Objectify Me: A Fireworks Novella (The Fireworks Novellas)

by Rizer, Bibi

  OBJECTIFY ME: A Fireworks Novella

  By Bibi Rizer

  © Bibi Rizer 2015

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or other commentary.

  www.bibirizer.com

  Cover Design by Cover Your Dreams

  www.coveryourdreams.net

  Chapter One – Levi

  Everyone has that one friend so intent on having fun that pretty much every outing with him nearly ends in death. You know the guy. He’s the one who made you think an umbrella would keep you from breaking both ankles when you jumped off the garage roof when you were ten. The same guy who said, “There’s no cops for miles,” when you were fourteen and thought a bonfire in an abandoned junkyard was a good idea. The guy who saw to it that you ended pledge week with a maple leaf shaved into your head and two mystery girls asleep on the floor of your dorm room. The guy who is so busy steering you into trouble that you barely have time to form an independent thought.

  Yeah, that guy. Everyone has a friend like that. Lucky me, I have two.

  “No, no, turn up the next street. Chipotle, Chipsatoolee…this one, look.” Buck points on his map to a completely unpronounceable street name. “We turn left there, then right onto Canal Street.”

  Omar starts to sing in his deep baritone, dancing down the sidewalk. “Canal Street, Canal Street, the place that I adore. But I’ll be a son of a bitch if I can find a whore.”

  “Dude, this boat will be crawling with whores. Strippers, porn stars. Anything you want.”

  “I want a cup of coffee,” I say. Omar insisted we drink a very expensive bottle of wine with dinner, and that was on top of the two pints of beer each. It’s not that I’m such a lightweight, alcohol-wise. I’m just out of practice. For the past year I’ve been trying out orthodoxy for size. You know, synagogue, no bacon cheeseburgers, praying. Hoping someone would answer. You’d think my West Coast Jewish parents would have been delighted to see me rocking the cultural identity like that, but actually it drove them crazy.

  Gotta say, though, not getting drunk every weekend did wonders for my GPA. And my body. All that time not spent drinking with these two hooligans, I spent at the gym instead. Even my sister says I look hot. Not sure it’s quite the right kind of hot. The buff, pretty boy combined with the clean-cut Jewish thing seems to come across as a little…

  “Hey beautiful! What’s your name? Are you old enough to be that cute?”

  Omar and Buck bend over laughing as the sports car full of guys speeds off.

  I have to laugh along with them. “What can I say? The fellas love me.” It’s been this way since we arrived in New Orleans two days ago. At first I was a little freaked out to get so much attention from gay men. I mean, I’m not a homophobe or anything, I just didn’t know how I was sending out the wrong vibe. Two days later I’m used to it. It’s an eye-opener, though. I was never one of those guys who told women they should see being catcalled as a compliment. Now I know firsthand that it feels weird, not complimentary at all. I think I’ll write a paper about it in Soc-201 next term.

  We turn off the unpronounceable street and head downhill to the river. Omar starts to sing again.

  “M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I.”

  “You said pee pee,” Buck says.

  I’m with the two most immature twenty-one-year-olds in America. How else can I explain that somehow we’ve been invited on a riverboat cruise with a bunch of people who I’m pretty sure are drug dealers? This is how it went down – I swear to God:

  Buck wanted to score some weed. Strange town, on the other side of the country from Seattle where he has every weed dealer on speed dial. But does that stop him? No. He takes off while Omar and I are paying the massive dinner bill. Then we wait for him for an hour in the bar, sure that he’s been mugged, murdered, or otherwise violated. When he comes back, he’s wasted of course, and grinning like a lunatic because he says the dealer was a huge World of Warcraft nut and actually knew Buck by his screen name.

  For real, they’d played WoW together. What are the odds? So Buck tells us that his new dealer buddy invited him to a Mardi Gras party on a riverboat.

  “I thought we were going to watch the parade,” I said, like the tool that I am.

  “Bro, a riverboat, with drug dealers. It doesn’t get any more New Orleans than that.”

