Redefining smooth

It takes a while to get used to waking up at someone else’s house. At first, with Drew it had been early, awkward and uncomfortable. I would wait until he went to the bathroom to emerge naked from the bed and look for my clothes. Sometimes I would have to look under the bed or behind his desk for my underclothes. Then he would come back, moan about his back or his joints and lie back down, asking me what I wanted to do. We’d talk about breakfast at an Irish pub around the corner. I would brush my teeth with my finger, attempt to dress down whatever I was wearing the night before, and straighten my makeup the best I could, just hoping I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew.

Today I woke up at ten, wearing Drew’s long white undershirt. My pajamas were in my overnight bag on the floor, so it had been an option. It was cold but I liked the way he smelled and he always liked coming back and reclaiming what was his. I moved his arm that had been resting on my side and got out of bed to take a shower. I thought he might sleep a little longer so I thought I’d beat him to it. I left the door ajar.

When I turned off the water, I heard his voice behind the curtain. “Bloody Marys sound good?” I pulled the curtain open, seeing my pajama pants in his hand; hot, fresh out of the dryer.

I almost began to cry, but grinned the tears back. “They sound amazing.”

We continued our morning routine—he put on some ska and I climbed up on his back and gave him a quick massage. He took a shower while I brushed my teeth (with my toothbrush!) and put makeup on. We watched a Tivo’d Daily Show before we decided to hit the liquor store.

Being a bartender, you always see it coming. The boy had light brown hair, a sprinkling of freckles and terribly striking blue eyes. Eyes that felt like you knew him without really knowing him at all. He looked desperate, needy, embarrassed.

I made eye contact with Drew, sitting in the car, playing with his Zippo. He smiled at me. I was sure he either knew what was going on, or thought the poor kid was hitting on me. 

“Hey maam.” Strike one. “Do ya think you could uh, help me and my friends out?”

I felt the smile slowly fill my face, remembering the old days. Jesus, most of the time I didn’t even want to remember I was ever so young. But it was hard to avoid now. My mind traveled back to scanning supermarket aisles, looking for the perfect provider. The cool one, the one who wouldn’t think ill of you, the one who thought you were cute and remembered what it was like.

I leaned in, stepped closer. He sidestepped and fidgeted. “Where are your friends?” I don’t know if I was genuinely interested or entertained by the fact that I was making him uncomfortable.

“Uhm, they’re over there, across the street.” I spotted three boys, all around 17, wearing khaki cargo shorts and clean, pressed polo shirts. They certainly didn’t seem like drinkers. I thought about walking into the liquor store and buying him a bottle of Strawberry Boones, calling him Shirley. Pinching his freckled cheeks. I thought about buying him a flask sized Jim Beam, telling him to drink it fast, that it would give him balls. I rolled the chocolate mint around in my mouth, lollygagging.

“Please? We really want to, ya know…”

My eyes wandered, scouring the parking lot. This was horrible. I was starting to wonder if I was being set up or filmed. But I remembered that we never took a “no” if they didn’t say it. I looked back at Drew. He was laughing.

“You really want to get drunk, because it’s Thursday afternoon and you and the Los Gatos suburbanites want to sit on park benches and forget about that big test you flunked?”

He stood up straighter and gave me a hard look. “Yeah, some alternate version of that maybe.” He looked like he was going to give up. “Forget it.”

I smiled at him, and back to Drew. It was nice to be able to affect someone. I had taken that for granted. Nothing got to Drew, and Vincent was always complaining. “What’s your poison?”

“Bacardi Limon.” It was a good choice. It was sweet and smooth, but there was definitely some kick to it. And if you weren’t an amateur, you could just drink it straight. I remembered sucking it out of sport bottles in the back of the limo before my senior prom, matching with Johnny, all black and white, even our hair. The strong, sugary taste of lemon that lingered in his mouth, cavernous and wet, welcoming, intruding.

That same smell in his parents’ hot tub, surrounded by a gazebo where he told me he loved me the first time. Waking up that next morning in his bed with his parents and mine knowing, approving, his making us breakfast and giving us ‘virgin Mimosas.’ It wasn’t warm pajamas but it was wonderful.

