Exes and Ohs

by Shallon Lester

  The next Monday, after spending an hour tarting myself up, I stood patiently outside my apartment waiting for Max to pick me up.

  Ten minutes.

  Thirty minutes.

  Forty-five minutes.

  Nothing. I called him five times, leaving messages that progressed from curious to seething. I’d been waiting out there nearly an hour and the neighbors were starting to think I was a prostitute. Was this guy seriously standing me up?

  Furious and blinking back tears, I tromped back to my apartment and straight to the refrigerator, where I self-medicated with Velveeta and The Golden Girls for the next two hours, weeping indignantly. I didn’t even really like him and he was ditching me? Is this really what my life in this city had become? A few hours later, bloated from queso and crying, Max called.

  I didn’t answer. He called again. And again. And again—eleven times. Finally, I picked up the phone.

  “Baby, I am so sorry,” he gushed. “I got caught up in stuff at the store and I just couldn’t get away—”

  I interrupted with a tirade about how cell phones usually get reception inside bakeries and blathered about how humiliating it was to stand outside for hours (he deserved a little exaggeration).

  “I know, you’re right, I’m an asshole. I’m horrible. I’m the worst guy ever,” he burbled. At least he wasn’t even trying to defend himself. I liked that in a man. “Listen, lemme make it up to you tomorrow, okay? We’ll have dinner at Per Se and then we can get a table wherever you want—Bungalow 8, Butter, wherever.”

  I looked around at my life—congealed cheese on the coffee table as Dorothy and Blanche bantered in the background—and realized that Max was making me a very decent offer. I agreed to see him the next night and vowed to make him wait twenty minutes before I deigned to come downstairs.

  And when I did, there was Max sitting in not the Benz, but a yellow Ferrari. A Novitec F430 Bi-Compressor Evoluzione, to be exact. I didn’t even know how to get into the damn thing; it looked like a Transformer. With a price tag so high it’s not even advertised, it made the Benz look like a van with a tiger airbrushed on the side.

  “All right, listen,” I said sternly as I wedged myself inside the slipper of a car. “I find it really hard to believe that you can afford this … machine on a baker’s salary. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Max sighed, like he knew this was coming. “C’mon, let’s go for a drive.”

  We raced along the West Side Highway and he squeezed my hand tightly.

  “You’re right; I do need to tell you something.” He chewed his lip pensively. “I … I kinda have … a wife.”

  “A what?” That was not what I was expecting to hear.

  “I mean technically we’re still married but we’re separated.”

  “Are you legally separated?” I yanked my hand out of his.

  “Well … not yet. But it’s in the works. We’re getting a divorce, honey.”

  I was vaguely aware that this confession did nothing to explain how he could afford these cars but I was shocked enough to be temporarily distracted, which I’m sure was his very goal.

  “Does she know you’ve been seeing me?”

  “Yes,” he lied, his voice rising an octave. Men are so bad at this. “I told her all about you.”

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. Truth was, I’ve never been an overly moral person and a wife was his problem, not mine. I even sort of appreciated the fact that he was motivated enough to be unfaithful. But you can’t just shrug and say “NBD!” To be ladylike you must at least pretend to care.

  “I just can’t believe this, Max,” I huffed. “First you stand me up and now I find out that you’re breaking your sacred covenant of marriage!”

  WTF was I talking about? The righteous and ethical were so foreign to me, I didn’t even know what vocabulary they used.

  I pouted and feigned iciness for a few more minutes before oh-so-reluctantly agreeing to still have dinner with him. Seven courses later he was dropping me off again. I had given in and enjoyed the thousand-dollar dinner but was too tired and full to partake in a boozy night out at a club. I permitted him one French-less kiss as he dropped me off, just to punish him for being such a jerk. At least that was my excuse, anyway. This was kind of an interesting experiment—me masquerading as a chaste, virtuous little girl in the city. I was ready to be done with the debauched phase required of every new Manhattanite, I reasoned, and maybe Max could save me from myself. I realize that a cheating husband is not the ideal shepherd to a life of morality, but hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  Truthfully, though, the Ick was beginning to set in. You know the Ick: it’s the skin-crawlingly disgusted feeling you get when you’re not attracted to a guy. It’s not reserved for ugly people—I’ve had the Ick for perfectly handsome, hygienic guys. But for some reason, I wanted nothing to do with them sexually. Maybe they were too nice or too fawning, but whatever the reason, eventually I’d be shivering with revulsion if they even tried to hold my hand. You can’t help the Ick—it’s an uncontrollable response, a terminal cancer on a relationship. Once the Ick sets up shop, it’s there forever. The smart move is to just cut off the romance, like a gangrenous limb. Try to deny it and it’ll eat you alive.

