Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (10 page)

Just after he’d broken up with his “very serious girlfriend,” Dulce had set Pants up with Alexandra. The two dated casually but fucked formally for months, and he continued to bed down Alexandra, even after he made it clear that he’d reconciled with his ex. “It was one thing, screwing around with him when she was his girlfriend, but now they’re engaged. That’s where I draw the line.” Evidently, Alexandra used pencil to draw her lines.

After Alexandra and Pants exchanged wanton smiles and gazes laced with future promises of very naughty things, she greeted me in a whisper. “I cannot believe he is here. Hilar! He looks so good for him. Oh, sorry we’re late, Monster. I tried to talk her out of it.”

“It” was Dulce’s mistake of an outfit, constituting black leather hotpants, so short they looked like training underpants. The knee-high boots were the black icing on her devil’s food cake. I knew she had added the pink long-sleeved turtleneck as an attempt at conservative.

“You couldn’t talk her out of that leather wedgie?”

“Stephanie, believe me, everything here represents a compromise.” She swept her hand through air, like a magician’s assistant revealing an ordinary object. “You should have seen the lace stockings she had on.”

“Where is everyone else?” I asked the planner of all planners, Alexandra, an events planner at
The New Yorker
who numbered her arguments, always thought before speaking, and wouldn’t dream of living life without her Bluetooth and a series of digital to-do lists.

“It’s just us tonight. The real party is on Sats.” Alexandra spoke in abbreviations to save time.

“What? What’s on Saturday?”

“Angel, we told you.” Alexandra petted my arm with her manicured hand as if she were petting a sable coat. “It’s all about the Hamps. We depart at 8
A.M.
…destination: Whore It Up All Weekend Long.” We regularly referred to ourselves, lovingly, as sluts, despite the fact that the only breathing thing I’d shared any horizontal space with lately was my dog.

“I thought we left on Saturday to avoid Fourth traffic.” Dulce and Alexandra stared first at each other, and then back at me, cracking into a harmony of laughter.

“Sweetie, please. This is the best frickin’ weekend all sum. Wake up early, pack your ass, and sleep on our drive out.” I needed to see if they made Cliff Notes for being fabulous. I would devour its pages and commit full paragraphs to memory. I didn’t want to be the matronly one, the divorcée in the pearls. I wanted to be part of Alex’s spectacular world. She was my VIP card into single life.

I wasn’t really sure why we were even out just then. No one was going to eat a proper meal knowing we’d be wearing bathing suits poolside tomorrow. It was a “what are you doing on your actual birthday” dinner without dinner. The three of us drank two bottles of sixty percent marked-up Riesling, snacked on Reblochon, and let retired men buy us pink, sugar-rimmed champagnes.

Then my stomach plummeted upon sight of Brad, one of Gabe’s old camp friends, walking straight toward our table. His face stopped and smiled, hovering over our chairs as if lit from beneath with a flashlight. It was surreal, like seeing my doorman in a different neighborhood. Fuckity fuck. I held my breath.

Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it. Gabe and I attended the same sleepaway camp. There. But don’t go jumping to the, “Oh, they were childhood sweethearts, no wonder the marriage failed” conclusion. Back then Gabe and I were never friends, and we were certainly not sweethearts. We didn’t date until my senior year of college, when we were reacquainted through mutual friends.

“Hi there, Stephanie. Nice to see you.” Liar, you couldn’t care less. I smiled and blinked, extending a limp handshake. Kisses, intros, forced smiles, and then the unexpected, “So how’s Gabe doing? I heard about your divorce. Sorry. But he’s a urologist now, right?”

I knew the question had to be answered gingerly, with finesse, and a sense of understanding. Delicately. Kid gloves.

“Yes, he’s a doctor and an asshole, just not in that order. Thanks for asking.” I stared into the pupils of his eyes and put my elbows on the table. Brad cleared his throat, raised his brows, and scurried off like a scolded dog.

“Stephan-eeeee!” Alexandra shrieked. “It’s one thing to think it, but saying it makes people uncomfortable.” This was a major difference between us. Alex grew up in a formal southern home where “Ladies don’t do that” was stirred into big pitchers of sweet Georgia tea and then sipped medicinally after praying to the Lord. When Alexandra was soused to the gills, she became the alpha dog, aggressively attacking what she wanted with complete disregard or forethought. When she became drunk, she became me.

