Barbara the Slut and Other People (8 page)

“Maybe,” said the guy, “but not more. Never would’ve passed inspection in the state of North Carolina.”

“I heard,” I said.

“The bottom of the car is rusted out. You got a hole in the back where the muffler was, and pretty soon you’re gonna have some holes in the cab. This floor is gonna crumble.”

“Is that safe?” said Mak.

“No, sir,” said the mechanic. “Car has a floor for a reason.”

•   •   •

The car seemed fine to me. Mak followed me back to the house. When we got there my mom had packed up our stuff, and we loaded it into the car and transferred Noah and Petey to my backseat. Tina came out to say good-bye to me and my mom. She said she didn’t want to wake up Andy and Dylan, but that they said bye. She gave us both hugs, like she wasn’t having a huge fight with my mom.

When we crossed the bridge I asked my mom if we were ever going back.

“We’ll see,” she said.

My mom and Noah slept most of the way to Raleigh, but when we got close my mom woke up and asked me if I was nervous.

“I guess,” I said.

“I’m proud of you,” she said.

“Why?” I said.

“Because it’s easy to stay in a relationship that’s not bad but not good,” she said.

I wondered what relationship she was thinking of. Obviously not her and Mak, which was gross but definitely good. Maybe she meant her and my dad. Or Tina and Andy.

“Like Tina and Andy?” I said.

“Ha!” said my mom. “Oh god, sweetie, you couldn’t end up like Tina and Andy if you tried.”

We stopped at a mall in Raleigh and woke Noah up. My mom went inside and Noah and Petey disappeared into the trees on the other side of the parking lot.

•   •   •

I drove up the highway feeling jittery. I couldn’t wait to get there, but I had no idea what would happen when I did. I tried to imagine some best-case scenarios. Maybe he had another girlfriend already. Maybe she liked surprises, but he didn’t even need to surprise her because they were always together. Maybe James sent me the coffee cake out of cheater guilt.

Or maybe he would come out to me. For this scenario I ignored his great love of the female body, and concentrated on his sensitivity and his strong commitment to feminism. If he was gay he would want to stay friends, but I thought it might be too late for that. I was so sick of him.

I tried not to let myself think about one other scenario, but it had occurred to me at some point in the last few weeks, and had been creeping into my thoughts ever since. I didn’t want James to die, but if I got to his house and he had been in a terrible accident, or had succumbed to a brief but devastating illness, I would be off the hook. Not only would I be off the hook, I would be like a girlfriend-widow.

When I got there, James’s parents were in the driveway and they gave me hugs and got into their van and drove away. I wondered how they knew what I was about to do.

James looked happy to see me. He also looked monogamous, straight, and alive. He gave me a big hug and a kiss and he went back in to get the lemonade he had made from scratch. I sat down on the wicker couch on the porch.

“I’m so happy to see you,” he said when he came back. He sat next to me.

“Uh,” I said.

His face fell a little.

“We need to talk.”

His face fell the rest of the way.

“I don’t think I want to be together anymore,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“What happened?” he said. “What changed?”

“Nothing changed,” I said. “I just want something else.”

“There’s someone else?” he said.

“No, I want something else. From my life.”

“What else do you want?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But don’t you want something else too? Something different?”

“No,” he said.

“I think this will be better for you,” I said. “You’ll find a better girlfriend.”

“No I won’t.”

We sat there for a minute that felt like a year. Finally the effort of keeping my eyes open made one of them water.

James looked at me and then put his arm around me and tried to guide my head to his shoulder. I realized he thought I was crying so I put my head down, even though that was the number one last thing I wanted to do. He wrapped his arms around me, and we sat like that forever.

Finally he let go and said, “We don’t have to make a decision right now.”

“But I already made a decision.” That sounded bad so I added, “I’m really sad about it, though.”

Now he put his head on my shoulder and started to cry. I patted him on the leg. Soon, but not soon enough, his parents came back, saw him crying, gave me a look of death, and went inside.

“I guess your parents hate me now,” I said.

“No they don’t,” he said. “I will never hate you.”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess I should get back on the road.”

James walked me to my car and gave me a very long hug that involved swaying from side to side. When he let me go I got in the car, and I felt something give under my right foot. I shut the door and looked under the mat, where there was now a hole that I could see his driveway through. I thought I would have more time before the floor crumbled. I rolled down the window.

