Another Bad-Dog Book

by Joni Cole

  But no matter which way I rubbed—in sweeping up-and-down strokes and then frantic, concentric circles—the fake tan wouldn’t apply evenly. Parts of my legs remained light, while other parts were smeared dark brown, like the walls next to the crib of some deranged, diaper-less baby. The more foam I applied, the darker the streaks. In desperation, I skipped the first step of spraying the foam into my palm, and aimed it directly at the remaining patches of moon rock.

  A few minutes later I emerged from the bathroom. This was not the look I had hoped for—middle-school-band atop feces. Perhaps, I thought ruefully, I should have started my effort sooner. Perhaps this effort should have included an appointment with a hair care professional, and a visit to one of those trendy spray-tan places where you’re misted with a bronze glow, then patted down by an attendant.

  I had read an article recently about how movie stars get spray-on tans before they appear at award shows. At the time, I wondered about the safety of spraying chemical dyes directly into your pores. A mental picture formed of Charlize Theron and Nicole Kidman on the Red Carpet, waving to their fans, only instead of arms they had flippers. Things could always be worse, I told myself, trying to maintain some perspective. At least I didn’t have spray-tan appendages.

  At the airport, my confidence plummeted even further. The infrequent times I fly, I usually travel in jeans, but today I wore a loose black skirt and a stretchy white wrap shirt. A simple, stylish outfit, I thought that morning when I extracted it from my closet; an outfit for the contemporary winning woman on the go.

  Who was I kidding? I thought now, waiting at the boarding gate and eating a cruller. These were my fat clothes. The past year of deadlines, doughnuts, and delusional thinking that I could still eat anything I wanted without consequences, had taken its toll on my middle. My skirt had an elastic waistband. My shirt’s front pleats were designed to camouflage two stomach rolls that rippled over the waistband of my Spanx Thigh-Shaper panties like a capital B.

  I caught myself scowling at the petite Japanese businesswoman in line in front of me. She wore a tailored navy suit and a Bluetooth peeking out from her sleek, black hair. Even her carry-on luggage was trim, a fashionable powder-blue case on wheels. You never see fat Japanese women, I thought, adjusting my own lumpy shoulder bag like a pack saddle on a donkey. They’re always slim and feminine-looking, and probably don’t even have a word for Spanx. It occurred to me, if I ever traveled to Japan, I would be the fattest woman in the entire country, a country of 127 million people.

  On the plane, things went from bad to worse. I spent most of the flight going over my Winning Women speech, which I had spent weeks writing and rewriting, and practicing in front of my reluctant husband and children. Because public speaking terrifies me, I had overcompensated by scripting every word and stage direction—“Hello.” (Smile!) “It’s a pleasure to be here.” (Stand up straight, and have fun!)

  At some earlier point in time, I remembered liking my speech, but now it seemed silly and trite, an Up-With-People message, only I was the opposite of a perky, talented teenager. I could just see it now: a roomful of three-hundred Winning Women, all pretending to listen to me, but secretly multitasking. Five minutes into my fifty-minute talk, the organization’s president would usher me away from the podium.

  “So sorry,” she’d say, pausing to check email on her Blackberry, “but our organization is committed to work-life balance, and I’m afraid you don’t qualify as quality time.”

  I put my speech away, intending to relax, but then I splattered coffee down the front of my white shirt. In the lavatory, I saturated a bunch of Wet Knaps in the undrinkable water and managed to soak out the stains, but we were landing in less than an hour. The stretchy fabric over my breasts was covered with big, wet blotches. Whoever was meeting me at the airport would think I was lactating, like one of those women you read about in the tabloids who have babies freakishly late in life. “Middle-aged author delivers quintuplets!”

  When I returned to my seat, no one seemed to notice that I was wearing what amounted to a skin-tight, see-through, soaking-wet t-shirt. At first I was relieved, but then it occurred to me—why hadn’t anyone noticed, not even the young guy in the seat beside me? He was watching an action-adventure movie on his iPod, the kind of movie that specializes in gratuitous violence and objectifying women. Yet here I was, only an armrest away, my cold nipples protruding so far they were practically sitting in first class, and it was like I was invisible. No, I didn’t want people staring at my breasts. But I did want breasts that people would want to stare at, if that sort of thing wasn’t frowned upon.

