by Sarah Fuller
I nodded. “That’s right. I forgot.” Because you haven’t mentioned it in five minutes, I thought.
One day, Jennifer was complaining about how her hair was growing too thick and long. My head perked up from the reformer machine. This sounded like my kind of problem. I was instantly curious.
“I think I’m going to have to cut back on the collagen I put in my vegan smoothie,” she said, holding up a long strand of hair. “It’s just too much.”
You poor thing, I thought, wondering if maybe she should call Sally Struthers’s children to tell them of her plight.
“My nails are growing so fast, I can’t keep up,” she continued.
“This collagen?” I asked, not aware that you could ingest this stuff. I thought doctors simply injected it into old women’s lips.
“It’s great,” Jennifer said with a smile. She’s super nice, probably because she doesn’t eat animal babies like I do. “I’ll send you the website.”
That night, I followed the link that Jennifer sent me and found a site that sold various forms of collagen peptides. The thing that struck me from the get-go was the source. I searched and searched and found that all sources of collagen are derived from animals. There was literally no way around it.
Jennifer’s voice from earlier that day rang in my head, ‘I’m exclusively vegan.’
The English teacher in me wanted to sit the sweet vegan down and teach her the meaning of the word “exclusively.”
I decided never to say anything to Jennifer about her failed vegan diet since it would make me look like an asshole. I learned that the hard way one day when I corrected one of the other instructors.
As we held a plank, Pelé told us over the microphone about this woman who’d cut her off in traffic. Pelé, named after a famous soccer player, often tells us colorful stories while we’re begging for mercy. The first time we met, I told her that I’d almost named my daughter Pelé.
“What?” she exclaimed. “That’s crazy.”
“So crazy,” I said dryly. “Alas, it wasn’t going to work because I couldn’t figure out how to get that thing over the ‘e.’ I gave up in the maternity ward and settled on something I could spell on an American keyboard.”
I apparently have a sense of humor that leaves people wondering whether I’m joking or not. It’s a gift.
“So this woman has cut me off twice in traffic,” Pelé stated, as I nearly started to sweat, my abs quaking from holding plank. “You can come down in three, two, one.”
I fell down into child’s pose with a thud, rolling over on my tailbone in preparation for the next torture exercise.
“Then the woman pulls in beside me at the smoothie shop, parking entirely too close to my car,” Pelé continued. “A real See You Next Tuesday.”
“A what?” I asked, silently feeling sorry for this woman who suffered from the same spatial dysfunction as me.
“A See You Next Tuesday,” Pelé repeated. “You know, it’s how we politely call women bad names.”
I shook my head. “I don’t get it. I happen to like Tuesdays. It’s when I have tacos.”
She laughed. “No, it’s code. You take the first letter in each word.” She cupped her hands to make a “c” and then a “u.” “Get it? C-U-N-T. See you next Tuesday.”
I nodded like I got it. “Ummm…you do realize that two of those four words don’t in fact start with those letters? ‘See,’ as in ‘See you next Tuesday’ starts with an ‘s.’ And ‘you’…” I trailed away, her blank stare communicating that my spelling lesson was completely unwelcome.
“See you next Tuesday,” I said, my voice injected with excitement. “That’s brilliant!”
“Isn’t it, though?” Pelé said with confidence. “And no one knows that you’re secretly calling someone a bad name.”
Or that you can’t pass a second-grade spelling test, I thought, already making plans to anonymously leave a dictionary in the studio’s bathroom.
Chapter Seven
I Belong to a Club of Old Men
You know how women will say, “Oh, most of my friends are guys.”
Well, that’s not completely accurate for me. I have a fair share of women friends, but the no-drama type. If you want to argue over petty shit, take your ass to the curb. I don’t do drama. However, I also have a large network of guy friends, but not like Ross and Chandler from Friends. Oh no, my male friends are older, married, or both. Not gay, mind you. For some reason, gay men are repelled by me. It’s the strangest thing, and I’ve never been able to understand it. It’s a bit frustrating, because all I’ve ever wanted was a gay best friend to help me with my defunct sense of style. Alas, there is no Will for this Grace.