“Is your car okay?” he said.

“Yup,” I said, “great.”

“I’ll see you in September,” he said.

“Yup,” I said, hoping that he wouldn’t. “I’m sorry again.”

He didn’t say anything. I backed out and was about to pull away when he yelled, “Wait!” He pointed to a spot on the blacktop. “Did that just fall off your car?”

“Nope,” I yelled. “I don’t think so.” I waved and pulled away.

•   •   •

Driving back to the mall I thought I would feel electrified or something, but instead I felt calm. When I got there, I pulled into the parking lot and called my mom and Noah. My mom came out of the mall.

“Mission accomplished?” she said.

“Mission accomplished,” I said.

Noah and Petey came out of the trees and got in.

We headed toward Charlottesville. The sound of the road tore through the hole in the floor and filled up the car.

W
hen I moved to San Francisco with my fiancé, he started practicing law and I started selling toys. I was supposed to start practicing law too, but I didn’t have the heart. I almost didn’t even have the heart to take the bar, but I found it when my dad threatened to cut me off. And then he cut me off right afterward anyway, because he said it was time to get a job, and if I didn’t want either of the jobs he had found for me, I was on my goddamn own.

I did apply to two law firms in San Francisco but I got rejected from both of them. Actually, rejected would mean they considered me, which there was no evidence of them doing. So now my job search strategy was to look for Help Wanted signs in windows, which would have given my dad an aneurysm, and which concerned my fiancé. Danny gently suggested that I stay home until I could think of something I actually wanted to do and apply for it. But I couldn’t think of anything I actually wanted to do.

I applied to some restaurants and some stores, but they all wanted someone with experience. And I didn’t have any experience except working at my dad’s firm in high school, another, bigger firm in college, and another, bigger firm in law school. My dad’s firm and the last firm were the two that had made me offers, but they were both in Los Angeles and Danny’s offer was in San Francisco, and since I didn’t care at all and Danny cared a lot, we went to San Francisco.

I tried to look for small stores that didn’t require folding T-shirts or any other special skills, and that looked like they might not have a lot of customers. One day I went out and applied to two movie stores in our neighborhood, where both of the managers were teenagers. Then I applied to a bagel store where all I would have to do was work the register. No putting cream cheese on bagels, because I needed training for that. Then I rode my bike to Dolores Park and walked around. Near the park I saw a Help Wanted sign in the window of an adult toy store called Desert Hearts. I went in thinking I would look around and then talk to someone, but the store was about ten feet by fifteen feet, and there was only one person there, so I had to talk to her right away. She was maybe sixty and she had short hair and a rat tail.

“Hi, can I help you?” she said.

“I was wondering if you guys are still hiring,” I said.

“Oh,” she said. “Yes we are. Are you, uh, lesbian?”

I looked around and took note of the wall of dildos.

“Yeah,” I said, “I am.” I gave her my biggest smile.

“Oh,” she said, “great. Well, I’m just filling in here, but I know they’re looking for someone full-time. The manager works at our store in the Castro. Ask for Chad.”

“Thanks so much,” I said. “I’m Brenda.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m Eunice.” She smiled and we shook hands. I realized my engagement ring was on my other hand and hoped Eunice hadn’t noticed. She gave me a business card and I left.

I looked up directions to the store, Making Love, and rode back through the park to the Castro. When I got there I put my ring in my pocket, and went in and asked for Chad. Chad was huge and black and he was wearing a T-shirt that barely fit around his arms. I was pretty sure I could see every muscle underneath.

“Oh, great!” he said when I told him I wanted to apply to work at Desert Hearts. “That’s great!”

He took me into the back and asked me a million questions about my employment history, my sexual history, and what I was doing in the hilly city. I told him I moved with my girlfriend Nadeen, who was a lawyer, and that I’d been a sexual health educator in college. The man at the bagel store had seemed concerned that I graduated from law school, so I decided to leave that part out. The sexual health educator part was true. And Nadeen was not completely untrue. I slept with her my freshman year of college after my dad told me that he didn’t want to hear about any of this “gay until graduation” stuff if I insisted on attending a girls’ school.

Then Chad told me about the stores, talking a mile a minute, and soon we were out on the floor and he was showing me the lesbian section and the exclusive harness they carried and the line of dildos they sold to go with it. The harness was really special because it was made out of leather and the ring was internal. Chad let me hold the harness and feel the ring, which apparently was around the hole underneath the two layers of leather. I didn’t ask what the ring was for or why internal was better.

