by Andrea Meyer
Alicia: “When he stops?”
Jeremy: “Unplug him.”
Alicia: “Cut off his cajones.”
Jeremy: “What was it this time?”
Courtney: “Taking a nap?”
Alicia (sarcasm): “Making a masterpiece?”
Jeremy: “Washing his hair?”
Alicia: “Clearly something much more important than…”
“HIS GIRLFRIEND’S BIRTHDAY!” shout all three evil preachers masquerading as my friends.
“I’m not his girlfriend!” I shout back. “Not really. He’s not ready for a relationship.”
“Duh,” says my mean gay boyfriend. “If he’s not ready for a relationship with a goddess like you, he doesn’t deserve you,” he adds, swooping me into his arms and nuzzling my neck. It makes me horny.
Just then Samantha strolls over to say goodbye.
“Jake didn’t make it? Quelle surprise,” she says, kissing both my cheeks. The four of us watch as she cinematically flings her long, blond locks over one shoulder and glides out into the night, as if the sidewalk was a stage and she a diva making her entrance, her engagement ring glistening as it catches rays off a streetlight.
“I gotta go. I’m not feeling so hot,” I say, surveying the bar and deciding that my friends will live if I don’t say good night. I grab my purse and a shopping bag bulging with the books, smelly candles, flowers, and sexy underwear my friends gave me, avoiding the eyes of the scary threesome studying me with concerned looks, and run out of the bar.
The icy air braces me, sobering me up ever so slightly. I lean against the wall, throw back my head, and close my eyes. The world spins and I open them again quickly, taking a couple of deep breaths before beginning my walk up Avenue C. I stumble left onto Ninth Street and let my fingers run along the chain-link fence bordering the community garden on the corner. The cold feels good on my fingertips. Jagged aluminum pinwheels in a variety of colors adorn the top of the fence. Most are rusted from years of weather. Some are twirling frenetically. Gazing up, I feel a gush of affection for my strange little neighborhood. One of the primitive sculptures looks like a gigantic sunflower with pointed, razor-sharp petals that would not feel so good if they fell on my head. I move swiftly away from the fence and spot a stack of terracotta flowerpots in perfect condition on top of a trash can, some of them painted in bold shades, probably by a local artist who got bored with them. I could use those, I think, wrapping my arms around them. I hear music in the distance as I cart my treasure down the sidewalk piled high with garbage bags just beginning to stink.
When I climb into bed, the world is still spinning so badly I can’t close my eyes. I guzzle a glass of water and take two aspirin, but it doesn’t help. After staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, I get up and stick my fingers down my throat. Up come the contents of at least seven mojitos (I lost count), a jug of sake, and some sushi. Tuna, I think. My eyes water and sting and my mouth tastes like vomit. I brush my teeth again, get back into bed, and vow never, ever to drink again—or at least not more than two (or three) cocktails in one night.
I close my eyes and imagine Jake spooning me, his arm tightly wrapped around me, his hand between my breasts, my hand clutching his.
“Fuck him!” I say aloud and try to come up with another guy to insert into my bedtime fantasy. Johnny Depp? That guy from yoga I’m pretty sure is straight? (He smiled at me when I stumbled out of Ardha Chandrasana pose and onto his mat.) The Italian barista at the café on the corner of First and Tenth with the hazelnut eyes and perennially pursed lips?
Ever since I was old enough to envy the girls making out with dreamy-looking men in the moonlight on The Love Boat and Happy Days, I’ve lulled myself to sleep with fairy tale love stories I make up in my head. They go something like this: On a perfectly glorious sunny day, I am strolling alone down an East Village street (in Central Park, through SoHo), dressed in something flattering in red (pink, yellow), maybe with polka dots. This guy—say, Cute Café Boy—is walking his golden retriever (mutt, beagle), sort of running, laughing, playing tug-of-war, not looking where he’s going, and he crashes right into me. He looks up, stunned, apologetic—“I’m sorry, are you okay?” His voice is raspy, masculine, full of emotion. When I look into his electric-blue (brown, green) eyes, the attraction is instant and mutual. I assure him that I’m fine, I forgive him; the bump and bruises won’t be so bad that I can’t cover them with makeup. He laughs and invites me for coffee (brunch, dinner) to make up for it. We get lattés-to-go and sit on a bench in the park. Conversation gushes like a waterfall onto slippery, wet rocks below. Coffee becomes drinks become dinner, and then we’re back at my place. The sex is a revelation. His dog mopes in the corner, neglected, and then licks my feet, making us laugh till our sides hurt. We stay in bed for days. He calls his boss (agent, partner) to say he’s coming down with the flu, and by the end of the week, we announce our engagement. I’m pregnant. We’re thrilled and planning the wedding at his family’s sprawling villa on the Amalfi Coast.
