Beth got fat that year. She stopped exercising and she didn’t know how to cook. Whenever I cooked, she had already called for takeout. She didn’t eat at her restaurant because pizza was fattening, so she ordered from the Chinese food place, the Indian place, the Thai place, and the Korean deli down the street from our apartment where everything tasted like Korean food, including the buttered rolls and the brownies.
Beth and I got very comfortable in that apartment. I tried to keep up decorum but she really let it all hang out. By the end of the first week she was walking around in T-shirts and underwear. I had to ask her to put pants on if anyone was stopping by. I still couldn’t be sure she was going to. She left clumps of her hair on the walls of the shower. She left tampons bleeding through wads of toilet paper on top of the garbage. She never washed her dishes. We had cockroaches and she didn’t care. She talked to them. Like, “You little cocksuckers are getting big. You like that fucking pizza, huh.” It was like living with a much grosser but much nicer version of my sister. Or of Tiffany. Or really, a grosser but nicer version of any other girl. Beth gave me a hard time, for sure. But she also wanted to talk to me every day. She brought me pizzas. She watched basketball with me.
So I missed her when I moved to New York. We tried to keep in touch, but she said she was too busy to come to the city. I was too busy to go back down there. We were supposed to celebrate twenty-four together in August. We have the exact same birthday. But when she got to my apartment and I wasn’t home, she had a panic attack and drove back to Pennsylvania. My sister was the one who invited her because she said I was lonely. They wanted it to be a surprise. It wasn’t, because they kept asking me for each other’s phone numbers. Then the real surprise was that Beth didn’t show up.
Several weeks later Beth said she was coming to the city to see me. Then she said if I wanted to see her I could meet her and her friend Marnie to go salsa dancing. I did want to see her but not for the price of going salsa dancing. She said she was going to go anyway. I asked her why she told me she was coming to see me if she was really coming to see Marnie. She said I was being a little bitch. She said she knew it wasn’t my fault that I was so sensitive but it pissed her off.
I wanted Beth to come see me because I didn’t know anyone else. A couple of guys from college worked downtown. I had drinks with them when I first got here. But they weren’t close friends and they were hard to track down. Kelly wouldn’t let me hang out with her friends. She was still mad that I slept with her best friend in high school. This girl was unbelievably hot. I never would have gotten to sleep with her if she hadn’t been at my house every day of her life, and then decided to let me take care of her when she was drunk and on a shit-ton of mushrooms at a graduation party. The next night she came over to say thank you and that I was the nicest guy ever. And by thank you I mean she let me have sex with her then and several other times that summer. And that is called karma.
So Kelly made it clear that her friends were not my friends. Also because of Kelly, the women in my office thought I was gay, but apparently not the fun kind of gay. Kelly got me a purple shirt to wear on the first day. She knew I would think it was blue because I can’t see reds. It never occurred to me that she would do that again. The last time was in high school. She knit me a yellow hat that turned out to be pink. When I got mad at her about the purple shirt she said it didn’t matter what color shirt I wore. Everyone knew that all men in development were gay and all women in development were straight. Except for on the finance side, and then the women were also gay. In any case, my coworkers kept to themselves. I spent most of my free time with my sister’s dog, Muscle. Other than that I was all alone in the big city. Each night, as I lay under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, under the polluted moon, I wept out of loneliness. Ha. Just kidding. But I was really fucking bored.
A month after Beth said she was coming to see me and then didn’t, she called. She said she felt bad about the birthday not-surprise and about the salsa dancing, and she was going to visit me for real. I told her I wasn’t going to hold my breath in case she couldn’t find a parking spot on my street and just kept driving until she got to Canada. She said very funny. She was coming Saturday.
On Saturday morning I made omelets for me and Kelly. Kelly fed half of hers to Muscle. Muscle was a Pomeranian. Kelly shaved him in the summer and it actually did look like he had muscles. But now he had long hair and Kelly called him Pammy because she said he didn’t have a penis in the winter. I preferred to call him Pammy year-round because Muscle was a stupid name for a dog. He was very cute and I loved him. He wasn’t mean like small dogs are mean. He would just sit and keep you company while you were watching TV or eating dinner or taking a crap or whatever. At night he liked to sleep between Kelly’s side and her arm, with his head on her shoulder. When Kelly was out he slept between my side and my arm. He loved to be under the covers except for his head. A tiny, very hairy, yellow person.
• • •
Beth called to say that she would be there at one. She got there at twelve forty. Beth had a lead foot. She drove sixty miles an hour in towns, and ninety on the highways. She drove with her left leg up on the dashboard, her left hand holding a cigarette and resting on the steering wheel. It always seemed likely that I was going to die when I drove with her. One time in particular she was driving seventy through town, on a road full of potholes, and the car sounded like it was losing big pieces. I was absolutely certain I was going to die. She called me a pussy for holding on to the door.