“Wow, this is nice,” I said.

“I know, right?” said Chad. “I mean I don’t know, but, you know.”

“Ha,” I said, “right.”

There were a million dildos in a million colors, in sizes from baby carrot to miniature log.

Chad introduced me to the people working at Making Love, and said I would be working at Desert Hearts by myself, and if I could work five days a week, one of the Love girls would fill in on the other two days. Eunice was a friend of the owner, Pamela, and was just filling in until they found someone more permanent.

“And I would like that to be you!” said Chad. “I have to run this by Pamela, but I know she will think you are just adorable!”

“Great,” I said.

•   •   •

When I got home I took a shower and made stuffed peppers and waited for Danny for a while, then ate the peppers by myself and watched a two-hour dating show. My dad called to bother me so I told him I was going to work at a sex toy store and he said he didn’t have time for my jokes, and to call him back when I was ready to get serious about my life.

When Danny got home at ten I told him I might have gotten a job.

“Where?” he said.

“At this store in the Mission,” I said. “A sex toy store.”

“Ha,” he said.

“No really,” I said.

“Really?” he said, looking worried.

“I can still look for law jobs,” I said, to make him feel better. “But this way I can make some money and have some interim work to put on my resume.”

“I don’t think you can put that on your resume,” he said. “Do you even know anything about sex toys?”

“Yes,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I do. I learned a lot today. And I have that vibrator.”

“That blue dolphin thing?” he said. “Has that ever had batteries in it?”

“So?” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “Well, I hope you get the job if you want it.”

“Thanks baby,” I said. “I want it.”

I guess thinking about the toys made Danny feel sexy, because he got me started when we got into bed, and we had sex for the second time in San Francisco. The first time we were exhausted from moving, and giddy because we had had too many beers to celebrate. Then when Danny started working and it didn’t happen again, I started worrying that it was the beginning of the end, and in twenty years when our kids claimed we only had sex twice, once for each of them, it would be more or less true.

But that night after Desert Hearts and Eunice and Chad, it was as good as it had ever been. I choked myself up thinking how grateful I was to have someone who knew my body by heart and could get me off in two minutes or two hours, and especially how grateful I was when it was two hours. When we finally went to sleep, I had a dream that I worked at the store and I had to wear a tiny dildo necklace.

•   •   •

The next afternoon Chad called to say I got the job, and he wanted to know if I could work the next day. The next day was Saturday but I said okay. He asked me if I thought I remembered enough from Making Love to come up with some talking points for the harness and the dildo collection. I said yes and had a feeling that I was going to spend the next twenty-four hours reading about lesbian sex and sex toys on the internet. He said he would meet me at Desert Hearts at noon to train me to use the register and some other store-specific stuff, like the sex machine.

“Great,” I said.

When Danny got home I told him I got the job and was going to start tomorrow. He said it was fine; he had a lot of work to do anyway.

“And maybe I’ll come visit you,” he said.

“Oh god,” I said. “Please don’t.”

Later he caught me printing out pictures from the dildo website, which I was planning to use for flash cards to help me learn the names of the different models. He laughed at me and I laughed too. He kissed my neck and I felt the hairs there stand up. I followed him to the back of the apartment, hopeful, but by the time I finished brushing my teeth he was asleep.

•   •   •

On Saturday I rode to Desert Hearts and Chad tried to teach me how to use the register, which was a computer with the most complex software I had ever used. I was finally able to make a successful transaction around two in the afternoon, and Chad sighed a big sigh of relief and brought in some books from his car, put them on the table at the front of the store, and told me he was leaving.

Two women who had been whispering in the dildo section asked me for help. They had picked out a fabric harness and were trying to decide on a dildo, and wanted to know what other colors “Buck” came in. I told them he came in three skin tones, vanilla, caramel, and chocolate. And I asked them if they had seen our exclusive harness and gave them the whole speech about the virtually seamless leather and the internal ring and everything. I didn’t think they would go for it since it cost twice as much as the one they picked out, but they did. They said they were glad they talked to me because they weren’t thinking of it as an investment before. When I turned around Chad was still there, folding shirts. The women picked the caramel Buck, and I checked them out with no problems.

