Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (8 page)

I received another text message, this one from Pat, asking whether or not it would be cool if he had a few friends come by and hang out. When you have a roommate who invites friends over that you don’t know and you’re going to be home at the same time, there are two options: hang out and be social or lock yourself in your room, waiting out the hang-out session for as long as it takes, even if it means peeing into a discarded Gatorade bottle. (I’ve only had to do that disgusting act once. The other five times don’t count.) I quickly had to weigh out all of my potential responses.

POTENTIAL RESPONSES

1. Say that I normally wouldn’t mind but tonight I’d really like to be productive and get some creative writing done. But then I stared at a shirtless Matthew McConaughey, still enjoying his reign as number one beach bod. Who was I kidding? Productivity wasn’t in my future that night. Also, I’m not the kind of person who would tell my roommate that he can’t have people over. I’m not Adolf Hitler.

2. Tell Pat sure. Then hide away in the safe confines of my bedroom. Only problem with that was the confines of my bedroom weren’t exactly safe anymore. I knew the girls above me would no doubt be loud as hell with their “sisters from different misters” spending the night while consuming numerous bottles of “Pinot Greege.” Then I thought, hey, if one of them mentions me, that would be pretty cool. But soon I got to thinking that if they
didn’t
mention me, or even worse,
did
mention me but said something negative, it would set me back a solid week emotionally. So that left me only one possibility.…

3. Hang out with Pat and a few of his friends whom I’d never met before. And I was fine with that. If there’s one thing you can say about Pat, it’s that the guy knows how to have a good time. He lets everyone do their own thing. He’s not strict or limiting.

“The rule is simple: Absolutely
no
talking while Gaga is singing.” Pat said this to all of us with a look in his eye that I’ve never quite seen before. A look in his eye that said, “It appears that I’m talking to everybody right now, but I’m really just talking to
you
, Charlie
McDowell.” I may have even gulped. And before long, the Lady Gaga concert DVD was delicately placed into our player and my living room was as quiet as a library packed with mutes. A library that, for some strange reason, blared Lady Gaga.

I found myself in the middle of what used to be my spacious L-shaped couch. There were a few other guys I’d never met before, overpopulating my living room, enjoying “Born This Way” with the thousands of other “Little Monsters” attending the actual concert playing on my TV. Pat and his friends took this concert seriously. Needless to say, they weren’t thrilled when I held a lighter in the air and swayed back and forth. I felt like reminding Pat that he wasn’t exactly watching
Death of a Salesman
. But I guess there are just certain men out there who don’t have a sense of humor when it comes to Gaga. Finally, after Lady Gaga’s fifth encore, the concert ended. Or so I thought.… It turned out that my good friend Pat had an encore of his own.

Pat stood up and addressed the crowd, some of whom were still riding their Gaga high with no signs of coming down. “Okay, so I have an amazing surprise, something even better than the concert we all just experienced.” (You don’t watch a Gaga concert, you experience it.) One of his friends wondered what could possibly be better than the concert. I remember thinking, Anything?

“Well, since I work at the most amazing company in the world, Disney, I’m happy to announce”—his speech was painfully rehearsed—“that due to an office raffle that yours truly won, all of us are going to be spending the weekend … at …” The suspense wasn’t the thing killing me. “Disneyland!” It was the payoff.

The room permeated with positive energy and genuine excitement; it was like Richard Simmons getting a blow job on ecstasy. “First Gaga, now Disney,” one of them exclaimed. Then they
proceeded to stand up and high-five one another in an incredibly masculine way that seemed to contradict their previous exclamation.

“Charlie, did you not hear me? We are spending the weekend at Disneyland!” Pat reiterated.

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“Well, then why aren’t you getting all excited with us?” Pat asked.

Pat was right. They were excited. If ten minutes ago my living room had turned into a library, it had now morphed into the reopening of Studio 54. “I’m sorry, but I’m just not going to be able to make it,” I said out loud. Everyone went quiet. They looked at me with such disappointment. Studio 54 closed its doors again that night, and this time it was my fault.

“But why?” They were begging for an answer. Even though they were glaring at me with their perfectly plucked raised eyebrows, I still didn’t flinch. I didn’t have the strength to clarify; it was all much too painful for me. It still is, my hatred for “the happiest place on earth.”

THE GIRLS ON DREAMS

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I had a nightmare that I was getting raped but he couldn’t get it up. It was scary but super offensive.” I wanna feel bad for you.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“If I got a dime for every sex dream a guy’s had of me, I’d have like 500 dollars and 75 cents.” Dimes can’t make that number.

THEY WRITE POETRY

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I think it’s ‘roses are red, violets are blue, things … I see … are … I know … is true.’ Just type that.” What the hell was
that
?

THE GIRLS ON WISDOM

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Let’s just say she’s not the sharpest pool in the shed.” To be fair you’re not exactly the sharpest wife in the drawer either.

LIFE REALIZATIONS

Dear Girls Above Me,

“It kinda makes me sad that I can never be a teen mom, like that’s not even an option anymore.” Aww, all grown up.

THEY INVENT STUFF FOR DOGS

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I finally came up with a gazillion dollar idea. Ready?” No. “Friendship bracelets for dogs!” That’s only a billion dollar idea.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“It’s time we get a dog!”
Please, do not get a
— “But we should invent wireless leashes first.” Oh okay, I’m good.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Why are you so against Disneyland?” She whisper-asked it, but I could still hear everything from my bed.

“Because I’m handing over hundreds of dollars to stand around getting all hot and sweaty.”

“I think they have other things there,” I responded, to myself.

