Little Black Dresses, Little White Lies

by Laura Stampler

  I try to figure out my next move. Ben said guys are easy. Just ask what time it is. Or for directions. I can do this.

  But as soon as I go up to a group of guys asking them for the time, one of them brings up the very good point, “Aren’t you holding your iPhone? Can’t you look at that?”

  Rude, but accurate. Definitely won’t be asking him for directions.

  But when I ask the next guy how to get to the nearest Starbucks, it turns out he only speaks something that might be Russian.

  What was Ben thinking? What was I thinking? I can’t do this and I don’t know why I ever thought I could. No matter the city, I’m still the same girl.

  “Sorry if I’m interrupting, but I couldn’t help noticing that you look lost.” The guy who makes this assertion is very skinny, with perfect teeth but an otherwise messy vibe.

  “Um, kind of,” I say, as I jam my phone back in my purse. He has long hair, a flowing linen shirt, and a hemp necklace with a small Vishnu pendant hanging from it. More of a hippy, granola vibe than I’m used to, but I can work with this.

  “I was lost once.”

  Well, that’s certainly a strange thing for him to say. But considering my day, I let it slide.

  Hippie Hottie’s eyes light up when I ask not for directions but about his Vishnu necklace. He’s impressed that I know the four-armed Hindu god’s name.

  “That’s just one of the many perks of being an East Asian history professor’s daughter,” I say.

  Hippie Hottie asks if I want to hang out with him for a while. I shrug and follow behind.

  Oh my God. This is happening.

  We walk toward the south side of the park, past a group of people with shaved heads and orange robes, and sit. Their chanting and tambourines punctuate our conversation. Seeing my plastic bag from the Strand, he asks me what book I got and volunteers that he just finished the Bhagavad Gita (yes, he reads!), which helped him get in touch with the universe and his spirituality.

  “Actually, do you want to borrow my copy?” he asks, pulling it out of his hemp backpack.

  “Sure?” I lower my eyes and then bravely ask, “But how would I get it back to you?” I feel so obvious and cheesy, but he hasn’t asked for my number yet.

  “I’m here every Saturday and at Tompkins Square Park in Alphabet City on Sundays. This group I’m in gives out food to the homeless. If you’re free, you should join in. We’re very welcoming.”

  And like that, Hippie Hottie transforms into Hippie Hottie with a Heart of Gold. He asks, “Are you doing anything now? Want to maybe meet my friends?”

  “Sure!” Is this going well? Could this guy turn into more than a bullet point in a listicle?

  He picks up his hemp backpack, eyes sparkling, and leads me toward . . . no. Nonononono. Why is he walking toward the people with shaved heads and orange robes who keep singing “Hare Krishna” over and over as they bang on their tambourines?

  The only guy who wants to talk to me is in a freaking cult.

  Awesome.

  Hare Krishna Hottie doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.

  * * *

  “You flirted with a guy in a cult?” Kristina asks as soon as I book it out of Union Square and give her a call.

  “Is that the kind of vibe I give off?” I ask. “Guys only want to talk to me to meet their cult-recruitment quota?”

  “You did like Kool-Aid a lot in elementary school.”

  “You’re evil!” I bury my head in my hands, which obscures my moaning, “What am I supposed to write my blog on now?”

  “You have plenty of material,” Kristina replies as if it’s easy as pie. “Your problem wasn’t in the methodology, just the execution. Just say it worked.”

  “But it didn’t work!”

  “Say it worked. No one will ever know.”

  I take out my yellow notebook and start brainstorming different approach tactics with Kristina, going over what I did and how I could have executed better, until we have a satisfactory, odd-numbered list. A list about how I calmly and expertly picked up guys.

  A little white lie never hurt anyone.

  7 STEPS TO PICKING UP A GUY

  Good things come to those who don’t wait.

