“Listen, I feel bad for her too, but I can’t stomach an entire dinner with her. Those stories are just too boring. Plus, I don’t have a present for her, and I’m certainly not buying one.”
“Just get her something cheap; it’s not like you have anything to do today,” Lydia said.
That annoyed me. “Listen, you have no idea what I have planned for my day,” I said as I put my vibrator down. “Where are you anyway? You sound like you’re in a washing machine.”
“I’m in the bathroom, because I didn’t want Aubrey to hear me calling you. She thought you were serious about the diarrhea and I told her you were just kidding.”
“I was serious about the diarrhea.”
“Chelsea, stop it! You need to do me this favor tonight and come. How many of your stand-up shows have I been to?” This was true. Lydia was pretty loyal and she would come to show after show of mine and laugh riotously after every punch line despite the fact that she’d heard it a million times before, even when the jokes were about her.
“Oh, fine! But if my eyes don’t clear up, I may have to wear a patch.”
“Good, I hope you do.”
“I hate you,” I said, and hung up the phone.
I needed a gift. I went into my closet and looked for something I hadn’t worn yet, or maybe something I hadn’t worn in awhile that looked new. I looked at an old pair of boots and wondered if I could pass them off as vintage. I had never re-gifted before and didn’t know what the guidelines were. I decided to call Ivory, who, incidentally, had a job that she went to on a daily basis.
“Can you believe this?” I asked her when she picked up the phone.
“No, actually, I can’t. Can Aubrey tell if I’ve viewed the Evite?”
“Yes,” I told her. “And Lydia says we all have to go.”
“I know. She’s instant messaging me right now, saying you’re going.”
“Apparently I am.”
“Well, maybe it will be fun if we all go,” Ivory said.
“No, it won’t be fun. Can you get her a gift from us?” I asked.
“Chelsea, I’m at work, I don’t have time to go out and get her a gift. I’ll probably give her something someone gave me. I barely know the girl,” she told me.
“That’s what I was thinking too. I have a first-aid kit I’ve never used.”
“I have to go,” she said hurriedly and hung up.
I looked around my apartment at all the possible things I could re-gift and was torn between a picture frame that held a picture of me and my sisters, and a candle that had only been lit once. My head bobbed back and forth between the candle and the picture frame, the same way it would if I were watching a tennis match. After what seemed like a long period of time, I finally decided I really liked the picture frame, and I would just cut the top part of the candle wick off. Lydia walked in the door as I was looking for my pocketknife.
“Well, that was a hard day of work you put in. It’s almost one p.m., you must be exhausted,” I said, rummaging through my fanny pack.
“Ugh, Aubrey is so annoying. She’s been crying all day, going on and on about turning thirty; it is so fucking depressing. I had to get out of there.”
“I’m giving her that candle,” I said, pointing at the candle I had placed on our coffee table right next to an old newspaper I was planning on wrapping it in.
She walked over to take a closer look at the candle. “It’s already been used.”
“I’m going to cut the wick off,” I told her.
“Then how is she going to light it?”
“Not my problem.”
“Chelsea,” Lydia said, in the same tone my gynecologist used when I told her I would need a month’s supply of morning-after pills. “I’m sure you can find something else. You can’t give her that.”
“Sure I can,” I said as I went over to my computer to check my e-mail, since that is primarily what takes up my day. I love e-mail and much prefer it to the telephone. I had two new e-mail messages. The first was from my brother, who sends me daily greeting cards from a site called gbehh.com. This one had a bunny rabbit holding a piece of paper that read, “You’re a fag!” There was a personal message from him underneath that said, “Chelsea, I just finished Melvin’s taxes, and according to my calculations, last year our father raked in a grand total of $7,300.62!” My brother Greg is an accountant and is constantly updating me regarding our father’s finances and tax evasions. None of my brothers or sisters has any idea how our father supports himself, and my brother Greg thinks it’s hilarious.