  Now wouldn’t that be a fine message for the Junior Girl Scouts, I thought. One of the Winning Women (who was also a Girl Scout leader) had asked me to serve as one of their role model speakers at their regional meeting. The girls were earning their Career Badges, so I was to talk about my job and offer inspiration.

  “You can be anything you want to be!” I would tell the Junior Girl Scouts. “But what difference does it make if you can’t even get noticed in a wet t-shirt?”

  By the time the plane arrived in St. Louis, my confidence was completely shot. I started humping my carry-on sack toward baggage claim, all the other arriving and departing passengers only serving to remind me of my own insignificance. The petite Asian woman with the powder-blue case was long gone. No baggage claim for her, given her entire tiny corporate wardrobe could fit on the head of a pin.

  Near the luggage carousel, I spotted one of the Winning Women holding up a sign with my name on it. She looked to be in her early thirties, and probably had two-point-five children and ran a Fortune 100 company. No doubt she was super nice, too, which only made things worse. She glanced around the crowded carousel, but didn’t see me, or more likely didn’t recognize me from the picture on my website. And why should she? I thought. At the time the photo was taken, I didn’t look like a spray-tanned Joey Delong.

  At that moment, I wished with all my heart that I had never agreed to be a guest speaker for Winning Women. I wished that I hadn’t promised to be a role model for the Junior Girl Scouts of Southeastern Missouri. But it was too late for that kind of thinking. I had committed to making an effort. It was time to earn my own badge of courage.

  I walked over to the woman holding the sign with my name on it, and introduced myself.

  “Hello.” (Smile!) “It’s a pleasure to be here.” (Stand up straight, and have fun!)

  Best Friends Forever

  “My husband is my best friend!” I am always hearing women say this, both in real life and on celebrity talk shows, but I just can’t fathom what they’re talking about. I mean, I love my husband. Steve and I have been married a thousand years, and I have no plans on leaving him any time soon (as if I could even afford it). But my best friend? I have lots of different best friends, depending on my mood, but these are all women or gay men who enjoy eating my root vegetable soups and watching Colin Firth movies, and who are willing to gossip with me for hours, usually about our husbands. If your husband is your best friend, how do you gossip about him?

  The last time someone bragged to me, “My husband is my best friend,” it got me worrying. Maybe there’s something wrong with my husband and me, I thought. Maybe there’s something lacking in our relationship. That night I couldn’t sleep so I decided to distract myself by reading my novel in bed. I actually prefer sleeping with the lights on, but Steve likes it dark. He lay beside me, a motionless mound under the covers. I silently rolled over and tapped the base of my bedside lamp to turn it on low. Steve jolted upright as if he’d been tasered.

  “What’s wrong?!!” he asked. “What’s the matter?” When Steve was in his early twenties, he was a live-in counselor at a residential juvenile detention facility. One night he woke to the smell of smoke, managed to rouse the delinquents, and escorted them all to safety. Ever since then he’s been a light sleeper, primed for catastrophe, even when sound asleep.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said,
irritated. “I’m going downstairs to read.”

  Downstairs, I turned on the overhead light and sulked on the living room couch, begrudging the fact that we need to keep the thermostat turned down at night to save on heating costs. Too antsy to read, I flipped through TV channels. At the moment, it seemed the only remotely watchable show was the movie Fun with Dick and Jane, a far-fetched comedy about a married couple who falls on hard times after Dick (played by Jim Carrey) loses his job. In response, he and his wife Jane (played by Téa Leoni) resort to robbing convenience stores and banks. Despite devastating financial hardship and the usual challenges inherent in a life of federal crime, Dick and Jane manage to have even more fun together. Yet another one of those annoying BFF couples.

