Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (11 page)

“Yeah, go down on him.” I know I sounded like a guy. I’d heard it in a bar once and always wanted to say it.

“I…” Dulce moved her hands into position, as though she couldn’t remember, but her body would. “I take it along for the ride.”

“Girl, it’s not a carpool. That’s your problem.” I shook my head knowingly, like a doctor sure of her new diagnosis. “You’ve got to smack that shit down, and pull it taut before you go down on him. I’m telling you, the uncircumcised penis has a whole separate owner’s manual.”

“Ew. Girls, enough,” Alex added sternly.

“Does this feel like high school to anyone else?” Alexandra was too busy playing radio president, executing veto power over Dulce’s Dashboard Confessional selections, wheeling her way toward a static-free alternative she knew all the words to.

“How’d ya mean?” Dulce turned to look at me.

“This whole thing, being in the backseat of a car for starters. I mean, the last time I was in a car that wasn’t yellow and smelling of incense and BO was in high school. And back then, the music we blasted was Led Zeppelin. I remember when Hillary Cohen lowered the volume on me. She turned to me saying, ‘Steph, it’s one thing to blast some top-forty song, but it’s just not cool to blare Zeppelin or The Dead. You just don’t do that.’ I was such a dork. How do you two deal with me?”

“It’s not like we a have a choice. You invite yourself everywhere, biatch.” Alex flirted with me, looking for my reaction in the rearview mirror.

“Ooh, leave this.” Kelly Clarkson was midsong, singing “Miss Independent.” Of course she was. How very Fourth. “We keep circling, like we’re missing out on something. Stop here. Forget this place. The crowd is too decrepit or too hoochy island, so we’re onto the next, hoping. It’s so Jan Brady, looking for the cool party.” I knew this would make Alexandra laugh, and when she did, I felt myself light up. I loved delighting her.

“Ladies, we are here now,” Alexandra roared as she put the car into park. “And we’re going to have fun because this is our fabs summer. Now, get the fuck out, and let’s go enjoy Jet.” I saluted her with a stiff cut into the air, then blew her a kiss.

WHERE ARE UGLY FRIENDS WHEN YOU NEED ’EM? MY RESPLENDENT
pack of friends looked liked grown-up versions of Sweet Valley High girls. Beneath the poetic featherweight whites of summer, their bronzed shoulders twisted, above their stacked wedge heels and tanned calves. It was that time again—for sunglasses, outdoor seating, and oysters; for shell jewelry, pulsing white on tanned skin; for main course salads, beach sarongs, and pots of crème brûlée, beneath green awnings, above white linen, beside a half-full bottle of Pellegrino. Everything looks beautiful at the beginning of a season. My friends aren’t seasonal. They’re exceptional year-round. Their beauty is arresting, and I’m not saying that like Joe Soccer Coach, readily spitting out “you’re all winners” after the team has just been pulverized. I’m also not talking “inner beauty,” while dangling a purple crystal and burning sticks of incense.

Alexandra has a face you notice from across a room: dimples, vexing eyes, and a plume of straight hair that shines like onyx. If she were a superhero, she’d be Wonder Woman. If a man preferred vanilla, there was always Dulce with her model figure and striking Texan beauty. Alexandra cornered the market on chocolate. What need would any man have for me, strawberry? No one ever chose strawberry over either of the classics. As long as I rolled with the pretty pack, I’d be packing it in alone every single night. Still, didn’t the fact that I willingly joined them in public attest to my security?

It occurs to me just now, quite seriously, that I don’t have an ugly friend. Okay, I do, but she lives in Connecticut, so she doesn’t really count. Do we see our friends as a reflection of ourselves, as accessories, like our choice of dog breed?

Had I velvet-roped it to Jet East with a pack of chicklets, each more recherché than the next, would men find me more exquisite than if I were in the same situation, flanked with homely fems, each more coarse and boorish than the next? Before you answer, consider Loehmann’s.

Bargain shopping certainly breeds a rush of excitement when you reveal a gem. You almost have to check yourself, looking behind you, to see if anyone else is on to you. But bargain shopping takes work, digging through piles of mismatched clothes, whipping through wheels of hangers by sizes. Even when you reveal something you think you might like, you figure, how good can it be? It’s at frickin’ Daffy’s! Maybe you take the periwinkle sweater home but never really love it the way you love an expensive Neiman’s purchase. You don’t bother to fold it with scented tissue paper in your armoire. Instead, it gets tossed on a shelf atop the closet. It’s something to throw on.

