On the other hand, Joel is really smart and funny and loves to talk about serious things. He’s back from college for some reason and wants to hang out with me. I would love to see him but if Rory found out, he would go ballistic. It’s not worth the stress. I swear, there is no worse quality in a guy than excessive jealousy. Except maybe cheapness. Rory is cheap too.
I’ve only been writing this blog for like three weeks but according to my tracking site it gets between 450 and 500 discrete visitors a day. Is this good? Sure seems like it. I wonder who the hell you all are. The most popular blog search terms that lead you to me are gyrl, high school, sex, oral sex and bliss.
If you guys want me to answer your emails, please stop calling me names. I’m not proud of cheating on Rory. And normally I would never mess around with a guy who has a girlfriend. I had no idea Martine even existed until after the third time Dan and I fooled around, when I found a brand-new box of tampons under his sink. I got really mad and asked why he didn’t tell me. He said because they were going to break up any minute. When I left that night I was positive I wasn’t coming back. But I couldn’t do it. I already liked him too much. I was hooked. If that makes me a slut, too bad.
I got 12 emails this week asking me to send a pic of myself. They were all from guys, except one from a black lesbian in the Air Force. Because she is risking her life for our country I emailed her a topless self-pic of me. No face, of course. She can tape it to her cockpit and try not to crash. Ha! As for everyone else, use your imaginations.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Last night I went to this college bar to eat stale peanuts, drink watery beer and listen to Rory’s band, Epiphany Cream Assassin. Between songs I went to pee and not even planning it, I walked right past the bathroom door and into the back alley and called Dan. I know, desperate, dumb, drunk and deviant. Well, guess what? Martine answered. I’m serious. I was so surprised, I couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
She said “Allo, Allo, who is zees? Allo?”
I hung up in her face, which was the stupidest thing I could have done. I should have just pretended it was a wrong number. If she told Dan about the call I’m already dead because my mom’s name comes up on Caller ID. (She pays my phone bill.) When I got back to the table I must have looked like I’d smoked crack in the bathroom or something, because all the other band girlfriends asked me what was wrong.
I replied “Not drunk enough.”
They laughed and poured. By the time the gig was over I was totally shit-faced. I was so sure Dan would never speak to me again that I was really grateful to have a boyfriend, even if it was only Rory. I dragged him back to my house, ripped his clothes off, and sat on him without a condom. I told him it was a safe time of month. Which was true but when I woke up this morning, I regretted not making him at least pull out early. If I get pregnant, no way Rory would want me to abort it. He’s liberal about everything but abortion. He thinks it’s murder. How can it be murder when you’re killing something the size of an olive? But he goes berserk on the subject because his mother almost aborted him. She even went to the clinic, but it was a week too late.
Working all day with a hangover was a nightmare. And not a word from Dan. Why does he let that crazy bitch answer his cell phone anyway? God, I wish I hadn’t called. Someone shoot me in the head. Pretty please?
Thursday, November 15, 2007
I pour my heart out but all notme58 wants to know is how Rory’s band got its name. Well, notyou, the story goes like this. The three founding members each wrote down five words on five separate scraps of paper and put them all in a hat and pulled out three at random. The words came out in exactly that order. Fascinating, huh? It’s an awesome name, isn’t it? Although I think Assassin Epiphany Cream would have been even better. But fate decided it.
You guys, please stop accusing Glenn Warburg of wanting to bone me. It’s so sad that every time a man spends more than ten minutes talking with a hot girl everybody assumes it’s sexual. Ever heard of platonic? Or maybe he likes women his own age. Or maybe Glenn’s into guys. I don’t know and you sure don’t either. So shut the fuck up.
• • •
Thanks to all of you who wrote to tell me my number of discrete visitors is completely phenomenal. I had a feeling it was. Yay! I’m finally good at something!
Madmantype said the only reason I’m getting so many views is because I sound hot and I let Dan have oral sex with me. Hey, whatever it takes to get ahead. That was a joke. Get it? LOL!
