Confessions of a Recovering Slut (28 page)

Ha! It was more than enough. It was over the top. I actually made thank-you notes, too, that featured a picture of Milly the morning after, sitting amidst a mountain of presents, ripped wrapping paper, shredded piñata, and the ankle-deep paste of trampled Polynesian food that covered everything. In it Milly is wearing red wooden shoes with her Powerpuff Girl pajamas, and the smile on her face is so radiant I just want to lean against a wall and clutch my chest.

I lost the list of who gave what, though, so I couldn’t send the note cards. This year I plan to use them as coasters, keeping a stack of them right there next to the steaming turkey legs and mutton, or whatever it is that medieval people eat, for chrissakes. This year it’s a Renaissance theme, and I actually considered having a genuine jousting tournament, but realized I can’t really fit horses in my house, not without risking some crushed kids, anyway.

“Kids got crushed all the time back then,” Lary offers. “It would be authentic to the times.”

Luckily Lary is good for other things. Like when I called him to say I wanted to make a castle in my house, he didn’t even ask why. He just drove over here with a truck full of castle parts, or things that make great castle parts, and pretty soon I had one standing here, totally blocking my CD player on the bookshelf behind it. That’s why Lary insists on the drawbridge. By that time other friends had arrived. “You need a dragon to go with the castle,” one them said, and damn if one didn’t materialize. It’s every bit as big as the castle.

“You don’t think it’s over the top?” I ask them.

“Sometimes over the top is called for,” they say, pouring themselves another glass of wine. By the time they left there was paint, glue, newspaper, gift wrap, and party supplies strewn about as if my house had been barfed on by a parade of giant birthday cakes,
and the party was still days away
.

I don’t know where I inherited this neurotic-entertainer chromosome. Neither of my parents had it: the extent of their hospitality often only resulted in an open can of mixed nuts on the coffee table. My mother, in particular, was never one to go over the top for a houseguest. My brother once brought his college roommate home for dinner, an occasion for which my mother made a passable pan of canned-sauce lasagne with crumbled hamburger dotting the surface like gravel shaken from a shoe. Throughout the evening she was barefoot and wore one of my father’s large button-down shirts over a pair of nylon shorts—or I’m assuming she was wearing shorts, anyway, as the shirt was long enough and the shorts short enough that the former completely camouflaged the latter, to the point that it seriously looked like my mother was serving us dinner in her underwear.

Looking back I’m very impressed with my brother’s friend, who, if he was appalled to have the mother of his college roommate offer him dinner half naked, he didn’t show it. He even asked for seconds, smiling when my mother, with smoldering menthol between her teeth, used a spatula to slap a slab on his plate.

You just never know about people. My father, for example, kept his usual place, standing in the corner of the kitchen where the counters met, and rolled his eyes at my mother. My sisters and I visibly died every other minute, so mortified we were that our mother looked like that floozie Michael Douglas just had casual sex with on
Streets of San Francisco
. But my brother’s friend pretended not to notice us or my mother’s bare feet and barely covered ass. He heaped compliments on my mother, who probably hadn’t heard many lately, and he pretended to love that canned-sauce lasagne like it was flown in from Florence. It was a performance that was completely over the top, but sometimes over the top is called for.

L
ARY SAYS I NEED
to start passing out in parking lots again. “I don’t remember ever passing out in a parking lot,” I tell him.

“That’s just it,” he says, “You used to be
wild
. You never remembered anything you did.”

“Oh, Jesus God,” I cry. “I’m not taking advice from some crazy goddam walking bag of body lice.” And I did not even
ask
for the advice, mind you, yet here Lary is, pitching it out like manure patties.

It’s not just him. Grant is sticking his huge head all up into my shit every chance he gets, too. “You need to fuck Matt,” he tells me all the time. “Go fuck Matt.”

“Let’s count the reasons why that will never happen, okay?” I say. “One, he’s
my friend
. Two, he used to
rob banks
! Three, he’s, like, twenty-two, isn’t he? Four, you’ve fucked him yourself five hundred times, right?”

Grant never answers that question, he just laughs. I have no idea what goes on between Matt and Grant, but I know something does. Anyway, Grant knows I would never, ever, ever,
ever
let him choose a man for me—not again, anyway—and that’s what this is all about. These two complete crust pockets have decided that manlessness is my problem. I figure this must be because they are men themselves, in their own way, and as men they can’t fathom not being needed.