The second e-mail I opened was from my friend Morgan who lives in San Diego. She e-mailed me a picture of her dog. Alone. Morgan is also the girl who gave Ivory a gold cross for her birthday one year. Contrary to her name, Ivory is the most Jewish person any of us know. She is constantly using Yiddish phrases, loves food more than anyone I know, and is my only Jewish friend who actually goes to temple.
I understand if people want to e-mail pictures of their babies by themselves, but there is no way I’m going to join Kodak’s photo gallery to look at a picture of someone’s pet standing by itself in front of Niagara Falls. This is not the first time this has happened to me, and I was actually pleased because I had gathered the materials necessary to respond appropriately. I clicked reply and sent Morgan a picture of my cleaning lady. Standing next to the toilet, alone. I attached a message that read, “Not interested? Me neither.”
“I’m not letting you give Aubrey that candle, Chelsea,” Lydia said as she put the candle back on the shelf where I found it.
“Well, I’ve spent the last hour trying to find something and I refuse to spend money on a present. Can’t we just buy her dinner?”
“Look in that closet, you have tons of shit in there. I’m sure you can find something,” she said, pointing to our hall closet the same way someone would yell “Sit” to a dog.
“I’m giving all that stuff to Fantasia,” I told her.
“Who is Fantasia?” Lydia asked me.
“Um, I don’t know, maybe the cleaning lady we’ve had for two years?” I reminded her.
“Her name is Florencia, Chelsea.”
I stared at her, wondering if this was true. Florencia did have a familiar ring to it. But I could have sworn Florencia was a name from my past.
“Well, whatever,” I said. “She’s been calling me Yelsea since she started working here and I go along with it. Every time I call her I have to say, ‘Hi, Fantasia, this is Yelsea.’”
I was looking through the closet when I found the present that Ivory bought me for my twenty-sixth birthday. Ivory had gone on and on about this present for months leading up to my birthday. “Chelsea, I can’t wait to give you this gift!” she kept telling me over and over again. “I know you so well, this is the perfect Chelsea gift.” With all the hype she gave it, you would have thought she had bought me a vibrator that could also make tacos.
After three months of enticing me with the “most amazing gift one person could buy another person,” she gave me a board game called Rehab. Not only do I make it a personal rule to never play organized games, if an occasion presents itself where I am forced to play one, I prefer it not to take place on a giant piece of paper. It’s called a board game because it’s supposed to be on a board. This game came with a giant piece of paper the consistency of loose-leaf that had different rehabilitation facilities spread over it, much in the same vein as Monopoly. It came with some wooden pieces that I actually burned one night when we ran out of firewood.
“I’ve got it!” I yelled to Lydia as I pulled out the Rehab game. Next, I opened up the Yahtzee box that was on top of the closet, stole three of the dice, and put them in the little plastic Rehab bags, along with a couple of the wooden pieces that were partially scorched.
Lydia walked over to the closet. “Oh my God, I forgot about that game. I actually played that one night.”
“You did?” I asked. “With who?”
“I don’t know. I can’t re
member.”
“Were you alone?”
“I may have been,” she said as she opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of Chardonnay.
Luckily, the box the game came in looked like it could have been new. I wrapped it up in the newspaper I had set aside. Then I took a black Sharpie marker and wrote “To: Aubrey, From: Chelsea” directly on top of the newspaper.
“Wait, Chelsea.” Lydia laughed. “Ivory is coming tonight! She’ll see the game and realize what you did.”
“Oh, who cares?” I exclaimed, exhausted from the day’s shenanigans. I needed to burn off some steam. I walked into my bedroom and dropped to do a set of push-ups. After the third, I got up and walked back into the kitchen, where Lydia was sorting through our bills with a confused look on her face. She did this every month, questioning one bill after another, wondering aloud why we would be charged for electricity two consecutive months in a row.
“That’s usually how things work, Lydia.”
“No, it doesn’t make any sense. Last month we were charged $47.32, and this month we were charged $75.45.”
I then inspected the bill and explained to her that we never paid last month’s bill, and that was the reason for the increase.
