by Abbi Waxman
“Your face is too mobile,” she’d explained.
“I’m talking and laughing and being an Active Listener,” Nina had replied.
“Well, quit it, because you look like you’ve been poked with a pin in every picture.” She’d pulled some faces to illustrate her point.
“I do not look like that,” protested Nina.
“You do. I have photographic evidence. You might only look like that for a few seconds at a time, but that’s when the shutter clicked, so to speak, so that’s what you look like online.”
“Well, great, I can use it as a first line of defense. If a guy doesn’t look beyond my pained expression to see the real, pain-free me, then he’s not good enough to date me.”
Leah had shrugged. “Or you’ll filter out the regular guys and be left with those that like seeing women in pain, and then who’s going to be sorry?”
Remembering this conversation now, Nina decided William Reynolds must have had similar advice, because if he’d ever smiled or laughed or actively listened in his life, the photographer never caught it.
* * *
It had taken Nina quite some time to investigate the state of Los Angeles book clubs, and after months of study, she’d decided to form one club that discussed a different genre each week, rather than four different clubs that each met once a month.
First Wednesday of each month was Book Bitches (contemporary fiction).
Second Wednesday was Sneaky Spinsters (Golden Age mysteries).
Third Wednesday was District Zero (young adult fiction).
Fourth Wednesday was the Electric Sheep Grazing Club (science fiction).
If there was a fifth Wednesday in the month, she would wing it, because she liked to live dangerously. Book nerds are daredevils, as you know.
Nina would have liked a classic literature club and a romance club as well, but God saw fit to deliver a limited number of hours in the day, and days in the week, and she needed to balance her books, so to speak, with other activities.
Because she advertised her book club widely, membership varied, but it was basically a reliable core team of women who lived for books and were eclectically nerdy enough to want to discuss a different genre every week. She’d met her trivia teammates Leah and Lauren through her book club, and Vanessa, her friend from the café on Larchmont, had joined. The other reliable team member, Daisy, worked at a big chain bookstore, and often brought leftovers from their in-house café, which was a plus. The five of them were completely committed and came every week, taking turns to host and trying to set new standards for snacks. Occasionally, a new member or visitor would show up, and then they would actually have to talk about the book and be completely focused.
That evening’s club was Book Bitches, which was contemporary fiction, and the gang was discussing a worthy tome short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. The ladies had, however, wandered from the topic.
“Really? An actual photo shoot?” Nina was skeptical.
“Yeah, really.” Vanessa was flipping through her phone. “Not just one, but five. From several different angles, different lighting, moody black and white, sun flare filter, the whole nine yards.”
“Yards? I hope you mean inches, because a nine-yard penis would be . . .” Lauren trailed off, and frowned. “How many inches in a yard, again?”
Everyone looked at Nina. They were familiar with her memory.
“Thirty-six. A yard is three feet.” She paused. She wanted to stop, but she couldn’t. “It’s an imperial unit of measure based originally on a physical metal bar in England, which itself was based on the size of a quarter of a cow’s hide.” She took a breath, but Lauren—who could see when a rabbit hole was about to be explored—held up her hand.
“That’s enough. If you keep going, we’ll forget the mental image of a twenty-seven-foot penis, which would indeed be worth looking at.”
Leah snorted. “Although presumably harder to fit all in one frame.”
Nina giggled and sipped her wine, trying to forget the rest of the facts she knew about units of measurement (did you know a “moment” is actually a medieval term for a minute and a half, for example?). She loved being at book club, because although they did talk about books and stories and writers and readers, they also chatted about other interesting things. Dick pics, for example, or the dating life of single women in Los Angeles (the two are sadly related).
“Here’s the thing,” said Daisy, who had brought two dozen cake pops and may have been high as a kite on sugar. “Someone needs to take men aside and whisper in their ear, ‘Dudes, your penis is not the most photogenic thing about you.’ Let’s be honest: The out-of-context penis is not an attractive item. It’s a naked mole rat wearing a beanie.”
“Yeah. If I walked into my kitchen at night and flicked on the light and saw a penis lying on the ground, I would definitely scream and hit it with a broom. At the very least, I would climb on a chair until it rolled away.” Vanessa had clearly given this topic some thought.
Nina objected. “But isn’t that true of any body part? If you flicked on the light and a leg was lying there, you’d also be alarmed.”
“Yes,” agreed Vanessa, “but at least you’d recognize it as a leg. If there was a disembodied penis, you wouldn’t necessarily place it at once.” Vanessa turned up her hands in exasperation. “I’m not sure what it is, but its single eye is staring at me, and it’s too big to squash with a rolled up newspaper . . . Oh, wait, hang on, it’s starting to look familiar . . .”
Nina was still not buying it. “Wouldn’t you be more concerned there was someone walking around missing a penis?”
“Nope,” replied Vanessa. “I don’t think I’d get that far. I think I’d get stuck on the penis, if you’ll excuse the phrase.”
Leah was more practical. “Why don’t men ever send me a picture of them holding a puppy? I’d be so much more interested in that. Or even their smile, or their forearms, or a witty text that doesn’t ask me if I’m wet.”
