Barbara the Slut and Other People (4 page)

I didn’t want to talk to Beth about sex, but I did want to tell her about the girls I had been meeting on the internet. I wanted to ask her if she thought I had tried hard enough and could give up. I had been on eleven first dates and two second dates. I had sex with two of the first-date girls. The first girl I wouldn’t have slept with, except her grandma died between when we were e-mailing and when we got together. When she halfheartedly suggested we go back to her place, I felt like I should take her up on it. I pretended I was really into it. There wasn’t anything wrong with her. But nothing made me feel drawn to her, other than how cheerful she was trying to be despite obviously being so sad. It ended up being very high energy, very good sex. But we both understood that that was that. The second girl I had higher hopes for. The sex was good in a more routine way, but I think she dated a lot. My friends might have called her a slut, but I didn’t have any friends. And when I was in high school my mom sat me down to talk about the word “slut” and to give me a general lecture about how to make her proud despite my being a man.

That girl never called me back. But before I could talk to Beth about any of this, we got to SoHo.

Beth wanted to go to the jeans store first. She tried on about a hundred pairs. She didn’t like the way any of them looked because she was still a little bit fat.

“This brand does not fit well at all,” she said. “Maybe they fit Kelly but she’s a lot shorter than me.”

Because Beth was thin and then fat and now almost thin again, it was like she didn’t remember being fat. She didn’t even act fat when she was fat. When we were living together she found out she had high cholesterol and said, “But I thought that was for fat people.”

We left the store and walked down Greene Street. Beth grabbed my arm and took a couple of bouncy steps.

“If I lived in New York, I would live in SoHo,” she said.

“Oh really,” I said. “Do you even know how much apartments here are?”

“They’re expensive, huh?”

“They’re like four grand for a hundred square feet.” Sometimes Beth seemed to know nothing about how the world worked.

“Well I like it here, it’s my favorite neighborhood.”

“What other neighborhoods have you been to?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t even walk down the sidewalk, there are so many people. I like my neighborhood.”

“I like your neighborhood too. Calm down. I don’t not like your neighborhood. I just like this neighborhood too.”

“Fine,” I said. “Live here when you move to the city.”

“Maybe I will,” she said.

The sporting goods store didn’t really have any sporting goods. Unless you think stretchy clothes that cost more than a nice steak and a bottle of wine are sporting goods.

I looked at the men’s clothes. When I got to the back of the store Beth was freaking out about some underwear. The girl who was helping her was looking through a rack of bras and Beth was jumping up and down.

“These bras and shorts are special for hot yoga,” she said.

“Those are shorts?”

“Oh my god, I’m so excited.” She took a bunch of things back to the dressing room.

I sat in the most comfortable chair ever.

“What kind of chair is this?” I asked a different girl, who was putting hangers on clothes at a table.

“What?” When she turned around I realized she was gorgeous. She had huge blue eyes and she was tiny. She looked like a little elf but without pointy ears and with a really nice body. The stretchy clothes fit her like a dream.

“Never mind,” I said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What kind of chair is it? Do you want me to find out?” She had a killer smile, her teeth were perfect.

“No, that’s okay,” I said. “I don’t know why I said that. I don’t need a chair.” I smiled at her.

“Jason?” said Beth. “Do you want to see this stuff or not?”

“Uh,” I said.

“I love love love this stuff.” She opened the dressing room door and came out wearing a bra and the so-called shorts.

“Please tell me you don’t go to yoga like that,” I said.

Beth’s hair was coming out of the sides of the underwear. There was a lot of it. Once we reached the point where no amount of information was too much information, except any information about me having sex with Tiffany, Beth told me that the place she went to get waxed charged her extra. I mean I used to see her in underwear all the time. But now it was at eye level. It was not a good surprise. And it caused some involuntary stirring, which made everything worse.

“Of course I do.” She stuck her tongue out and let it hang there. She turned around and went back into the room.

“Tell your girlfriend I’ll be right back if she needs another size,” said the beautiful elf.

I started to say, “She’s not my girlfriend,” but only got as far as “Sh—”

“Thanks!” Beth said through the door.