“Still, it doesn’t make any sense,” she said, confused.
“It makes perfect sense,” I told her. “If someone’s pulling the wool over our eyes, I’m pretty sure it’s not Southern California Edison. This isn’t Erin Brockovich, Lydia. We’re talking about tens of dollars.”
Lydia is five years older than me and never has any money. In the entire time I lived with her, she never paid her rent on time. She’s the type of person who says, “I’m really broke right now,” and then takes off to Vegas for the weekend.
“Well, I’m really broke right now, so I hope this dinner isn’t expensive,” she said.
“Yeah, so do the rest of us, Lydia. No one wants to go. And why would anyone want to have a birthday dinner with a bunch of friends who are complaining about going? It’s sad, is what it is.”
“Chelsea, she has no friends.”
“Another red flag,” I reminded her.
“Okay,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “That’s it, you’re right. Let’s have a better attitude.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, looking at her sideways. “I’m going for a run.”
“Fine, but dinner’s at seven-thirty,” she said as she poured herself a glass of the cheap wine she had opened.
“I think I’ll be able to make it back in the next six hours,” I said, looking at my watch.
“It’s only one thirty?”
“Yes, what time did you think it was?”
She put her glass of wine in the fridge along with the newly opened bottle. “I can’t have a drink at one-thirty.”
Lydia was a complete mess. The older she got, the more of a disaster she became.
When I got back from my run, Lydia was on the phone with our telephone company asking why we were being charged for a fax line if we hadn’t actually received any faxes that month. Along with her electric company conspiracy, she was also under the impression that we were living at Kinkos and faxes should be free.
I grabbed a bottle of water and headed to the shower. After watching Oprah and Dr. Phil, it was time to do something productive. I had been seeing a therapist for nearly three weeks and was getting the sinking feeling that she was no closer to prescribing me medication than when we first met.
When I told her that Vicodin was to me what cocaine and horse tranquilizers were to Amy Winehouse, and that without it I would not be able to continue performing at such a high level, she tried to explain to me that Vicodin was a pain medication and it wasn’t for the depression I was claiming to suffer from.
Not to be outdone, I gently but firmly explained to her that the depression I was suffering from was causing a very large pain in my head. It was back and forth with this woman, and I was exhausted. It didn’t take me long to realize this was money that could be better spent. I grabbed the yellow pages, skipped right past the list of psychiatrists, and started jotting down names of psychics.
At around 6 p.m., Lydia came into my room to say that Jen and Ivory would be meeting us there. “Great!” I exclaimed. “I’m looking forward to it!…Where is this dinner, again?” I asked her.
“Cobras and Matadors, on Beverly.”
“Do they have a full bar?” I asked sternly. I vaguely remembered that Cobras and Matadors only served beer and wine and I am strongly opposed to such limitations. I prefer vodka and I generally like it in mass quantities.
She scrunched up her face. “Sorry.”
I shook my head, brushed by her quickly, and walked into the kitchen. I took my flask out of the cupboard and my Ketel One out of the freezer. Now I would not only have to bring my own lemon juice that I routinely carry with me everywhere to mix with my vodka, but I would also have to supply my own vodka. In addition to being at someone’s birthday party whose last name I didn’t even know, I would also be bartending.
“Do you think they’ll have ice?” I asked Lydia. “Or should we empty a couple of ice trays into a beach cooler?”
“I have to stop by the Gap and get her a present,” Lydia informed me. “They have that sale rack, so I’m sure I can find something cheap.”
We stopped on our way to the restaurant and I waited in the car while Lydia shopped for a total of seven minutes. She came back with two tank tops and a box.
“How much were those?” I asked, wondering how I would feel if I got two tank tops as a thirtieth birthday present.
“Two ninety-nine each.”
“That was nice,” I said.
We walked into Cobras & Matadors and were led to a rectangular table. We were the first ones there, so Lydia sat in the seat directly across from me.