I let Beth in and she gave me a big hug and said, “I love those slippers more and more every day.” My mom gave me these shearling slippers when Tiffany broke up with me and I was spending a lot of time in my dorm room. Now they were full of holes. It felt good to see Beth.
Since I hadn’t known if she was going to show up, I hadn’t made any plans. Now I was thinking we could take a long walk with Pammy. Talk about life and internet dating. Get sandwiches and eat in the park. Watch a game and cook something healthy, something that Beth could learn from without me explicitly teaching her. I tried to do that when we lived together, to indeterminate effect. When I moved out I thought I’d be glad not to have to take care of her. Now I kind of missed it. At least she showed some appreciation. My sister showed none.
“What should we do?” I asked Beth, thinking she would say, “Whatever you want.”
“Shopping!” she said. I had never known Beth to want to go shopping before. Fine, I could do shopping. Beth said she wanted jeans and stuff for yoga and a perfume sample for a girl she worked with. Kelly said she couldn’t come because she had work to do, but she made a list of stores for us to go to in SoHo. When we left she was taking turns putting coats of paint on her nails and her dog’s nails.
“I think nail polish is toxic for dogs,” said Beth.
“This is dog nail polish,” said Kelly. It was yellow and Pammy was licking it.
“What do you two want to do for dinner?” I said.
“Something free,” said Kelly.
“What, I buy you dinner?” I said.
“Oh would you?” She smiled.
“Let’s cook here,” I said.
“Sure,” said Beth.
“You know what I feel like? Diner-style grilled cheese and french fries and root beer,” said Kelly. So much for teaching Beth how to make something healthy.
“Fine with me,” I said. “Beth?”
“Sure.”
• • •
On the way to the subway Beth and I went into a store with crafts and stuff. I tried to wait outside but Beth wanted to try on all the jewelry and have me tell her how it looked. I thought all the jewelry looked the same. The crafts looked like stuff that Kelly’s friends made, maybe worse.
Beth bought a ring. We looked in a junk shop next to the subway station and then got on the train. We sat down next to a deaf couple who were signing to each other and laughing hysterically.
“What’s been going on?” said Beth.
/> “Not much,” I said. “Work, bad dates, work.”
“Bad dates,” she said. “There’s no way your dates are as bad as my dates.” She told me about this guy who was a regular at the restaurant. He turned out to be married with kids but took his wedding ring off when he went there to eat lunch. She said she didn’t like being the other woman but she couldn’t stop. Before that there was another guy. Her age, but a socially conservative Republican. They couldn’t talk to each other about anything but they also didn’t need to. They were always having sex. Then it turned out that he was not actually her age. He was still in college. He was the head of the campus conservatives, a group that we had not taken seriously when we went there.
Back when we lived together I would have given her a lecture about both of these guys. Now I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like the lectures had worked. All of Beth’s lovers were basically the same. Good in bed but deeply morally flawed. In college she had been less discriminating, but she had developed this particular taste in the last four years. It seemed like she thought good men and good sex were mutually exclusive. They probably had been back in college. Good guys didn’t know what they were doing, and bad guys did. I didn’t do an anthropological study on this or anything. But I know that I thought I knew what I was doing and I definitely didn’t. The one nice thing that Tiffany did for me was to tell me that I didn’t know what I was doing, although I have never been more ashamed in my life. And obviously I didn’t improve quickly enough to not get cheated on. But Tiffany taught me that you have to assume you know nothing. I do think that makes me better in bed. At least less arrogant. Basically this is the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever thought about.
I didn’t want to talk to Beth about sex, but I did want to tell her about the girls I had been meeting on the internet. I wanted to ask her if she thought I had tried hard enough and could give up. I had been on eleven first dates and two second dates. I had sex with two of the first-date girls. The first girl I wouldn’t have slept with, except her grandma died between when we were e-mailing and when we got together. When she halfheartedly suggested we go back to her place, I felt like I should take her up on it. I pretended I was really into it. There wasn’t anything wrong with her. But nothing made me feel drawn to her, other than how cheerful she was trying to be despite obviously being so sad. It ended up being very high energy, very good sex. But we both understood that that was that. The second girl I had higher hopes for. The sex was good in a more routine way, but I think she dated a lot. My friends might have called her a slut, but I didn’t have any friends. And when I was in high school my mom sat me down to talk about the word “slut” and to give me a general lecture about how to make her proud despite my being a man.
That girl never called me back. But before I could talk to Beth about any of this, we got to SoHo.
Beth wanted to go to the jeans store first. She tried on about a hundred pairs. She didn’t like the way any of them looked because she was still a little bit fat.
“This brand does not fit well at all,” she said. “Maybe they fit Kelly but she’s a lot shorter than me.”
Because Beth was thin and then fat and now almost thin again, it was like she didn’t remember being fat. She didn’t even act fat when she was fat. When we were living together she found out she had high cholesterol and said, “But I thought that was for fat people.”
We left the store and walked down Greene Street. Beth grabbed my arm and took a couple of bouncy steps.
“If I lived in New York, I would live in SoHo,” she said.
