Case in point, I had to get off the phone with Celeste because I had a call coming in on the other line and I hoped it was a local lawyer I’d exchanged a few flirty emails with.
“Let me go Celeste,” I said, “It’s either a potentially cute lawyer or my stalker.”
I hung up with Celeste, switched over to the second line and sure enough, it was my stalker. I knew because a Meat Loaf song was playing.
Maybe I had it coming, the stalker I mean, not the Meat Loaf. If you’re going to pursue online dating with the intensity I did, meaning I went on at least three dates per week and rarely turned anyone down who asked me out, perhaps your odds of picking up a stalker along the way are a bit higher, or maybe they aren’t and it’s just me. In fact, this is probably the case because I knew and still know plenty of people who have paid memberships to several online dating sites and they have never had anyone call them repeatedly playing Meat Loaf songs.
I was pretty sure that I knew who my obscene caller was. I could say “prank” caller, but I chose “obscene” because I dislike rock opera so much that in my world Meat Loaf is obscene. Obscenely bad. I could leave it at that. An obscene caller pestered me, I could say, but I also chose to call this person a stalker because somehow he knew when I was at work and called me during my shifts to play more Meat Loaf, though I could hardly hear it over the hip-hop.
The calls started after a particularly bad date, the best part of which was the crème brûlée cheesecake I ordered for dessert as a sort of consolation prize for having to sit through the rest of the date. The guy called himself “Buddy” which is disturbing in and of itself somehow. Reminds me of that doll they tried to market to little boys back when I was a kid: My Buddy. The mere thought of this Chuckie-like doll, the very mention of the name “Buddy” sets off an earworm of that commercial’s theme song that can last for days. My Buddy, My Buddy. My Buddy and me like to climb up a tree. My Buddy and me are the best friends that can be. I could barely concentrate on anything else throughout dinner, except that I wanted to leave.
Buddy was gay. That part was obvious. He was flamboyantly effeminate, but not in a fun, you’re hanging out with your glamorous hairdresser kind of a way. He was limp-wristed, whiny and spoke with a weirdly affected lisp. Buddy would never help you redecorate your bedroom and he lacked any flair for style. His polo shirt hung hollow over his concave chest. He looked pale and Gollum-eyed, as if he hadn’t been outside in months. I quickly learned this was true when he told me he’d only been out of rehab for a week. Buddy was a walking disaster. He should never have been dating. Whatever psychiatrist suggested that he join Jdate as a way to “get back in the swing of things” after battling addiction for six months should have lost his or her license.
“I’m very wealthy,” Buddy told me before the entrees arrived.
Maybe this was his last ditch effort to entice me. In South Florida, a lot of girls would have taken the bait and ran with it, broken the line even, not caring a whit about the fishhook through their lip. I saw this happen at work constantly. Girls flocked to money no matter whose wallet it was crammed into, but they were strippers. That was their life. Their “culture” if you will.
Buddy wasn’t really rich though. His parents had the cash and he bled his trust fund for drugs and partying, then the rehab for the drugs and now that that chapter of his life was over, at least temporarily, I guess he wanted to waste money on dates. What a shame. I’d heard of his mom. She was a famous author. You know her books. Trust me. You do. She’s a human franchise now. Buddy’s dad wasn’t famous, but he came from old money and lived as a hermit on Fisher Island, an enclave so exclusive that it can only be reached by ferry. Buddy bragged that for his family, Joe’s Stone Crab, one of the toughest reservations in Miami, delivered, but I wasn’t impressed. Stone crabs have no taste.
“I can take you shopping,” he added.
I saw this at work too. Gross rich guys, mostly old, mostly wearing red leather pants and cowboy boots and driving yellow, Italian convertibles seemed to delight in taking strippers, sometimes several at a time, for shopping sprees at Neiman’s where they’d come giggling through the back door into the locker room to sort through their loot of Prada and Dior like children after the birthday party guests had departed. There’s nothing wrong with generosity, but buying love is pitiful and selling your love is evil. Not my style. I tended to take to heart the morals of every 80s teen film. Can’t Buy Me Love was a classic and I was no Cindy Mancini to anyone’s Ronald Miller so I politely declined Buddy’s offer in spite of the aqua silk halter calling my name from the Banana Republic across the street from the restaurant.