The next person to arrive was her friend I had never heard of. Her name was Six. Like the number. I could tell by her outfit that this girl was going to be trouble. She was wearing a plaid miniskirt with black tights and open-toed, high-heeled, red patent-leather sandals. Her present was in a red gift bag tied together with a black ribbon. These were obviously her theme colors.
“Are these the gifts?” she asked as I finally looked up from her shoes. She was pointing at the present that I had placed in the middle of the table with an unsure look on her face. Her hair was black and in a ponytail that was placed about two inches away from her forehead. Her shirt had nothing to do with the rest of her outfit. It was a pink button-down sweater that belonged on Katie Couric.
Her lipstick was whore red, and outlined with black lip liner, or what could have very well been eyeliner. She didn’t have a stitch of makeup anywhere else on her face and she was wearing black hoop earrings that must have been made out of limestone, because her lobes looked like they were going to detach from the rest of her ear at any moment. In addition to this, she was blowing bubbles with what I could only assume was a giant gumball.
It was obvious that Lydia and I would need to avoid making eye contact with each other for the rest of the evening. Lydia and I have the maturity level of ten-year-old boys when we drink, and Six’s arrival combined with the gifts we were about to give Aubrey was a surefire sign we were bound for one of our laughing fits that usually only results in two things: us looking like complete assholes, or me having to change my underwear.
“So how do you know Aubrey?” I asked Six, trying not to stare at the whale’s spout on top of her head.
“We actually just met a couple of days ago,” Six told me.
“Oh, how unusual,” I said, glaring in Lydia’s direction. “And where did you two meet?”
“It was the funniest thing,” she told me. “We were both in Trader Joe’s looking for a good multivitamin. Can you imagine?”
It was time for a drink. I leaned into my purse and got out my supplies. “Would you like a cocktail?” I asked Six. “They only serve beer and wine here.”
“Oh, um, no, that’s okay, I’ll pro
bably just have some wine, but thank you. Last time I had vodka, I got sick.”
“Last time Lydia had vodka, she had sex,” I said, referring to the previous weekend, when Lydia hooked up with a stranger. She woke up in the morning and scrambled out of bed to find out what part of town she was in, only to discover that the guy she hooked up with lived in our building.
Aubrey walked in next, and Jen and Ivory were soon to follow. I got up to give Aubrey a hug, but only after Lydia kicked me under the table. There were three seats on each side of the table. Ivory and Jen were waiting to see which seat Aubrey was going to take. “I want to be in the middle, it’s my birthday,” she announced as she moved to sit down next to Lydia and motioned for Ivory to sit down on her other side. Jen took the seat next to Six directly across from Ivory. “This is Six,” I said to Jen and Ivory. “She and Aubrey met last week at Trader Joe’s.”
Ivory looked over at Six, looked at me, opened her menu, and then held it up to cover her face. Ivory was more mature than Lydia and me. She would never laugh directly in front of someone’s face; she would wait until they left the room. She also would never judge someone based on their car, job, or drug habit. She is very open-minded and embraces all different cultures. For example, she is close friends with a gray-haired, black drug dealer named Roger, who she will stay up with for entire weekends straight, wandering from one crack-house to another watching him snort cocaine. It doesn’t seem to bother her that Roger is in his fifties or that he carries a revolver.
Jen’s a little more laid-back than Ivory, Lydia, or me. She’s always around, but usually isn’t the one who makes a scene. She’s had the same job for five years as a manager of an art gallery and has never had a serious boyfriend, nor does she have the interest. She’s quite self-sufficient and a little more dignified than the rest of us, except for the one time Ivory and I couldn’t find her at a party, only to discover her on our way out of the parking garage, having sex in a station wagon.
The waitress came over to take our drink orders and tell us about the specials. “It’s my birthday,” Aubrey declared as she stood up and motioned for everyone else to stay seated. Aubrey has a twang not unlike Drew Barrymore when she speaks, but much more condescending. Although she looks nothing like Drew Barrymore, people tell her all the time that she reminds them of Drew Barrymore and she always acts appalled, knowing full well she loves any comparison to a celebrity.