  So now he’s dragging us down to the pier to see whether there really is a riverboat, or if this is just some complex setup to get us down there and shake us free from our parentally-controlled credit cards.

  We pass three coffee shops before we get to the pier, but Buck and Omar won’t let me stop. When I see the riverboat all lit up with colorful lights and blaring music, I’m actually a bit disappointed. Maybe I was hoping to be mugged instead just for that final piece of evidence that I’m basically too stupid to live.

  Yeah. Some backstory. The whole orthodox Jewish thing was to impress a girl. She was a pre-med student in the Jewish students’ club. Most of the other kids in the club were just secular Jews hanging out there to meet some guy or girl their parents wouldn’t flip over. Me, I don’t even know why I joined. My last girlfriend was from Sri Lanka and my parents loved her. I mean it was kind of insulting. I think they loved her more than they loved me. But she got into a posh school on the east coast and my parents wanted me to do pre-law at UW. So we tried the whole long distance thing and that was pretty meh. So we broke up.

  I took it like a man. Drank myself into a stupor and woke up with two black eyes from falling on my face. Buck’s fault. Omar, bless him, took a picture and put it on my Facebook page.

  Then I had to “get out there again,” as my mom said. So I joined a few clubs, and it was in the Jewish club that I met Rachel Blum. I don’t know why I fell so hard for her. She was pretty and smart, sure. Maybe it was the unavailability that did it for me. She kind of floated above everyone else. Once I got up the courage to talk to her and figured out how into being Jewish she was, I probably should have just politely backed away. That whole thing had never been my scene. But somehow that just made her more interesting to me. So when she invited me to go to Synagogue with her, of course I did. Next thing I’m eating different and walking everywhere on Saturdays, even in the pouring rain, and praying to a God I don’t even really believe in. I went to Rachel’s Krav Maga classes. I tried to learn Hebrew, even brushed up on the Russian my old Babka taught me.

  I stayed away from the non-Jewish stuff, too. I worked a double shift when the rest of my family went to my uncle’s for Christmas dinner with his insane Catholic wife. In fact, I worked a ton over the holidays just to prove to Rachel Blum I was Jewish enough for her, because Christmas is a Christian holiday and…you know. I even took a shift on New Year’s Eve. And that was a weird night, because one of the guys I work with, Charlie, picked up this girl, and then she got carjacked and he went after her while I tracked her using LoJack. There was a moment there where I thought one or both of them would end up dead with me on the other end of the phone. Kind of made me think.

  Anyway, the next morning I checked Facebook to see how Charlie was doing and he was all ‘Charlie Zhang is in a relationship’. So I thought – wow that was quick. And then I see it further down my timeline.

  Rachel Blum got engaged.

  For a second I thought, “Did I ask Rachel to marry me last night?” But then I remembered we’re not even dating. I’m just a desperate loser who follows her around like some Jewish wind-up toy. And the worse part a
bout it? The dude she got engaged to? His last name is O’Reilly.

  O’Reilly is not a Jewish name!

  I took brooding to a whole new level. It became my project for the whole month of January; so much so that both my parents started to miss the days I would spend weekends at the synagogue or in my room practicing Hebrew verbs. I brooded and brooded and ignored my friends and blew off classes until finally my mom said, “Get over yourself,” and got me a cheap package deal to New Orleans for Mardi Gras for me and two friends. It was some leftover booking she’d done through her travel agency when a bunch of executives had decided to double their budget and stay at the Hilton rather than the cute little guesthouse originally booked. And they’d upgraded to first class so there were plane tickets and all.

  Mom said it was too good a deal to let just anyone have. But I think she just wanted to get me out of her hair.

  Omar and Buck were only too happy to ditch school and help break me out of my funk. Buck took magic mushrooms on the flight. Omar wore his Seahawks pajama bottoms, and almost had two Canadian girls convinced he was Kanye West. I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life.

  Like I said, the first two days of our stay in the Big Easy were mostly spent with me getting cruised by muscular guys with southern accents. Omar has done nothing but eat. Buck has spent the entire time high off his brain.