“Also, there’s a lack of consistency to the characters.” I had no idea what that meant; good thing the voice elaborated: “Pluto is a dog who can’t speak, yet we’re supposed to believe that Goofy, also a dog, miraculously can? That’s preposterous.”

“I live under a lunatic,” I recall groaning.

“When I was a boy in England, I didn’t need a park for amusement. I played with garbage in the streets,” he argued.

Other than this being the night before the most traumatizing experience of my childhood existence, this night also marked the first time I was blessed (or cursed) with the ability to overhear people who shouldn’t be overheard.

I was five years old, and through the right combination of opened
windows and doors, a sound tunnel was created from my parents’ room that allowed me to hear everything. But there are some things that no five-year-old should hear.… No, I’m not talking about
that—
well yes, that too. Only I’d rather have heard my parents do
that
than heard them denigrate the most magical place on earth.

It started just
like any other day. My sister Lilly and I were both drawing in our Strawberry Shortcake coloring books. As a kid, pretty much anything my sister did, I wanted to do as well. Particularly, I was enamored with the Strawberry Shortcake scent. If Lilly wanted to wear a pink tutu out to dinner, I wanted to wear a pink tutu out to dinner. I was completely oblivious to any social norms and was happily living my life as a little girl. Of course, this all changed on my first day of elementary school when Jeremy Powell made fun of me for having a purple headband in my hair.

As we continued coloring, I distinctly remember Lilly criticizing my Strawberry Shortcake palette: “I just don’t get what you’re trying to do.” I know how Fellini must’ve felt; clearly I was ahead of my time. Before I was able to defend my delightful pinkish hue, a television commercial for Disneyland appeared before my eyes. I was transfixed. I had never experienced anything so magical through a TV set in my entire life. It was a warm summer night in 1988; I was five years old, and in that moment I made it my life’s mission to go to this heavenly place.

“If you haven’t been to Disneyland lately, you and your family have a lot to catch up on,” the man from the commercial said directly to me. As he spoke, images of kids whirling around in life-sized teacups, a humongous delighted mouse, an enormous wooden log sailing down a waterfall into a refreshing pool of water, and even a scary pirate steering a ship flashed onto the screen, taunting me. A life I’d
never known; I was Stevie Wonder now able to see. My sister and I both shared a look—the kid version of “WTF.” “Disneyland, where the magic begins. Come now and discover the perfect family vacation. Located in beautiful Southern California.” Then it vanished; I was blind once again. I turned off the TV, for what good is television to a blind kid? Without any spoken words, my sister and I jumped up and bolted toward our parents’ room.

“We wanna go to Disneyland!” We stood there with our mouths wide open, catching our breath, awaiting our life-altering fate. My parents looked at each other with eyes that said, “Code red! Code red!” They had clearly tried keeping this incredible land from us for as long as possible, but did they really expect we would never find it? The name Mickey Mouse made so much more sense to me now. And he was clearly not the mascot for a pest-control service, as my dad previously claimed.

My sister and I didn’t budge. We had them in the hot seat, in desperate need of answers before a hissy fit would ensue. My mom gave a nod to my dad, which I assumed meant “This is your department.” My dad reluctantly got out of bed and carefully approached his fiendish children.

“Disneyland is closed on the weekends and you start school next week, so we’ll plan a trip to go there next summer,” my dad said with his cheeky British accent.

This was bullshit. I knew it then as I know it now. “Why would it be closed on the weekends? Isn’t that when mommies and daddies don’t have to go to work?” I could tell my sister really wanted to give me a high five for decoding that one. “Perhaps next time you’ll think before critiquing my crayon choices,” I remember wanting to say.

My dad glanced at my mother. He was in need of some major help, but she kept her head buried in her book. Smart move. The
poor guy was walking a tightrope without a net. I sort of felt bad for him, but I kept my sympathetic thoughts in check. Disneyland was the priority. I was ready to knock him down.

“We want to go to Disneyland tomorrow,” I said in a calm yet firm tone. My mom dropped
The Mists of Avalon
and hid under the covers. Lilly was proud to be my sister. And my dad had no fight left in him.

“Disneyland it is,” he said with such defeat. My sister jumped up and down. Pretty soon it would be she who dressed like me; the student had become the teacher. I stood, anchored solidly to the ground in my Velcro shoes with my chest puffed out, showing my family who was really running things.

It was later that night, through the right sequence of windows and doors left open, that I was able to hear my father’s true feelings about Disney. But as long as I was going, I couldn’t have given a shit how he really felt about it. We were set to leave at seven in the morning and that was all that mattered.

I was up at four thirty because you’d have to be out of your mind to sleep in on a Disney day. I gathered the necessary essentials for my impending adventure. Luckily, I had a neon-green fanny pack my uncle Arthur had given me for my five-and-three-quarters birthday. These were the objects I placed inside:

Half-eaten Jawbreaker.

Strand of my dog Lucy’s hair in case she died while we were gone.

Bag of Fruit Gushers.

My entire collection of Garbage Pail Kids trading cards.

Thirty-seven cents in case my parents forgot their wallets.

I was ready. The problem was the only people with official driver’s licenses were fast asleep. Fortunately for me, not them, I was much more effective than an alarm clock. As I leapt up and down on their bed, muffled sounds of agony came from their pillows.

“Charlie, Disneyland isn’t open for another five hours. Go back to sleep!” my mom said in her most irritated tone. How were they not as excited as me? The commercial said it was the perfect family vacation. Were we not a perfect family? All I could do was imagine a happy
Leave It to Beaver
–like family piling into a minivan with the parents calling out, “Hurry up, children! We wanna be the first ones there so we can go on every single ride!” My dad was half-asleep with a line of drool running down his chin.