When Buddy told me that he’d been experimenting, I ordered the crème brulee cheesecake.
“With men?” I asked. The shut-off, or shut-up, valve on my brain had stopped working and I blurted it out involuntarily. Buddy looked stunned. His mouth hung open, making his face even more gaunt.
“How did you know?” he asked.
I lied. “I have no idea.”
“I’m not gay though,” he said, nervously trying to defend himself. He twisted a cocktail napkin into a rope and then tore it to shreds. Little paper bits covered his barely touched plate of duck tacos. When the pieces got too small, he went to work on his cuticles.
I told him I had nothing against homosexuality at all, because I didn’t, except when it came to dating. My rule was that I never wanted to kiss a man who had had another man’s penis in his mouth and really, was that an unreasonable request? I didn’t think so.
“But I’m not gay. Just so you know. I’m only experimenting,” Buddy clarified.
My cake arrived under an avalanche of strawberries and I offered him half.
“You won’t eat off the same plate as me?” he accused.
I didn’t know what to say.
“It’s because you think I’m a faggot isn’t it? You think I have AIDS?”
“What? No. No!”
It was because he had a sore on his mouth and because he was skeezy and creepy.
He licked his fork and stabbed it into the cheesecake, shattering its burnt sugar glaze.
“How do you like that?” he asked, so triumphant that he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms.
I tipped the wedge of dessert over on its side and ate it from the bottom where his contaminated fork hadn’t touched and when I was done I pushed the plate over to his side of the table and smiled sweetly.
“That’s disgusting,” he snarled, “I’ve never seen a girl eat like you. You have horrible table manners.”
I smiled again, thanked him for dinner and left. Buddy chased me to my car, sobbing a hysterical apology and begging me to “hold him” but I high-tailed it home as fast as I could.
The Meat Loaf calls started a couple days later. They scared me at first but pretty soon I got used to hearing “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” and “Bat Out of Hell” and when he got around to “I Would Do Anything for Love” I just had to laugh, though sometimes the calls got on my nerves, especially when I was hoping to hear a hot lawyer on the other line and not the uncomfortably menacing lyrics of “Wolf at Your Door.”
“Stop calling me!” I yelled.
My mom heard me. She’d been passing by my bedroom, which was next to the kitchen, on her way to fix herself a late lunch. I clicked “end” and tossed the phone on my unmade bed, then scooped up the kitten and joined my mom by the stove where she was pushing some unidentifiable leftovers around in a frying pan.
“Why don’t you just use the microwave?” I asked.
“I don’t trust them damn things puttin’ radiation in my food. Is that asshole still calling you playing that music?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, “But I have a bigger problem.”
She plunked a cube of butter into the pan and poked at it as it melted into her food.
“What’s that?” she asked, not looking up.
“Dis wittle cutie-ness pie.”
I smothered the k
itten with kisses and it purred in ecstacy.
“I had a feeling,” my mom said.
“I can’t give her up. What should I do?”
“I don’t blame you for wanting to keep her and to tell you the truth, I think it’d be good for you to have something to love, but we’ve got one problem.”
It was a big problem. It weighed more than I did. It was black, hulking and mean. Its brain was too big for its skull. IT had finally just gotten used to me being in the house. For the first couple months that I moved back into my parents’ house, I couldn’t even get up to pee in the middle of the night without IT cornering me, hackles raised and teeth bared. It’s a miracle that I didn’t pee right on the floor from fright. That damned psycho Doberman.
His name was Moishe. If you’re Jewish you’ll find that name amusing. Moishe was mean if he didn’t know you and had bitten so many people that the city sent a representative from Animal Control to our house to evaluate him. Guess what happened? He bit her too.
