by Alice Bello
Linda cocked her head as she waited for me to go on.
“I’m not gay.”
Her eyes squinted and her brow furrowed.
“I’m just desperate.” It almost felt good to just admit it allowed. “You see, I asked Bess to set me up, and I’ve gone through four guys in less than twenty-four hours.”
Linda looked alarmed and repulsed at the same time.
“I don’t mean I went through them. I didn’t sleep with them! Three of them I only talked to on the phone. I just...” I was running out of honesty. It was exhausting to tell how desperate I really was. “They were all just psycho. So Bess must have thought that maybe what I needed was... a woman?”
Linda stared at me with no emotion showing on her face. A full minute passed by before she moved a muscle or even spoke.
“You don’t need a woman,” she said, turning on her heel to leave. “You need a psych consult.”
I tried to call Bess, but only got her voicemail. I texted her: “You’re a dead woman!”
~*~
On my way home that day I turned off my cell phone and enjoyed a slow, leisurely walk—trying to forget the coffee shop incident, the work incident, and the Linda Johnson debacle.
I stopped and ate a gyro at Tosas. I perused the tabloids at a newsstand, and then bought another pair of sunglasses. I’d left mine somewhere between the hospital and home—maybe they’d gone MIA at the coffee shop, so embarrassed by my pathetic state that they just had to escape from my possession.
I stopped and stared longingly at a cute little puppy in the window of a pet shop. But I was just barely past killing off my plants, I didn’t need to push my luck with something furry and cute that pees and poops everywhere.
I found myself coming up on Gus’ store.
I’d just mentally registered this fact, and felt a strange desire to go in and talk to him when I heard a banging sound from the narrow alley just beside his store. I peered down it, and about twenty feet away stood a shirtless, very well built man—he was loading pots of plants onto a wooden flat.
I thought for a thrilling moment that Gus had hired this hard bodied stud to help around the shop—a new perk for coming to talk with Gus... or to get talked down to. But no sooner did I think this than the brute turned around and I saw the beautifully put together stud was none other than Gus himself.
And he saw me the instant he turned around.
We stood gawking at each other for a beat before he reached for his button down shirt and pulled it over his brawny shoulders. He was buttoning it as he came into the light and stood beside me.
“Beautiful day,” he said, his eyes crinkling sexily against the brightness. I was reminded how very, very green they were.
Get-lost-in-my-blue-eyes blue.
“Yeah, beautiful.”
I felt my heart beat a little faster as I watched him button the last button—I longed to tear all those buttons off, and his shirt.
“Playing shirtless in the alley weather,” I said before I could stop myself.
I saw some embarrassed blush appear around his jaw line. “I don’t like my shirts to get ruined when I’m handling flats of plants.”
That’s when I finally got it.
It all came together like one of those algebra problems in high school that you never think you’ll get through.
The great body, him never once ogling me, the bit about not wanting to “ruin” his shirt—and that only retired old men and farmers would ever touch a plant or flower.
Gus was gay.
“Oh!” I said with a shock.
He looked at me, his pretty eyes almost smiling.
“I-I forgot... I have a thing in...” I made a show of looking at my watch. “Well, like now.” He was looking at me like I was a mental patient. “I’ve gotta run.”
My cheeks were burning as I strode away, bumping clumsily into strangers, my mind a jumble of lust and shame.
How hadn’t I known?
It should’ve been obvious!
Thank god I hadn’t flirted with him!
By the time I finally quieted down the voices in my head I realized I’d breezed right past my apartment building and was now three blocks away. At that very instant I stopped in front of a bakery. Two éclairs, half a dozen glazed donuts, half a dozen with sprinkles and three double chocolate brownies the sales lady called “Death by Chocolate” and I finally started my journey back home.
~*~
Be it my pastry binge or the lingering sight of Gus—the stud I hadn’t noticed and now couldn’t have—but I had the dream about the hands again. This time I was in a bed overlooking the beach. What parts of me the hands weren’t caressing the ocean breeze was taking care of. I was shaking with desire by the time the hands pulled me onto my back again. But this time the hard male body they were attached to was attached to Gus’ face.
I shivered and moaned as he moved himself atop me, his body, and his naked flesh sliding over my own. He looked deep into my eyes as I felt his manhood push against my hungry opening. I groaned as he pushed into me, and just as he leaned down to kiss me...
My goddamn alarm clock went off again!
I lay there in my upturned sheets, every inch of me wet with sweat—my loins burning with need.
Oh god, I thought pulling my pillow over my head. I’m in lust with a gay guy!
~*~
Another cold shower ensued. I was starting to get used to them, which was utterly pathetic. Actually, this time I was yearning for it. My skin was burning me alive. I needed to be cooled down. The spray from the showerhead wasn’t nearly as cold as I needed it to be.
After my shower, wrapped in a towel and dripping water all over my kitchen floor, I stood in front of the open refrigerator, the freezer part open too, holding a handful of ice cubes to the back of my neck.
I needed the kind of relief that no amount of cold showers or ice cubes could give me. I saw that now. Bess was right—not about the blind dates she’d tried to fix me up on, but the fact that I needed to get laid.