  By now it was 2:17 a.m. and I had wound myself up, thinking about all the ways my husband and I weren’t best friends: how we had nothing in common (children don’t count), and how we were going to end up in just a few short years like so many other empty nesters who look at each other across the middle cushion of their corduroy couch and think, Wow. What now? Why am I with this person? I hate corduroy. Clearly, not only were Steve and I not best friends, we were completely incompatible. I ticked off a mental checklist:

  1. I live in fear of people getting all emotional. Steve is a mental health professional.

  2. When Steve does the laundry, he folds the underwear. Am I supposed to spend my life folding underwear, as if I have nothing better to do?

  3. We don’t even use the same coffeepot because Steve thinks my pumpkin spice coffee pollutes his precious gold filter.

  Why did we ever get married? I glared at the TV. Why can’t Steve be more like Jim Carrey? Why can’t I look more like Téa Leoni? Why can’t we go to my favorite Chinese restaurant in town and share the sushi-for-two platter?

  “Oh, try this one, darling. It’s eel,” I would say. “Here, let me feed it to you off my chopsticks.” If Steve was my best friend, if we were really meant for each other, he wouldn’t hate sushi. He would eat eel off my chopsticks and like it.

  I heard footsteps on the stairs. Now what? I thought. Was the TV too loud? I tugged my flannel nightshirt over my bare knees. I hate being shushed. My husband has said to me on more than one occasion, “You don’t have to shout. I’m right here,” at which point, I usually accommodate him by giving him the silent treatment. One of these days, I made up my mind, I was going to live in my own overheated apartment and sleep with all the lights on. And I was going to talk as loud as I wanted!

  Steve shuffled into the living room. He was carrying the red comforter from our bed in a bundled-up ball. His salt-and-pepper hair was mashed against one side of his head.

  “I thought you might need this.” He plopped the comforter on my lap then headed for the kitchen. I watched him go in his faded Life is Good t-shirt and plaid boxers. Still half asleep, he opened the fridge, stared inside it for a few moments, then closed the door and headed back up the stairs to bed.

  And just like that, my marriage was saved.

  I spread the red comforter over my legs and pulled it up to my chin. Maybe Steve and I don’t have a ton of things in common, I thought, as I clicked off the TV and closed my eyes in our brightly lit living room. I smiled, thinking about him coming downstairs to check up on me, like he always does, even in his sleep. Maybe Steve and I weren’t the kind of couple who always prefers each other’s company and never runs out of things to say. But he keeps me warm in the middle of the night, and whenever I get all emotional, no one knows better how to make things right.

  A Real Bozo

  For once, some good news in the morning headlines. Bozo the clown has died.

  Even as a kid, I couldn’t stand clowns, and still fail to see the humor in white-faced men with giant tufts of flame-colored hair sprouting from the sides of their head. Whereas mimes, by comparison, are just peculiar (what type of aspiring entertainer thinks, I know, I’ll pretend to be mute and stuck in a box?), I believe clowns cross the line into creepy. The red, bulbous nose. The huge shoes. The way they’re always contorting balloons into wiener dogs. Whenever I see a clown in real life or on TV, I always want to ask, “Why bother with all that symbolism and pretense? Why not just come out and say, ‘Hey boys and girls! Look at me. I’m a drunk with an exaggerated view of my manhood. Do you find my suggestive costuming as amusing as I do?’”

  It turned out that the headline in the paper that day wasn’t really about the death of Bozo the Clown, but rather Larry Harmon, the actor who played Bozo on TV for fifty years, and bought the copyright to the character in the 1950s. The article described eighty-three-year-old Larry Harmon as “beloved,” and I’m sure his family and friends, and all those people who weren’t traumatized by clowns as children, still smile fondly at the memory of his size 83AAA shoes. But that morning when my then eight-year-old daughter interrupted my reading of Larry Harmon’s obituary to ask me if she could have an end-of-summer party, I knew one thing for sure. We wouldn’t be hiring any clowns for the event.

