Contestant #2 certainly had her work cut out for her. Sammi came out in a red Saran Wrap bikini, which looked downright nunlike after Cricket's Duncan Hines number. She too had a sweet face, and her XXX body seemed designed for use as a male masturbatory aid. Nothing jiggled unless it was supposed to. This point was clearly illustrated in the talent portion of the competition, when she flexed each breast one at a time like the greased-up male bodybuilders on ESPN2. Her DD cups made this no small feat. I was much impressed, because I have a better shot at telekinetic titty flexing than moving my A-minus boobs through pectoral muscle power alone.
Lia, the third contestant, was introduced. She was about 5´10¨ and 100 pounds, maximum. Her pointy hips and nonexistent breasts were easily covered with a sort of chain mail made out of interlocked safety pins. Bethany mouthed the word “Anorexic.” I mouthed back “Ew.” The guidos agreed (“No cushion for the pushin',” declared one), and barely clapped when she quickly exited the stage after an abbreviated Q&A session.
I was about to congratulate the guido next to me for not perpetuating the starvation aesthetic when I was silenced by Contestant #4, who came out wearing three dollops of whipped cream. Like Cricket and Sammi, Ginger Lynn had a tight ass and huge, synthetic hooters, though hers were of the beach-ball variety. Also unlike the fresh-faced competition, Ginger Lynn had home-dyed, Kentucky fried hair, and an unfortunate schnozz. She knew she couldn't get away with the “I'm a nice girl who just happens to be naked” angle, so she resorted to skankier measures.
“So, Ginger Lynn, why don't you tell the audience what your favorite hobby is?”
She grabbed hold of the microphone.
“FUCKING!”
I expected the boys to go berserk, but her slutty announcement was met with a humiliating lack of interest. I was starting to have a whole new respect for the male gender. First the anorexic rejection, now this. They saw through her thinly veiled attempts to win them over with the promise of an expert lay by a nymphomaniac, and I was proud of them. But then I heard the truth from the Jack Daniels–swilling guido to my right.
“I'd fuck her if she put a bag over her head.”
Bethany clucked her tongue in disapproval. Apparently sluts are acceptable. Ugly sluts, well, that's another story. I never thought I'd feel sorry for a hobag with gravity-defying knockers—but I did.
While the panel of their “peers” (former homemade bikini queens by day and sex industry pros at night) voted, the MC reminded us what was in store for the Third Annual Homemade Bikini Queen. Namely, she would get to pose for the Girls of Persuasions Calendar. Cricket was by far the audience favorite—she had won over the guidos' hearts and private parts. Sammi, the tit-flexer, was definitely the underdog. The other two didn't stand a chance. But, much to our dismay, the audience votes didn't count. So when the MC announced that the winner was Lia—the sickeningly thin safety-pin girl—the audience gasped in disbelief.
For a moment, I hoped that the bimbos had a wicked sense of humor, since one of the prizes was dinner for two at a local steakhouse. But as I watched the barely-clad judges hug and kiss and fawn all over the winner, I realized that wasn't the case. This skin-and-bones bod really was the envy of the all-female panel. Lia's crowning as the Third Annual Homemade Bikini Queen was a victory for binge-and-purgers everywhere . . . a realization that, appropriately, made me nauseous.
The outcome also left a sour taste in Bethany's mouth, but she was more reluctant to leave.
“I've got a babysitter!” she shouted. “I'm not ready to go home!”
I was. On the way out, we had to fight our way past the throng of guidos vying to buy Cricket her first consolation beer. Oh, now they had money to burn. I spotted the MC working his mojo on Sammi, well aware that Cricket was way out of his league. Lia, the anorexic queen, was still holding court with the augmented skankbots. I had almost made it out the door when I was shoved by a steroidal elbow, which made me crash into the body in front of me. I said I was sorry even before I realized that I was apologizing to Ginger Lynn, the girl who less than a half hour ago had pulled out all the XXX stops—and failed.