Friday, November 16, 2007
I just called my dad and asked if we could have lunch tomorrow, just the two of us. This is code for “leave your pathetic Indian girlfriend at home.” He said yes but I could tell he was annoyed. He hates being alone with me. I don’t know why. He didn’t used to. Up until junior high we did things together all the time. Maybe it’s because now that I am older I often want to discuss money. The subject is unbearable for him because it reminds him of what a deadbeat dad he is.
Let me explain. When my parents got divorced the judge ordered my dad to pay $1,600 a month in child support. That was almost eleven years ago which means by now he should have paid us a fortune. You do the math. Well, guess what? He’s paid a total of $300! Which was the amount of the check he wrote my mom in the courthouse hallway three minutes after the divorce papers were signed! He asked her to be patient about getting the rest, because he’d just handed in a story to a magazine and there was going to be a delay. Well, the delay lasted forever. Great guy huh? Today he’s too sick from drinking to even work, so he lives off Social Security checks and his hardworking Indian girlfriend. He also gets occasional handouts from his rich aunt Dorothea in Florida.
What irks the shit out of me is that my mom doesn’t really care that he’s a deadbeat dad. I think she actually sort of likes it. It makes her feel even more superior to him. She loves to say that after she kicked him out she never took a red cent from him. But she never needed to! She’s the director of human resources for a big insurance company and makes awesome money and benefits. I, on the other hand, am broke off my ass. My life would be so much better if I had just a small percentage of the money he owes us. I could buy a car, for instance.
What’s really sad is that even though my dad is poor, he could get me a car so easily. All he’d have to do is call up Dorothea and tell her it’s an emergency, because I can’t function without one. She’d make him eat a little shit first but she would definitely write a check.
Still no call from Dan. Maybe French Fry never told him about the hang-up call. How lucky would that be?
I got paid today. 32 hours × $12 an hour = $384.00 cold hard cash.
• • •
If my dad complains tomorrow about us eating at a restaurant, I’ll tell him to relax. It’s on me. Ha!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Yesterday when I called my dad he was so drunk he forgot that the Michigan-Ohio State football game was on today. So instead of us going out to eat we stayed in and watched TV as usual. Which means I dressed up for nothing.
My father is completely in love with sports. I’m sorry but I think a semi-racist middle-aged white man wasting a whole day in front of the tube, watching a bunch of poor black kids chase a ball around a field is just plain pathetic. And it’s even worse that he does it wearing dirty pajamas, with a belly as big as a pregnant lady’s. Last year Jade’s older sister Mylene, who’s a telephone triage nurse, told me it’s not fat that makes my dad’s gut so huge. It’s his liver. She said “Go to your computer and look up cirrhosis.” I did. It was horribly sad. He is also diabetic now too. He has to shoot up every single day.
Unlike baseball, when football is on I’m only allowed to talk during the commercials, so I had to tell my dad about my new job in two-minute chunks. He didn’t say much back. He hardly talks these days. He is very sick. He is so skinny he can barely lift his beer mug with his skeleton arm. He hasn’t cut his white beard and white hair in ages. He looks like he
’s 100 but he’s only 54. He is definitely going to die pretty soon.
When he does talk it’s usually to crack a lame joke. For example, when I told him I work at Elysium Books, he said “It’s all Greek to me.” When I said World War One was called “the war to end all wars,” he said “Too bad Hitler never got the memo.” And when I told him Glenn was paying me 12 bucks an hour he said “Does that include hand release?” I used to think it was cool I had a dad who makes sex jokes. Now I just think it’s inappropriate and tragic.
The whole time I was there, his Indian girlfriend Affie (her real name is Aafreen) walked in and out of the kitchen with trays of appetizers, smiling like one of those happy robot moms from the old sitcoms, only she’s chubby, wears a sari and has a mustache. (Both my parents are dating people with mustaches. Only Mark doesn’t wear a sari. He is sorry. Ha!) I don’t know where Affie comes up with these recipes of hers. She served us weird crabmeat in little pita breads, squares of stinky cheese toothpicked to sweet pickles, egg-salad sushi rolls and macadamia nuts covered in bacon and curry.
