A Total Waste of Makeup (3 page)

She does.

“There’s no talking to her!” my mom says in
that tone.
You know the tone—every mom has one. “She thinks your father and I are made of money, like it’s not enough we’re throwing this shindig at the Bel Air, even though I got to be married at some neon-belled chapel in Las Vegas…but no,
now
we’re supposed to spend another fifteen thousand dollars on a dress she’ll wear once, twice at the most, and don’t even get me started on the costs of the bougainvillea.”

Bougainvillea. Is that a flower, or some new drink?
I wonder to myself. Back to the matter at hand. “Well, when Andy and I went dress shopping last week, we did see a lovely dress in that very store for only four thousand dollars. You think you and Dad could pop for that?”

Dead silence. Dead silence is never good with my mother. Well…actually, it’s good until she talks again.

“How do you know what store we’re in?” Mom asks suspiciously.

Shit! “Well, I…”

“Andy, show me this four thousand dollar dress your sister likes so much!” my mother bellows right into my ear.

There’s a beep. “Mom, I have another call. Can you hold?”

“You put your own mother on hold…”

I click over. “Hello.”

“Do you want to see hell today?” Drew purrs into the phone. He must still be looping. Hard to find a man who purrs, unless you have your mouth around his—But I digress.

“Hold on,” I say cheerfully, then click back over and return to my normal voice. “Mom, it’s Drew. I’ll call you later.” I hang up on her. Saved by the beep. I click back to Drew, and try to make my voice as cheerful and sweet as is humanly possible. “Hi. Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. Listen, can you find out if Julia Roberts is available?”

“Available for a date, or a movie?”

“Well, both I suppose.”

“She’s with someone,” I tell Drew. I haven’t checked lately, but it’s probably true.

“Goddamn it!” Drew belts out at me. “Why doesn’t anything ever go my way? I’m gonna die alone!”

Apparently the fact that he’s a gorgeous gazillionaire doesn’t count toward “things going his way.” But before I can point that out in an ever so diplomatic fashion, Drew changes the subject. “I have my interview with
People
magazine this weekend, and the house looks like hell. The dining room is this horrible shade of yellow—I agreed to a color called butter. A good butter where I come from is almost white. This isn’t butter. This is…some shade much worse than butter. Margarine, maybe.”

I want to point out that he has twenty-two other rooms in his fourteen-million-dollar Brentwood mansion. But I also want to keep my job. “I’ll call the painters and have them fix it.”

“Do you think five hundred thousand dollars is a lot for a car?”

You’re asking the wrong person,
I think to myself.
I think $500,000 is a lot for a dress.
But I would never say that. I like my job.

Drew just reminded me of a good one. I write in my leather book:

Don’t ever read
People
magazine. It will make you feel bad about your own life.

I’m not sure which type of article in
People
bothers me more: the weddings where everyone’s happy, or the drug ODs where we’re supposed to feel sorry for the forlorn and tormented millionaires. I mean, Matthew Perry was still dealing with a drug addiction when he was making $750,000 a week? Please.

Anyway, before I can answer, Drew says, “You know, I’m just gonna buy it. I mean, if I hate it, I can always give it to my next ex-wife. Call’s at seven
A.M
. Monday, right?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Great. Take the rest of the day off. Love you,” he says, then hangs up on me.

My home line rings. With tremendous self-control I wait until the second ring, then pick up with a bright, “Hello.”

“I have, like, two seconds to talk,” my happily married cousin Jenn says. “You sounded awful on the machine. What’s up?”

“Tell me again why it sucks to be married,” I say. Usually she’s good for that—even if she doesn’t mean a word of it.

“Are you waiting by the phone?” Jenn asks knowingly.

“Yes.”

“Okay—here’s one. I haven’t waited by the phone in six years. The love of my life has called me eight times today. Once to tell me he’d be late tonight, and can I somehow convince a three-year-old and a four-year-old to wait for dinner? Once to tell me that my mother-in-law will not be able to take the kids this weekend so he upgraded the hotel room of our romantic getaway to accommodate our lovely offspring, ‘Did not’ and ‘Did too.’ Once to tell me the cat—”

I have to interrupt. “At least you have someone who wants to have a romantic weekend with you.”