When I was in high school, I was cast for the lead in the school play. My co-star was a redheaded homosexual who studied Wiccan. See? Even then I couldn’t get away from the damn redheads. However, Chris wasn’t drawn to me like most gingers. Quite the opposite.
In the play, we were a married couple who had to kiss. I’m a professional actress—or at least, back then I thought I was. I was all up for snogging the sweaty warlock, but he wouldn’t have it. Whatever it was, he could hardly stand to be on the same stage as me. So when it came time to kiss, he put his palm over his mouth, and I laid my lips on the back of his hand, making it look as real as I could for the audience. After the play was over, Chris apparently put a spell on me.
And that’s why gay men don’t like me.
One time, I was at a James Blunt concert at the Belasco Theatre in downtown Los Angeles—an intimate setting with a capacity of only sixteen hundred. I didn’t realize that my future husband, James, had a big gay following. For that reason alone, I feel like gay men should like me, or at least be able to stand me: we share a common obsession with a British musician. However, they are repelled by me. It’s sad.
I was roughly five rows from the stage, a close enough distance that I should have been able to get James’ attention, putting my own witchcraft on him so that he knew he was “beautiful” to me. There was only one problem with this clever plan of mine… Well, besides that George and I were married at the time, and he was stationed right next to me. He always dampened my chances to get a rock star boyfriend; like when I was at a private recording for One Republic, and he kept introducing me to everyone as his “wife.” Dude, how was the lead singer, Ryan Tedder, going to ask me out if I had some label on me?
Don’t worry, I was totally loyal, and George knows that. Like any healthy couple, we had an agreement that I could have a pass for James Blunt, Rob Thomas, or other eligible rock stars. Problem was that George always sabotaged my chances by being present.
Anyway, also stationed close by during the James Blunt concert were two giant men—the sweetest couple one ever saw, holding hands and ready to sway to the music. The issue for me though, was that the towering men were directly in front of me, not only blocking any view I’d have of James, but any view I had of anything that wasn’t their asses. Seriously, I’m so short that my head was even with their waistlines. Not cool.
Forgetting that Chris had jinxed me all those years ago, I tapped one of the men on the shoulder. Okay, I tried to, but it was more like the small of his back, which was where everything started to go wrong.
When he turned around, he looked out at the crowd behind me, a scowl on his face.
“Down here!” I yelled, like an ant on the ground.
The brute looked down at me like the Jolly Green Giant, except without any cheer or green beans.
“Hey, I can’t see from behind you,” I sang playfully. “When the show starts, will you hunch down a little?”
Okay, I was kidding obviously. Maybe I was hoping they’d take pity on me and let me in front of them. I seriously don’t take up much room.
One of the men laughed, the smaller of the two, because, let’s be honest, it was funny. His boyfriend was like an NBA star who’d probably ruined movies for thousands of people with his fat head and broad shoulders.
“I don’t think so,” the taller man said, cutting off his boyfriend. He then turned around, making his partner do the same.
Their terse words and the giant’s angry stares over his shoulder told me I’d crossed into the wrong territory. The curse was still active. Fuck my life.
“I’ve told you before that you should keep your mouth shut,” George warned in a whisper. “You’re too sassy, people don’t always like it.”
I ignored him right in time for the shorter man to storm off.
Goliath spun around and yelled in my face. “Look what you’ve done! You’ve created a fight!”
Right. It was me. Obviously, I was to be blamed for this. I was the reason that most people were assholes. Just blame it on me.
I really didn’t want George to get involved. Which was good, because when I turned around, I saw that he’d taken three giant steps backward. When I turned back around, the obscenely tall, angry man pushed me, making me stumble. I was shocked. Seriously, who pushes someone who is so short, she nearly qualifies for handicapped parking?
