Satan's Sisters

by Star Jones

  “Maybe this might be a good time to introduce them to me,” Rain said.

  Her statement just sat there for several seconds. Dara didn’t expect it, but now that it was out there she had no idea what to do about it. She didn’t want to get into a tiff with Rain over this issue yet again, but she knew that she couldn’t keep avoiding it.

  “You’re not going to say anything? Like ‘Great idea,’ or ‘Shut up, bitch’? Nothing, huh?” Rain said.

  Dara turned to her. “What if this is some kind of blind date? Do you think that would be the best time to introduce you to my family?”

  Rain shrugged. “Listen, Dara, no time is going to be easy. Believe me, I know. I put off telling my parents for like three years, and then they happened to stumble across one of my stand-up routines where I’m talking about being a lesbian. It was horrible. So I’m just trying to help you here. It’s going to hit the papers any minute, girl, and you know it. And now you got this crazy bitch, Missy Adams, and her fuckin’ book to worry about. Let’s just go up there and get it all out in the open. I promise, I’ll charm their fuckin’ socks off!”

  Dara shook her head in frustration. She knew this issue wasn’t going anywhere; it was only going to get worse. She wished there was someone she could call, a wise mentor or something, who could tell her what to do.

  “Listen,” Rain said. Dara turned to look at her. Rain’s expression was as serious as Dara had ever seen it. She might play the joker most of the time, but this was not the joker in front of her. This was a subject that Rain took very seriously. “You have to get out in front of this, baby. You have to,” Rain continued. “Too many celebrities get trapped in this little box that you’re in, hiding, denying, scared to death that somebody, somewhere, is going to out them. It’s a horrible way to live. I love you too much, and you are too important to me, to let you close yourself in the box.”

  Dara could see the tears starting to form in Rain’s eyes. She felt herself growing more tender in her feelings for this woman. She knew her own tears would be coming in a matter of seconds. How could something as powerful as this, feelings as strong as these, be considered wrong by anybody?

  “You have to be the author of the only dictionary that defines you. You can’t allow anyone else to write that definition because when it changes—and believe me it always does—you won’t know who you are. If we tell your parents now, it would be the first big step in you taking control of this issue. Doing it your way,” Rain said, then added, more softly, “Our way.”

  Maybe Rain was right—maybe it was time to get it over with. She looked up and smiled at Rain. The passionate closing argument had won over the jury. “Okay, if I agree to do this, can you at least promise me that you won’t use the word ‘fuck’?”

  Rain broke into a grin. “Oh shit, is that a yes?”

  “And you can’t use the word ‘shit’ either!” Dara said, giggling and pointing a finger in Rain’s face.

  “Fuck! Shit! You are basically rendering me mute then,” Rain said.

  Dara pointed her finger again. “Promise me, Rain.”

  Rain put her hand on her chest. “I promise, I promise.” Rain shook her head. “Is this really going to happen? I’m in shock. Dara, this is wonderful!”

  Dara lifted her hands and covered her eyes, shaking her head at the same time. She was pleased that Rain was so happy, but Dara was scared to death.

  “WOULD YOU LOOK AT the hair on that one over there, the one in the green dress!” Garrett pointed to a woman on the edge of the dance floor. “That bitch looks like she got into a fight with a pair of hedge clippers! And it’s clear that she didn’t win!”

  Molly giggled and smacked Garrett on his arm. “You asshole! How come you always make fun of the women and not the men? I swear, you queens are more sexist than the Irish men I grew up with!”

  “Can I help it if these sluts are such a mess?” Garrett said, sweeping his hand across the width of the club. After ditching the almost-empty club, the Box, they were snuggled in a corner of Excess, a hot new club downtown in the Meatpacking District, a fabulously decadent space created out of the guts of an old decrepit warehouse. Like snipers, they moved their gaze across the dance floor, aiming their brutal wit at one poor clueless target after another. It was their favorite pastime, something that Molly thoroughly enjoyed because it kept her comic sensibilities sharp—and the bitchy Garrett was one of the funniest men she knew. As she told him on a weekly basis, he could make a killing on the stand-up circuit. But he was a hairdresser—he’d told her he had looked around for the most stereotypically gay profession he could find, but all the interior decorator jobs were taken—and made a ton of money at his Upper East Side salon attending to the locks and the fragile psyches of Manhattan’s wealthy ladies who lunch.