  But then again, Max wasn’t making any demands on me sexually, and he actually seemed to like my sassiness. So I let him make plans for us to see La Bohème at the Met the next Friday. It would be our third date, and from what Cosmo says, that’s when you’re supposed to explore his “bod” and “moan zones.” I didn’t think Max was expecting to go from good-night kisses to shagging, but men don’t make sense. We know this. So just to be on the safe side, I prepared a long list of sexually deterrent excuses as I got ready that night.

  It’s that time of the month.

  I’m worried my parents will find out.

  I’m nervous that your wife gave you AIDS—let’s swing by the clinic on the way home.

  I respect you too much to ever want to see you naked. Ever.

  Turns out, he would be the one making excuses. That night I waited outside, again, this time for thirty minutes before I realized that Max wasn’t coming. Part of me was relieved; I didn’t even bother leaving him an enraged voice mail. There was something very shady about this guy; the wife, the oddly lucrative business, the tattoo. Was he with his wife? Had she found out? Pfft, found out what? That we’d been to dinner and kissed like sixth-graders? Big whoop.

  I took off my fancy dress, cut a block of Velveeta from the log, and plopped on the couch. A few minutes later, my phone rang. An automated voice greeted me.

  “This is the New York City police department, First Precinct. Will you accept a collect. Call from. Max Borgia.”

  Who the hell was Max Borgia?

  “I’m the worst, I’m horrible, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “I—what? Where are you? Why are you calling me collect?”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m in jail.”

  “Jail?” Surely this was a joke. Maybe Jail was a cool new lounge I hadn’t heard of.

  “Yeah. I’m so sorry, doll-face, I’ve been with the DA for the last few hours, they just now let me use the phone.”

  “Jail,” I repeated thickly, still trying to understand how my love life had morphed into an episode of Law & Order.

  “Listen, I’m leaving here soon, I’m coming over and picking you up.”

  “What? No!” I shrieked. “No no no! I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in but I don’t want any part of it, Max. I don’t even know your last name!”

  “Shallon, listen,” he said gravely, his voice dropping into a low rumble. “I need to explain some things. I’m not who you think I am.”

  A chill ran up my spine, but I was too curious to hang up on him. An hour later he was outside my house, immaculately dressed, as always, with his arm slung over the headrest, coaxing me into a Lamborghini Murcielago—a third car, for, technically, our third date.

&nb
sp; “C’mon, honey, I’m not gonna kill you.” He patted the ostrich-leather seat invitingly. “C’mon, where you wanna go?”

  “Someplace with witnesses,” I mumbled nervously, and gingerly climbed in.

  We drove to the Spotted Pig and nestled into a corner table. Max quickly ordered us both whiskeys. Up until now he’d been strictly a champagne man, so I knew whatever he had to tell me wasn’t good if he needed a Johnnie Walker buffer.

  He took a deep swig of liquor and began.

  “First of all, let me start with things that are true. I do own a cupcake store, but that’s not how I make my money. I am separated from my wife, but no, we’re not divorced. And my name is Max, but not LeCavalier. I’m not French.”

  I wrinkled my nose, totally confused. “I—you’re not—but then if you don’t …?”

  I had no idea how to even begin responding. He took my hand gently, patiently, and began to unravel the long yarn of lies he’d spun over the past month.

  “You know why I have so many cars? Because I steal them. Long story short, I run a ring of car thieves and basically, that’s what I got pinched for tonight. I wouldn’t be telling you any of this if the feds didn’t already know, so don’t worry that you’re keeping secrets for me or anything.”

