Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (4 page)

In an instant, all my clothes were off. We were naked on his living room rug, where he was massaging me with oil. He kneaded my muscles, pulling my shoulders, following each muscle into the next, like hands over a braid. “Turn over.” I knew where this was going, and for once, I would “enjoy the journey.” More massage oil. After plunging his hands into me, he whispered, “You know, I do have a bed.” I rocked my body in pleasure and frustration, but I let him take my hand and lead me to his room.

“I’m not having sex with you,” I warned. Now, just for the record, if a woman says this to you, she means intercourse, not oral sex. “I mean it.” I
did
mean it. He believed me and sought an alternative. In a snap, he left the room and returned with a bottle of lotion. Trying to squirt some body lotion into his hand, he stood naked above the bed. The bottle was empty. Splatters of white lotion speckled his hand.

“Damn it. I’m out of Astroglide, too.” Here’s a tip, men. Try to leave “Astroglide” out of your speech with any women you’ve any interest in fucking or seeing again. Nix it from your vocab. “Astroglide” translates to “Sketchy Perv.” Defeated, he left the room again. He returned with Pam Cooking Spray. Red cap, aerosol spray. You know the one. You use it to cook eggs, fry up some onions, render some bacon. You don’t spray it on your dick.

He shook it and then sprayed. He used his free hand to rub it in, or rub one out. More spray. I smelled butter. At that moment, I simply could have asked for the check, terminating the evening, but I decided to carry on with our meal. Alas, the “you only live once” cliché resonated. He masturbated over my face. I might have licked his balls, but he might have been too soused to climax. Through his childlike squeals, I learned he was caught a little off guard by my finger up the ass maneuver. “Do you mind quieting down? I’m. Working. Here!”

When we were finally tired out, we lay on his bed beside each other, naked, no sheets. We talked about his family, his sister, his mother. As I sit here recounting it, I have enhanced memory. I remember details about his life, the way a fascinated second grader knows things about the paramecium. His mother had red hair and was married twice, bringing her son to her second marriage. “Linus,” he said, “can be your equivalent to our relationship.” Soon, the sun came through his bedroom windows. Thin stripes of it marked his wooden floor. It was 6
A.M.
, and I had to go home. I nearly busted into a jog toward his living room to collect my clothes. Being naked in daylight before a stranger ranks right up there with someone discovering your period panties.

“Wow,” I exclaimed. I looked at the floor, our clothes strewn about, abandoned like the clothes of lovers, and then I saw the empty bottle of “massage” oil. Colavita Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

He answered, “Yeah, it’s a great view, isn’t it?” Wide-open windows surrounded me. I stood naked in bewilderment. The man had tossed my salad…at least he did it without Astroglide.

HE HADN’T JUST MOVED SOUTH IN THE CAB THAT NIGHT.
Turns out the following week he moved south again. To frickin’ Southeast Asia. I went north, to Gristedes for a pint of Rocky Road and self-esteem.

How was I to keep three bachelors in rotation when I couldn’t even find one with lasting potential? Forget the spare—I couldn’t even rally a pair together. It was depressing. I went through all the dating hurdles and always ended up alone anyway. All of my girls heard me dramatize my dates, twirling squeals of excitement around a core of disbelief. And when I was down to a drought, I’d have to pick myself up, go shopping for a $125 tank top to show off my shoulders, and start all over again. Enjoy the journey? Yeah, I’d enjoy “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” myself, in my pajamas, on a night off, thank you very much.

ABOVE ALL OTHER OCCASIONS, A WEDDING IS AN EVENT
where people get insulted and remember, in remarkable detail, how they were slighted many years later. “How could you sit me at a table with that one?” “Could you have seated me any closer to the kitchen?” and “I can’t believe I wasn’t invited with a date.” And my personal favorite, the one I ingested after each meal with my ex-nag-in-law, “You’ve made it perfectly clear you want to do it all yourself, and you don’t want my help.”