  Molly’s night with Garrett was doing just the trick, taking her mind off her disastrous weekend with Roger. She had studiously avoided Dara before and after the show that morning, even though Dara was obviously desperate to pull her aside. Molly had hired her own limo and fled Atlantic City at the crack of dawn. She had called Rain and left a message on her cell, letting them know she was still alive but was eager to get back home—Molly knew Rain turned off her phone when she went to sleep. She and Garrett had downed a large, decadent portion of Gnudi with Brown Butter & Sage at the Spotted Pig, their favorite restaurant in the West Village. Sometimes she’d meet Garrett there in the middle of the night—the Spotted Pig stayed open until two a.m.—and she’d try some new adventurous delight. Garrett loved the place because they sometimes had special dishes with names like Gentleman’s Relish with Boiled Egg Salad, and Pork Belly Faggot with Risotto, which Garrett would order even if it wasn’t on the menu, giggling the whole time.

  “Okay, look at that guy over there,” Molly said, pointing to a tall, skinny guy in leather pants on the dance floor whose shirt was unbuttoned all the way down to his navel. “Isn’t he the worst dancer you’ve ever seen?”

  “My God, he looks like he’s in the middle of an epileptic seizure!” Garrett said.

  “That’s an insult to epileptics. Even one in the middle of a seizure has more rhythm than that,” Molly said.

  “I swear, like I always say, they ought to require that white people get a license or something before they allow us on a dance floor!” Garrett said. “That would save a lot of people from injury.”

  “And from embarrassment!” Molly added.

  Garrett shook his head. “I don’t understand how that guy cannot see how pathetic he is. He probably can’t fuck to save his life.”

  “In your exhaustive research, have you determined that there is in fact a correlation between dancing ability and skill in bed?” Molly said. “So what would that be saying, only like ten percent of the white population knows how to fuck?”

  “First of all, why you gotta call me a ho, talking about my exhaustive research?” Garrett said. “Just because, unlike you, I’ve actually encountered a dick in the new millennium, doesn’t make me a ho. I think my eighty-four-year-old grandmother probably gets more dick than you! And second of all, I know that guys who can dance are usually great in bed. But that’s not saying the opposite is true, that if you’re a lousy dancer then you’re lousy in bed.”

  Molly was silent for a moment. The line about Garrett’s grandmother struck a nerve, especially considering what had just happened to her in Atlantic City. For a second, she considered telling Garrett the whole story, about how she had been so close to actually having sex—but in the end went all psycho on the guy. No, it was too embarrassing a revelation. Maybe she could tell Garrett about it one day, but it would be a while before that sore healed over. And with the TMZ clip, she had already had enough embarrassment for one day.

  “Oh my God!” Garrett said. “Isn’t that one of the Real Housewives of New York over there, walking in like she owns the place? What the hell is she doing down here? Hilarious. And I always thought you needed to own a home and actually be a wife to be a real hou
sewife. Oh well.”

  “Oooh, look at that slut over there!” Molly said, pointing to the edge of the dance floor.

  Garrett turned to see what Molly was pointing at. Truly, there was a woman on the dance floor wearing a miniskirt so transparent that they were looking straight at her ass in a thong. And she wasn’t shy about displaying it, either, sticking out her ass while she bent over at the waist. Apparently, she was supposed to be dancing.

  “My God, what is that woman thinking?” Molly said. “I can’t even make a joke. I just want to bring her home and make her go to her room.”

  “You sound like somebody’s mother, Molly,” Garrett said, suddenly sounding angry. “You can’t come down here to the Meatpacking District carrying some bullshit morality with you. Yeah, it’s clear that she’s a dumb skanky trick, but if you want to be passing judgment, you need to take that back uptown. Especially after you were just flashing your tits on the Turnpike. You’re a hypocrite.”