Now consider a boutique store, along one of the historic streets of Southampton, with a trained staff and pools of natural light. You’re surrounded by neat order. You can almost smell the verbena soap. You want to buy it all, hoping your life will become the store, fresh, clean, and airy. It’s hard to decide, but once you do, you walk home swinging the bag with your periwinkle gem tucked neatly in a sleeve of wrapped paper. You rearrange your shelves to accommodate it. You’re in love.

It’s the same item, er, same woman, but the scene certainly reinforces the sale. If you find her packed in a bargain basement bar, you might not appreciate her as much if she were surrounded by more comely surroundings. Still, it was taxing on my ego always being the ugly chick the martyr wingman had to entertain so his buddy could hit on my friend. But that’s New York. It would’ve been easier had I assumed that centerfold-caliber women were vapid, deplete of soul, passion, or wit. I mean, would God really make women that perfect just to spite me? From Manhattan to Montauk, I realized, I just had to get over it. Anywhere I turned, I was likely to find someone wealthier, smarter, and much more beautiful than I’d ever be. I could hate ’em or join ’em. I just wished joining ’em didn’t mean Jet East.

The only respectable boys at Jet East were too short to date and equated their self-esteem with their Prada loafers. Mostly, the place was peppered with short, spiked-hair boys with tall spiked attitudes who called it “Jet” because they were trendy and on vay-K, too tired to add “East.” I waited twenty minutes for my overpriced dirty martini. The waiter was certain I’d asked for the flirty martini. How fucking annoying. While I waited, I overheard the name-dropping and witnessed the lifting of velvet ropes just beyond the window. This one was hemming and hawing about the Sony party and the Hiltons’ new record label to Dulce. That one had his hand on Alexandra’s knee as he mentioned Lizzy Grub-man’s reality show, “filming at Cyril’s tomorrow. Care to join me?” I wanted to vomit, and I would’ve if vomiting weren’t such a cliché. No one wanted to talk to me.

But then I heard Prince. “Don’t have to be rich to be my girl; don’t have to be cool to rule my world….” And suddenly, I was encouraged. I sang aloud and kissed the air, feeling like my very own Pretty Woman. My calves were smooth and about to be tanned, and my hair fell in uniform ringlets that bounced when I pulled them. I was part of the pretty pack, in a pretty house with pretty things. I should’ve been smiling and, just like that, knowing I was supposed to be happy made me sad.

I listened to the words as they belted free from my lungs. The song was bullshit. It should’ve been outlawed anywhere south of the North Fork of Long Island, where even the streets are named after money. It is money and looks from the gray gravel driveways flanked with hydrangeas to the French tulips for her dinner party and the orange Birkin. Southampton is old money, East Hampton is new money, and Westhampton ignores money and surfs instead. Don’t tell me men don’t care about manicures, watches, and “it” bags. I assure you, the men who pay top dollar for their iced hooch, who hang in the Hamps wearing black, do care if it’s a garbage bag or Gucci. Been there, married that. It was clear my summer would be wretched if it meant places like Jet East. I ought to have been west with the low-maintenance WASPs and their greased-up boards, sitting outside in cutoffs listening to a steel drum band sing “No Woman No Cry.”

I couldn’t ask to go home because both the girls were heavy into light conversations with new men. This called for a solo bathroom break. Usually, women hit the bathroom in a gaggle, even if they don’t have to pee. Most of what women do in bathrooms is barter complaints for compliments.

They stand in front of a mirror and put themselves down. “Ugh, I’m exhausted. Look at these bags.” She pulled the skin taught around her eyes.

“That’s nothing. I’d rather have those bags than these.” An atrociously thin woman used her pointer fingers to poke what I can only assume she believed were her saddlebags. “I have to stop donating to the gym and actually go.”

“Oh, shut up both of you. My skin is breaking out, and my period is bloating me. I look pregnant.”

“I know a great cream for that.”