“At least when you go to bed with someone, you don’t wake up to a little person between you in wet pajamas,” she counters.

“At least you have someone who loved you so much he wanted to create a little person with you.”

“Get those handcuffs off your brother right now!”
Jenn screams away from the phone.

Jenn returns to her normal voice as she comes back to me. “Sweetie, I love my kids, but having a family is not the only way to guarantee happiness in life. It’s a lot of work, it’s very draining, and once you start, you can’t go back. You lead an amazing, glamorous life. Try to be happy having this time to yourself. It’s a luxury. It goes by so fast. And you’re going to miss it when it’s gone.”

God, I hope she’s right. I hope there will come a time in my life when I’m so content, I miss being alone sometimes. When I’m actually happy enough to look back on my single years fondly.

“Alex just threw up on the dog,” Jenn says, cutting into my thoughts. “Is it okay if I go?”

“Sure,” I say. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.” And she’s gone.

I stare at the phone and blow out a big sigh. Maybe she’s right, maybe I should be happy with all this free time. Maybe the grass is always greener. Maybe I should appreciate the luxury of getting to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and not needing to ask permission from anyone about my choices. Yeah, I could go to Paris this weekend if I wanted to. Just get my passport and my Visa card and—

The phone rings. I wait until it rings a second time before I pick up.

Maybe I’m a big hypocrite.

“Hey, you waited until the second ring. Good for you,” my younger brother Jamie says.

“He still hasn’t called,” I say. “Why do men say they’re going to call, if they’re not?”

“Because we tried saying, ‘Hey, great lay. Listen, I may call you at two in the morning when I’m drunk and near your place,’ but you repeated it to all your friends.”

“I didn’t sleep with him,” I say self-righteously. Though frankly, if I had, I wouldn’t admit it to my baby brother. “So what does it mean when a guy says he wants to ‘go out’ with you, but he’s not sure if he wants to date you?”

“It means he wants to sleep with you, but doesn’t want a commitment.”

“Pig!”

“Me or him?”

“Both.”

“Hey, why you wanna kill the messenger?”

“Because you’re all pigs.”

“See, that’s just offensive limited thinking. The dude was honest with you. He said, ‘I wanna go out with you, I just don’t want to date you.’”

“And that naturally means he wants to sleep with me?”

“Yes,” Jamie says definitively. Then he thinks about his statement. “Actually, any man you go on a date with wants to sleep with you.”

“Great.”

“And any man you say ‘hi’ to in a bar—”

“You can shut up now,” I say calmly.

“Frankly, any man you’ve ever made eye contact with who’s not gay—”

“I’m hanging up on you now,” I tell him.

And I do.

I spend the next five minutes relieved that no one calls, and debating what to write next:

This may be sexist, but…when dating, always remember, the treasure doesn’t do the hunting.

I paid my therapist $100 an hour to be told the treasure doesn’t do the hunting. Sounds great in theory. But how do you feel like a treasure when men have been making you feel bad for more than ten years?

The Dave thing is a perfect example.

You know, if he’d called me Monday, he would have freaked me out.

But on Tuesday I missed him. He crept into my mind between my coffee and my fudgsicle.

And on Tuesday night, I asked my friends about him. And on Wednesday morning, I told my Mom about this nice guy I met.

On Wednesday night I had a date with someone else. And as he plied me with Merlot, and charmed me with his sardonic wit, I thought about how Dave looked when he napped on my couch after a long day at the beach. And I wondered if he liked red wine or white. And if he really wanted girls more than boys, like he told me on our date when we talked about kids.

By Thursday, I wanted another magical weekend. But the thing about magic is if you know the trick, it’s not magic anymore. I wondered why he didn’t like me so much, and what was so wrong with me that he didn’t call.

Let’s see, there was that thing where he asked my age, and I wouldn’t tell him. No, it must have been when I said that I hated high school, but he was the captain of the football team. No, I mentioned an ex. That must have been it. No, it must have been because he thought I was fat.