  After last week’s ode to flings, some readers tweeted some very practical questions, namely: How exactly do you go about acquiring a summer fling or three? How do you get a guy to approach? My answer is, this isn’t the 1950s—don’t wait for some dude to tell you that you have “really beautiful eyes” (or some other pickup cliché)! Here are some tried-and-true tactics on how to effectively make the first move and get your summer love on:

  Play pump-up music before you head out on the prowl. There’s nothing like blasting some T-Swift to get you in the zone.

  Let yourself get caught checking him out. Don’t turn away when he catches you making eyes (or burst into a hungry smile like you’re about to eat him whole). Rather, you can confidently walk over to him and say, “I couldn’t help notice that you were looking my way.” Turning the tables will keep him on his toes.

  Bump into him. Literally. Being clumsy can be cute, or so I keep telling myself. If you throw in a line like, “Cute guys always make me lose my balance,” then he’ll know you’re interested. (Note: Try to be clumsy gracefully. The only thing you should break here is his heart.)

  Talk books. Go to a bookstore and ask the guy browsing next to you if he has recommendations. You might nab a reader (hot) and a new addition for your summer reading list.

  Ask a cute stranger what time it is. Or for directions. Or for whatever. Once he helps you out, ask if you can buy him an iced coffee as a thank-you. (Pro tip: Make sure you leave your fully functional iPhone inside your bag for this one.)

  Get involved. Seek out someone doing an activity—volunteering, playing in a park soccer league, handing out flyers—and ask about it. (Just don’t end up joining any cults.)

  If you feel awkward, fake it. Fake it till you feel it. Confidence can be contagious, even if it’s only pretend at first.

  Carpe that Effing Diem!

  Harper

  12

  AFTER MY BLOG POST GOES up, I keep waiting for someone to call me out. I had a nightmare that someone posted a Vine of me (literally) crashing and (metaphorically) burning at the Strand. Luckily no such video existed, but after the blog went up Wednesday, I still got called into McKayla’s office.

  “The blog was cute,” she begins.

  The way she emphasizes the word makes me realize that “cute” is not a good thing.

  “But you still aren’t making the Leader Board, which means your blogs need to take a new direction,” she continues, drumming her now Rothko-inspired nails on her desk. “No more how-to guides. I want personal stories. Steamy hookups.”

  Steamy hookups? All zero of them?

  McKayla catches the look on my face. “Like in your application essay,” she says. “You do want a shot at that magazine feature, don’t you?”

  I do. More than anything.

  And that becomes even clearer when she gives me a non-blog-related assignment. My very first for the magazine. Although absolutely no writing is involved.

  Harper:

  Wanna know how many A-listers Harry Styles has hooked up with in the past three years?

  Kristina responds to my text almost immediately. Must be a slow morning at Skinny B’s.

  Kristina:

  Ew. Creeper much? Why do you know that?

  Harper:

  My job is so weird.

  McKayla has demanded I research not just Harry Styles and the rest of One Direction’s hookup history, but all of young Hollywood’s dirty laundry. For the past two days, I’ve been working on quite possibly the perviest project of all time with Gigi, who has made it abundantly clear that forced interaction doesn’t mean we’re bonding.

  Gigi and I are making a flowchart of heartthrobs’ overlapping hookups for the magazine. And we’ve researched it so extensively and fact-checked it so thoroug
hly that if there were an AP Celebrity Hookup exam, I’d get the top score. No question.

  We won’t get official bylines, but the words “Research by Harper Anderson and Gigi Bello” will be written in tiny, microscopic letters at the bottom right-hand corner of the spread for the whole world to see! (As long as they have really good eyesight and, on top of that, a magnifying glass.) To me, this is a big deal. My mom already said she’s going to hang it on the fridge. If this is what microscopic letters feel like, how amazing would it be to be the star of a whole article in the glossy pages of Shift?

  Gigi is less impressed.

  “I can’t believe that I have to work on this dumb flowchart when I should be one of the interns assisting on the Jenni Grace cover shoot right now.”

  “Jenni Grace is here? Now?” I ask. Kristina and I devoured a whole season of her CW show along with mass quantities of Indian food takeout last Presidents’ Day Weekend. “I love Jenni Grace. How did I miss her coming in?”