Beth came out. Another girl came over to take the things she didn’t want. Beth handed her everything.

“What are you getting?” I said.

“I don’t think anything,” said Beth.

“What? Why not?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, I just don’t want to get anything.”

“Okay,” I said. On the way out I smiled at the elf. Beth rolled her eyes and said it was lame how I hit on her by asking about the chair.

“I wasn’t hitting on her,” I said.

“Oh please, Jason. I would recognize your lame moves through a brick wall.”

“I swear. I didn’t even see that she was hot until after I said the thing about the chair.”

“Whatever,” said Beth.

“Where do you want to go next?” I said.

“I think I’m fucking getting my period,” she said. “I need a cupcake or something.”

We went to a gourmet store where I once accidentally got a cup of yogurt and granola for eleven dollars before an interview.

“I think I want a cookie,” I said.

“Me too,” she said.

We decided to split one peanut butter and one ginger. After we paid we stood at the counter eating them. The peanut butter cookie was crunchy.

“Damn,” I said. “It looked like it was going to be soft.”

Beth took a bite of hers and chewed carefully. “It’s probably old.”

“What? Why would it be old?”

“Because it’s crunchy.”

“Crunchy cookies can be not old,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” said Beth. “No.”

•   •   •

Next we went to some special store that only had one kind of perfume. Beth’s friend ordered a sample and it never came, so Beth wanted to get it for her.

The girl handed Beth a tiny vial, and Beth said, “It’s fifteen dollars, right?”

“Wait, what?” I said.

“It’s complimentary,” said the girl.

“Oh my god, really?” said Beth. “Thank you so much.”

“Sure,” said the girl. “Have a good day.”

We left and Beth put the sample in her bag.

“Tell me you weren’t just going to pay fifteen dollars for that,” I said.

“Yeah I was,” said Beth.

“Beth, come on. They give those out at every store. Kelly has like a hundred in the bathroom.”

“I know, but this one was supposed to be fifteen dollars, Camille said so.”

“There’s no way,” I said. “Come on, please be smart about this stuff.”

“Well Camille really wanted it,” said Beth. “She waited for it to come in the mail for a month.”

Beth was really killing me. I couldn’t even look at her on the way to the grocery store. She didn’t notice. We had had moments like this before. But today I felt really out of patience and I didn’t know why. I was supposed to be Mr. Patient. I would wait for you to stop cheating on me for years and years if you needed me to. That’s how fucking patient I am. When we got to the grocery store Beth said she wasn’t that hungry, and I wasn’t really either.

We had a fight about whether to get rustic bread and cheddar cheese or white bread and American cheese, and finally Beth decided she wasn’t going to eat grilled cheese anyway. She only wanted to eat fruit for dinner. So I bought the white and American, frozen french fries, and a six-pack of sugar-free root beer for Kelly. Beth bought a fruit salad and at the last minute, some dumplings.

The subway didn’t come for a long time. Neither of us was over our fight about the grilled cheese yet. Beth pointed out the rats running around the tracks like she was glad to see them. I missed that about her. Right before Tiffany’s semester in Italy, Tiffany and I stayed on a houseboat in Berlin. It was full of spiders. There were ten or twenty spiders on every surface. The bunk beds. The table. The chairs. Our suitcases. Our shoes. At least two or three hundred total. I counted more than eighty as I threw them out the window. I was sliding them onto pieces of paper and brushing them off into the water. It seemed like as many as I was throwing out were coming back in through the open window and under the door. Tiffany sat on the top bunk, whimpering and flicking any she could see with her long nails. Until she saw the webs on the ceiling, only a foot or two from her head. Her scream shook the boat. If I had been a spider I would have jumped out the window voluntarily. Instead I caught her arm as she threw herself off the bed. I hugged her and kissed her. That night was the last time we had sex. Tiff gave me an amazing blow job. She said it was because I saved her from the spiders, but I think it was because she knew it was the last time.

Beth and I watched the rats in silence until the subway came. On the subway Beth said, “So, what about your bad dates?”

“Oh,” I said. “You know. New York is weird.”

“You should go back and ask that girl out.”

“What girl?” I said.