When they were gone Chad said, “See, you are smart! That was just great! You’re going to do great. The only thing is don’t call the dildos ‘he,’ okay? Most lesbians don’t really like that.”

“Oops,” I said, “okay.” That made sense but it really seemed like a stretch to imagine Buck as female or sexless. Buck had a very realistic-looking head, and veins up and down the shaft. Buck didn’t have balls, but several of the other dildos in that collection did. And Buck was circumcised, but some of the others weren’t. I could see calling the dildos in the other, smoother, more abstract collections “she,” but when I see a head, veins, and wrinkled balls, I think “he.” I wondered who was designing these things and why they thought lesbians wanted penis replicas.

Chad left and later called to see if I could work the next day so that I could meet Pamela and have her show me around.

•   •   •

Before Pamela came in I saw her parking her motorcycle in front of the store and taking her helmet off. She looked like Eunice, but heavier and without the rat tail, and when she came in I couldn’t tell if she had a really kind face or a tired face. She gave me a once-over and a terse smile and I decided on tired face.

“I’m Pam,” she said. “Thanks for working on such short notice.”

She explained everything to me again, looking at me skeptically the whole time. In the middle of the harness speech she looked at me and said, “Have you ever actually used a harness?”

“Yes,” I said. “Of course. I’ve used yours. I mean the Desert Hearts one. My girlfriend and I got it when we were up here last year.”

“Oh really?” said Pam. She looked pleased but didn’t smile. “Do you like it?”

“Yeah we love it,” I said. “I’ve never worn anything more comfortable.”

“Huh,” she said. “Great.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have said I was the one who wore it. I guess if I was a lesbian I wouldn’t be a top. But I figured I would be willing to at least try it.

I listened through the harness speech and the dildo speech and the lube speech, and by the time we got to the vibrators I started to get impatient and started cutting her off. Like when she said, “The Eroscillator is the number-one-rated stimulator,” I said, “It was engineered in Switzerland and university-tested in the U.S. There is no better vibrator.”

“Good,” she said. “I guess Chad went over everything.”

When Pam got back on her motorcycle and rode away, I tried out all of the vibrators on my nose like she told me to tell the customers to do, but I wasn’t sure that gave me a good sense of how they would feel on my clit. I did like the Eroscillator though. There were seven attachments and I cleaned off the Grapes and Cockscomb attachment with a Clorox wipe and massaged my face with it. At the end of the day, I bought the Eroscillator with my employee discount. Danny laughed about it at first, but then we had sex and we used it, and it made him feel good and it made me feel like I was on another planet.

•   •   •

The next morning Chad called and asked if I could work at Making Love instead, and when I got there he told me that Pam was concerned about me working at Desert Hearts. He held his hands up like,
What can you do?
and started explaining all of the men’s color-coded leather accessories.

The other people working were Marc and Estelle, and they worked the floor while I stayed at the register. Some guys came in and asked for poppers and I looked in the cock ring display case, wondering what might be called poppers. Marc was in the video section, and I didn’t want to ask him what they were, so I just asked him where they were.

“Um, they are NOWHERE,” he yelled back, “because we do not have POPPERS, because they’re ILLEGAL!”

“Oh,” I said, and tried to smile at the guys as they hightailed it out of the store.

Marc told me that poppers were muscle relaxants and he also told me that Pam didn’t want me to work at Desert Hearts because I didn’t look gay.

“That’s discrimination,” I said.

“What are you going to do, call a lawyer?” said Marc.

“Maybe,” I said.

“She didn’t really fire you.”

“True.”

I worked at Making Love all that week and Eunice worked at Desert Hearts until they found a replacement, Carol, who had a crew cut. Marc said if I was really mad he would cut my hair and lend me some cargo shorts. It was clear to me that I needed a rat tail, and later Danny told me he would pay me a hundred dollars to get a mullet, but Marc thought I needed something more subtle, like a faux hawk.

But then on her third day, Carol the real lesbian dropped the entire computer on the floor by accident. Somehow Pam didn’t fire her for that, but Carol never showed up to work again. Marc told me that Pam begged Eunice to come back before she decided I would have to work at Desert Hearts again. I was almost sad to leave Making Love because I liked working with everyone there and I liked gay men—when it came to sex toys, they were much more outgoing than lesbians—but I was glad to be by myself and read all of the books, and the new cash register was so easy. I just typed in the prices, and if something wasn’t marked, I made up a price that I thought sounded fair.