“Big deal,” he says. “Malcolm’s mom forgot him at the state fair last year. He had to sleep with the cows, so you don’t have to worry. Cookies are nothing.”
Gramma’s Little Brown Chippies
2½ cups flour
½ cup margarine
½ cup Crisco
1 cup sugar
½ cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 cups oatmeal
2 cups chocolate chips
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
½ teaspoon salt
Preheat oven to 350˚. Mix everything together. Roll in small balls, stick on cookie sheet, cook at 350˚ for 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven. Eat while still warm. Serves four, or one premenstrual woman.
Friday, Sept. 30
It’s late at night, Jay-Jay asleep, the house quiet. Outside the wind blows, a cool autumn breeze filled with the smell of damp leaves and silt from the inlet. I’m sitting at the kitchen table, my art supplies huddled around a Barbie doll arm, three Bratz doll legs, a Ken torso, and two vintage heads with the hair scalped off. As soon as I finish drinking my tea and writing this entry, I’ll start my second job. No one knows I do this, not Laurel or my best friend, Sandee, or the snotty credit counseling woman. It’s best to keep quiet about it, at least for the time being.
I’ve already spread newspapers across the table and assembled my X-Acto knives. I love the way they feel in my hand: cool and smooth and promising. Each time I pick one up I experience a tremendous urge to cut something, and once, after an especially brutal fight with Barry, I sliced holes in all of his socks, clever little rips that wouldn’t become apparent until halfway through the day, when his toes would suddenly pop through the seam and give off that itchy feeling that can drive you crazy. X-Acto knives make you think of things like that. They make you slyer and smarter than you really are.
Across the table I’ve lined up my paints and glue, sandpaper and drill, dental floss and various tricks of my trade along with the red storage containers I keep at the back of the closet filled with my “work” dolls, most of them bought for a steal on eBay because of cracks or missing eyes. Such flaws mean nothing to me. Like that Six Million Dollar Man show I used to watch growing up, I have the technology to make my dolls better and faster. Much, much faster. Because I make them anatomically correct. I drill tiny little vaginas and labia lips between those poor sexless thighs, and then I cover these private parts with seductive underpants, cheerleader outfits, or nursing uniforms with push-up bras stretched across newly expanded boobs so big it would be impossible for these dolls to see their feet if they had the misfortune of coming alive. I make dirty dolls. X-rated, but mildly so. I don’t do anything radical like butt plugs or fisting or foursomes, and I always make sure Ken carries a condom.
I sell these on an adult website and they’re more popular than you might expect. My agent is Jimmie “10-inch” Dean (no relation to the sausage), a former porn star who found Jesus during a stint in rehab and became so excited pondering the age-old question of whether Joseph and Mary had ever done it that as soon as he got out he started Thinking Butts and Boobs, an artsy adult website that speaks frankly and honestly about sex and desire and why we want what we want. It’s the adult site; it’s even been written up in such stuffy publications as The New Yorker and the Wall Street Journal.
I happened upon this site by accident one night as I was surfing the web looking for ways to make extra money. One minute I was reading about My Points accounts and the next I found myself at Jimmie’s website, which I like to think was fate since he was hosting his My Body and Why? art contest. First prize was $500, so I grabbed a Barbie, made her boobs bigger and her butt rounder, and then I went all the way and drilled a tiny vagina, complete with real-life labia (which was harder than you might expect, with so many folds and all). I only came in third, but Jimmie was so smitten that he called me the very next day to see if he could market the idea. I was sure he was joking: did the world really need dolls with cunts and pubic hair?
It turns out it did. The first five sold out in less than a day, and even though Jimmie has twelve other artists working on his Really Real, Really Feel Me doll line, mine are the most popular. I make four to eight a month and average $50 apiece. I could make more money if I branched out on my own, but I don’t want the hassles. Jimmie has an ongoing legal battle with the Mattel toy company and besides, I like the anonymity. I don’t have to suffer the embarrassment of walking into Jay-Jay’s school conference knowing his teacher knows I’m the creator of Purple Pussy Patty or Suck Me Harder Sammy.