In a deep voice Beth said, “What kind of chair is this? It’s really comfortable but I bet it’s not as comfortable as your vagina.”

The old man across the aisle looked up at us.

I started to laugh. Beth started too. We cracked up for a minute. Then we stopped. We didn’t really have anything else to say.

•   •   •

When we got home, Kelly was making lanterns out of jam jars and wire and hanging them on the fire escape with candles in them.

“That’s so beautiful,” said Beth.

“Thanks,” said Kelly. “I hope they’re sturdy.”

“How do you know if they’re sturdy or not?” said Beth.

“I don’t,” said Kelly.

“Well they’re beautiful,” said Beth. “I’m very impressed.”

“Thanks.” Kelly smiled.

I let Beth ask Kelly a million questions about lanterns and beaded chandeliers and stripping furniture. Since Kelly was Kelly, it was a win-win situation. I put the french fries in and constructed the grilled cheese. I wondered what to do about Beth’s dumplings.

“Do you want me to warm up your dumplings?”

“Yeah baby, warm up my dumplings,” she said. “No, I like to eat them cold.”

When everything was ready she got them out of the fridge and started eating them out of the package. Then she went to the cabinet and took a glass down and held it up to the light and put it in the sink. She took another and did the same thing.

“Beth,” I said.

“What?”

“Are you putting our glasses in the sink because they’re not clean enough?”

“Yeah, should I not?”

“No, you should not. It’s rude.”

“Oh, is it?” said Beth, not sarcastically. “My mom does it to me.”

“That’s different. That’s your mom.”

“Okay. What should I do?”

“If you don’t see one that looks good then wash one.”

“Okay,” she said and washed a glass.

Kelly came in and we sat down to eat. Beth asked where the forks were and I got up to get her one.

“Is this clean enough for you?” I said.

Beth inspected it. “Yes.”

“Jason is mad at me because I put some dirty glasses in the sink,” she said to Kelly.

“Why is that bad?” said Kelly.

“Not from the counter,” I said, “from the cabinet.”

“Oh,” said Kelly. “Well that’s probably my fault. I think I did dishes last.”

It was definitely Kelly’s fault. She did dishes like she was blind and also had no fingers. There was always dried orange juice pulp on the glasses.

After dinner Kelly got dressed and went out. Beth and I watched a basketball game. I worked on a proposal letter. When the game ended I opened the futon for Beth and gave her a pillow and a blanket. I brought Pammy into my room, closed the door, got into bed, and jerked off.

The next morning I woke up early by accident. I took Pammy out for a run. On our way out he licked Beth’s feet, which were hanging off the futon. Beth’s feet were like everything else about her. Oversized but fine. She didn’t have anything gross like bunions and her toes were the right length and right width. I started to pay attention to this in high school because the only thing I could say to Kelly that really upset her was that her feet were ugly. They were and she knew it. And then in college I turned into kind of a foot guy. Tiffany’s feet were sexy. They were tiny and she had perfectly shaped toenails, like little shells. She had them done all the time and sometimes I did them for her. She told somebody about that, probably one of the guys she was fucking. My friends asked me if I wiped her ass for her, too.

I have all my epiphanies when I’m running. I had three contradictory epiphanies on the run with Pammy. I needed one more epiphany to tell me what the real epiphany was. The three options were: 1. The reason I didn’t want to sleep with Beth wasn’t because she kind of grossed me out, or because I didn’t really want to sleep with anyone after Tiffany the life-wrecking whore, but because she was like a sister to me, which explained all the fighting. 2. I actually did want to sleep with her, which also explained all the fighting. Or 3. We didn’t actually have anything in common, and I neither wanted to sleep with nor be friends with her.

I wanted it to be number 1 so that we could still be friends, and I didn’t want it to be number 3. As for number 2, I really didn’t think I wanted to sleep with her. Although I would have liked for her to know that I was better in bed now. And it would have made sense if the inverse of us hating each other all day was fucking each other all night. And I really did want to have sex. But I just didn’t want to do it with Beth.

I gave up trying to figure it out. Instead I thought about how I had too many women in my life. Too many women and all the wrong kind.