No one is ever satisfied, including the newlyweds. They’re too tired from a night of having to try to remember names to have good sex. Everyone loses. People should elope, then have a big party to celebrate. Riiiiight, because in-laws would never
dream
of taking that personally. Instead, they’d create a
nightmare
for you until death do you part.

An invitation to my cousin Electra’s wedding arrived in the mail. She was marrying a third. Not a third of her worth or a third time’s a charm guy, but William Trevor Rand III. Upon reexamination of the weighty embossed envelope, I saw it, right there, in black and ecru: and guest. I drummed my nails on the coffee table. Shit. Shit. Shit. It was my first family wedding since my split with Gabe, and now I had to find my second to attend a “third wedding.” Having to endure the love orgy that is a wedding was bad enough, but now I needed not just a date, but a
proper guest
. You know, someone I’d need to offer things to, like fresh hand soap, a cold beverage, or, say, the chance to hold back my hair at the end of the night while I vomited champagne. This would be swell. Something to really look forward to, you know, like a Pap smear.

I had to factor in what I like to call “Grate Expectations.” It’s the double-edged sword of function dating. One side of the sword is devoted to the guests: expectation. If you’re invited with a date, people expect you to bring one. The invitation should’ve said, “black tie and date optional” because procuring a date to a wedding is no small task. The flip side of the dagger belongs to my date: he couldn’t grate the guests with his incessant declarations of his love for me. What he showers me with in private is one thing, but really, telling anyone who will listen how “fond” he is of me vexes people into stiff smiles and sprints toward the loo. “She’s really a great lady, isn’t she?” Then you conjure images of a panting Odie, jumping through the hoops Garfield tells him to. This isn’t dating, it’s babysitting. This wouldn’t do.

My date would have to endure abandonment when family summoned me. I’d apologize too often about deserting him, so he’d have to deal with that too. He couldn’t dance the whole time, or not dance the whole time. He’d need the ability to make me feel beautiful and wanted, to touch my arm, to stare at me and get caught doing it, then produce a wry smile. My guest would understand my anxieties and make me laugh at them, knowing that for a girl like me, who was once married, alcohol and vows might make me…oh, I don’t know, want to throw myself in front of a meat truck. He couldn’t smell or have a small penis in case I got drunk and wanted to fool around. And I would get drunk, like you read about in medical textbooks beside photos of damaged livers.

Okay, so I was asking for more than a date, I suppose. I was looking for a worn-in love, the kind where he’d know to introduce himself to someone because he could read my expression of memory loss. A love like I thought I had with Gabe.

The last wedding I’d attended had been with Gabe. We were running late, something we did remarkably well together. We sat in Long Island Expressway traffic with the car windows down and the radio up. He asked me to give him singing lessons. We sang along to The Barenaked Ladies’ “What a Good Boy.” When Gabe got to the “bear with me, bear with me, be with me tonight” lyrics, he squeezed my hand and looked at me, finishing his last choral note in a smile. And I remember thinking, “My God, this is it. This is really it. I get to be with this man for the rest of my life.” I felt so lucky. I sang and smiled, and—not at all shocking for me—I even cried a little. “You have such a beautiful voice, Stephanie,” he said. I adored hearing him say my name. I felt loved when it came from his mouth.

Later that night, after the wedding reception, I became ill from too much wine. Gabe stayed up late with me, in the dark of our bathroom, so I wouldn’t have to be sick alone. “I’ll do whatever I can to always take care of you,” he’d whispered. “Stephanie, you’re my girl, and I love everything about you. Even when you make us late to a wedding, no matter how much warning time I give you.” I looked up from the toilet bowl and squinted at him. “Yes, I even love when you make your mean face. And I love how excited you get about stuff, even the stuff I have no interest in, like in the museum the other day.” I had dragged him through the sweltering Museum of Natural History because I wanted to draw some of the animals.

“Ugh, how can you be telling me all of this when I’m like this, all nasty and on the floor, sick like this?”