My dolls actually sell more among women than men. This is a fact. It’s also a fact that women think of sex a lot more than men give them credit for. It’s just that we think of sex as a whole outfit, while men only think of ripping off the clothes and getting the deed done. Women dress up their fantasies, right down to the weave of the silk undies and the peek of lace around a push-up bra. We imagine not only hairstyles but the shapes of barrettes and the shades of toenail polish. Once we’re satisfied that our fantasy looks exactly as we want, only then do we bring in the men. And here’s the secret, the thing we all know but rarely admit: in our fantasies, the men don’t matter that much. Oh, we need their parts and their presence, but they are shadowy and often faceless because it’s mostly about us, our bodies, and the way we look and move. Sex for men is all about the orgasm. For women, it’s all about getting to the orgasm. I understand this, which is why my dolls are so popular. I take care with every detail, from the handbags to the toe rings to the fake designer camisoles, one strap slipping coquettishly down a shoulder.
I love sitting at my kitchen table late at night and chopping my dolls to bits. I feel so inexplicably happy that I often get up and dance around the kitchen. It’s not just about the money, which I so desperately need. It’s the knowledge that I’m creating something, and so what if it’s slutty dolls? I’m choosing colors and shading textures, I’m figuring lines and confronting angles. Lately I’ve begun dabbing small canvases on the side, sketching an identity for each doll. These paintings are embarrassingly sloppy and amateurish; it seems I’ve gotten out of touch these years I’ve been away. Yet I can feel a difference in my brush the nights I work on these, a thumping like a heartbeat, a tingle much like someone’s breath against my hand. Often I get so carried away I fall asleep right at the table, my head pressed on small tubes of acrylic paint so that when I wake in the morning, streaks blaze across my face like tribal markings. I don’t wash these off, I wear them as long as I can: to the post office, the grocery store, the bank, the color marking me as someone with a purpose, someone trying to find meaning, decipher nuances. Someone who matters.
Lesson Two
Remember to Praise
Thy Mailman
When we praise the good things, the universe rewards us by subtracting from the bad. Think of it as a math problem with a smaller solution!
—The Oprah Giant
Chapter 3
Tuesday, Oct. 4
“IT’S NOT THAT I DIDN’T want to sleep with him,” Sandee said the moment I walked in to work this morning. “I just didn’t want to listen to him make a big deal out of it later.” She pulled a large tray out of the pantry cooler and began sorting salsa: green, hot, mild, and chunky. “It’s so pathetic when men try to thank you for sex.”
Sandee is my best friend. She’s a small-town girl from the Florida bayou who hates the heat and doesn’t know how to swim. She has platinum blonde hair and dimples and wears high-heel shoes even while waiting tables, her shapely calves flexing with each step. We work side-by-side stations during the lunch rush, and over and over, she saves my life. Unlike me, she actually likes to wait tables.
“The money’s not bad and I don’t have to wear career-girl bullshit outfits,” she says, tugging her apron over her hips. Sandee is fifteen pounds overweight, but on her it’s perfect. She looks ripe, like fruit waiting to be picked. She also has a way of
making people feel right at home that nets her more tips than the rest of us.
“Honey, I’ll be right back,” she says, patting shoulders and soothing tempers so that even the older women, the hard, over-fifty women with sagging chests and bad haircuts, feel a need to protect her. No matter what she does, drops her tray or mixes up drink orders, the customers forgive her.
“Oh, darling, it’s just not my day,” she gasps, her hand held up to her mouth like a parody of old movies.
Sandee lives out in Eagle River, an upper-middle-class area about thirty minutes outside Anchorage, in a house with large windows overlooking the mountains. She was married once. On their third anniversary, her husband, Randall, surprised her with a Las Vegas vacation. He settled her in an expensive hotel, told her he was going out for breakfast, and never came back. He left her with a hefty hotel tab, a $1,600 monthly mortgage, and four maxed-out credit cards. Every three months, she receives a postcard from a peculiar location: Tupelo, Chattanooga, or Hell, Michigan, the backs holding strange and badly poetic messages scrawled in Randall’s stilted handwriting. “In the morning, the sky is the color of pumpkin pie,” the last one said. Sandee fumes for days after receiving one of these. It’s her theory that Randall is hiding out in Vegas and making a killing as a blackjack dealer. The postcards, she believes, are mailed by tourists after they return home from vacation.