Something was wrong with this dog. There are many theories and we don’t know what his deal was for certain. It could be that he was just being a Doberman and protecting his house and his people a little too vigilantly. He seemed to take pride in being an excellent watchdog, which he was, though he took it to extremes.
Having bitten the Animal Control lady, Moishe got a bad reputation. Her conclusion was that he was a dangerous dog and that in order for us to avoid his execution, he had to wear a shock collar which would essentially taze him and render him temporarily immobile. We also had to send him to a trainer and my parents had to be trained as well, in how to use the shock collar’s remote control. If Moishe bit one more person, he would have to be put down and there would be nothing we could do about it.
Moishe hated cats more than he hated strangers. My new kitten, nothing more than a teeny scrap of striped fluff, was the equivalent of about half a mozzarella stick to this dog. He could eat her so fast that he’d barely taste kitten on his huge, pink belt of a tongue, and he wanted her. He knew I had a kitten locked in my bedroom and had been growling at the door since the first night I brought her home.
“You can’t keep the kitten unless we can ensure her safety around Moishe,” my mom said.
I agreed. It would be awful to rescue a kitten only to have the dog rip it to shreds. I wouldn’t have been able to forgive myself for not letting Celeste take her if that happened.
“You also can’t keep a cat locked in your bedroom for its whole life. That’s not right. If she’s going to live here she needs to be able to roam freely around the house.”
I sighed. It was true. If we couldn’t get Moishe to accept her then she had to go and I was so attached by then that I couldn’t let that happen.
“Let me eat and we’ll try to get them acclimated,” my mom suggested.
We held the kitten on the bed and brought Moishe into the room. My father, who got in on the action too, could barely hold him back and the as yet unnamed kitten, not having good sense, wasn’t scared at all. The Doberman lunged and barked and the miniature cat fuzzed her teeny body up and spit right back. It didn’t go well.
It continued to not go well. Every time we introduced these two the same thing happened. Moishe wanted the kitten dead and in his maw.
“We have to use the shock collar,” my mother finally said, “It’s our last resort.”
I protested. It was mean and scary. Tasing the dog seemed like animal abuse.
“Either we use the shock collar and see if it works or you have to get rid of the kitten because what’s more cruel? Shocking the dog or letting a dog maul a kitten?” my mom said with her hands firmly on her hips. She was right of course. As usual.
I gave in. We’d shock the dog.
My Mother: B.F. Skinner.
Same scenario. We brought Moishe into the bedroom. I held kitty on the bed. Kitty fuzzed and hissed, Moishe lunged. My mother pressed the button on the remote and the dog dropped to the carpet with a garbled shriek.
“Oh my God I can’t watch,” I cried.
Baby kitty, on the other hand, loved it. She jumped out of my arms because she, again not having good sense, thought she could beat up a Doberman. Moishe went for her and this time the kitten managed a swipe to his nose before I could grab her. We shocked him again. Moishe whimpered and stopped right in his tracks.
The dog held very still as he recovered from his second shock. Kitty approached. Tentatively, the enemies smelled one another and the dog curled his lip in a wet, red growl. Kitty yowled a sassy reply and hissed. For the first time, Moishe exercised some control, but he couldn’t maintain it long and went for her. Again he was shocked.
Three times it took and after the third electric shock something came over Moishe. It was instantly obvious that he had changed his mind. Suddenly, he began to lick the kitten, who rolled playfully on her belly. Moishe wagged the round black stump of his tail. He whined and whimpered and soaked her coat with slobber while she, strangely enough sensed his submission and purred and played with him. I’ve never seen anything like it.
“I’ll be God damned,” my mom said.
From then on, Moishe regarded the kitten with a sense of fear, awe and adoration. Now friends, the Doberman would have protected the tabby with his life. Never have a cat and dog loved each other more. They became inseparable, sleeping curled up together and grooming one another. The kitten could roam freely around the house, safe and free of fear. No one believed it.