  Molly looked closely at Garrett, to see if he was serious with the tongue-lashing. But he had his head turned away, acting like he was sulking.

  “Garrett! Are you serious?”

  He turned to her with a naughty giggle. “Of course I’m not serious, you crazy broad!”

  Molly laughed along with him, but she realized that maybe Garrett was right—she probably did belong back uptown. Under no circumstances was she ever going to be able to see a young woman wearing a thong and see-through skirt in public and think that it was okay, no matter how many times she came to these clubs with Garrett. But though she started to feel like maybe she should call it a night—after all, she did have a show to do in the morning—she was happy that she had made Garrett take her out. It had been three days since she had downed one of her pills. She wasn’t going to lie—at times she had desperately craved them, but she had shown more strength than she realized she had. Maybe this was the start of something. Maybe she would be able to beat this pill problem on her own, without the need for any further intervention.

  “Garrett, I think it’s time for me to call it a night,” she said.

  “WHEN WAS THE LAST time this happened?” Whitney said, holding aloft a copy of the New York Post. “When was the last time we had two of us in the gossip pages on the same day? And I thought we were some old corny broads!”

  Everybody except Molly and Shelly was in makeup, discussing the items in the newspaper. They were especially enjoying the story on Shelly. Apparently, Miss Carter was with a group of rowdies at another downtown club and they ran into some sort of conflict with other folks there. A fight ensued. One guy wound up in the hospital and two guys were led away in handcuffs. While the Post took pains to point out that Shelly was not involved in the fight, according to the eyewitnesses, she was definitely a member of the rowdier group.

  “Shelly’s little rapper friends are gonna get her in trouble,” Dara said. “She’s not some crazy supermodel diva anymore.”

  “What I want to know is, doesn’t anybody here have a job anymore?” Whitney said. “Since when are we hitting the clubs on a Monday night? Is that like the new hot club night and I missed the memo?”

  “Whitney, if it was a memo about hot clubs, I think you got crossed off the list about twenty-five years ago,” Maxine said from the corner of the room. The ladies all responded with enthusiastic laughter, even joined by Whitney herself, who couldn’t disagree with Maxine.

  “But what about this picture of Molly and her friend Garrett?” Maxine asked. “It says here that Molly McCarthy Stein was seen at Excess with her boyfriend, Garrett Carson. When did her ‘walker’ become her boyfriend?” Maxine was snickering, but everyone in the room knew that Maxine had more than a few “walkers” of her own. “Garrett is so flaming, he’s like a burning bush,” Maxine said. “And speaking of Molly, what the hell was she thinking, flashing drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike? I heard she was maybe on that god-awful show, TMZ, and they had video of somebody who they claimed looked like Molly, flashing her tits through the window of a limo. The face was kind of obscured. I don’t believe that was really her, though. Not even Molly would be that stupid.”

  “They had video of that?” Dara said. To anyone paying attention, Dara’s voice would have sounded suspiciously high and uncomfortable. But no one was paying attention.

  Just then, Shelly breezed into the room, looking as refreshed and chipper as if she had just had a spa treatment. “Oh, I see we’re getting a little giggle from the gossip columns,” Shelly said, observing the reading material around the room. But Shelly didn’t appear to be very upset. Anytime she was written up in the gossip columns, it just confirmed her status as an object of fascination. When she was ripping the runways, Shelly used to celebrate when she saw her name in boldface. Now she was used to it, but she still got a thrill out of it, even when it was something stupid like a fistfight.

  “That was so dumb, I can’t believe it even made the papers,” she said. “Some drunk asshole spilled some of his drink on my girl LaDashah. The guy she was with told the drunk that he needed to apologize, the drunk’s friend stuck his nose in it and said something to LaDashah’s friend, then some other guy said something back to him, next thing I know these guys are actually swinging at each other. Me and LaDashah actually left before the police came. I didn’t even realize somebody got arrested. I think the police actually arrested the guy who started it all, the drunk who spilled the drink. But it was all kinda stupid.”