“’Cause we’re family, and I get to see you like this and be this close to you, and I just realized that I’m excited about the fact that I get all of this, all of you, the woman who lets her mail pile up higher than the kitchen table but still complains that I don’t throw out my magazines fast enough. Speaking of mail, you know what I love most?” I shook my head. “I love, and never repeat this because it’s huge, that your e-mail subject lines are historically all better than mine.” This made me laugh because we constantly tried to one-up each other in funny. “I know you’re not going to believe me, but you look so pretty sitting there.” I did believe him.

We fell asleep watching
My Fair Lady
until the room stopped spinning, which is exactly what I shared with his friends the following afternoon. Upon hearing me tell them that he’d spent the morning repeating, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain,” Gabe rolled his eyes, jokingly denied it, and pulled me to him and whispered that he was going to kill me.

I’d kill to have a date like that again for Electra’s wedding. But finding a wedding date is like finding a valentine: if you have to
find
one, it doesn’t count. Certainly, I’ve heard of wearing a dress on loan, but borrowing, or dare I say, buying a man is so provincial, yet it was still suggested.

“I saw an ad in the back of a magazine,” my sister half-joked over the phone.

“Don’t even finish that statement.”

“I’m just sayin.’ At least you know he specializes in shiatsu in case things get out of hand at the wedding.”

“Lea, shiatsu is a form of massage, not a martial art.”

“I know.” No she didn’t.

“What are you reading that crap for?”

“Oh come on, everyone reads them. They’re funny as shit. The swinger ads are the best. One actually said they were looking for a hairy nut finder.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I don’t know, but that’s funny as shit.” Then she snorted.

I was approaching the maximum spending limit on the AmEx as it was, thanks to the outfits I’d purchased to reclaim the esteem that was ripped from me on the recent litany of bad dates. And since the only feasible option appeared to be paying for a date, I decided to do the ever practical, and oh so dismal: I RSVP’d for one.

“Are you sure you want to stag it?” Electra asked over the phone days later, “because there really won’t be any single men at my wedding. Well, no one over twelve who you aren’t related to, anyway.”

“Yeah, I’m sure. Besides, I can spend time with the fam for a change.”

“Good, because I’m sitting you with Fay and Yiya then. I don’t know who else to put at their table.” Yiya is my eighty-six-year-old Puerto Rican grandmother. Fay is her older sister. Undoubtedly, they’d be wearing muumuus and walkers and want to talk to me about sex. If I weren’t related to them, I’d have taken bets on Spanglish Tourette’s syndrome.

“Yeah, okay, whatever you want.” I decided to be accommodating. Certainly, my cousin already had to manage a handsome share of “this wedding is about me” demands.

“Ugh, thank you,” she exhaled. “You have no idea how impossible everyone is being about the simplest things.”

I had more than an idea—I had an inexhaustible memory.

BEFORE THE INVITATIONS TO MY WEDDING HIT THE
printer, announcing our marriage on August 28, 1999, Gabe panicked, using the words, “not ready yet.” To this day, my unworn wedding gown hangs in a thick plastic garment bag, in a basement, appropriately enough where everyone stores their pasts. Lucky for my cousin—because she enslaved me to the stately position of bridesmaid, I was forced to wear the appropriated dress for the job and could not wear my white wedding gown as a nod to her “something new.” Okay, not that I would. No one ever has an occasion to wear her formal wedding dress again, even if it has never been worn. So now, the only one left to insult was Electra’s mother, my aunt, who would later lecture, “You and Lea should have had the dresses altered with my girl. It’s a bridesmaid dress, not a bachelor party.” I didn’t give a gnat. I wasn’t about to schlep to Long Island just to use her “girl.” Who the hell even says that? And last I checked, Manhattan was known to have some stuff. You know, like a fashion district and directories of A-list clothing geniuses.

I convinced Lea to haul her bridesmaid dress into the city with promises of a free meal, a sleepover chick-flick fest, and an unadulterated make-out session with my dog. She wants to violate the laws of nature with Linus.