I thought of the pink girl again, envisioned syrupy coconut rum, yellow juices and paper umbrellas. Drinks that would get you fat before they got you drunk. I gagged to myself.

He gave me a twenty and I did my civic duty. I walked back over to Drew, holding the brown paper like it was contraband. He followed me, giving his friends a thumbs-up. I handed Drew our vodka and sat down, closed the door, rolled down the window.

I handed the bag and to him and then the change. “What’s your name?”

He took it, his left hand straightening his hair, acting cool, like his stock had gone up with me. “John. But my friends call me Johnny.”

It had.

always the bridesmaid…

Today was the first day I had woken up alone, without a hangover, in my own bed, in nearly a week. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally drained. It felt amazing to sleep in my favorite flannel pajamas, sans makeup, hair a complete mess. I meandered to the kitchen and poured myself a tall glass of milk. I sat down, flipped through a magazine that my mother had left the last time she had visited. Upon leaving, I remember her running her long white finger along the windowsill, shaking her head disapprovingly. “I can get you a cleaning lady, you know.”

Visits with Mother. There was nothing like them in the world.

Still morningized, I rummaged through the fridge, gathered together a couple of brown eggs, mushrooms and mozzarella, and began to work on an omelet breakfast I had been missing out on for weeks. For some reason, I felt like a prisoner who had just earned a reprieve. I found myself intoxicated by the silence the entire apartment contained, although silence wasn’t something I lacked consistently.

I had just pulled out another frying pan and begun to cook some bacon when I heard the sound of the Clash singing “Janie Jones,” my ringtone of the moment. I hurried to my bedroom to answer it.

I looked down at my small, unassuming black phone. The name that was illuminated on it this time was G-Town, a name I had affectionately given Gina, my best friend of almost fifteen years. It was perfect; I had a day to myself, after all, to be lazy, cook a breakfast I could indulge in at a leisurely pace, read, write or do anything I wanted. I wasn’t going to call Drew and probably not Vincent; I didn’t have anyone to answer to, no work to prepare for, and nothing to do. Besides, I hadn’t talked to her in quite some time, so I answered it happily.

There are a few moments in your life that stick with you, not for any particular reason other than the fact that perhaps it might change your life forever. These three words, which were whispered like a secret of unholy nature, was a moment as such. “I’m getting married.”

If I didn’t worry about what other people thought as much as I did, I would have screamed and dropped the phone. I couldn’t believe it. Gina’s relationship, since she’d been widowed three years previously, had lasted only about a year and a half, and it seemed to have serious flaws, including fidelity issues. He was a parasite whom I trusted as far as I could throw.

But at that point, none of it mattered. I wasn’t even thinking about Gina, clad in white lace, walking down the aisle all over again. I wasn’t thinking of male strippers and apple manhattans sipped from straws shaped like penises. I wasn’t thinking about drunken toasts and limos written on with shaving cream. I was thinking about me, catching the bouquet four years ago and rolling through a series of endless, monotonous loops with men ever since.

“Congratulations,” I choked out, one tear falling, releasing the floodgates for the rest of his brothers behind him.

She sighed. “Crazy huh?”

“Crazy indeed.” I could taste the salt.

“We’ve got more time than last time.” She was referring to the fact that, four years ago, Chad only had a week after his tour in the army had gotten extended, so we had been forced to throw together a wedding in five days. Since I had been the maid of honor it was a lot of work. But it was beautiful and definitely worth it. Chad and Gina had loved each other since they were kids, and even though at the time it felt rushed and insane, it really had made sense. It definitely made more sense than this.

“How long?”

“A little over two months. We want to get married the first day of spring. A sign of good luck, don’t you think?”

I said nothing. She would need as much good luck as she could possibly get. And it was better than five days but it was still no small feat. But I didn’t even want to think about my future responsibilities, the ones that would soon be haunting me just around the corner, forcing me to celebrate something that seemed genuinely wrong and at the same time analyze my own present loneliness. I just wanted the freedom to eat some greasy meat and cry myself back to sleep.

“Okay. I’ll call you later. My bacon is burning.”