  “Are you sure you want a party?” I folded the newspaper and tucked a loose strand of her long brown hair behind her ear. I always get nervous when my kids want to host parties, not because they aren’t well liked, but because I wasn’t popular as a kid. One time in elementary school I was standing at the bus port when a classmate, Kelly Walls, came up to me and told me that I was the ugliest girl in school.

  What?!

  I knew with my fat cheeks and buck teeth that I was no Peggy Lipton, but the ugliest girl in school? For years, I’d catch myself debating the point in my head. What about Kathy Brubaker? I’d argue. With her home-spun dresses and coiled braids, she looked just like one of those polygamist wives, even when she was ten. What about the speds? I’d reason. Those kids had to be sequestered in their own specially-equipped classrooms. What about Kelly Walls herself? I’d demand, the voice in my head growing ever more strident. Just because Kelly was inexplicably popular didn’t make that red birthmark on her neck any more pleasant to look at.

  Now, of course, over thirty years later, I know enough to understand that when Kelly Walls told me that I was the ugliest girl in school, she was probably projecting her own insecurities onto me. I also know that it is cruel to refer to students with developmental disorders as speds, let alone sequester them in a remote part of the school. But still, I felt a sudden, familiar surge of defensiveness—the ugliest girl in school?

  “I want it to be a water party,” my daughter said, interrupting my thoughts, while ducking out of reach to prevent me from fussing with her hair. Sadly, she had recently moved into the “No More Babying” phase. Until a few months ago, I had been able to mom-handle her any time I wanted, whereas now I had to curb, or at least negotiate, any kind of physical affection.

  “Okay,” I looked at her, wishing the brown spots on my face looked as cute in the morning sun as the sprinkling of freckles across her nose. “You can have a party . . . if you give me a hug.”

  Over the next couple weeks, my daughter winnowed down her guest list to six best friends, and we loaded up on squirt guns and other water-party supplies. The morning of the event, she came downstairs already dressed in her bikini, and handed me a piece of a paper. At the top she’d printed—Mommy’s Dos and Don’ts.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It’s a list,” she explained, “so you know how to act at the party.”

  I read the first instruction—Do not say I love you.

  “What’s the matter with saying I love you?” I demanded.

  “You say it all the time,” she answered. “And you say it to my friends.”

  “I do not,” I argued.

  “Yes, you do,” my other daughter chimed in. Yesterday, the girls had been fighting over who was better at petting the cat, but today, presented with the opportunity to conduct an intervention on my parental shortcomings, they were a miraculously united front.

  The list continued: Do not follow people around. Do not do your pig impersonation.


  “I don’t even have a pig impersonation!” I said, prompting both my daughters to wrinkle their noses and start snuffling, a mockery of that special funny face I had entertained them with since they were newborns. Of course, until this moment, I’d never thought of it as pig-like.

  I flipped the paper over to the list of Dos. According to my daughter I was permitted to 1. Ask about people’s summers; 2. Use a water gun; and 3. Use the Slip ‘N Slide.

  “Sorry, Mom,” she said, no doubt reacting to my stony silence. “Are you okay?” If my daughter’s early education at private kindergarten had taught her anything, it was that you should talk about your feelings and encourage others to do so, as well.

  “I’m fine,” I waved her off. “I won’t act like a pig at your party.” Our cat was lounging on a nearby kitchen chair and I tried to pick him up to nuzzle his fur, but he darted away, probably still traumatized after yesterday’s bout of competitive petting.

  At the party, five girls and one boy ran around the yard, assaulting each other with water balloons and taking turns on the Slip ‘N Slide. To give them some semblance of privacy, my husband and I placed our lawn chairs at the far end of the yard, where Steve could read the newspaper in peace, and I could have a glass of wine and eavesdrop without being obvious.

  As the party moved from the water games to the munchies table, the children’s conversation shifted to secret crushes and school gossip. Their conversation reinforced that, even though these kids were only eight or nine years old, their exposed tummies still rounded in a way that, sadly, only looks adorable on children, they were growing up fast.

  Any day now, I thought, my kids would hand me more lists with more Dos and Don’ts—Do not touch us; Do not speak to us—until eventually they would take out a restraining order and that would be that.