Ginger Lynn looked at me with tired, blue-mascaraed eyes and said, “Hey, it's okay. We're both just trying to get out of this hellhole.”
In cut-to-the-crotch Daisy Dukes, a tube top, and cowboy boots, she was wearing considerably more than she had onstage—but it didn't help. Ginger Lynn was the unsophisticated type that this publication loves to mock, a Miss on the Hit or Miss? page of life.
But at that moment, I didn't want to make fun of her. I related to her. I understood her. Ginger Lynn and I were both invisible in that bar, and united by our desire to get out of it. But one monumental difference was clear to me then, even if it wasn't to her.
Ginger Lynn would definitely be back.
the seventeenth
I knocked on Tyra's door to find out whether she would prefer an electronic or hard copy of my first draft.
“Mighty Aphrodite! I'm so thrilled to see you!”
I blushed with pride, honored that she was so excited to read my essay.
“You need to read this book,” she shouted, thrusting a hot pink paperback into my hands. “For inspiration!”
And Tyra started going on and on about how the author was one of the brightest among a new breed of social satirists, and how the Park-Avenue-born-and-bred author had reinvented the submersion genre of journalism by going undercover at a podunk New Jersey high school to see what middle-class life was like there, and how the author had crafted a Fast Times at Ridgemont High for the MTV generation, and how the author had eviscerated suburban culture with her razor-sharp wit and wisdom, and how the author had surprised them because as a Manhattan heirhead she had no reason to do anything with her life besides go shopping and clubbing, and how the author was being profiled in the New Jersey issue because the unreleased film version of the book was already generating a lot of bad buzz and she wanted to relaunch herself as a social activist . . .
“Have you heard of the author?” Tyra asked. “Have you read the book already?”
What to say? What to say?
Do I tell her that yes, I have not only heard of the author, Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace, and the book, Bubblegum Bimbos and Assembly-Line Meatballers, but I hung out with the author when she was hiding behind the name Hy and also, unintentionally, provided her with the title of her hip-hop opus? Do I tell her that I have read this book already because the “fictional” high school the author trashes, located in the “fictional” town she trashes, is none other than the very real high school in the very real town I am from, and the “fictional” characters she trashes are all based not-so-loosely on very real people I know, and the “fictional” character Jenn Sweet is none other than yours truly?
This isn't something I brag about. It's something new friends only find out about me through a third party, usually a Pineville resident who is proud of being immortalized with an ISBN number. I'm too embarrassed about not living up to the high standards set by my supercool fictional self. Yes, I trash people privately in the pages of this journal. And yes, I get a schadenfreudian lift from reading about people being trashed in the pages of True. But I think the reason I'm incredibly uncomfortable with doing the public trashing myself is because I know firsthand what it's like to have my trust violated in that way.
Of course, if I had submitted my editorial “Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace: Just Another Poseur” along with my internship application, Tyra would know this already. But I was down to my last copy and I was too lazy to go to Kinko's and I had other Op/Ed samples ready, so I sent it without. See how one innocent decision comes back to haunt me?
“Cinthia Wallace is writing a piece for us,” Tyra said.
“She is?”
“Jiminy Cricket! Yes! She's studying sociology and political science at Harvard. And she's using what she's learned there, plus her innate investigative skills, to write an in-depth piece exploring the reclamation of the term ‘g
uido' from a pejorative to a positive.”
My mouth just hung open.
“What do you think of that?”
What do I think? I think I'm being ripped off, that's what! That was my idea! Mine!
Of course, I didn't actually say any of this.
“Holy horse hockey! What about your piece about Persuasions?”
My chin was getting a nasty case of rug burn. But I was still too shocked to speak. How could Tyra give away my idea right in front of me?
“Nothing about Persuasions was worth writing about?”
Still dazed by Tyra's news, I shook my head.
Tyra leaned back in her chair, studying my face. I concentrated on the cartoon sperm swimming on the poster above her desk: SAVE THE WIGGLEPUPPIES.
“I'm disappointed,” she said.
Now I was really confused. If this is how she really felt, then why was Hy writing my essay? And it got even more baffling.