“Which isn’t a good question to ask, either.” Nina had tackled this one a few times. “Because it offers up too many opportunities for sarcasm: ‘Am I wet? Because you sent me a badly composed picture of your mediocre man meat? No, I’m not wet. I’m not even mildly moist around the edges. I’m a veritable Sahara of repulsion.’” She turned to Daisy. “Do lesbians do this?”
“Send dick pics?” Daisy raised her eyebrows. Daisy’s whole aesthetic was fifties’ retro pinup, and her eyebrows were perfect for raising. “Only if we’re breaking up with someone and want to make sure they block our number forever.”
“So, anyway, what did you say to the photo shoot dick guy?” Nina turned to Vanessa, who shrugged.
“I had already said yes to a date, so I felt bad canceling after he’d shown me the goods.” She grimaced. “‘I know I said yes to a movie, but now that I know you have that monstrosity nestling in your pants, I’m no longer interested.’ Too hurtful.”
“Why were you being considerate of his feelings when he had just visually insulted you?”
“Because I’m not a horrible human being.” Vanessa was occasionally too nice, although she was working on it. “But I do wonder if penises look completely different from the male point of view. Is there, like, an aura or something around it, or a tiny halo? Do they think, ‘Wow, that’s a handsome penis; simply the sight of it makes me horny. Let me send a photo of it to this girl and it will make her horny, too’?”
The women collectively sighed. “They’re simple creatures, men,” said Lauren. “If they like something, they think everyone else will, too.”
“So you’re going out with him?” Nina was sticking to the original topic.
Vanessa nodded. “Yeah, we’re going to the Aliens screening at the ArcLight in a couple of weeks. I left plenty of time in the hopes he meets someone else in the interim.”
“I’ll
be at that screening!” said Nina. “Shall I come over and tell him I’ve heard his penis looks really good in black and white?”
“Please don’t.” Vanessa paused. “Although if he takes it out during the film, I promise to text you for help.”
Leah snorted. “That is absolutely the last movie you want to take your dick out in. Too much similarity to those things that burst out of people’s stomachs. Take your dick out at the wrong moment and you could cause a stampede for the doors.”
“Oh my God, that would be a great Halloween costume; you could dress as John Hurt from the first movie and have your own dick sticking out of a bloody hole in your T-shirt. Totally convincing.” Nina reconsidered. “Mind you, you’d have to keep it hard and menacing looking the whole time, which might be difficult in late October.”
“Can we get back to the book?” Daisy asked, giggling but trying to hold it together. “We’re nearly out of time.”
“Who are you going to Aliens with?” Vanessa asked Nina.
Nina nodded at Leah and Lauren. “These two losers, plus Carter.”
“Are you seeing someone right now?”
Nina shook her head.
Lauren coughed. “She likes a guy at trivia, but she’s too chicken to talk to him.”
Nina frowned and shook her head. “He’s cute, but he may not be worth talking to. He knows too much about sports. He probably doesn’t even read.”
Lauren added, “And that’s apparently her deal breaker.”
Nina looked around. “Isn’t it everyone’s?”
Lauren shook her head. “Not mine. Mind you, I’m not a bookstore employee, so it’s not like nonreaders threaten my livelihood.”
“It’s not mine, either, and I do work at a bookstore,” said Daisy, tucking her blond curls behind her ear. “I draw the line at non–animal lovers. Or girls who ostentatiously use hand sanitizer after going to a public bathroom. Soap and water should be enough. What are they going to do after sex, a full body scrub and chemical peel?”
“I won’t date someone who talks about politics within the first two hours of our meeting,” said Leah. “It used to be a good filter, but now everyone talks about politics, so maybe it’s too fine a mesh. I might need to lower my window of exclusion.”
“Rudeness to waiters, total veto,” contributed Vanessa.
“Backward hats, or, actually, any hats. I hate hats.” Leah looked firm.
“Men who call me by my last name. Unless they’re my high school gym coach, it’s not cute.”
“People who blow their straw wrappers off in public.”
“People who say, ‘Can I come with?’ as if it’s a complete sentence.”
“Calling soda ‘sody pop.’”
“Asking for water with no ice in a restaurant.”
“Pussy Whisperers.”
There was silence. “I’m sorry?” asked Lauren.
Vanessa blushed. “You know, when a man gets down there, so to speak, and then says stuff like, ‘Hello there, gorgeous’ or ‘You like that, don’t you, baby?’ except they’re talking to, you know, her and not you.” Pause. “It’s like when you think a guy is interested but it turns out he’s only trying to get to your hotter friend.”
“You’re jealous of your own snatch?”
Vanessa was now bright red. “No, but if you give me your thoughts on my vagina, I’ll make sure they get passed along, OK? We’re the same person.”
All the women gazed at her for a moment, then Nina said, “You know what I hate? Men who assume women are scared of spiders. And mice. And snakes.”
“Men who like Star Trek but not Star Wars, or the other way around. As if they’re so incredibly different. Or who only like the original Star Trek.”
“Or who use the word ‘canon’ without irony when talking about comic books.”