The hell with waiting for love or Mr. Right.
I pulled my scrubs on over my sensitive, still smoldering flesh, raked a comb through my hair and fastened it back into a ponytail. I watered Ozzie and realized I hadn’t named the violet yet. I felt guilty and negligent as I poured some water on her. Alright, I thought as I stared out my window, the window with Ozzie and the yet to be named African violet. I was considering just naming it the obvious Violet and being done with it, but in the short time I’d had her in my apartment I could tell she wasn’t a “Violet.”
I just needed to be patient.
Then her name hit me—Harriet. Like Ozzie and Harriet! I whispered her name to her as I turned her in her sling, so that she got some sunlight on her other side.
Standing back from my window and its two newly coupled inhabitants, I was consumed with jealously. They were a couple now. How was it so easy for everyone else but me?
~*~
The next day what was really on my mind were the horrendous phone calls from would-be suitors. The scene at the coffee shop and at the hospital. They had all been disasters! Bess wasn’t kidding when she’d said she knew a lot of strange men. Those had been some of the strangest denizens of New York City I’d ever come across. More perverse than the businessman with Turret's I met in Central Park one day in June. He’d seemed nice until suddenly he’d asked me to blow him.
“What?”
“You know! Suck my cock! Lick my balls!” He’d made this vulgar gesture with his rather long tongue. I’d walked away, but he followed, lobbing even more profane requests at me, every eye in a hundred-foot radius was watching as I was verbally molested. Finally I’d started running. I lost one of my shoes in my haste—thus another reason I had for owning just the one pair of boots.
I kept losing the others.
And I had to admit the Agoraphobia guy wasn’t as crazy as the homeless guy that loitered daily by the entrance to the subway terminal on Fifth.
That guy spoke in tongues most of the time, sometimes grabbing hold of you and telling you things like, “You’ll be fired today!” or “Don’t eat the birthday cake, it’s poisonous only to you!”
That last part had been the advice he’d told me, the part about the birthday cake. It wasn’t my birthday, so I forgot all about it. Then when I got to work I found out that it was Matt’s birthday, and that his girlfriend had baked him a cake. It was chocolate cake with peanut butter icing, and it looked absolutely to die for. So I weighed my options: heed the warning of a crazy kook from the subway; or enjoy Matt’s birthday cake.
I decided to partake of the cake.
It’s a good thing I work in a hospital, because not five minutes after I took my first bite I broke out in head to toe hives and by the time they carried me down to the ER I was starting to wheeze.
So I guess homeless guy’s not really all that crazy, but he’s definitely not boyfriend material.
And the Agoraphobia guy was probably not crazy, just clinically, mentally ill, and I cringed at the thought of dating a hermit.
So when the phone rang again I jumped, shook my head whilst cursing under my breath. I wasn’t going to answer. I’d just go to work and forget my cell phone today.
But then I looked down at Ozzie and Harriet. There was a good reason to keep trying.
I walked over and picked the phone up, pressed the on button and said, “Hello?” I sounded like a frightened teen getting “the phone call” in a slasher flick.
“Cupcake! I hear you’ve had a fun few days.”
“Oh thank god it’s you—why the hell did you give my number to those guys! And what the hell were you thinking with that Linda chick?” I just wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her.
“Hey, beggars can’t be choosers. And in my defense they seemed normal enough when I sold them their homes.” I heard the click of a lighter and Bess took a deep inhalation.
“I thought you only smoked after you closed a deal?”
“I did,” Bess purred. “Just sold a flat on a hundred seventeenth. The guy was a hot doctor type, totally fuckable. Opened my door for me, even called me ma’am.”
“How old was he?”
“Late twenties, early thirties. A little young, but who cares? He’ll pick you up at eight tonight.”
“What!” I couldn’t believe my frigging ears.
“I would’ve let him call you but you scared the rest off, so I took things into my own hands.”
“Bess!” I still couldn’t get my mind wrapped around it. I was sitting impotently on my couch, a throw pillow clutched in a white knuckled grip. “I can’t... I can’t believe you... and I didn’t scare those guys off! It was the other way around.”
“Whatever. You should be thanking me about now. This one’s a total babe, and all you have to do is open the door for him. Okay, simple. See you tonight.” And Bess hung up on me.
I speed dialed her six times and texted her, and even sent her some irate e-mails—but she never picked up or returned my messages.
Oh god, I thought sitting on my couch in stunned silence. I’m going to have to go on a date with one of these goons.
Chapter 9
Another day of injured weekend warriors, of little old ladies with brand new hips, of fitting old men with corrective appliances for hammer toes and drop-foot. The only patient that was even mildly interesting to me was a woman who’d been sent to us by her plastic surgeon for help learning to walk again in four inch heels and to carry a cocktail tray—something she’d been able to do until she’d had double D implants installed.
I just stared at them. She looked like a brunette Anna Nicole Smith... right before she died.
“Why don’t you find another job?” I don’t know why exactly I said this but she didn’t seem fazed by it.
“And do what? Pole dance? I’d have to dance in heels then, not just serve drinks at the Hilton. And anyway, I’m too freakin’ old to start that shit!”