I was still disoriented when a few girls came to my rescue. They’d witnessed the whole thing and assured me that the guy had gone from happy to hostile instantly. Yep, the curse was keeping gay men everywhere from liking me.
Thankfully, the women took an instant liking to me and invited me to join them in the third row, close enough that James could fall in love with me. I’m still waiting for him to call and tell me he hasn’t gotten me out of his mind, five years later. It will happen.
So since gay men have banned me from their friendships, and I’ve banned catty women from my life, the majority of my friends are old men. Makes perfect sense, right?
When I go to the grocery store, one of the produce guys, Bob, who has a head full of gray hair, always stops what he’s doing to come over and greet Eleanor and me. We chat easily, catching up on each other’s affairs.
Then there’s the wine guy on the other side of the store. You know I’m tight with that guy. He’s a seventy-year-old Italian named Giuseppe, who often entertains me with stories of growing up in the Bronx while he helps me pick out a case of wine for the week.
These guys are my friends, and I always look forward to their wide smiles and twinkling eyes. On more than one occasion, one of them has rushed out to my car while I was loading groceries to offer Eleanor and me a complimentary bouquet of flowers. We always beam and tell them how grateful we are for their friendly gift.
Guess what happens when the hot produce guy, who is my age and has green eyes like the waters of Lake Tahoe, says hi to me? If you guessed that I pretend my phone is ringing or that I’ve just stepped in gum, then you get a thousand points, only good for bragging rights. On more than one occasion, he’s smiled at me across the pile of lemons, offering a compliment.
“Would you like a free sample?” he asked one time, holding up a ripe nectarine.
My eyes dropped as my face flushed red. “No, thanks. I don’t like fruit,” I said, hurrying off, hoping he didn’t notice the melon, bag of apples and crate of strawberries in my cart.
Since then, if I see Mr. Green Eyes doing his job, arranging the fruit just right, I veer toward the dairy section.
“Don’t we need lemons,” Eleanor asked one time I tried to dodge the produce guy.
Damn kids and their fucking questions.
“No, we’re good. I’ll get the inferior bottled stuff,” I muttered to her in reply.
“But you say that stuff—”
“Who wants cookies?” I said in an attempt to get her compliance.
“Me! Me! Me!” she sang.
“Looks like Bob is over there.” I pointed. “Get him to help you pick some out.”
Since I can’t stay out of the produce section forever, I’ve managed to figure out the days that the hottie produce guy doesn’t work, and I go shopping then. Yes, I get that this is counterintuitive to finding eligible men to date; I should be chatting him up every occasion I get. However, as much as my neighbor might think I’m some puta, I’m really a classy woman.
Firstly, I won’t flirt with a man when I’m with my daughter. That’s just gross. And I can’t date anyone who I could casually run into if things don’t end well. So men in the following areas are off-limits: the gym, grocery stores, the park, Eleanor’s school, my work, and in a five-mile radius of where I live. I call it the protected zone. That’s an easy rule to follow; it leaves tons of options.
I was at the grocery store one day when I picked out an onion from the bottom of the artfully arranged pile. In my defense, it was the best-looking one. I had it nearly in the bag when the rest of the pile began to fucking quake like an avalanche of rocks about to thunder down a mountain. I threw down the pristine onion I’d picked, and launched my body up against the dozens of onions rolling for the floor. Several escaped past my short arms, but by pressing myself up against the shelf of onions, I served as a wall, keeping many of them from busting to the ground like their brethren.
“Did you pull from the bottom?” a voice asked at my back in a sing-song voice.
Fuck my life. I turned to find Lake Tahoe Eyes staring at me with a sideways grin, his arms crossed in front of his chest.
“It was the best one,” I said, looking down to see that I was waist-deep in onions. The vegetable of romance.
I pushed them forward, catching a couple as I tried to back away. On the ground, several onions had split open, their pungent aroma wafting through the air.