“When I read the editorials from your high school paper, I thought, Jeepers creepers. Here's someone who is onto the joke of her suburban New Jersey existence. Here is someone who is brave enough to expose the artifice of the culture that has made her what she is. Here, I thought, is someone True!”
I took this all in and thought, Are you kidding me? I have no idea when anyone around here is being real or ironic. Genuine or game. All or none of the above.
One thing I do know is this: If I were really True, I would have confronted Tyra about my connection to Hy and my stolen idea. But I didn't. So I guess I'm not.
the nineteenth
Today is Marcus's birthday. We had agreed that we would celebrate in the city.
Instead, I got a dizzying phone call.
“Come here,” he said, without saying hello. This isn't unusual. He doesn't call much, but when he does it's because he has something very specific to tell me and can't wait for social conventions like hello.
“Marcus, what are you talking about? And why aren't you on your way?”
“Come here!” he said again, ignoring my question, his voice sunnier than the California sky.
“Marcus, I know it's your birthday, but you were supposed to come to me. So why do I have to come to you?”
“Why are you focusing on what didn't happen instead of what can happen next?”
“Why are you answering my question with a question?”
“It's a Buddhist thing,” he said, keeping his tone light.
This is his half-joking stock response whenever Marcus talks about concepts too complicated to explain without sounding preachy. I felt a nauseous thud of emotion, one I don't like to admit to: annoyance.
“My dad is depressed about not being able to get around,” Marcus continued. “And my birthday is more important to him than it is to me. So I feel like I should stay here.”
“I'm sorry, Marcus. It's just that I'm dying of boredom and I can't wait to see you and I made special reservations at Czarina, this crazy Russian restaurant on Fifty-second Street where the waiters are circus performers and they do insane acrobatic tricks as they serve your food and I don't understand why you just couldn't tell me that you weren't going to come . . .”
I stopped talking because I was sounding like a hysterical girlfriend and I did not want to be that girl.
“Am I your alternative to boredom?” he asked.
“Well, yes. I mean, no.” Lately, talking to Marcus had felt more like a test than any of my actual end-of-semester exams. I never had the right answers. “I mean, I'm bored because I'm alone here and I don't have any money and it would be less boring if you were here with me . . .”
“Where are Bethany and Marin?”
“They met G-Money in the Hamptons,” I said. “You know, I've been staying with Bethany for almost a month and I've only seen her husband three times. I think he's avoiding his wife. Or his life.”
“Maybe they need to be separate to be together.”
“How can you be both separate and together?” I asked. I was eager to hear the answer from the boyfriend I hadn't seen much of for the past year. I didn't want the stock answer either. “And don't tell me it's a Buddhist thing.”
I could almost hear his mouth snapping shut. Without his joke to fall back on, Marcus changed the subject.
“What did you do today?”
I was feeling manic, pacing wildly around the perimeter of Bethany's guest room, a lap circuit almost as long as Columbia's indoor track.
“Today? What did I do today? I woke up around noon. I ate Cap'n Crunch right out of the box and washed it down with Coke. I looked through the paper and clipped articles that Tyra won't think are edgy or subversive or True enough. I watched The Real World for an episode or five, but turned it off when I realized that the soul-baring conversations on the show sounded alarmingly like the same soul-baring ones I'd had with my floormates at school. It made me feel like nothing I said or did was unique, that someone somewhere was thinking and doing and saying the same things I think and do and say. It's like when I'm at a party and I'm screaming along with everyone else to ‘American Girl' or ‘Paradise City' or ‘Sweet Caroline' or whatever and it all feels so full and real and in the moment, and then I tell Hope about it later and she says, ‘Oh yeah! We love those songs here, too!' which means that my experience isn't unique to my group of friends, or even Columbia, but is part of a ubiquitous experience playing out at high volumes on campuses all around the country. And while I used to crave the comfort of knowing there were people out there like me, now I feel generic. . . .”
“You are not generic,” he said, interrupting my rant. “You are you. And I love you for wanting to make this day special for me.”