  “Of course you didn’t see her come in,” Gigi sneers. “Shift doesn’t parade A-listers in front of the plebeians. What if some fangirl asked to take a selfie with her?”

  Clearly she sees my fingers itching toward my iPhone. A selfie’s the new autograph, right?

  “This is so unfair.” Gigi sighs. “I’m the one writing the ‘9 Things You Never Knew About Jenni Grace’ listicle. I should so be in the photo studio right now. I’ve done so much research—I know for a fact she hates the techno music blasting through the walls right now.”

  “What else do you know about her?” I ask, excited to finally have a common interest with Gigi.

  “She’s allergic to shellfish; she’s a virgin—”

  “Really?” I interrupt. Jenni Grace and I have something in common, too?

  “Is there something wrong with that?” Gigi says. “Besides, that’s her least-surprising fact. Everyone knows she’s saving herself.”

  “Oh, that’s really cool.” I almost blurt out that being a virgin myself, I’m obviously not judging. But I certainly don’t want Gigi to know that particular factoid. Instead I go back to drawing lines between celebrity hookups. McKayla wants us to finish before she leaves early for the Hamptons at three. We have to work through lunch.

  I reach into my bag to get my sandwich, offering Gigi half.

  “Christ, Harper, how many times must I tell you that I’m gluten intolerant? I had celiac disease before it was even trendy.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.”

  “And if the bread didn’t make me feel sick, that tuna certainly would. Who has that for lunch by choice?” Gigi pinches her nose and scoots to the other end of the couch. “Please excuse me while I move over here and try to avoid the stench.”

  Aaand bitchy Gigi is back in full force.

  “I’ll cover for you if you want to run downstairs and get food,” I offer, making another attempt to bond.

  “Unnecessary. I got lucky in the open kitchen.”

  Gigi opens up her bag of food and starts eating her . . . wait, is that . . . ?

  “Gigi! You’re eating mac and cheese!”

  “Congratulations, you have the gift of sight!” She rolls her eyes. “Since I have the gift of smell, maybe you should see if there’s any more on the up-for-grabs table and ditch the tuna.”

  “But you were just talking about how you have celiac.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s macaroni!”

  Never breaking eye contact, Gigi defiantly shovels another spoonful into her mouth, slowly chews, and finally swallows, defiantly asserting, “It’s from Ban Bread.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “In Nolita?”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s from this new gluten-free restaurant everyone is talking about North of Little Italy. God, Harper, it’s like you don’t know this city at all.”

  “I don’t!”

  Apart from the Union Square outing and my neighborhood dog walks, my New York exploration has been pretty limited thus far, mostly consisting of trips from Aunt Vee’s apartment down to the office and back again. When I daydreamed in homeroom about escaping to New York, I assumed I’d immediately be catapulted into this fabulous life sans awkward transitions. I assumed that I would make fast friends, the kind of friends my mom made when she was here and young, and we’d go gallery hopping and to book readings and try to sneak into bars together.

  “Besides,” I say cautiously, “it’s not like I’ve been invited out to any cool events.”

  Gigi looks down at her gluten-free mac and cheese (complete with gluten-free bread crumbs) and pretends that she hasn’t been taking everyone but me to the cornucopia of cultural events she gets invited to as Arts & Culture intern.

  “But,” she says, “it’s not like this is your first time in Manhattan, is it?”

  “First time outside of the West Coast.”

  “Well, at least San Francisco is pretty decent. For an American city.”

  I stop myself before correcting her. I almost forgot that I told everyone during orientation that I was from San Francisco and not Castalia.

  Our conversation is interrupted by a shriek: “Well, where in the name of all things holy did it go?”

  A man is screaming and the waves of testosterone are crashing throughout the office.

  “I swear it was right here,” a voice squeaks back.

  “Well, find it, Briana,” he shouts. “Find it!”

  “It’s Brie.”

  “You’re smelly Camembert to me until you get me Jenni Grace’s mac and cheese. The talent is HUNGRY!”