The guy dashed forward, helping to catch many of the onions as they sought to spill over the side, a vegetable suicide attempt.
“I-I-I’m sorry,” I stammered, backing away, picking up pieces of onion before I tripped on them.
“It’s fine,” the guy said, laughing at me… not with me. I wasn’t laughing. “I haven’t seen you in a while. How’s everything going?”
If you’re thinking this makes for a wonderful icebreaker, you’re absolutely right. We met because I made an avalanche of onions rain down all over the grocery store floor. That would be a great story to tell people when they ask how we met. Unfortunately, that won’t be our story, since I pretended that I’d lost Eleanor and excused myself. The truth was that Eleanor was with her father, and the only thing I’d lost was my dignity.
“You realize you’re never going to meet anyone if you don’t actually get out,” my friend Alissa said one day after listening to my onion story.
“I get out!” I argued.
“You go to the dog park in the evening and hang out with a bunch of old men,” she countered. “And you don’t even have a dog.”
“I’m dog shopping,” I stated. “It’s like hanging out at a car dealership before the big purchase.”
I had developed this strange habit of going down to the park in the evening with Eleanor. At first, it was an attempt to deal with my dog fear. Then I made friends with the dogs, and then their owners. A club of old men met there every evening who mostly had Labradoodles. Eleanor played with the canines, and I chatted with my friends who were all about my father’s age.
The running joke was, “Sarah, which one of these dogs are yours?”
“Shush it,” I usually scolded my friends. “I’m browsing. I’m going to get a dog as soon as I steal and pawn your jet ski.”
A few weeks would go by, and then one of the guys would say, “Hey, Sarah, when are you getting that dog you’ve been talking about?”
I’d throw the ball for one of the shaggy Labradoodles and roll my eyes at “the guys.” “Why get a dog and have the expense when I can play with yours?”
Alisa shook her head at me as we strolled through my neighborhood, discussing the strange dog club I’d snuck into. “I think you have to get out more—like out of your element. Or you’re going to have to get rid of the protected zone.”
I gawked at her. “I can’t deal in my own neighborhood.”
She laughed
at me. “It’s called ‘dating.’ You’re not ‘dealing.’ And didn’t you say there was a nice eligible bachelor at the park who taught Eleanor how to throw a ball?”
I gulped. Blushed. “Yes, he used physics to teach her how to throw properly. It was so hot.”
“Oh my God! You’re the biggest dork in the world.” She nudged me. “You should take down the protected zone and talk to him, like really talk to him.”
“But if things didn’t work out, we’d see each other at the park all the time!” I argued, my mouth popping open from a different thought. “What if we had to split the park? Like a strange custody agreement? What if he got the side where the summer concerts happen? What if I got the shitty side where the baseball fields are? There’s nothing to do over there. And the guys all meet in the open area.”
“Guys? You mean elderly men?” She shook her head. “And besides, what if it works out, and this guy doesn’t have to commute, like most you’ve dated?”
I let out an exasperated breath, my mind already racing through the outcomes of this relationship that hadn’t even happened yet.
“Maybe you have walls that are too high,” Alisa continued. “How is anyone ever going to get in if you don’t let down the drawbridge?”
I grimaced at her horrible and disgusting analogy. “Leave the words to me, Alisa. You suck at them.” And yet, I wasn’t going to admit that she’d made an excellent point, one I maybe couldn’t argue with.
Chapter Eight
I Put on Pants for This
Since I work from home, most days, dress code is optional. Let’s be honest: most days, pants are optional. I’m civilized enough to throw on a pair of yoga pants, a sports top and flip-flops to take Eleanor to school. In the three months of coolish temperatures we have here in LA, aka winter, I exchange my flip-flops for Ugg boots and add a hoodie to the mix. That’s about as much diversity as my wardrobe gets. And because I’m a pansy ass, I start shivering when the temperature drops to around sixty degrees. I get that in other parts of the United States it gets much colder, but it’s all about what you’re acclimated to.