“Oh really,” I said. “Do you even know how much apartments here are?”
“They’re expensive, huh?”
“They’re like four grand for a hundred square feet.” Sometimes Beth seemed to know nothing about how the world worked.
“Well I like it here, it’s my favorite neighborhood.”
“What other neighborhoods have you been to?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t even walk down the sidewalk, there are so many people. I like my neighborhood.”
“I like your neighborhood too. Calm down. I don’t not like your neighborhood. I just like this neighborhood too.”
“Fine,” I said. “Live here when you move to the city.”
“Maybe I will,” she said.
The sporting goods store didn’t really have any sporting goods. Unless you think stretchy clothes that cost more than a nice steak and a bottle of wine are sporting goods.
I looked at the men’s clothes. When I got to the back of the store Beth was freaking out about some underwear. The girl who was helping her was looking through a rack of bras and Beth was jumping up and down.
“These bras and shorts are special for hot yoga,” she said.
“Those are shorts?”
“Oh my god, I’m so excited.” She took a bunch of things back to the dressing room.
I sat in the most comfortable chair ever.
“What kind of chair is this?” I asked a different girl, who was putting hangers on clothes at a table.
“What?” When she turned around I realized she was gorgeous. She had huge blue eyes and she was tiny. She looked like a little elf but without pointy ears and with a really nice body. The stretchy clothes fit her like a dream.
“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What kind of chair is it? Do you want me to find out?” She had a killer smile, her teeth were perfect.
“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t need a chair.” I smiled at her.
“Jason?” said Beth. “Do you want to see this stuff or not?”
“Uh,” I said.
“I love love love this stuff.” She opened the dressing room door and came out wearing a bra and the so-called shorts.
“Please tell me you don’t go to yoga like that,” I said.
Beth’s hair was coming out of the sides of the underwear. There was a lot of it. Once we reached the point where no amount of information was too much information, except any information about me having sex with Tiffany, Beth told me that the place she went to get waxed charged her extra. I mean I used to see her in underwear all the time. But now it was at eye level. It was not a good surprise. And it caused some involuntary stirring, which made everything worse.
“Of course I do.” She stuck her tongue out and let it hang there. She turned around and went back into the room.
“Tell your girlfriend I’ll be right back if she needs another size,” said the beautiful elf.
I started to say, “She’s not my girlfriend,” but only got as far as “Sh—”
“Thanks!” Beth said through the door.
Beth came out. Another girl came over to take the things she didn’t want. Beth handed her everything.
“What are you getting?” I said.
“I don’t think anything,” said Beth.
“What? Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, I just don’t want to get anything.”
“Okay,” I said. On the way out I smiled at the elf. Beth rolled her eyes and said it was lame how I hit on her by asking about the chair.
“I wasn’t hitting on her,” I said.
“Oh please, Jason. I would recognize your lame moves through a brick wall.”
“I swear. I didn’t even see that she was hot until after I said the thing about the chair.”
“Whatever,” said Beth.
“Where do you want to go next?” I said.
“I think I’m fucking getting my period,” she said. “I need a cupcake or something.”
We went to a gourmet store where I once accidentally got a cup of yogurt and granola for eleven dollars before an interview.
“I think I want a cookie,” I said.
“Me too,” she said.
We decided to split one peanut butter and one ginger. After we paid we stood at the counter eating them. The peanut butter cookie was crunchy.
“Damn,” I said. “It looked like it was going to be soft.”
Beth took a bite of hers and chewed carefully. “It’s probably old.”
“What? Why would it be old?”
“Because it’s crunchy.”
“Crunchy cookies can be not old,” I said.
“I don’t think so,” said Beth. “No.”
• • •
Next we went to some special store that only had one kind of perfume. Beth’s friend ordered a sample and it never came, so Beth wanted to get it for her.
The girl handed Beth a tiny vial, and Beth said, “It’s fifteen dollars, right?”
“Wait, what?” I said.
“It’s complimentary,” said the girl.
“Oh my god, really?” said Beth. “Thank you so much.”
“Sure,” said the girl. “Have a good day.”
We left and Beth put the sample in her bag.
“Tell me you weren’t just going to pay fifteen dollars for that,” I said.
“Yeah I was,” said Beth.
“Beth, come on. They give those out at every store. Kelly has like a hundred in the bathroom.”
“I know, but this one was supposed to be fifteen dollars, Camille said so.”
“There’s no way,” I said. “Come on, please be smart about this stuff.”
“Well Camille really wanted it,” said Beth. “She waited for it to come in the mail for a month.”
Beth was really killing me. I couldn’t even look at her on the way to the grocery store. She didn’t notice. We had had moments like this before. But today I felt really out of patience and I didn’t know why. I was supposed to be Mr. Patient. I would wait for you to stop cheating on me for years and years if you needed me to. That’s how fucking patient I am. When we got to the grocery store Beth said she wasn’t that hungry, and I wasn’t really either.
Barbara the Slut and Other People Page 3