“I’m serious, Steph. We’re talkin’ the big bad vows, and I claim him now,” she cautioned as she wiggled free from her sweat-soaked clothes at a midtown dressmaker’s studio. “I have dibs. When the laws change, that little nugget is
mine
to have and to hold.”

“Yes, dear. Can you zip this atrocity of a top for me, please?” We were crammed in an airless, makeshift dressing room composed of a curtain and exposed brick wall.

“You think I’m kidding. I’m going on eBay later and ordering him the doggie bowtie and top hat in preparation. God, I wish I could marry him.”

I was wearing my way-too-tight navy pants, trying to stretch them out for their eventual date debut. There wasn’t room for panties in there, even my slingshots, so I warned Lea, “I’m nekked in Tahiti down there, so watch out for my red fire-crotch.”

“Please, more like firecracker. That thing looks like a dog treat.”

“Ew, stop looking!”

“Whatever, mine’s a burning bush. Boys can hear the voice of God in there. Go ahead, make a wish!” She cackled.

I wished I didn’t have to be a bridesmaid. The problem wasn’t really the ill-fitting dress. It was me. I needed alterations. I’d already done this, been the bridesmaid and the bride. Walking down an aisle felt like walking backward. I had to stop feeling sorry for myself. So what if I looked like a chunk? No one was going to be looking at the back fat that would protrude from my top as I ambled down her aisle. This was Electra’s day. Not everything had to be about Stephanie and her broad-beamed bod. What was wrong with me?

I’ll tell you precisely what was wrong: when you look like shit it quickly becomes all about you. Bridesmaids complain for a reason, and it has so little to do with taffeta and everything to do with demure. Bridesmaid dresses might be garish but, I assure you, they’re always prudish. It was a Saturday evening in late June. The rest of the guests would be grandstanding their go-go calves and cleavages. The last thing I wanted to be wearing was a yellow floor-length gown named “Provenance Squash” with nary a breast in sight. I looked like an egg yolk.

Lea and I stood side by side, staring at our reflections.

“Oh, Steph, this is bad.” She turned to the side and extended her stomach. “So bad. I look like a knocked-up Perdue roaster.”

“I have two words for you Lea: Open. Bar.”

THE GROOM’S MOTHER WAS GREETING GUESTS BY THEIR
first and last names, as if she’d studied the seating chart for months. She was heavier than I’d expected a mother of a III to be. From across the church, she looked like a shrub of a woman, the kind with a meaty laugh who, if given the opportunity, would lift Bob Barker upon meeting him. She’d win the brand-new car and make it to the showcase showdown. Everyone would want her to win. As I got closer, she looked more like a woman who had a one-night stand with a disco ball. Was that glitter eye shadow?

“Oh my, Stephanie Klein, your hair is just Love. Ly.” She sounded like she’d swallowed a southerner. “Where ever did you get these magnificent curls?” She gripped one and pulled it toward her nose, inhaling deeply. “Just Love. Ly.” She had puppet mouth when she spoke, moving her face only by way of her enormous mouth. It seemed like a hinge that kept her head together. “You know, I just love Electra’s curls too. You girls have great genes. I can’t wait for those two to give me some grandbabies. My husband and I just love Electra.”

I didn’t know what to say, only that I suddenly wanted to squeeze her. Maybe it was her voice or her disarming casual manner, but I loved Electra’s motherin-law to be. “It’s true honey. Did you know we were never close to our William until Electra came into his life?” I wanted to borrow her eye shadow. I wanted anything this woman had to give. “She’s a blessing I tell you, a God’s honest blessing. He is lucky to have found her. We all are, you know.” I didn’t know. I didn’t know women like this existed.

I thought all mothers-in-law lived up to their dreaded clichés. Mine was certainly no exception. Accustomed to one-upmanship, Gabe’s mother, Romina Rosen, was a cliché and a half. On the whole, a woman isn’t keen on her motherin-law if she’s controll
ing
, disapprov
ing
, or interfer
ing
. Romina was a triple major in the
ing
s and took extra night classes in calculat
ing
just for kicks. The woman was a hate nerd.