  “LaDashah? Is that the one with the crazy spelling to her name?” Maxine asked.

  Shelly rolled her eyes. Maxine knew the answer to that question. She had met LaDashah on several occasions and knew exactly who she was. The purpose of the question was to try to humiliate Shelly by calling attention to her ghetto friends.

  “Yes, Maxine, that would be her,” Shelly said.

  “Wait, how does she spell her name?” Whitney asked.

  Dara was the one who answered, saving Shelly the trouble.

  “It’s spelled, L-A, and then a dash, and then A-H,” Dara said. “So you pronounce the middle part like D-A-S-H, but those letters aren’t actually spelled out in the name. Instead, you just use a dash.”

  “Wait, let me get this straight,” Whitney said, stifling a laugh. “Instead of letters, this woman uses punctuation? Is that legal?”

  The ladies around the room all tried to stifle their snickers, but they weren’t successful. Shelly had heard all the jokes about her friend’s name. Yes, it was unbelievably ghetto, nonsensical, and ridiculous. But La—ah was her friend, and she wasn’t going to tolerate people making fun of her girl. Besides, the name was extremely memorable.

  “LaDashah is one of the most level-headed, logical women I know,” Shelly said. “If I were ever in some kind of trouble, I’d want LaDashah to have my back every time. She may not have gone to Harvard or Columbia”—Shelly shot a glance in the direction of Dara, who had gone to Columbia Law School and medical school—“but the chick is smart as hell. And I’ll tell you something else: once you hear her name, you never forget it.”

  “Well, that’s for sure,” Maxine said, already bored with the conversation about some ghetto bunny with a tacky name. The thought that someone would name his or her child La—ah on purpose was foreign to Maxine. No wonder some black people would never get ahead, she thought, just a bunch of “postslavery syndrome” suffering fools.

  At that moment, Molly appeared at the doorway. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes were sporting heavy bags underneath, and she looked like she was in some sort of daze. The ladies all were inclined to laugh at her, but they were not sure laughter was appropriate. Molly had had some rough days of late.

  “I know I look like shit,” Molly said, trudging toward an empty chair and collapsing. “You can go ahead and laugh.”

  The ladies did exactly that, filling the room with laughter. Molly even laughed at herself. She then proceeded to give the ladies a blow-by-blow recounting of her evening, including Garrett’s efforts to ensure t
hat their picture was taken by the paparazzi and how he made sure the photographer spelled his name right.

  “Was it Garrett’s idea to describe himself as your boyfriend?” Maxine asked.

  “Ew, is that what it says?” Molly said. “Garrett called me this morning, so excited that we had made the paper. He didn’t tell me the Post had turned him straight and me into an official fag hag!”

  DURING THE POSTSHOW BRIEFING, word flew around the room that Maxine was throwing a huge bash at her place on Saturday night.

  “Maxine, I didn’t get my invitation yet,” Shelly said.

  Maxine was expecting to be confronted by Shelly about the party. Shelly could sniff out another step on her career ladder like an NBA star locating a blond hoochie.

  “But it’s a couples night, Shelly,” Maxine said, in a bald-faced lie. “Who would you bring, for heaven’s sakes—Fifty Cent?” The thought of one of Shelly’s tacky homeboys in her home made Maxine shudder. If she was going to hang in that world, the least she could do was pick someone like Russell Simmons. Now, he had money, status, and entrée to everything. Hmmm, I gotta put that one in the yellow book when I get a chance, Maxine thought.

  Around the room, people—particularly the producers, including Josh Howe, who decided to sit in on this meeting—started staring at their watches or cell phones, pretending they weren’t hearing this wicked exchange.

  “She could bring me. We could go together,” said Whitney. Whitney had discovered that Riley had been invited to the party. Eric was still out of town, so Whitney was a free agent. She enjoyed private visions of slipping off into a closet or spare bedroom and getting nasty with Riley while his wife sat by herself, bored and not happy about it. She was surprised that the element of danger was so thrilling. When she had begun the affair with Riley, the idea of getting caught mortified her. Now it kind of turned her on. Who knew she was such a freak?