“That would be like Randall, making someone else do his dirty work for him,” she says.
She isn’t sure if she’s still married (“He could be dead for all I know,” she says in more optimistic moments), and when men ask her out, which is often, she usually agrees. These dates rarely end well and the next morning she shares the unhappy details with me. Today it was a guy she met at the car wash over on Minnesota Drive.
“I knew he was left-brained—come on, he’s an accountant—but even that can be sexy. Remember that guy from British Petroleum who wore my underwear?” She tossed lettuce for the Caesar salad special. Croutons and cherry tomatoes flew. “Then he goes on and on about this digital recorder he got to capture rutting moose. I should have left right then but no, I hang around for the inevitable sex. Which was—surprise!—accompanied by the roaring and thumping of horny moose.” Sandee licked her fingers and stuck them back in the salad. “Why do I bother?”
I shrugged and headed to the empty dining room to set up my tables. The air was hazy with the smell of spilled tequila and old grease, and as I wiped chairs and tightened salt and pepper lids, I hummed along with the Mexican elevator music piped over the speakers. Since I’m the only all-day server—the others work split shifts and return for dinner as I’m finishing up the last of the afternoon tables—I get the prime corner station, five cozy booths plus two tables. Most days they’re covered through two p.m., which is a good thing: more tables equal more money.
Today was busy, and after everyone was cut from the floor I got caught with a busload of retired dentists from Wisconsin, all of them straggling in with that peculiar pallor of the overly stimulated tourist. They had been to Portage Glacier and Denali, cruised Kenai Fjords, walked along the Alaskan Pipeline, and were just now returning from a day jaunt along Turnagain Arm, where they had encountered two heaps of bear scat. A fat man shoved his camera’s viewfinder in my face.
“See?” He pointed to a blurry speck on the ground. “Scat so fresh it was steaming. Five minutes earlier, we’d have been ripped to shreds.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell them that they had photographed dog poop, not bear. They were having such a good time—what right did I have to ruin it for them? They ordered premium margaritas and steak fajitas, left me a fat tip, and promised to send autographed pictures of The Scat as soon as they got back home. By the time I tallied up my bank, the dinner shift was in full swing and I was late picking up Jay-Jay. I found him slumped in front of the locked multipurpose room, a big-bosomed lady with a clipboard glaring down at me. Did I know, she barked, that I would be charged an extra dollar for every minute late? I shook my head and signed the form; I had barely broken even. The retired dentists had left $55 in tips, yet their staying late had cost me $35 in extra child-care fees.
“I had to wait with Mrs. McCallister,” Jay-Jay complained as we walked across the darkening parking lot. The air was cold and crisp—Halloween weather, I always call it, these midautumn evenings when the wind blows with damp promise and everything feels suspended and mysterious.
“She talked about when she was a girl.” Jay-Jay shuddered and pulled his coat tighter. “It was awful.”
“I was a girl once,” I said.
He gave me a disgusted look and climbed in the backseat. Once home I couldn’t muster the energy to cook, so we had TV dinners. Jay-Jay and I secretly love TV dinners; we love the brightly colored cardboard wrappers and the way the food is stacked so neatly in clever little aluminum trays and then covered like holiday presents. We eat these compact meals in the living room while watching movies. Tonight it was Dr. Dolittle, and we laughed along with Eddie Murphy, we slurped and chewed and wiped our mouths on the bottoms of our shirts. After we finished, we put on our coats and sat on the porch and ate Fudgsicles until our tongues turned brown. I was stuffing the second one into my mouth when Jay-Jay suddenly asked, “Mom, ever wish you had a penis?”
“Not particularly,” I said.
“Maybe then you wouldn’t be so grouchy.”
I lowered my Fudgsicle and stared at the slope of his forehead, so much like Barry’s that I had the sudden urge to smack him. “How so?”
“Because,” he explained in a patient, adult voice, “you could pee standing up.”
“I’m on my feet all day at work. I like sitting down.”