  Good times.

  “Holy shit,” Omar says, looking up at the Riverboat. “Look at all those girls.”

  I look up to the deck of the boat. There does seem to be a lot of girls. Like a disproportionate number. “Are you sure this is the right boat?”

  “Damn straight it’s the right boat,” Buck says. “Come on.”

  We head over to the gangplank. There’s a giant bouncer there and he does not look friendly. That doesn’t slow Buck down, though.

  “’Sup?” Buck says, trying to be cool. The bouncer looks at him like something he scraped off his shoe. “Uh, we’re meant to tell you that Phil the Pill invited us.”

  The bouncer sighs and opens the velvet rope for us.

  “Phil the Pill? For real?” I thought only TV drug dealers had cutesy names.

  “Whatever man, it got us in.”

  Omar disappears into a sea of barely dressed women as soon as we reach the deck. I turn to say something to Buck only to see him trailing off towards the open bar.

  And that’s that. They ditch me because ultimately, I’m not very fun to be around.

  I try to blend into the crowd, wandering around, hoping maybe I’ll find a cup of coffee. I have to basically swim through a sea of fake tan and tight satin to get anywhere. There’s a cloud of cheap perfume hanging over everything. And four different women step on my toes in their stiletto heels.

  Then it occurs to me – these girls are all hookers.

  I look around. Every guy here has at least two women hanging off him. They’re all laughing and flicking their hair and acting like the schmo they’re with is Superman when he’s really a skinny freaked-out-looking bag man for a meth dealer.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  Fuck this. I pull out my phone and open a text to both of them.

  I’m bailing. Headache. Might watch the parade later. See you back at the hotel.

  When I walk off the boat, just as the captain announces they’re about to set off on the river, it feels like the best decision I’ve made in months. Maybe it’s the only decision I’ve made in months.

  But then I’m just standing there on a nearly deserted pier feeling like a loser. Again.

  “All the action is up in the quarter, boss!” The big bouncer is winding up his velvet rope and posts and stowing them in the back of an SUV.

  “You’re not working on the cruise?” I ask.

  “No way, man. That’s a good way to bring some disease home. Jesus wouldn’t do that, would he?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I’m Jewish.”

  “So was Jesus. Want a ride back up to Bourbon Street?”

  I could accept a ride from him. I mean he’s kind of gigantic, but he’s a bouncer and a Jesus dude, so how dangerous could he be to me? It’s not like I’m being obnoxiously drunk in his bar. But then again, Bourbon Street was already crazy when we headed out to the restaurant. I’m sure it’s even more insane now.

  “I don’t know if I’m up for it. The whole Big Easy thing is starting to wear a little thin.”

  He hands me a roll of velvet rope and I tuck it into the car. “It can do that,” he says. “You want somewhere civilized to hang out? I have just the place. I work there some nights.” He fishes in his pockets and comes out with a glossy grey business card.

  “Objections?” I say, reading the card. The address is a street just at the edge of the French Quarter.

  “That’s right. It’s a hangout for legal types. Real tasteful and chill.”

  “I’m a law student.” I read the back of the card. Private drivers and discrete security available. And the big dude’s name. Thaddeus Hunter. Wicked name – like one of the Avengers. Makes my name, Levi Borovski, sound like the guy you call to fix your photocopier. “I mean I will be a law student. Next year. I’m in pre-law.”

  “Perfect! Lemme give you a ride and drop you there.” He tosses the last post into the back of the SUV and slams the door shut. “It’s the least I can do, nice Jewish boy like you.”

  As he opens the passenger side door for me and I climb in, he turns his head to the side. “Not to be weird or anything, but you go for girls or guys?”

  I sigh. “Girls. Sorry.”

  “No problem, boss. Just checking. You never know.” He pulls the car off the pier and onto the street. “You’re going to love Objections. It’s a real classy joint. Lots of pretty girls.”

  At this point, if they have a clean rest room and coffee that doesn’t taste like battery acid, it will be an improvement.