Other guys would sooner have their balls served sunny-side up for breakfast than say the “L” word. Marcus has never had this problem. I should have hopped on a bus to Pineville right then and there. But I just didn't have it in me, and I'm not quite sure why.
“Well, happy birthday then.”
“We'll celebrate the next time we see each other. Okay, Jessica?”
“Sure.”
About a half hour later, I received an e-mail that reminded me that we still have August. In August, we will be face-to-face, flesh-to-flesh. In August, it will be easier.
It has to be.
* * *
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Date: July 19th, 2003
Subject: Poetry Spam #22
chromosomal dance
oh, heavenly happenstance
rare creation, you
—Original Message—
From: Ruth Spotnik [
[email protected]]
Sent: July 18th, 2003
To:
[email protected] Subject: you degeneracy fleeing amperage oh
cranny tissue flintlock forum antacid thoroughgoing equal creation salesian annuity buena rare rote gourd mba cocktail bluebush cashier principle heavenly dean murder abovementioned manhole deft impoverish chronicle divorce plausible functional demo cove blessing discriminate meantime contradistinction winch cholesterol familiarly dance sawdust dungeon contrition obliterate gauge olfactory mona homebuild arcing acclimate coulomb cranberry droplet film deportee happenstance synod conjecture ambidextrous aviatrix polity neuralgia chromosomal
* * *
the twenty-first
This morning, Tyra threw another salon. Unlike the Shanny salon, which was rather unceremoniously held around the conference table in the very gray, very dingy, very unfabulous newsroom, today's took place in the dining room, located on another floor of the building and often used for wooing advertisers and other potential money donors. I assumed that the move meant that we were going to be treated to the insights of a legitimate dignitary.
And indeed, the smiling fifty-something woman who greeted us certainly looked the part with her poufy, perfectly groomed hair, shiny lacquered nails, and Chanel suit. The guest of honor was Ms. Toni Sheridan, frequently quoted sexpert and author of
Land Any Man in Minutes (and Keep Him Forever!), among others. Ms. Sheridan had arrived at True to conduct one of her popular sex seminars, the likes of which she routinely gives for margarita-swilling Jersey Shore bachelorettes.
Ms. Sheridan began her presentation by asking us to select from a Birkin bag full of dildos.
Yes, dildos. As in mock cocks.
They came in myriad shapes (Huge Nads?), sizes (Six-inch “Executive”?), and ethnicities (Mulatto?). After much lose-lose-situation deliberation, I settled on a ten-inch Caucasian model with unobtrusive testes. Everyone else picked their penises with relish. (Meaning enthusiasm, not the condiment. Though I am sure that if given the opportunity to have their penises with relish, they would have—gamely—done so.) Then we gave them perma-hard-ons by attaching them to our plates via a suction cup base, located under the balls. On my plate, mere moments before, I had put a fat-free muffin from the breakfast buffet, having incorrectly assumed that the place setting was for my dining pleasure.
“Now stroke and pull,” Ms. Sheridan commanded. “Stroke and pull!”
“Hella, hella big fella!”
Tyra yanked on her twelve-inch Black Stallion with enthusiasm, her dainty pearl necklace thumping her chest with every thrust of her fist. Taking her lead, the rest of the True staffers stroked and pulled and stroked and pulled and stroked and pulled. Dressed almost identically in their own twinsets and pearls, silks and pastels, as ladylike as the editrix herself, they resembled an assembly line of horny Stepford automatons. The only one abstaining was Smitty, who instead waved his King Commando model in the air, admonishing Ms. Sheridan for thinking that she could teach him something about male pleasure that he didn't already know.
I was so not cool with performing a sex act in front of my peers. I go to college, an Ivy League institution of higher learning that prints its diplomas in Latin, for Christ's sake. There is only one thing more mortifying than practicing hand-job techniques in front of your boss. And that is watching your boss lube up and jerk off. All in the name of what? Of journalism? Of science? Of saving face in front of a guest lecturer who charges $250 an hour?