“Whatever.” Jay-Jay shrugged. I could tell he didn’t believe a word I said. I wondered if he was right, if I would be happier if I had a flap of skin swinging between my legs. I couldn’t imagine it, though; couldn’t imagine having to tuck it in and constantly rearrange it and worry about whether it would get hard when it wasn’t supposed to or, worse yet, not get hard when it was supposed to. No wonder men treated their cocks as if they were the greatest things in the world. It was like stroking a talisman or praying to an unpredictable god: if I worship you and grant you privileges you’ll always be there for me when I need you.
But they weren’t, that was the thing. Every man I’ve ever dated for an extended time sooner or later couldn’t get it up or got it up but came moments later, or got it up but not quite up enough, lying there and stroking it with a fearful, desperate look in his eyes. As I lay there beside them with my beautiful cunt that was always ready and only needed to be oiled from time to time and could come five and six and seven times in a row and never “petered” out or stopped working.
“Vaginas are really cool things,” I wanted to tell Jay-Jay, because I wanted him to understand how it is to always be open, how walking around with that hole between your legs can sometimes feel like a void—if not filled, you could find yourself leaking away. How a man’s penis might be more prominent but a woman’s desire is just as strong, if not stronger, because she carries it deep inside of her.
Of course I couldn’t say this to my son; it would be almost incestuous. Plus it wasn’t really Jay-Jay I was thinking about but myself and the way I’ve lived my life, flitting from one desire to the next, never stopping to question if I was moving in the right direction, or even any direction at all. If men follow the lead of their penises, then women follow the path of their wombs. We follow our nurturing instincts. We call this passion or sex or love, but really it’s deeper and more binding. It’s our true voice, pure and pink and strong. It’s the thing we seek yet fear and doubt because, think of it: how many of us really want to know the truth about ourselves? Most of us, I believe, are happier with lies.
Letter #3
Ms. Carlita Richards
202 W. Hillcrest Drive #22
Anchorage, AK 99503
Dear Ms. Carlita Richards:
Congratu
lations! As head librarian of Anchorage Community Libraries, I would like to commend you for having the highest outstanding library fine so far this year: $120.60, accumulated in daily fees for How to Save Your Own Life, by Erica Jong.
Please arrange payment as soon as possible. Until balance is paid in full, your library card will no longer be honored at local branches.
Shame, shame, shame on you, Ms. Richards!
Sincerely yours,
Margaret M. Miller,
Head Librarian
Anchorage Community Libraries
Thursday, Oct. 6
I lie. I can’t help it, they just slip out. Gramma never made a big deal out of my lies, at least not the small ones, which she called fibskis. She believed fibskis were the only thing holding the world together.
“Think anyone wanna see themselves like they really is?” she’d snort. Then she’d roll dough out over the kitchen table and cut noodles while she told the story of her name, which was supposed to be Rachel but ended up Bethany; the midwife refused to write Rachel in the registry, since it was the name of the woman who stole her husband, so she wrote the name of her dead sister instead. By the time anyone realized this, it was too late and Gramma became Bethany, a combination of two names and similar to a small town in northern Alaska. Perhaps it was fate, for not only did I end up living in Alaska, but my name is also a fibski. It’s not really Carla, it’s Carlita. I don’t admit this often because it’s obvious to anyone looking at me that I don’t have an ounce of Spanish blood in my veins. Laurel could get away with it, since she is darker, but I have that pasty skin of someone who should have been blonde but turned brunette. I wasn’t purposely given a Spanish name. Mother, drugged out on painkillers and flying from champagne, goofed. I was supposed to be a boy and Mother had the name Charles all picked out, after her great-uncle, who started his very own tire company and made a fortune, only to lose it on a mad gambling binge when he was eighty-four, but that’s beside the point. He was the only rich one in a family of middle-class people trying to toe the line and pull themselves up. I was supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor. “Or maybe even a movie producer,” Mother used to sigh when telling the story. Then she’d take two aspirin and lie on the couch with a washcloth over her eyes. Talking about our muddled family history gave her a fierce headache, and we all knew to keep it down at such times.
Dolls Behaving Badly Page 3