I am an Aries woman, and we, the most relentlessly wide-eyed, trusting, and optimistic sign of the zodiac, are not known for great patience. I for one want it all and I want it now. (My ex-therapist confirmed the diagnosis, although she failed to recognize the astrological correlation.) I don’t want to wait for the whole getting-to-know-you thing. I want Harlequin Romance Man to emerge from the mists on his towering black steed and carry me off into a fiery sunset. I want Romeo and Juliet (without the death part). I want insta-bliss: love, babies, lifelong commitment—at first frig-gin’ sight. Unfortunately, I have yet to meet the guy who is willing to comply.
So, Cute Café Boy’s strong, protective arms are wrapped around me, his hand fondling a boob. Not even this soothing vision is capable of getting me off to sleep. Handsome Café Boy keeps morphing into stupid Jake. I keep changing positions. Café Boy can barely keep up. I grab the phone.
“Jake?” He’s totally asleep. “Wake up. I need to talk to you. You awake?”
“Now I am.”
“Please come over,” I say in my most irresistible voice. “I can’t fall asleep.”
“Goddammit, Jacquie!” The force of his outburst blows me into sudden sobriety. “I told you I’m fucking sleeping! I’m so sick of this shit.”
I don’t know how to respond to his unexpected fury. Every other time I’ve called him in the middle of the night he’s at least indulged me with conversation.
“Fuck! I’m so sick of this ‘you always disappoint me’ shit and you expecting me to act like the good boyfriend on your birthday and making me feel all guilty if I don’t. I’m not your fucking boyfriend. I’ve told you a million times. I like you and I’m cool hanging out or whatever, but I told you: I can’t do this. Every time we have this fucking conversation we end up staying together, you know? I never wanted to have to not see you anymore, ’cause I like you, but you’re driving me crazy. I can’t handle you crying and that sad voice. Fuck! I have enough things to worry about without you being mad at me all the time.”
It’s the most words I’ve ever heard him string together. I’m in shock.
“You there?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Can I call you tomorrow?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay.”
Silence.
“Hey,” he says. “Call me when you feel okay talking to me.”
“Okay,” I say. And I hang up. And cry. And cry and cry and cry and cry. I’m lying in my bed, naked and squeezing my teddy bear, Chubby Joe, the same one I’ve squeezed at times like these ever since my “Secret Santa” in my freshman dorm, a skinny guy named Joe, gave him to me.
I know Jake’s right that this pseudo-relationship has gone on too long. And yet more than anything I wish he were here with me. I want Jake to comfort me about getting hurt by Jake. I feel completely distraught that I won’t see him anymore, stunned that I won’t sle
ep with him again, furious with him for saying I was driving him crazy and with myself for not breaking up with him before he broke up with me. I was supposed to break up with him first. My pillow is drenched. Chubby Joe is soggy (and pissed). My abs hurt from heaving. Maybe I’ll look skinnier in the morning.
I close my eyes and imagine myself walking down Prince Street in SoHo. It’s late at night, long shadows falling across the cobblestoned streets, lights eerily illuminating the empty storefronts. And suddenly the cute Italian guy who works at the café on my corner appears staring into the window of a furniture shop. It’s funny to see him outside the neighborhood, and we both smile shyly as our eyes meet. He asks me if I’d like to get a drink with him. Later that night, he winds up with his arms wrapped tightly around my waist, his hand nestled lovingly between my breasts, and I finally drift off to sleep.