“Saying it makes people uncomfortable? Mentioning
Dr. Cock & Balls
to my face makes me uncomfortable. Don’t ask the fucking question if you’re not ready for the answer.”

“I just hate when you sound defensive, that’s all.” Alex’s tone was softer now.

Dulce was scraping the last bits of Reblochon onto a piece of crusty bread.

“You bet your ass I’m defensive. I’m going to defend my life. Damn, screw Bradford and his uglyass loafers.”

Dulce touched my hand. “Actually, Stephanie, I applaud you. He has real nerve to walk over here and ask you about Gabe, especially after admitting he’d heard about your split. Good for you for saying what’s on your mind. I say we make a toast while we’ve got the champagne.”

I wanted to finish the meal in silence and respect the dead of my relationship. I hated how my past could walk through a door like that, through someone else’s body, like a successful night with a Ouija board. I hated that no matter how over it I ever felt, or how rational I was, something as small as an acquaintance from our past could make me feel vastly ashamed. “Yeah, we’re divorced now” seems as embarrassing as admitting you’ve just been released from rehab. It’s admitting you had a problem, that your life hasn’t been perfect. Well, whose has? Enough with the silence. I raised my glass. “To champagne-in-the-asses.” We all smiled, raised our flutes, and clicked.

When we finally presented our waiter with a fan of nearly maxed-out credit cards, he assured us the meal was already taken care of. Had Brad suddenly come down with a severe case of remorse? Could it be? I turned, looking to find his chipmunk face in the crowded restaurant. Our waiter stopped me by resting his hand on my shoulder then nodding toward Pants, who smiled the smile of a middle school boy who just learned the meaning of the verb
teabagging
. Alexandra lit up, straightening her posture and pressing her hand against her stomach, as if to keep her excitement contained in her body. She wanted to get Pants off, and let him get into hers. When drunk she believed the technical term for fiancé was “not married yet.” Dulce and I looked at each other, and in unison, grabbed Alexandra by both arms, escorting her out of Markt in minutes, saving our fellow pack member from being ambushed. She could be her own worst enemy. We all shared a taxi uptown. Next stop Sagaponack.

I HATED THE IDEA OF HAVING TO STRESS FOR A RELAXING
weekend away. Unpacking from a weekend in the Hamptons is one thing. Despite only ever wearing a third of what I actually packed, I turned my bag upside down into my laundry hamper, emptying it all: shoes, toiletries, everything. A few days later, I’d need the toothpaste.

Okay, that’s gross. True, but gross. Packing for the Hamptons is stressful. It takes prudence, patience, and Pucci. You have to consider the weather, bring the right walking shoe that won’t give you blisters. Is dinner espadrilles in the garden or stilettos at Sunset Beach? I don’t care what my mother said about horizontal stripes, this still looks good on me. Right? Find room now for loungewear, bedding, tennis racket, and don’t get me started with the hair products.

The Hamptons are like sleepaway camp with heels. You leave packed with all of the above, then realize you forgot a pillow and towels. You grab some bottled water and fem mags, and then your real life stops counting. It’s left behind with your doorman and your privacy. Work, worries, and “will he call”s genuinely fly out the window when you crank up the car radio, roll down windows, and inhale the smell of summer. We knew we’d have a terrific weekend, the way we knew it was time for farm-stand corn, Wolffer’s rosé, and flip-flops. We turned the radio up with our arrival song: “Lay a whisper on my pillow…leave the winter on the ground…”

It was a house that looked like a child’s drawing: connected triangles, a two-car garage, windows that looked like wrapped presents. It sat on four acres of green land, complete with a pond and a lone tire swing hanging from an ancient oak. The house was modern but not in a mirrored walls and raised Formica platform bed bachelor kind of way. Rooms were imbued with natural materials—stone, wood, and sisal—suggesting a connection to nature right down to the seashell-loaded glass hurricanes on the screened-in wraparound porch. The fireplace was left unadorned by art, save for the American flag, fixed along a wooden ceiling beam. With its cushy, oversized, white denim seating and whitewashed wooden floors, the house always made me feel clean, as if I were moisturized and freshly French-manicured. The bedrooms and bathrooms were strewn with the contemporary and the timeworn: glass lamps, leaning orchid stalks, log magazine racks, and primitive sailboats. So, the designer was a little heavy-handed with the lighthouse and anchor art. I could almost hear the National Anthem.

