I looked down at Maude again and decided to leave her in her bowl until I found a replacement for her. I thought it would be in everyone’s best interest that I wait until the day before Darryl was supposed to return to buy a new fish. That would leave a very small window for me to commit another homicide.
I was very much looking forward to my date with Big Red, but also scared that when I saw him sober I might not be attracted to him. Obviously I would need to drink heavily before my pickup time.
Three weeks and about eight dates later, Big Red and I decided it was time for penetration. I was very surprised to find myself becoming more wildly attracted to him every time I saw him. Each date we went on, his hair became less and less of a focal point.
I didn’t intend on waiting a certain amount of time to sleep with him, but since he knew my manager, and since I was technically sleeping with Darryl, who was still away shooting his movie, I decided to behave somewhat respectably. Obviously a threesome would be out.
What I was completely astounded by was the fact that Austin was packing some serious heat. Not only did he have a huge penis, but he was great in bed, and another added bonus: He had extremely sensitive nipples. I had never met a man with such sensitive nipples before, and took enormous delight in the fact that the minute I touched one, he would climax. I wanted to thank the person responsible for inventing the nipple and applaud them for creating such a great addition to the human form. Who knew nipples could be so much fun? With that knowledge in hand, sex never lasted a second longer than I wanted, and I considered this to be the jackpot of all jackpots.
The part that wasn’t a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn’t believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or—more appropriate for that kind of growth—hedge trimmers. I didn’t understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I’m not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don’t expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves looking like a hairless cat. That’s even creepier than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: a clown in a leg lock.
Obviously, at night it was much less offensive because I couldn’t see the seriousness of the situation, but in the daylight, between the boldness of color and the length, I was quite taken aback.
Even though Big Red would vacillate between being shy and overconfident, in many ways he was growing on me. One minute he would say something like, “I can’t believe you’re even dating someone like me,” and the next minute he would tell me he had plans for the weekend and wasn’t sure if he could squeeze me in. I told myself that maybe he was trying to play it cool in order to land the account, and I found him even more charming. I even considered cutting Darryl out of the picture if things kept on going with Red, but I didn’t want to make any hasty decisions.
I hadn’t seen Darryl in a few weeks, but knew that once he came back, we’d be back to our same story. It was an affair built on convenience, and neither of us ever pretended that it would lead to anything of significance. We both knew that if someone else came along we would go our separate ways with no hard feelings. Our relationship was the equivalent of a reach-around: It felt good in the moment, but once it ended, it would be easily forgotten.
My aunt Gerdy called and asked me to bring the redhead over for dinner. Gerdy and her husband, Dan, are both huge boozers, and happen to hate each other. Somehow during their twenty-five year union they managed to have nine children and buy a house in Bel-Air. They have three dogs, seven birds, several fish, a hamster, a gerbil, and no cleaning lady. Their house is not dissimilar to a zoo, but with more animals and no one to clean up after them.
Once when I was babysitting for my manager’s son, Luke, he wanted me take him to the Los Angeles Zoo for the day, which ended being the worst idea ever, mostly because the Los Angeles Zoo is the lamest zoo in America. First of all, they have no animals. From what I can remember they had maybe half of a giraffe and a mosquito. After the zoo Luke was still asking to see animals, so I took him to Red Lobster and told him that we were at an aquarium and to stare at the tank. When that didn’t work, I brought him to my aunt’s house, which kept him occupied for four hours. To this day, he still thinks her house is the real zoo.
Gerdy’s a great cook, a great mother, and a great aunt, but as far as sharing information with her that you wouldn’t ever want repeated, you’re better off confiding in Linda Tripp.
I didn’t know if it was such a good idea to bring Red over because my aunt can be a total bitch, but I did think it would be a good opportunity to score a fish, since Darryl was coming home the next week. I warned Austin about my family and told him he shouldn’t feel at all like he had to go, but he said he’d love to.
The thing about my aunt is that she only spills her guts when she’s drinking. I always convince myself that if I tell her something while she’s sober, she might not remember it when she’s drinking. But I have learned the hard way that the opposite is actually true: She gets drunk, somehow manages to paraphrase my words exactly, and then promptly forgets everything she said the next morning when you confront her. In addition to that, she frequently orders things online in her state of inebriation, which would be fine except that one morning, a small black boy from Angola arrived at their front door holding a case of Viagra.
My uncle Dan has problems of his own. He has never made a drink or cooked a meal for himself, and I’m convinced that the only reason they continued to spawn children was in order to have a twenty-four hour bartender. Every single morning, Dan wakes up, walks outside in his bathrobe to get his paper, and then plops himself on his toilet to read it while taking a shadoobie. And every morning while he’s doing this, his parrot, Henry, mimics the phone ringing. This has been going on for close to ten years, and without fail, each morning my uncle gets up off the toilet with his boxers around his ankles to answer the phone, only to realize it was the bird. “Goddammit, Henry!” he screams day after day. “Goddamn birds!”
Inside a half hour of meeting Big Red, Aunt Gerdy pulled me aside and reminded me that I hadn’t been sure whether or not to go out with him based on his hair color, and that, initially, she had thought I was overreacting. However, upon meeting him, she completely understood my dilemma. This assessment would have been fine had she not walked right outside to the table where Red was sitting with all nine children and my uncle and said, “Jesus, Austin. Chelsea wasn’t sure about you in the beginning because you’re a redhead, which we all thought was so ridiculous, but now seeing it in the broad daylight, I totally understand where she was coming from. Do you put something in it to make it that bright?”