While she’s feeding us this garbage, my dad’s insulting her right to her face and she doesn’t even care. He told her that her crabmeat tasted like cat puke. I asked “When’s the last time you had cat puke?” He said “The last time Affie made tuna fish.” Ha! Later he said “I never thought I’d eat a pig in a blanket worse than the one I met in that Mexican whorehouse in 1974.” Later he said “It’s not that Affie’s a bad cook. It’s just that she’s not used to cooking with American ingredients. We use shrimp. They use crickets.” Affie smirks at these insults like he’s some naughty boy instead of a grown man who basically hates her guts.
Another terrible thing about hanging out at my dad’s is that he keeps all his windows closed even in summer, so his apartment, which is very small, reeks of cigarette smoke, incense and cat poop. Affie owns a stray named Tapu that is dying of leukemia. It must be invisible or the biggest coward of all time because even though it is an indoor cat I have never seen it once. The place is so stinky it makes me want to run out the door screaming and never come back. But you’re not allowed to do that, right? Honor thy parents.
Sometimes during the game, he looks over at me and I can tell he’s thinking something. Or feeling something. Something important. But I have no idea what. The only way I know he loves me is that every now and then I will hear him on the phone and he’ll say “Can’t talk. My gorgeous daughter is here,” or “Gotta go, the fruit of my loins and I are enjoying some quality time.”
You’d think maybe at halftime we might have some sort of conversation but not even then. He just sits there sipping beer, watching the marching band or the highlights like it’s the most suspenseful thriller he’s ever seen. Like it’s The Wages of Fear and any second a truck is going to blow up. I usually don’t care—I’m used to it—but today he knew I had something I wanted to talk to him about. I was so pissed he wasn’t even curious what it was that I asked for a cigarette and a beer. I usually hate being self-destructive in front of him because it sets a terrible example, but today it was either that or stick my head in the garbage disposal.
Affie ran to get me a beer like it was the most exciting thing she’d ever done. My dad handed me one of his Kent Lights. Lately they are my brand too. They taste like car exhaust and burn as fast as fuses but I think this will eventually help me quit. I held in the first drag for about ten seconds. Ahhh! I felt so much better.
When the game was over, I said “Can we please talk? Or is this a doubleheader?”
“I know that tone,” he replied with a cruel smile.
“Huh, I wonder why. She only raised me. Yes or no? Otherwise I’m leaving.”
He was pissed for a second, then he looked at Affie. “Baby, how about giving me and my spawn a little privacy?”
Even though her feelings were hurt, Affie smiled all the way through the hanging wooden beads into the bedroom.
“Okay, lay it on me,” he said.
I told him how scary it is to defer college, and how I’m still not sure what I want to do with my life, and how hard it’s been for me with all my friends away at school, because I depend on them for transportation, and most nights I just sit home lonely because I have no way of getting anywhere. My dad knew what was coming.
He said “So tell the bitch to buy you a car.”
My mom is always the bitch, the witch, the ballbuster, the shrew, the hag or the cunt. Why you ask? Why does he speak of her with such offensive disrespect? Because he’s still in love with her! Even Affie knows it and she doesn’t know much.
I replied “I’ve asked her a million times but she thinks I’m too much like you. She thinks I’m an alcoholic. She’s worried I’ll die in a fiery crash.”
This was total bullshit. My mom has no idea how much I drink. If she did, she’d ground me forever. The real reason she won’t buy me a car is that she thinks I am lazy. My 2.75 GPA makes her sick. She knows what I am capable of. But if I told my dad this, he would be off the hook.
“Neither of those accidents were my fault,” he growled.
“I know that, Daddy. But she thinks they were. She thinks they were caused by your excessive drinking.”
“Sanctimonious hag. If she had her way, we’d all be drinking holy water.”
“Out of the pope’s nutsack.”