I felt like a grown up living there, even if it did mean sharing the space with strangers who played Quarters and high-five’d at the dinner table using words like
boyz
,
homey
, and
playa
. It was a home where, upon arrival, it was as if the beds were forever made and the bathrooms always smelled of lemons. Upon leaving, the house looked like a picnic ground and smelled of coffee filters, rain, and vomit. And I shared it all with my girls, bunking up in one basement of a room, which we soon referred to as the Diva Dungeon of Dare. Forget sharing a room with two other women or sharing a bathroom with nine other people. Roughing it is a weekend in the Hamptons without a pedicure.

That first night, I phoned my father from the backseat of our rental car, as Alexandra circled East Hampton looking for “the scene.”

“Is my little monster behaving himself?”

“That’s no way to refer to your father, Miss Stephanie.”

“Har har, Dad.” I grew up on a diet of his corny jokes and learned early on to starve him of encouragement.

“Linus was fine in the car ride out here, but he’s been stealing the toilet paper and dirty items from the bathroom trashcan ever since.” “Here” was his Manhasset home with his new wife, Carol.

“Dirty items, Dad?”

“Carol’s feminine products.” Ew. I never should have asked. Now all I could picture was Linus with a maxi pad stuck to his mouth. “And when we try to get it away from him, he growls.” My father laughed while telling the story. I actually bit down.

“So, he’s good then. Glad to hear it.”

“And you, my dear? Are you having fun with the girls out there?”

“Yeah. But the real fun is tomorrow when I go shopping at Calypso for a snag-a-man outfit. Everyone is so put together out here.”

“Linus Paddington Klein, you get back here. Stephanie, that’s ridiculous. Aren’t you in the Hamptons?” He said “the Hamptons” as if it were Fire Island. My father didn’t realize the Hamptons aren’t about tranquility and self-service—they’re about bottle service. “Do you know how ridiculous you sound? If a woman is as beautiful as you are, she can wear nothing but a garbage bag, and she’ll still be beautiful. Guys aren’t exactly looking at your shoes, you know.”

“Yes, Father Knows Best, I know. Give the pooch a peck for me. I’m out the door.” Click. It occurred to me just then that I wasn’t out the door. I was in a moving car, and I hadn’t felt this particular feeling since I was in high school. I worried I was regressing. No longer married, cruising the streets for the “it” spot made me fearful I’d never find what I was looking for. We might as well have been driving in reverse.

“I’M SICK OF DRIVING. THAT DRAGON ROOM WAS ASS-AND-
a-half. At this point, I’d even hit The Almond, where everyone’s in their forties.” Alexandra preferred young boys she could boss around.

“I love men in their forties,” I responded after some thought. “They know what they want, already paid their career dues, and can’t claim they haven’t sowed their oats.” What a wretched phrase, sowing oats; it’s so Wilford Brimley. “Except, there’s always the forty-year-old bachelor who should come with a Beware sign that barks self-centered.”

“Yeah, but with older men,” Dulce added while lowering the radio, “there’s that whole limp dick Viagra problem.”

“Pulling taffy,” I said simply. “There’s nothing worse, and then you have to pretend you don’t notice. Please, everyone involved knows it’s not working. I hate having to pretend I’m compassionate.”

“Yeah,” Dulce added, “but look at Jean Claude. He’s young and never fully gets hard.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, even when I dress like the kitten that Pepé Le Pew chased around.”

“Dulce, I told you, that’s because he’s so big.” Alexandra submitted this as if it were exhibit A in the case against the flaccid penis.

“What?” I yelled.

“Yeah, Stephanie, it’s because he’s so big. Some dicks never fully get hard. It’s like porno dick. It’s because they’re so big and heavy, there’s not enough blood in their body or something.”

“Believe me, the fact that it’s big has nothing to do with his gummy-bear dick problem. If I had a name like Jean Claude, I wouldn’t be able to get hard either. Is he uncircumcised?”

Dulce took a moment and looked up as if she were trying to remember where she’d last left her pearl earrings. “Yes.”

“So when you pipe him, what do you do with the extra skin?” I was sure she was doing it wrong.

“Pipe him?” Alex asked.