  My head was swimming. I pictured Max as the Artful Dodger to a ragtag gang of street urchins with names like Little Tony and Spitball. Under Max’s orders, they would slim-jim their way into cars and, as payment, were allowed to keep whatever change or gum they found inside. But for some reason the life of crime wasn’t what immediately bothered me.

  “We’ve been driving around in someone else’s car?!” I yelped, suddenly getting a massive case of the creeps. “Oh my God, Max, gross!”

  He rolled his eyes. “Honey, we weren’t using their fuckin’ toothbrush, okay? And these cars haven’t belonged to anyone yet—we got ’em off the boat. Anyway, I use a French last name because it puts a little distance between me and the people I’m … connected to.”

  I realized that my vision of Max and his merry band of orphans was an underestimation of his talent. He wasn’t some half-assed street thug—Max was in the Mafia.

  I hadn’t lived in New York for very long, but I was already becoming very accustomed to unpleasant dating surprises. Oh, you’re actually nineteen and live in the dorms? Great. That girl isn’t your sister but your live-in girlfriend? Marvelous. The jar of powdered sugar in your kitchen is really cocaine? Faaaantastic.

  Along the way, I’d learned to desensitize myself to those sorts of mid-range lies. But Max’s fictitious life was in a whole separate category.

  I shook my head disbelievingly and tried to choke out a few basic questions.

  “Did … did you get that tattoo in prison?”

  He laughed, his sudden joviality startling me. “No, no, this took months to complete, it’s not something some fuckin’ jerk-off could do in the joint.”

  He turned his back to me and with one swift movement pulled up his shirt, exposing his entire illustrated back—a massive, multicolored portrait of the Pietà. The blessed virgin wept over his shoulder blades as her limp son’s arms dangled to his waist. At her feet was etched an elaborate Latin phrase, but before I could try to decipher it he pulled his shirt back down and turned to face me, waiting patiently for more questions.

  “So, they caught you,” I asked, hoping that saying it aloud would help it make sense, “and now what? I mean, they let you go—that’s a good thing, right?”

  He smiled bitterly. “Nah, they didn’t just turn me loose; I made bail. But I gotta report back next week to start my sentence.”

  “Your what?” My dodgy knowledge of the legal system was based entirely on what District Attorney Jack McCoy had taught me, but I was sure that Max was at least entitled to a trial. “Aren’t you going to fight it?”

  “Nah, baby,” he said, squeezing my hand. “They got too much on me, and besides, they’re only giving me a year—I take my chances at trial and I could get fifteen. Juries don’t have warm and fuzzy feelings for the kind of people I do business with.”

  Suddenly I felt the hot sting of tears welling up in my eyes.

  “You’re going to prison? To prison?” It’s not like I was in love with Max, but the thought of him being cooped up in a cell for an entire year was horrifying—he was so vivacious and dapper, so refined and dynamic! Would he come out bitter and twisted, with a teardrop tattoo on his face like Lil Wayne? Actual tears spilled onto my cheeks, and I found myself sobbing into my whiskey as a waitress discreetly slid me a napkin.

  “Aw, baby, don’t cry, please don’t cry,” he said, starting to panic the way all men do at the sight of female tears. “A year ain’t nothin’, really.”

  “But, how did they know?” I snuffled. “How did they catch you?”

  Max stared out the window, his vivid eyes narrowing menacingly. “Someone ratted me out.”

  I value loyalty above anything else and it turned my stomach to think that someone sold Max down the river.

  “Who?” I hissed. “Who?”

  “Oh, I know who did it,” he murmured, still gazing out the window with a reptilian look in his eye. “I wouldn’t worry about them anymore …”

  I shivered, realizing that whoever was stupid enough to betray Max LeCavalier/Borgia was sure to meet a sticky, sticky end.

  Good, I thought cruelly, I hope he got two taps to the head and was left in a ditch somewhere. I hope it was slow and painful and—I caught myself, shocked by my own maliciousness. Is this what I was becoming, a Mafia mistress wishing death on anyone who dared cross her boyfriend?

