast leftie-crazy like Jerry Brown.
"Dude," he said to us, straight-faced and clearly not sharing our humor in the situation. "That's so funny I can't stop laughing." He stomped over to Nirvana, I guess trying to salvage his cool.
"Uh-oh," Helen said. "I better go over there and make it up to him. Should I let him use my trade-in credit?"
Autumn and I both shook our heads. "Just be nice," I told Helen. "You don't need to make it up that much. Don't waste a fifty buck trade-in on a crush."
Autumn nodded in agreement. She said, "Kenny G? C'mon, he had it coming. But I can't just stand by and watch you try to make it up to him, cuz I know he'll take advantage of the situation and pretty soon you'll have agreed to take his latest bimbette to get a fake ID. How 'bout CC and I go to the Goodwill store and then meet you at the crepes place in half an hour?"
Helen said, "Yeah," but she was already on her way over to console Aryan, like she'd practically forgotten us.
The weird thing is, I had no objection to Autumn's plan. Okay, I admit it. I like the Autumn wench. Get over it.
Later, when we were sitting at the crepes place and Autumn and Helen were sharing a crepe with heaping veggies and cheeses while I had opted for a plain Nutella crepe, I interrupted their chatter.