Thinking I might lose the blues and become inspired like last time, I indulged in another bubble bath. It was too hot. I lie down and let the water burn me, soothe me. I watched the bubbles surround my crimson skin, pop up from the sides of my arms, my legs, my hips. I looked down at my own breasts, the light pink nipples standing up beneath the foam. It made me think about sex. Calloused hands and wet lips, probing tongues, fingers, candlewax, ice. I thought about my history teacher in high school I had always fantasized about blowing under his desk. I thought about my first time with the first one, sweet but awkward, uncomfortable, tainted possibly by my own intense feelings and unreasonable expectations.

I thought of Jane, the girl I had teased mercilessly but eventually fallen for, and how it felt like I was making love to a warm mirror.

It had been a long time, but I remembered what it felt like to be in love. Wondered what it felt like to be in love now, more grown, evolved, no longer so idealistic and naïve. I wondered if I was still capable of producing those feelings. I wondered if I was still capable of instilling them in someone else. I thought about how much I had loved Johnny, how I felt like I would give up everything, my personality, my existence, my life for the best of him, the best of us. Had I really ever been so young? I laughed, thinking now I had trouble even compromising trivial issues. Further speculating, I decided I blamed him for my present stubbornness. I wondered if I had a right to.

I pondered the possibilities with Drew; wondered if he’d ever be more than he was now. Wondered if he ever wanted to be. I had asked once, in a haze of drink and sweat if he wanted to be with me. He had held my hand and said, “I am with you.” He had been slippery from day one; perhaps he would always be that way. He was me. And now that I had discovered that we were the same, I wanted to change him, probably like everyone had wanted to change me.

I thought about all the times I had met someone who had wanted something more. Cute, sweet or not, I would become scared off and more often than not completely self-destruct and sabotage the prospect. It was like a slapstick comedy. You just always knew it was coming.

Looking back on my own love life, dating now seemed to feel like one tattoo after another; a silly, pleasurable addiction that appeared to be more important than it really was. Sure, there were days that I tortured myself over Drew, but he was just a man. I didn’t need him. But I wanted some meaning in my life. I wanted something deeper.

And it was pathetic that it took my best friend deciding to take lifelong vows (for the second time) for me to even realize it. Did I really have such low self-esteem that I would give anybody who gave me attention half a chance? Or did it merely suit me to inflate my ego further? Was I constantly in search of one I could deem “the one,” failing miserably each time and not having the energy or the balls to completely cut off contact anyway? Or did I just crave sex and preferred to keep it solely among people I knew, trusted and found reasonably attractive?

In the past few years, I had experienced many nights of sitting at a bar, drinking at the expense of a gentleman caller, or strangers that admired the curvature of my form or the brightness of my smile, and the end of the evening would always go one of two ways. Either my gentleman caller and I would find ourselves tangled in one of our beds’ sheets (much to my chagrin the next morning), or I would return home, lonely, sad, hoping for a better tomorrow, wishing I had more motivation, stability. Hearing my mother’s voice saying “do something with yourself for chrissakes.” Kicking myself for not writing more, writing relentlessly, writing from my blood, my bones. For not forcing the world to read it.

Wishing I could open my eyes to someone who wanted to be there, someone who was happy that I was there, too; someone who was smart and stupid in the same ways I was. I was the typical female, the typical anti-female. Was it win-win or lose-lose?

The bath had run cold.

Should old acquaintance be forgot…

December 31^st. It is one of the most terrifying days of the entire year. We are a society of clamberers, feeling the intense and passionate, almost vital need to be attached to someone’s ass on this day, especially at the very stroke of midnight. I remember in high school the girls and I always made a point to kiss the cutest boy we could find, that is if we were single, to kiss at this momentous moment.

This, in retrospect, seems silly now. I opted to spend New Year’s Eve, for the most part, alone. Drew and I did curry and drank some Indian beers in the afternoon but I didn’t even bother hinting that I wanted to spend ‘the big moment’ with him. Besides, I knew he was working graveyard that evening (who does that?) and Vincent was with Camille, of course. Who, I might add, I have started warming up to.