Daniel doesn’t really bother me about this. Don’t forget that years ago on his endorsement I ended up dating a guy who fixes cars in his yard, and I’ve never let him forget that. Now he knows not to bolster my own awful taste in the opposite sex, and let’s face it, my track record is a total toilet spin. I have absolutely no standards.

But goddam, I still feel lucky. I can’t tell you how great it feels to open the door to my new home and know there’s peace on the inside, as well as relative peace outside on the street. It’s not the prettiest place to live, or the biggest, and the wallpaper in the bedroom will melt the retinas right out of your eye sockets, but at least it’s mine. It’s my reward for having no standards, and I’m okay with that.

Now I can’t believe my friends want me to wreck everything all over again. Especially Lary. Lary loves his solitude like a smelly old troll. He doesn’t even have a real door at his place, you just have to show up and holler outside his warehouse and hope he lets you in. That there is someone who does not want people in his life, believe me, yet here Lary is, giving me advice!

“Just what the hell am I gonna accomplish by passing out in a parking lot?” I ask.

“It’s attractive,” he says.

I bet it is. I bet an unconscious female attracts all kinds of crap. I wonder if that’s how Lary finds the women he dates. If so, it’s working pretty well for him. Lary usually dates women we’re amazed would agree to be seen with him, though occasionally he throws a nutball into the mix, too, like the schizophrenic girl whose third personality is missing its left leg. She spent an entire afternoon once just hopping around out on the patio.

But still, Lary at least has standards. “I need a crazy-assed bitch in my life right now,” was his standard then, and he met it.

Grant, for one, sees my lack of standards as a bonus. Grant came out of the closet at forty-two, and it must be great for a guy to figure out he’s gay after a relative lifetime of heteroness, to discover this whole world of faceless sex free for the taking. I swear, I don’t think there’s a woman alive who will let you ass fuck her without at least a diamond bracelet in a box on the end table with her name on the card. Freshly gay, Grant found out there’s a whole field of asses out there ripe for the fucking, and he does not even have to know their names or care whether they’d like him to. “I wonder why all men aren’t gay,” he says, knowing full well I know he thinks all men are.

I ask him if he remembers me ever passed out in a parking lot. “Girl, you were always passed out. Those were the good old days,” he reminisces fondly. Right then I realize my friends don’t know shit about what I need, but they are still my friends. They are the flotsam that got caught in the strainer of my life as the rest of the world flowed through. They are my reward for having no standards, and I’m okay with that.

F
OR MONTHS NOW
,
Grant has been buying women’s clothes, which by itself isn’t anything new, but these women’s clothes
don’t fit him
. “Bitch,” he said to me over the phone yesterday, “I just found the goddamnest, most gorgeous cocktail suit in fifties bubblegum blue. . . . ”

“Bubblegum
blue?
” I asked.

“Believe me,” he said, “when you see this blue suit, you will want to chew it. It’s that fabulous.”

I saw it, and he’s right, it’s that fabulous. “But it doesn’t fit you,” I pointed out.

“Whoreslutbitch,” he said, exasperated, “I
know
that, do you not see me putting it into the special closet?”

That’s right, Grant has a special closet. He’s been keeping all the women’s clothes that don’t fit him in an entirely different closet from his own, one way down the hall. In addition to the cocktail suit, he has a blue Angie-Dickenson trench coat with contrast stitching, some sweater sets, two A-line shifts, a white patent-leather belt, and pantyhose.

I used to five in the Telephone Factory as well, in an apartment with the same floorplan just two doors down from where Grant lives now that he sold his shotgun shack in Peoplestown. I also used to use that closet for crap I was clinging to for odd reasons. Some of it didn’t even belong to me, like the chipped plaster panther that my sister had unwisely given me for safekeeping eleven years ago. Evidently my mother had bought it for her in Tijuana, the world center for crap-ass plaster products. Why my sister thought it would be safer with me is a mystery, as it was chip-free when she handed it over. I also had a kitchen clock that once belonged to my grandmother. Besides a hand-knitted pincushion, that clock is the only heirloom I have.