Oh please, Dave, call me right now, and I’ll fall in love with you. Just be the one nice guy I’m allowed to fall in love with, and it’ll be okay and I won’t be hurt, and everything will be the way I thought it would be growing up. All I want is the one phone call. Please, let someone I like actually like me back, even if I don’t deserve him. Please?

I stare at the phone. Pick it up. Listen for the dial tone. Damn, still there.

It’s Friday, and I could have fallen in love. By tomorrow, I’ll remember that I have a life to attend to, that magical weekends don’t really happen, that there are no nice guys in the world, and these final words of wisdom:

When men say they’ll call you, what they usually mean is “good-bye.”

Two

Don’t smoke.

I write in my notebook as I light up a Marlboro. Well, it is good advice. Unfortunately for me, those Ben & Jerry’s calories don’t just burn up themselves.

Some people tell me I look a little like Charlize Theron. Granted, these people are mostly in bars, and are trying to get me into bed, but I’m taking the compliment anyway. In reality, I’m a few inches shorter and a few pounds heavier. I suspect Ms. Theron gets her body through working out. I get mine from Marlboros. A girl has a choice when she eats like I do: take up smoking or jogging. I am not a jogger. And I do plan to lose those ten pounds sooner or later, but I don’t believe in New Years’ resolutions, so it’ll probably be later.

I mean, let’s face it: we tend to lose those last ten pounds when we’re in love. You can go to Weight Watchers all you want, when you’re happily in love and having sex all the time, those pounds just melt off—don’t they?

I think the other reason people compare me to Charlize is because that’s my first name—and up until her I never knew anyone else who had it. My friends call me Charlie. My family calls me Charlie. Dave should really think about calling me—ever.

Anyway, right now I’m standing in front of my house, shivering, and stomping my feet up and down for warmth as I wait for Dawn to pick me up. I jot down in my notebook:

Repeat this mantra when down about men: “I don’t need a lover, just several really close friends.”

Dave never called. It’s eight o’clock. I waited by the phone, filled with false hope, until about 7:58.

I see a black limo pulling up, and quickly stub out my cigarette. Despite how cold I am, I wait for the chauffeur to get out and open the door for me. When I step in, Dawn is draped across the long seat with a glass of champagne in her hand. She looks stunning in a dark red Versace dress with a slit up the side. I hate her. How am I going to get a man tonight with
that
sitting right next to me?

Dawn and I met at a dorm party my first week of college. We immediately became best friends and, with Kate, lived together from our sophomore through senior years.

The first time I saw Dawn, she had a glass of Merlot in one hand and a cigarette in the other. And somehow everything she said matched that personality exactly. Dawn is gorgeous. She is the product of three interracial marriages—something that could only happen in L.A. Her paternal grandfather is Japanese, her paternal grandmother is black, her maternal grandfather is Hispanic, and her maternal grandmother is Jewish. Which means she’s the most exotic-looking woman ever to grace her temple—both her Buddhist temple and her Jewish temple. And her Catholic church. And the Baptist one down the street. She considers herself “mostly Jewish” but says, “When I die, God’ll sort it all out.” She celebrates Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Easter, Passover, Halloween, Cinco de Mayo, Mardi Gras, Dia de las Muertas, and the Chinese New Year (I never figured that one out).

Her job: MAW—model/actress/whatever. Only she actually works (most MAWs have an extra W at the end—waitress). When she walks into a room, every head turns: the women, to call her a “skinnybitch,” the men, to get themselves into trouble with their girlfriends later. She has dark hair, flawless cappuccino skin, and a mouth that could shame a sailor. But I love her. She’s fun, she’s actually very nice when you get over her whole “I’m so over you” attitude, and she gets me into the best clubs and parties. This is what I need right now.

Dawn pours me a glass of champagne as I climb in. “Sweetie, we’ve talked about the eyeliner.”

I’d been in the car less than five seconds. Ever feel like you’re totally not cool even around your own friends?

“Please don’t start,” I say. “What looks good on you looks totally unnatural on me.”

She hands me my champagne, then pulls an eyeliner out of her purse. “Look up.”

I look up out of habit. Dawn has been redoing my makeup since college. She draws black eyeliner on my lower lid. “Whose limo is this?” I ask her while staring at the limo ceiling.