  As the Beauty intern, Brie sometimes gets to help out during photo shoots. Brie’s tasks range from blotting the “talent’s” T-zones with oil-reducing tissue in between shots to making sure that they never run out of Perrier. (Or, for the uptight celebrities, Perrier with a dash of vodka.) Other intern duties: resident whipping girl for whatever goes wrong.

  “Has anyone seen a bag from Ban Bread?” Brie pleads, darting out of the kitchen and down the halls of the office, her once Pinterest-perfect hair falling out of its braids. My eyes dart to Gigi’s half-eaten lunch.

  This is bad. This is very, very bad.

  “Tell me this isn’t happening!” Gigi whispers, her fuchsia lips starting to quiver. This is the first time I’ve seen her uncomposed. She starts talking to herself in a panic. “I have to get rid of the evidence. What am I going to do?”

  I go into friend-freak-out mode, one of my personal settings that Kristina has seen many, many times.

  “You have to breathe,” I say. “Maybe they won’t figure out who took it. Just don’t say anything.”

  Gigi stuffs the gluten-free mac and cheese back in its bag and stuffs the bag into the nearest trash can, not seeing the tall man in a fedora stomping our way.

  “What the fucking fuck is that?” the angry-man voice says. Angrily.

  “It’s, it’s, it was on the up-for-grabs table so I . . .”

  This is painful.

  Why am I standing up? Why am I walking over? Why am I cutting Gigi off to tell this seething, I’m guessing powerful, bizarrely dressed man, “You have it all wrong!”

  He turns in his cowboy boots (another interesting choice) and his spurs make a sharp jangle.

  “I have it wrong and she wasn’t throwing our cover girl’s specially ordered, gluten-free, truffle-oil macaroni and cheese in the garbage? That’s not what I’m seeing right now?”

  Now I’m telling myself to breathe.

  “Of course she was throwing it away. But only because she saw it was gluten-free, truffle-oil . . . lobster macaroni and cheese.”

  Gigi is playing possum standing up. I continue my ramble.

  “We all know that Jenni’s allergic to shellfish! Thank God Gigi thought ahead and checked on the food. Otherwise we might have had to call an ambulance. The correct order is already on the way.”

  “When will it be here?” The photographer stares
down Gigi.

  “Soon,” she says. “Very soon.”

  “Give it to Gouda and have her bring it down to the photo studio ASAP. Our talent is getting hungry.”

  And like that, he turns again and stalks off.

  Gigi is staring at me as if I’d just grown a second head. (But maybe a second head with really good hair, since Gigi doesn’t look entirely disgusted.)

  “Why did you do that?” she asks. “Why did you step in? I’m sure you would have loved to see me get fired.”

  But then her eyes narrow.

  “Unless you’re in it for the long game.” She points her finger in my direction like a talon. “And you’re going to hold this over my head.”

  Does Gigi think that we’re actually in an episode of Gossip Girl ? I’m not conniving; why would she think I am? What’s wrong with this girl?

  Suddenly I’m no longer thinking this—I’m saying it.

  “Seriously, Gigi, what’s your problem? Guess what? I’m not gunning for you. I’m not plotting your downfall. I have more important things to worry about. The Diet Coke thing was an accident, and right now, the mac and cheese? Any person would do that. Any decent person, anyway.” Clearly I’ve moved into the three-headed category. With really split ends. “Come on! In all your travels around the world, have you just never met decent people before?”

  The words barrel out of me. I’m incapable of stopping until I’m done. But when I’m done, I’m terrified. How much worse could Gigi make my life if given the opportunity?

  But Gigi doesn’t look like she’s about to attack. She looks stunned.

  “Then, I guess, thanks.” She says it so quietly, I can barely hear, and then lowers her head.

  “Don’t worry about it. Just worry about getting that mac and cheese ASAP. You might want to consider bribing someone to deliver it quickly.”

  Gigi nods. “I’ll offer a big tip and tell the manager we’ll tweet about Ban Bread from Shift’s main account. They’ll love the free publicity. Shift has millions of followers.”