  They say you’re only as good as the company you keep. Suddenly, as I assessed my current compatriots—down-and-out waiters, club kids, coked-out models, alcoholic bankers, and now, a Mafioso—I realized that Max’s appeal was not one of novelty. No no. It was one of familiarity. I had tried to pretend that his lifestyle—shady dealings with slimy people—was oh-so-foreign to me. It wasn’t. He was simply a Technicolor version of myself—flashier, sneakier, more illegal—and I’d known it from the beginning; I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.

  I realized that I wasn’t crying for him but for me; if I didn’t cowboy the hell up, cut back the partying, and get out of Houston’s, I’d find myself down a similarly dead-end path.

  I’d been putting off applying for an assistant editor position at FHM a friend had told me about, but the Max episode now awoke a long-dormant sense of purpose within me, a feeling that had been lulled to sleep with vodka sodas and Britney Spears remixes. But enough was enough.

  “Look, honey, I don’t expect you to wait for me or nothin’,” he said, “I just wanted to explain and, ya know, maybe after I get out I’ll look you up and we can pick up where we left off.”

  It was the most respectful breakup I’d had in months. Maybe ever. I nodded and kissed him good-bye, and hopped a cab home. The next morning I sent in my résumé to FHM, and a month later, I was throwing out my Houston’s apron and settling into my new office.

  I never did hear from Max again, but every time I read about a body being discovered in a shallow grave outside of Newark, I think of him, and I smile.

  Bursts Under Pressure

  “Jesus Christ, how many of these things do you have?!”

  That’s never something you want to hear your boyfriend say. Whether he’s talking about cats, Girl Scout cookies, or body parts, it ain’t a compliment. But my problem wasn’t felines or Thin Mints. It was condoms.

  Like most girls, the majority of my experiences with condoms were fraught with awkwardness and embarrassment, but not for the usual reasons. My problem isn’t ineptitude or shyness; quite the opposite, actually. The issue is that I have so very many of them.

  Hundreds.

  Thousands.

  Enough rubbers to supply a whorehouse at a Russian naval port until the end of time. Why? That’s a good question, one that every paramour asks sooner or later.

  “Well,�
�� I say sheepishly, suddenly very aware of my nakedness. “I’m sort of sponsored by Trojan.”

  “I’m sorry,” the boy will say, “did you say you’re sponsored … by a condom company?”

  Visions of gangbangs and key parties swim in his head as he reels, grabbing the bedpost for support.

  “No, no!” I exclaim in protest. “It’s not like you think! I host parties for them and they just send me all these as a thank-you!”

  Their next sentence is usually something along the lines of:

  “What in hell does a condom party consist of, Shallon?”

  At this point I have approximately forty-five seconds to explain how I got involved with Trojan, what I do for them, and why that equals the 2,350 condoms stuffed under my bed before their pants are back on and they’re fleeing out the door.

  The whole prophylactic saga began years ago, when I was an associate editor at FHM magazine. I was lucky enough to get the plum assignment of interviewing a scientist who worked for Trojan, nicknamed “Dr. Condom.” Yes, he was the guy in charge of testing how well the rubbers worked and coming up with new, innovative ideas for how to keep gonorrhea—and lost erections—at bay.

  My boss wanted me to get lots of pervy little sound bites from Dr. Condom about how he watches people have sex for a living. But I, the nerd-slut hybrid that I am, instead spent the interview grilling the scientist on which type of rubber would best suit my boyfriend Raylan.

  Here’s what I learned: Unless he’s really small, pretty much every guy can wear Magnums. The only difference between them and regular condoms is that Magnums are wider at the base. This makes for a much more comfortable fit, allowing more blood to flow, which makes him harder, longer. Magnum XLs, on the other hand, are best left to professional athletes and porn stars; they’re wider throughout and could probably cover a Volkswagen Beetle if necessary. That answered my questions about fit, but what about all the other typical dude objections? The key, the doc said, is to put a few drops of lube inside the condom—much more enjoyable for the guy.

  I soaked up the information, even taking notes to show Ray later. He’d been complaining about condoms being too small—seriously, do guys still think that line works? We’ve all seen the health class demo where our teacher puts one over his head and inflates it by exhaling through his nose to show that any guy who claims “I’m just too big for them, baby” is full of crap—so now I had a viable solution. Magnums!