This really cracked him up. He totally forgot that it’s his own line that he’s said at least three times. Boy, does he love it when I bash my mom. He was all buttered up now. I scooted over on my knees and squeezed his bony hand. The fingernails were yellowish brown from smoking and he smelled of Old Spice and B.O.
“Daddy, my whole life you said you’d buy me a car when I turn eighteen. Well, I’m almost eighteen. Please keep your promise. Please!”
He looked at me with a gooey little smile.
“What about your rock star boyfriend? Freckle Face. Why can’t he squire you around?”
“We broke up.”
“Oh, too bad.”
“No, it’s not. He’s been pressuring me to … you know … go all the way. I’m not ready.”
Boy, did he love that! What dad wouldn’t? Hahaha!
He smiled even gooier. “Eighteen and still a virgin. I must have done something right.”
We both smiled at his miraculous achievement. Our eyes met. It was one of those moments that is really warm for like half a second then turns instantly uncomfortable. He reached for another cigarette. His hand shook.
“You know, when you were little, you promised me you’d never grow up. You said you’d stay my little angel forever. But you lied. I mean, look at you now. Tits and everything.”
When he saw how shocked I was, he looked really embarrassed. He covered it up with a smile and lit his cigarette. His dead eyes returned to the TV He blew smoke and took a big gulp of beer. Then he wiped his mouth with his pajama sleeve and said that at tax time he’d look over his finances and get back to me about the car. In other words “Go home.”
Monday, November 19, 2007
I told Glenn Warburg today about how when it was time for me to start kindergarten, I was held back because I was born in December. So instead of going to school, I stayed home and my black nanny Ethel taught me how to read. When I finally started kindergarten I was already such an awesome reader that after just a few months they skipped me to first grade. When I got the good news, I ran to all my friends on the playground and sang “Kindergarten baby, stick your head in gravy, wash it out with bubble gum and send it to the navy!” My mother loves to tell this story. She thinks it’s hilarious what a disloyal little bitch I was.
I also told Glenn how I continued to love reading all the way until my eleventh birthday when against my mother’s wishes, my grandma bought me my first computer. A lime iBook. Pretty soon I was spending all my free time emailing friends and wasting time on various websites. If there was a word I didn’t know instead of looking it up in the dictionary I went to answers.com, and if I was assigned a boo
k report, instead of actually reading the book I’d use SparkNotes. I’m pretty typical of my generation, I told him, only I never got into computer games, and pop music means nothing to me. I said that when I want to relax I watch classic films. Preferably foreign or in black and white.
“Such a shame you stopped reading,” Glenn said leaning back in his squeaky wooden chair with his hands behind his head. His sweet blue eyes got sort of misty as he talked for ten minutes straight about how he couldn’t imagine his life without books. “Online stuff is fun,” he said, “and so is TV. But all they do is make you feel closer to everyday life. The same with most movies. Great literature does the exact opposite.”
“Makes life less fun?” I asked.
“No, no, it lifts you out of the here and now and brings you closer to the angels.”
“You’re religious?” I asked, pretty surprised.
“Not those angels,” he said, smiling at me like I was a cretin but cute. “I’m speaking metaphorically. I’m talking about transcendence. Escaping the daily and the ordinary. Leaving mortality behind.”
I told him about a kid from my class named Alan Hsia who got perfect SAT scores and is now at MIT. He told me once that when he plays the cello he leaves his body and disappears into a world where he has no problems. I was blown away by this because he’s fish-faced and zitty and unless he turns out to be gay I am pretty sure he’ll never get laid in his entire life, so for his problems to disappear is a huge deal.
“Is that what you’re talking about?” I asked.
“Yes. It doesn’t have to be literature. It can be a musical instrument. Or a great painting, a great opera or ballet, even great love. All of them can give you a feeling of transcendence. So can religion. You leave the earth behind. Death means nothing. You’re alive in the eternal present.”
Undiscovered Gyrl: The novel that inspired the movie ASK ME ANYTHING (Vintage Contemporaries) Page 3