  Chapter Two - Charlotte

  I really don’t like it when the other girls use my eyelash curler. I mean, at the deepest level, I think what I really have a problem with is that I even have an eyelash curler. It’s a tool of my current trade though and I must remember that my current trade isn’t so bad most of the time. But it’s the little things. Every time I find my eyelash curler in someone else’s make-up kit, I have to take it into the bathroom and scrub it and disinfect it with rubbing alcohol, and that takes five minutes because I’m a little OCD, okay? I don’t want some skank’s eyelash cooties.

  Skank isn’t a word I should use. We’re “hostesses”. If the other “hostesses” are skanks, then I’m a skank. And I’m not a skank. I’m a sex-positive, independent young lady who enjoys making money off male lust. Not quite a prostitute. Not that desperate yet. A little more than a costumed cocktail waitress, though, which is the lie I tell my dad.

  “What kind of costume?” he says, because he forgets most of what I say to him in between visits to the group home.

  “Like that movie, Cabaret. You know? You like that one. With Liza Minnelli?”

  “You dress as Liza Minnelli? Like in Arthur?”

  “Not that movie, though, Dad. Cabaret. It’s a musical.”

  “You sing?”

  Maybe I just make him a grilled cheese sandwich at that point because really, how can I tell my alcohol brain-damaged father that I’m a lap dancer without it being the most heartbreaking conversation in the history of daughter-hood?

  It could be worse. That’s what I remind myself as I scrub my eyelash curler for the third time this week.

  “What’s the crowd look like, Charlotte?” Barbie says. Barbie has giant natural boobs and gets hella tips because of it. None of the girls at Objections are allowed to have fake tits so Barbie is sort of a draw. I’m not super stacked but I make the most of push-up bras and such. There’s no topless here. That’s tacky, says our boss, Jack. Fake tits are tacky. Topless is tacky. Apparently grinding my ass against some douchebag’s crotch is not tacky, but whatever. Our clientele cross their eyes trying not to jizz i
n their expensive designer suit pants.

  So not tacky.

  “It’s okay,” I say to Barbie about the crowd. “Not packed. Not empty. Our type doesn’t really go in for the parades anyway.” Our type is mostly lawyers from the nearby financial district. They spend the day wheeling and dealing, taking giant cuts of businesses lured back to post-Katrina New Orleans with subsidies and tax breaks, then come to Objections to unwind. And unload some of their money on me and my grinding ass.

  On a good night I bring home two fifty in tips. That just about pays for a month of my dad’s medication. Another night pays my student loan bill. Four nights pays my rent. Five nights pays my dad’s rent at the care home. I can usually squeeze a car payment out of one customer because I drive a ten-year-old Mazda. If I want to eat well that month, I need to do a bachelor party of some kind. If I want the lights and WiFi on while I eat, I need to entertain a couple of old judges. Waxing and nails is a lunch shift – less grinding and more upselling the cocktails. If I have to bail Dad out again, I need a gazillionaire showing off for his fakey friends. And so on.

  I dry my eyelash curler with toilet paper and go back to the dressing room. All tonight’s girls are there. Barbie with her giant hooters is holding court, telling a funny story about her three-year-old son. The other three girls—Felicity, who rubs sparkly moisturizer on her toned brown arms as she listens, Claire, who has her hair in sponge curlers like some 1950s housewife, and Louise, who is drawing an eye of Isis on her belly button—listen in rapt silence.

  “…and he swore that he found it that way!” Barbie says, laughing so hard that tears are ruining her mascara. “Like chocolate frosting just magically got on his toothbrush!”

  I have to smile too, as I finish my make-up. Barbie’s son sounds like a proper hell-raiser. Makes me want to double up on my birth control pills tonight.

  I brush my hair. Jack keeps telling me I should curl it or something, but I prefer the kind of natural look. Dark-brown, soft bangs, just hanging loose. I think it makes me look young and wholesome. I shake off my kimono and take in the whole package in the full-length mirror.