“It doesn’t even work,” Grant said back then. He was always coming over to tell me I had to edit my possessions. “Divest yourself!” he’d holler. It could be heard echoing through the hallways. But I could not divest myself. I lugged that stuff through three addresses after that, and I still have it, though I seriously resent that panther. Now here’s Grant with the same closet full of crap that’s of no possible use to him, and I have to laugh. What
is
that in there? Is that a goddam pillbox hat?

“Divest yourself!” I holler at Grant. He’s chasing me now because I’ve discovered that all that stuff in his special closet fits me fine, and I refuse to take off the blue Angie-Dickenson trench coat with contrast stitching. “God
damn
it, give that back, that is the one thing that fits me like a glove!” he shrieks.

Like hell it fits him. He was prancing around in it earlier, and his shoulders were about to bust through the back seam. “It’s mine now and you know it,” I taunt, and I can see he does know it. “Bitch,” is all he says, but he’s smiling as he shakes his head. The coat has banded sleeves with cuffs that turn up at the ends, and when I put it on, I just want to curl up in it, it’s that wonderful.

In fact, everything in Grant’s special closet is wonderful. The bubble-gum blue cocktail suit is a little tight in the hips, but hell, I could lose some more weight. It’s been a while since I cared what I looked like, what with the kid, my absent love life, and the way I’d completely divested myself of any confidence regarding my ability to judge character. I was happy with my solitude, happy wearing the T-shirts and cargo pants and whatever else that stuck to me from the floor when I got up in the morning. I’d wad my hair on the top of my head like wet hay and hit the road. Nobody took notice of me, or at least I hope they didn’t.

But Grant must have. When I met him eight years ago I was living in that same building, and I used to wear white high-heeled sandals and a sundress you could fit into an envelope. Sometimes I’d take my tennis racket and whack balls against the brick wall of the Turner building next door. Once Grant walked over and leaned against the wall I was whacking, and I remember thinking he had a lot of confidence in me, because one wrong shot and he’d lose an eye, I swear. But he leaned there and talked to me anyway, and I didn’t hit him.

Back then Grant was heavy, bald, and clad in overalls, but that is not the most surprising part. The most surprising part is that he was not gay. He was stuffed way back in the closet, on the tail end of his second marriage, and after ten careers, three kids, and seven redecorated living rooms, Grant had not yet found himself. For some reason our friendship emerged as part of the path that helped him get there.

Since then, my own path has proven to have had some surprising forks. Motherhood, for one, was a complete bolt from the blue, and through it all I worried I’d lose my friends, because people fall from you when you change, they drift away like dead leaves. But I did not lose my friends. What I had lost was myself—that is, until Grant opened his special closet, and there I was again.

G
RANT IS SO AFRAID
I’m gonna find Jesus that he sometimes reminds me of my atheist mother, who used to fend off Bible-wielding Jesus freaks with lit cigarettes. He’s downright protective, Grant is, whenever someone tries to save my soul, whereas personally I’m pretty flattered by the effort, such as this most recent attempt by a lady at the American Thrift store.

“That lady with the jacket just saved my soul,” I told him, skipping through an aisle of old prom dresses. “I’m going to heaven,” I singsonged, “while your freckled fag ass is gonna fry in hell. Ha, ha.”

“Goddamit! Where is that bitch?” he bitched, his eyes searching the store for her. “I’m gonna tell her God told me she needs to tithe that jacket to you.”

He was talking about the vintage jacket the lady had snagged right out from under his nose, which was pretty swift, I must admit. It’s hard to out-thrift Grant. He’d already found me the dress that went with the jacket, a short-sleeved shift from the ’60s made from an awesome aqua-colored, puckered polyester, and he could see the matching jacket from four aisles away. He was headed there like a hornet, believe me, but the lady got there before him.

Grant asked her to give it up, which would never have occurred to me to do. He is the master, I tell you. She said no, nicely, so I told Grant I planned to offer her the dress, since it would be a shame to split a matching set. “Are you crazy?” he hissed at me under his breath so she wouldn’t hear. “Don’t you dare give it up! I will
kill
you.” But I asked her if she wanted it anyway, and she declined. Grant sighed with relief and ambled off to look at some ’70s leisure suits that appeared to be made from lightweight sofa upholstery.