“How on earth did you get them to love one another?” people would ask when they saw the genuine affection between the hulking canine and the feisty kitten.
Classical conditioning isn’t something to laugh at. The connection between cat and pain was indelible in Moishe’s doggy brain, but his interpretation of that connection, as best as we could figure, was that the kitten was the one shocking him. He believed she was electric, like an eel, but a kitty and that she was stronger and more powerful than him and that if he dared mess with her, she’d electrocute him again with her supernatural, feline powers and this was a creature he wanted on his side, he figured.
The kitten was on my side too. My side of the bed that is. Finally, I had found a little love. It wasn’t exactly what I’d ordered, but at least I no longer slept alone. I had something to love for the first time in a very long time, something to nurture and it felt good and right. Healing.
41
If you think all I did was date and go to work, you’d be somewhat accurate, but I also shopped. I shopped a lot and honestly, it was getting to be a little bit of a problem. I practically bought a new outfit each time a new guy asked me to dinner. Or coffee. I’m guilty of buying new outfits just to go to Starbucks, I admit it. I’d come to Florida with nothing but a single suitcase of frumpy skirts and clunky shoes, but in less than a year I’d managed to stuff a walk-in closet so full that the rods sagged from the weight of the embarrassing number of cocktail dresses I preferred for dates and the cheap, slinky gowns I sausaged myself into for work.
I knew that I should probably control my spending and that I should start saving up for a place of my own, because my parents’ house, as easy as it was to live there with my mom cooking and doing my laundry, wasn’t ideal. I lacked privacy and that is an understatement. The doorbell never stopped ringing. At any given hour the house was usually filled with an eclectic assortment of my parents’ friends and business associates, all of whom they referred to as their “partners,” though I never had any idea in what. I tried to stay ignorant to anything “business” related that my parents came up with. When your parents are hustlers and deal makers you can only imagine the types of people they hang around. Most of these characters made the clientele of the Bubblegum Kittikat look classy with a C. My parents’ house was Grand Central Crazy. From the seventy-year old Dominatrix, the rabbi who rode a motorcycle to the former Mormon turned Scientologist who camped out for weeks on the couch meditating or e-metering or something, you just never knew who’d be at the d
inner table with you each night. Many of my parents’ friends sported trophy wives who were younger than me! Their house was a constant party, which was fun sometimes, but other times it really got on my nerves.
Their house, though clean, was totally disorganized and it sent me into convulsions of obsessive compulsive rage when I couldn’t find a simple damn thing, like a pair of scissors or some scotch tape. My parents weren’t practical and small details didn’t matter to them like they did to me. When you opened their cupboards an avalanche of Tupperware clattered out and you’d be lucky if you could find a single matching lid. It drove me insane. Every time I tried to organize it, a few days later it was back to the avalanche and I still couldn’t find the God forsaken lemon squeezer when I needed it.
But at the same time, living at my parents’ house was free and as much as I complained about not having my own space, I also feared being alone. Plus, I just wanted to have fun for a little while. I hadn’t had fun in, well, ever and now I had this crazy job where easy money landed in my fishbowl every single night. Money that arrives easily tends to disappear just as effortlessly.
I’d always dreamed of buying beautiful clothes whenever I wanted them and I loved being able to take off to New York for a few days if I felt like it, which I did on a complete whim when Brent gave me three days off in the middle of one week. Angelina and I had gone up to Orlando for a long weekend at Disney World and I was even planning to spend a week at a resort in Jamaica with Olivia. I wanted to go to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Hawaii and finally, I could afford it and it felt fantastically empowering and hedonistic, especially when I had big hair and smoky eyes to go along with it. Back in middle school, when I’d been bullied by my classmates for not having the latest trends, I’d dreamed of a day when I could go into the mall and buy whatever I wanted. That day had finally come and I didn’t want it to end any time soon.
Amateur Night at the Bubblegum Kittikat Page 26