3
* * *
Filmmaker seeks female flatmate. Big, sunny room in 2-bd SoHo 1ft on Grand (Mercer/Greene). Own bath. Shared kitchen w/new stainless appliances. Lovely. Quiet. Loaded with light. Flat so bright, I must wear shades & a visor inside. I work from home, travel often. Easy to live w/, highly intelligent, sparkling sense of humor. Seek same. Call Graham
* * *
When my alarm shrieks in my ear the next morning, I leap out of bed and stand trembling, naked, my toes gripping the cold, wood floor, trying to figure out if the evil sound is coming from outside or inside my skull. I’m wondering if someone might have launched a car alarm through my bedroom window when reality clanks me hard around the head and I grab the offending clock to turn it off. The ensuing silence soothes me until the sensation that someone used my head as a bowling ball takes its place. I groan and drag myself into the bathroom to find pain relief.
Without getting dressed, I creep into the kitchen to put water on for green tea, rip off the end of the stale baguette on top of the fridge, and sit down at my desk to check e-mail. There’s nothing good except a belated e-card from Brad, Courtney’s husband, apologetic about missing my party. I am relieved that he stayed away, because I hate it when he witnesses my shame. Brad and I have been close since college, and he plays the protective big brother I never had. Unfortunately, all his friends are either married professors, twenty-something musicians who smoke too much pot, or residents of Seattle, his hometown. I have had drunken escapades with many of them and we don’t mention most of their names anymore. I tell Brad that I wish technology would advance to the point where he could clone himself. He tells me I’d make Brad-clone love me and dump him, because he’s a nice, normal guy and I only fall for dickheads. He’s probably right.
Brad teaches music composition at NYU and plays in a band. An amazing thing happened a few months back: He self-produced a solo album of ballads that he’d written through the years, and it took off like a rocket. There’s this one song, “Still in It,” about him just kind of watching Courtney piddling around the kitchen and making coffee and watering a plant. He describes how she gasps when the cat jumps onto the counter and glances at him, embarrassed, and it makes him fall in love all over again, even though they’ve spent every minute together for the last twelve years. It’s not corny at all. It has a rock ’n’ roll beat and avoids love-song clichés. I’m not exactly objective, but the song brings tears to my eyes every time and I feel honored to know the guy who wrote it. Some DJ in Portland heard it and next thing, it was being played in dorm rooms nationwide and turning up on celebrity playlists and Brad was being compared to Jeff Buckley and the Coldplay singer who knocked up Gwyneth Paltrow, and we were like, “Our little Brad?” He got a record deal, took a sabbatical, and tomorrow he starts a tour of the whole friggin’ planet (or at least the North American part). Needless to say, with all the organizing, rehearsing, and stressing out, he doesn’t have much time to attend the birthday parties of mere mortals like me. The e-card’s a funny one, with a monkey playing “Happy Birthday” on the banjo. It sticks its big, pink tongue out at the end.
When my kettle squeals, my sister, whom I hadn’t noticed sacked out on the couch, bolts upright. She’s wearing her bra and underwear and is wrapped up in one of the curtains that are eventually supposed to adorn my living room windows.
“Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me,” I say, pulling myself out of my chair and into the kitchen, shoving a heap of Alicia’s clothes on the floor with my foot as I go.
“You’re always naked,” she says. “It’s kind of gross.”
“I was hammered when I got home last night.”
She grunts and goes back to sleep. It will be nice when my sister finds a place to sleep that is not in my apartment.
A half an hour later, I walk very slowly out my door, past the woman who sits on a white, padded stool on my block advocating Bible studies, and notice tiny green buds just beginning to peek through the tips of the branches on a skinny tree behind her. In spite of my throbbing head, I feel relieved. There is still a chill in the air, but at least spring is on its way. Summer is my favorite season, but there is nothing I love more than the sudden burst of color as flowers pop out of frozen, scraggly trees in New York City after months of cold. Okay, the one thing I love more is running around in a skimpy dress and flip-flops on a balmy, New York summer night that will never cool down.