“Hey, can we get back to Nina’s love life, and then the book we’re supposed to be discussing?” Daisy really did like to stay on schedule.
“There’s nothing to discuss about my love life. I can’t see myself dating someone who doesn’t read books. What would we talk about?” Nina was also ready to get back to the book.
“I think it’s good to date people who spend time in the real world.” Everyone turned to look at Vanessa, who was still blushing a bit from the pussy-whispering part. “Look, last year I dated a guy who could actually hang a picture.”
“Really?” Lauren was surprised.
“Yeah. He changed his own oil.”
“Olive or automobile?”
“Car oil. He cooked. He had a dog he’d trained to do stuff. Impressive stuff, like jump off the guy’s back and catch a Frisbee.”
“Huh.” Nina was interested. “But he didn’t read?”
Vanessa shook her head. “No. He was too outdoorsy. He didn’t like to sit still for very long, you know?”
“And that worked?”
Vanessa nodded, suddenly looking a little sad. “Yeah, it really did. He didn’t care I was less outdoorsy. He went off and did his thing and I went and read books and it was fine.”
There was a pause, and then Leah asked the obvious question. “So, what happened?”
Vanessa shrugged. “He broke up with me and started dating a personal trainer who competed in that competition where they do the crazy obstacle courses.”
Silence.
“She could scale a rope wall in eight seconds.”
Silence.
“I bet she had no imagination,” Nina said, comfortingly.
“Yeah,” Vanessa replied. “Shall we get back to the book?”
So they did. Because, as Neil Gaiman once memorably said, “Books were safer than other people, anyway.”
* * *
When Nina got home from book club, she had an e-mail from Peter Reynolds.
“Hey there,” it began. “This is a weird thing to say, but I am your nephew and until recently neither of us knew the other existed. Sorry about that. Sarkassian thought I might be able to help you understand the family you inherited, and I’d certainly be happy to try. Would you like to have coffee or something? Let me know. Your little nephew Peter, ha ha.”
Nina looked at it for a long time. She could always ignore it. She really had things pretty much together right now; she didn’t need any new complications. Then again, what if there was a very sporty member of her new family who could help her edge out Quizzard? And why was that guy getting under her skin so much, the big, good-looking dumbass? She decided her friends at book club were right: She was being a little Lizzy Bennet about him. I care not one fig, she told herself firmly. I am not in any way intrigued. And besides, I have plenty of other things to think about.
“Dear Peter,” she wrote. “I must admit this whole thing has been a bit of a shock, and I have no real comprehension of what just happened. It would probably be helpful to get my head around it with someone who understands it all. Here’s my number. Why don’t you text me if Friday lunchtime works for you. Love, Aunty Nina, which is hilarious even to write.” Then she put a smiley face so he’d know she was joking, and hit send.
See? Not distracted by the guy in any way. Totally focusing on more important things. One hundred percent not thinking about him. Or his hands. Not at all.
Six
In which Nina feels less alone, but not necessarily in a good way.
Peter Reynolds and Nina had agreed to meet for lunch at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the modern art museum in mid-Wilshire. It was right next to the Tar Pits, with their disturbing, life-sized models of mammoths stuck in the tar-filled pond. Nina remembered standing by the fence around the pond as a child, agonizing over the baby mammoth. He (or she; it was hard to gender-identify a mammoth at fifty feet, probably even for other mammoths) was standing at the side of the pond panicking because his parents were having a problem he couldn’t understan
d. Nina had been a child with a rich imagination and way too much empathy, so after a few tearful visits, her nanny, Louise, had stopped bringing her.
“It’s only a model, baby,” she had explained. “It’s not real.”
“I know,” wailed eight-year-old Nina. “But it could be real, right? Mammoths did get stuck in the tar. That’s why all their bones are here, right?”
Louise had nodded.
“Well then,” cried Nina. “This is a model, but it’s Real Life, too, and a real baby mammoth might have watched his parents get stuck and starve because they couldn’t get out and days and days would go by, and they’d keep telling him to go find food, or somewhere safe, and he would say, ‘No, Mommy, come out of the tar,’ and then she would say, ‘I can’t, baby,’ and she would have cried and he would have cried or maybe some nasty dinosaur would’ve come and eaten him and his mommy wouldn’t have been able to help and it would have been awful . . .” And then Louise, who didn’t think it was the right time to point out dinosaurs and mammoths hadn’t lived at the same time, realized it really would have been awful, and then the Tar Pits were ruined for her, too.
It was the same way with everything Nina experienced; fictional characters were as real to her as the people she met and touched every day. Eventually, she developed a tougher skin and a more critical appreciation of literature, but she still cried at endings, happy or sad. Certain books had left an indelible impression, and Liz never let her forget the occasion she’d been explaining the plot of Flowers for Algernon and had started crying in the middle of the store. Not that Nina needed reminding.
She’d arrived a little early for her appointment with Peter Reynolds and had taken a table where she could watch the door. Sipping her coffee, she examined the people coming in. Every arrival was scrutinized carefully for familiar mannerisms, walks were studied, and of course she missed her actual nephew completely. A man approached her table, a broad grin on his face.