It was reason enough to pee in the street or cut the men’s line, claiming desperation and ovary pain. Bathrooms are just bad for the head. As I glossed my lips, it occurred to me that the
crème fraiche
of the Hamptons passed the same bouncer test I had, and here they were beside me looking in the mirror and picking themselves apart. I wasn’t any different than these thin self-deprecating models after all. If a guy were going to choose a different breed of woman over me, he’d always choose that. What’s the use in comparisons when I can’t change who I am? And why in God’s overused name would I want to? Why would I ever want the “it” bag everyone else wanted? It becomes common and expected, like Hamptons traffic. Well, fuck that noise. I’m pretty damn spectacular: me, my cellulite, and my anxious-as-all-get-out dog.

“Barkeep, another martini—make it filthy, not flirty!”

“Now, that’s a woman who knows who she is.” Damn. Usually a man who’d say this type of thing was a retired Long Island cop who wore more gold jewelry than a pawnshop, but this guy was cute. Very cute, and he’d just called me a woman.

“And that’s a man who knows how to use a line.” We were flirting already. His eyes were warm, and his shirt was perfect. I’m such a sucker for preppy. I swear, if I could, I’d marry preppy and make grosgrain babies.

“Hey, that wasn’t a line.” He feigned offended and looked good with his hands on his hips. From the boyish look of him, I could tell he was the kind of guy whose favorite movie was
The Princess Bride
, but he’d never admit to it unless someone else did first.

“Here you go, Kenny.” The bartender passed Prep Star a brown drink.

“Not a line?
Right
. You can tell I’m a woman who knows who I am just by my drink choice?” I peered up at him, my chin tucked to my chest.

“No.” He came closer and pushed his shoulder into mine. “Anyone who uses the word
barkeep
is a person with little regard of what others think.” Shoulder to shoulder, now, both of us leaning our forearms on the bar, I gave him a head nod and shoved him right back. “And you’ve got a killer smile.”

“Well, shit. Now you’ve gone ahead and captured my attention. How ever will you keep it?” I was drunk. Don’t hate me.

He didn’t even pause. “I can teach you the military alphabet.”

“How do you know I wasn’t a ROTC cadet in college?”

“Damn, you went to college?” Suddenly, he was speaking like a trucker with a toothpick in his mouth. “Woowee, girl, your folks must be proud!” I loved him. I smiled, biting into one of my olives.

His camp counselor voice returned, asking, “So, was I wrong to assume you’re a woman who knows what she wants?”

“You didn’t say that. You said a woman who knows who she is.”

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?” Before I had a chance to figure out if I wanted to argue, he barked, “G.”

“G?”

“Yeah, what’s the military word for G?” I had no idea.

“Golf.”

He slammed his drink on the bar without spilling. “I was betting everything you had no idea.”

“I’m right?” If I weren’t in heels, I would have hopped.

“You guessed?” He slapped me five, and we began laughing as if we’d known each other since crapping your pants and wearing emergency OshKosh was the thing to do. “Okay, it’s your turn. Ask me something.”

“Okay, where’d you grow up?” I stopped smiling and began to look at him as though I wanted to lick him somewhere.

“Oh, come on. I know that one! It’s too easy. Give me something tougher. I promise not to cry.”

“Vanilla, chocolate, or strawberry?”

He stared into my eyes. “Strawberry blonde.” A smile escaped his sunburned lips as he slid a finger into a coil of my hair. “Strawberry. Every day. It’s more interesting.”

I matched his smile and raised my glass to toast “Kenny, was it?” who, as I found out much later that night, had a half share in my Hamptons house. Normally, it’s don’t shit where you eat, but share houses are weekends only. They’re not elevator doorman buildings with uncomfortable someone-should-say-something mailrooms. Surely I could make an exception. Besides, strawberry!

“Yes, it’s Kenny, but you can call me whatever you want.” I wanted to verb his noun.

“Okay, see, now that was a line, my friend.”

“What are you looking for in a man?” I stared at him blankly. Whenever a man asks this of you, he’s hoping you’ll describe him, right down to the favorite sport he likes to participate in but not watch. “See, now that’s a line.” He said it as if it were the punch line. “But now you have to answer.”

“Have to, like I have to pay taxes, and have to be home by midnight?”

“I have news for you, little girl. I’m keeping you out past midnight.” He smelled like flannel. “Now come on, tell me.”

I stirred the remaining two olives in my glass, drank more than I’d expected to, and answered plainly. “I’m looking for a man with balls, Ken. Some serious stones. A man who can tell me the truth even when he knows I won’t like what he has to say.”