I stared at her aghast. She wasn’t even thirty yet, and she was “too old” to become a stripper? I shook it off. “Don’t worry, I’ll have you juggling...well, juggling your tray and those suckers, in no time.”
First, I watched her walk in bare feet. Not bad, her back was straight and her gait was good. Next, we added the four inch heels. Suddenly she started to slouch, and then her hips started to move forward. Just to see the rest of the problem I handed her the tray she’d brought in with three plastic cups filled with tap water. This made her slouch more prominent and made her knees bend. She looked like a walking letter S from Sesame Street—an S with gigantic honking tits.
I caught the guys huddled by the front desk, all eyes honed on me and the cocktail waitress. I made my angry face and they all smiled, then I picked up an adjustable mechanical arm that patients in wheel chairs use to reach objects on out of reach shelves with. I aimed it at the closest of my co-worker’s genitals and made it grasp with a sharp metallic click. They all got my drift and dispersed, making do with simply ogling the waitress from afar.
“How long do you have before you have to go back to work?”
“Two weeks, give or take.” she said as she set down the tray and stepped out of the heels.
Oh brother, I thought. “Well, I’ll go over a couple abdominal exercises, and let’s try the tray without the heels for a couple days, and then we’ll try different heights of heels. You have some inch high pumps?”
She thought for a while. “I’ve got a pair of two inch heels I had to wear for my sister’s wedding.”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s a start. I’ll stop and get you a pair of inch high heels for tomorrow.”
“I don’t want you spending your own dough on me.” She looked defensive.
“I get reimbursed by the hospital for stuff like that. It’s no problem. And we really need to start off small.”
“Makes sense,” she said, relenting.
“Just one thing... I’m wondering why you had these done in the first place?”
She winked at me as she pulled on her sneakers. “Honey, I had to sling drinks for a year to afford these suckers. They’re gonna up my tips from two hundred a night to five. More if I up my game with the flirting and shit.”
“Oh.”
“And then I’ll be making enough money I won’t have to fuck my shitweasel landlord because I’m late with the rent anymore.”
I had to ask...
~*~
I stopped and bought some cheap one inch heels for my waitress client, stopped and rented a movie, and was about to cross the street and order pizza when my cell chirped to life. It was Bess.
Shit, I’d forgotten.
“Where the hell are you?” she demanded.
“About a block away. I’m on my way.”
“Good. And hurry. We’ve got our work cut out for us.” And she disconnected. I didn’t like the sound of that. The last time I had work done on me I looked like The Nanny, and then I looked like a drowned baboon.
When I got to my apartment Bess was tapping her foot, her arms heaped with a huge carry-all tote and a dry cleaning bag. “About time.”
“I forgot.”
“How could you forget? It’s your first date in over—”
“Hey, easy! You want me having a melt down before this guy even shows up?”
“Good point. Now unlock this door and hit the showers.” She pulled my hair out of its ponytail and cringed. “And use some fucking conditioner for once!”
~*~
When I came out of the shower my bedroom was cluttered with beauty supplies and makeup. First thing Bess tossed me a pair of French cut undies and a matching black lace bra.
“These aren’t yours, right?”
“Of course not. But the dress and the shoes are, so no getting them mangled or stained. “
“More to worry about…” This was turning into a real chore.
“Not really, the dress and the shoes are black.”
“Good thinking
.”
The bra fit too well. Made my boobs stand up at attention and made me think of Playboy models. But the panties were a mess. Too tight, skimpy on material, kept riding up my ass crack.
As I squirmed to get them picked out of my butt, Bess grabbed me and shoved me down into a chair. “First makeup and then I’ll tame that rat’s nest.”
“You didn’t just call my hair a rat’s nest!”
“Quiet!” Bess barked with a rabid dog look on her face.
I gulped and said a rosary as she plucked my eyebrows, for the second time that week—which freaking hurt!—and then started brushing my entire face with some expensive looking powder makeup. I had to admit that it felt pretty good. Didn’t feel like a mask like my last encounter with cosmetics had.
She told me to close my eyes and not to open them, unless I wanted to lose an eye. I obediently closed them and waited as she drew on eyeliner and brushed on mascara and eye shadow—then with the brushes again and finally my lips. She spent a really long time on my lips, and I was sure I was going to turn out looking like Tammy Faye Baker this time.
I tried to turn around in the chair and take a look in the mirror, but Bess would have none of it, swatting me hard in the back of the head when I tried.
Next came a flat iron. I hadn’t expected her to go for straight hair. I was sure she was going to curl and tease my hair until my head wouldn’t be able to fit out my front door. But a few short minutes later and a few sprays of some sweet smelling hairspray, she had me up and was pulling and cinching me into a sexy little black dress.
I’d never worn a little black number, and was surprised how sexy I really did feel putting it on.
Then she showed me THE SHOES.
“Three inch heels!” I howled, wishing I’d brought the waitress home with me to show me how to walk in them. “I haven’t worn heels since my college graduation.”
“It’s like riding a bike.”
“No, it’s not.”
Before I knew it I was teetering in the heels, feeling not only sore but nauseous.