Vincent and I finally got her drunk a few weeks ago. I got so inebriated that I actually admitted it was weird that she was always wearing pearls, something I immediately regretted, but she was really cool about it. She took them off and threw them, then started on a rant about the White Album, and how it changed her life, which was cool if not somewhat random. She just kept singing “Sexy Sadie” and smoothing her dress down. Who knew? She’s kind of a character when she’s not being uptight.

But I digress. It’s January 1, 2008. Another fucking year. It’s suddenly everybody’s birthday. Some people rejoice, reciting clichéd resolutions, diet plans and self-help psychobabble, some people see it coming and detest it vehemently, usually swearing a lot and complaining about how old they are, or how the year in particular sounds preposterous (“I just got used to writing 07 on my checks!” blah blah). I fall somewhere in between. More of a ‘who cares’ attitude. So I did what any normal, ambivalent, unattached person would do. I ate well, drank the world dry and got into a fight.

Don’t you think it’s rude to cut someone off on New Year’s Eve? I wasn’t even that messed up, and I was by myself, minding my own goddamned business. I was eating unagi hand rolls at Blowfish, getting blitzed, celebrating the big occasion in my own small way. And the waitress straight up refused to serve me another drink. I could barely understand what she was saying so that didn’t help either. I threw a bit of a fit and a mouthy heavyset chick got involved. One thing led to another, and we ended up having a bit of a scene in front of the restaurant.

Although I suppose it’s true, I was in a bad mood. I had noticed Johnny and the pink girl in his car from the bus on the way to Santana Row. She was wearing a matching pink peacoat and grinning like an idiot. I thought less of Johnny almost instantaneously… doesn’t he know that only stupid people smile that much? And what abut this pink business? He was a black, white, navy, gray kind of guy back in my day. I imagined her underclothes, probably all frilly and lacy. She was a bush girl for sure. A dumb, pink, bush girl. What the hell was he thinking?

Looks like Mouthy was just looking for a fight. She ripped my new shirt I just got in the mail from Victoria’s Secret. I could only assume that my drinking or arguing with the waitress was curbing her appetite; she was missing out on the fistfuls of raw fish or something. So Mouthy and I brawled. I was relieved I was wearing a fuller coverage bra so my tits weren’t flapping around like some Jerry Springer episode. But hers popped out a bit, as she was wearing a shirt that’s a bit too small (to flaunt the ‘assets’ I’m sure). I ended up with a bloody lip, and she got a nose a little different shaped than before. We were both pretty bruised on our arms (oh how girls fight) and out of breath. Her date was turned on and the waitress was in shock. Then she looked at me, you know the kind of look you give someone before they say checkmate, and sneered “Buy you a drink?” I brushed myself off a bit. “Fucking A.” The waitress didn’t say shit.

That was an interesting bus ride home. You know you don’t have to pay past 7 on New Year’s Eve? I took the bus all over goddamn town, leaning on the pole, talking to the driver, an attractive older Latino man with a nice smile. Bus drivers have some good stories, and most of the time people don’t ask. He had a good sense of humor and had a lot to say. We chatted and laughed till around ten, when the route was done and everyone was gone. He dropped me off at my house because it was cold and I had neglected my jacket at the restaurant. We shook hands, said Happy New Year and went on our separate ways. I imagined him coming home to a house that smelled like cinnamon, a fire crackling in the fireplace, his kids excited to see him because they know he’s got illegal fireworks to celebrate the New Year, his wife smiling knowingly, adjusting her bra strap, new, emerald, silk, for later.

I played a Miles Davis record, drank a bottle of wine and fell asleep in Vincent’s chair. I didn’t even make it for Ryan Seacrest’s butchering of the ball dropping.

Today was different. Sitting in the bathtub, letting my aching body soak, letting the bubbles fizz away and pop on my back, I started to hum an old song from the Screams from the Balcony days. Remembering how we wrote it, at my parent’s house in the garage, high as shit on Cisco and my dad’s weed. Johnny was watching, smoking cigars, drawing. I felt inspired.

In my towel, I called Sage. I was suddenly energized, excited, hopeful. The words came out so organically, so fluidly, that it felt like I said them all the time. “Do you want to jam?” We arranged a time and day and didn’t stay on the phone all that much longer.

Fucking A, this was the New Year and it felt like my birthday.