I’m not a regular morning caffeinator, but today I need a boost, so I stop at my favorite corner café. The adorable barista smiles when he sees me and I stiffen, afraid he’ll sense that I imagined him doing naughty things to me last night.
“Ciao bella,” he says, still clinging to a slight Italian accent, even though his family moved from Sicily when he was fourteen.
“Not bella today,” I say.
“You’re the best thing I’ve seen this morning.” That makes me feel a little better.
“Thank you,” I say. “But my head is pounding and my stomach is queasy. Think a latté and a croissant might help?”
“Let’s give it a try.”
I watch his arm muscles bulge in all the right places as he twists the espresso into the machine and foams the milk. “So, what did you do last night?” he asks.
“It was my birthday. I drank too much.”
“Happy birthday!” he says, reaching into the pastry display to pull out a cookie. “For you.”
“Thank you.”
“Please smile. I can’t make it through the day without seeing you smile once.”
I grimace at him and he flashes his lovely white teeth in response. He doesn’t let me pay for my coffee and croissant. Creeping up St. Mark’s Place, I try to pick up my pace, knowing I have a magazine to ship. The sun is shining much too brightly. I wonder if sunglasses stop working at some point—mine don’t seem to be doing their job today. This particular block is never calm; even before the rows of dirty T-shirt and hat shops open, there’s a certain noise and griminess to it. A pile of dejected Gap underwear is lying on top of a Dumpster—the ones that say, “I love you, I love you, I love you…” in different fonts and sizes and the ones covered in red hearts on a navy background. Some poor kid whose girlfriend dumped him must have trashed them last night. A band of skinny boys in tight, leather pants, who are probably crawling out of their K-holes, shiver around greasy slices of pizza on the corner. A homeless guy is sprawled facedown on the curb, covered in a kid’s sleeping bag with cartoon bunnies and pink flowers on it. I take in the detritus of the night before, barely able to muster a smile when a bouncy girl with a shaved head skips by with a waddling corgi on one leash and a dappled dachshund on the other. They’re wearing matching orange parkas.
“Hey, precious,” I manage. They grin up at me in unison. Their mommy throws knives at me out of her eyes before continuing to bounce. Mean people should not be allowed to have dogs.
Impinging on my space, a cell phone rings. The lounge lizard walking in front of me still decked out in last night’s purple, shimmering three-piece suit yanks out his phone, at the same time as the annoying girl behind me screeches into her phone,
“Where are you?”
“I’m on St. Mark’s?” says the lounge lizard. I’m surrounded.
“Where on St. Mark’s?” says the girl behind me.
“I’m on St. Mark’s,” says the guy, louder now.
“No. Where on St. Mark’s,” the girl screams.
“Oh, where on St. Mark’s!” the guy screams back.
I stop in my tracks, causing Annoying Girl to bump into me. I turn around to face a teenage toothpick sporting a checkered minidress under fake white fur, and a bleached-out hairdo two feet high. “He’s right there,” I say, pointing at her buddy prancing three paces in front of us.
As I continue walking, she shouts, “Oh! My! God!”
“That’s, like, so fucking weird,” says the lounge lizard. Completely forgotten by the whole freak reunion, I walk more quickly until their shrieks fade out of earshot. It occurs to me that at least I’m not thinking about Jake. Then I see a couple making out at a bus stop and tears fill my eyes. “He’s not my fucking boyfriend,” I growl at myself.
When I duck into the deli next to my office, the cashier, who must be about twenty, is showing a sonogram picture of his baby to a guy standing next to me at the counter.
“Tres meses!” he says, beaming. His sweetness makes me weepy again.
Sam is the only one in the office when I get there and she’s chattering on the phone. “I’m thinking of going with lilac,” she says, turning toward me. Her mouth literally falls open when she sees me. I wonder if she might drool on the back of her chair, before recalling that she doesn’t do normal-human-being things like drool. “Au contraire. You look outstanding in lilac,” she says. “Hey, can I call you back?” She hangs up and says, “You were so drunk last night, I thought for sure you wouldn’t be here until noon.”
“We’ve got a magazine to put to bed,” I say, dumping my stuff by my chair but not removing my sunglasses.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Thirty-two and still standing,” I tell her.