“Oh, goddammit, Gerdy,” my uncle said. “Go back inside and have another drink.”
I don’t remember much more of that of that night, because immediately following my aunt’s little speech, I headed straight for the wet bar, where I did three shots of Jose Cuervo straight from the bottle. I know it was exactly three because in my head I counted three solid beats while the bottle was lifted to my beak. I also remember grabbing a snifter from behind the bar, walking over to my family’s fish tank, and scooping out the first goldfish I could get a hold of.
I walked into the kitchen and found my aunt emptying an entire brick of cream cheese into the pasta she was cooking. “That’s nice,” I said. “Thanks for being so nice to Austin. I’m sure he’ll look back at this evening as one of the best nights of his life,” I said, holding the fish in the snifter. “I’m taking a fish.”
Gerdy walked over to a drawer, pulled out a Ziploc bag, and handed it to me. “You might want to put it in this. And don’t let the kids see. I think that may be a new one.”
I took the Ziploc bag and slipped it over the top of my snifter, sealing it around the stem of the glass. I looked up and saw Gerdy shaking her head.
&nbs
p; I walked outside and put the fish in the cup holder of my car.
The rest of the night was cloudy, but luckily my aunt passed out shortly after she served dinner, and my uncle took that opportunity to perform his daily ritual of apologizing up and down for my aunt’s behavior. Austin didn’t seem too bothered, and he and my uncle got into an hour-long conversation about golf.
Austin wasn’t being overly affectionate with me, but come to think of it, he really never had been. Then he made a comment about my nine-year-old cousin that I felt was completely inappropriate. My cousin Rudy is a little hyper. We’re all pretty sure my aunt drank during his entire pregnancy because she drank through all of her pregnancies, and for the most part all the kids turned out okay. Physically, anyway. Rudy’s eyes are a little uneven, and one isn’t always looking in the same direction as the other, but I didn’t think that was grounds to ask Gerdy if he had Down syndrome. Cerebral palsy maybe, but Down syndrome was just flat-out uncalled for.
I apologized for my aunt’s behavior and admitted that, even though I was a little shocked by his amber waves of grain when I met him, his hair had really started to grow on me. We didn’t have much to say to each other on the way home, mostly because I was trying to balance the Ziplocked snifter glass in order to avoid having the new fish jump ship. When we got home, we jumped into bed and both passed out before anything could happen.
In the morning, I woke up to see him getting dressed, and shut my eyes to avoid catching a glimpse of his pitcher’s mound. When I thought it was safe to open them I did, and there was definitely some awkwardness. He kissed me good-bye and told me he’d call me. I looked over at the snifter on my nightstand and couldn’t help thinking that the fish and Austin had the same exact hair color.
I got dressed and took the new fish, which I secretly decided to name Lawrence, over to Darryl’s apartment. When I got to his place, there was a slight problem. I realized that Maude was about three shades lighter than Lawrence and about two inches shorter, which, for a goldfish, is pretty extreme. I thought that if I sullied the water a little more, the murky hue could potentially discolor Lawrence, and maybe his skin tone wouldn’t be so bright. Since I was not exactly sure how to soil fish water, my thoughts moved to disposing of Maude. I took a tablespoon out of Darryl’s kitchen drawer and used it to transport Maude from the fishbowl straight into the toilet, where I promptly flushed her. I went back to my apartment, changed into a leotard, and decided to watch a workout video. I always make it a personal rule to get familiar with the tape before I actually join in. This would be my fifth viewing in the span of a month, and I was almost ready to participate.
Five days later, I still hadn’t heard from Austin. I called my uncle and he told me that I was better off without Red.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, he doesn’t really seem to have much of a personality. I said hello, and the guy was stumped for an answer.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him. “You were talking to him all night.”
“Yeah, well, I was trying to be polite, but it wasn’t an easy conversation. He’s not for you. Let’s put it that way. He doesn’t have much to say.”
“Well, you’d be quiet too if you went over to someone’s house for dinner and the host’s opener was, ‘Your hair looks stupid.’”
“Well, that couldn’t have been the first time he’s heard that, Chelsea.”
“Good-bye,” I said, and hung up. I called my friend Ivory and discussed it with her.
“I’m surprised you even care, Chelsea. It’s not like you were going to marry the guy.”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. That’s just mean.”
“Well, that can’t be the first time he’s had his feelings hurt. Not with that Afro.”
“Jesus! Can’t anyone get beyond his hair?” I asked her.
“Chelsea, if you really think that’s the reason he hasn’t called, then why don’t you call him and apologize?”
“No, what if he’s trying to blow me off?”
“Maybe he is.”
“Well, I am not about to go make an appointment to get dumped.”
“Well, then shut up, and go visit Darryl.”
“I can’t. He’s on location filming a movie with Hulk Hogan.” Ivory hung up on me without saying good-bye. She seemed to be doing that an awful lot, and I must say that I respected her for it on some level.
I felt like a loser. No one likes getting blown off, and unfortunately for me, this wasn’t my first time. I thought about calling him, but wouldn’t even know what to say. Obviously he had no interest in talking to me. If a redhead could dump me, who knew what was next?
The next day, Darryl called and told me he was on his way home from the airport and asked if I wanted to go paintballing. “Not at all,” I told him, “but you should see Maude. She is getting so big!”
“What? Who?” he asked, confused.
“Your fish, Maude. She’s gotten so big. I went to the fish store and found all these great vitamins to make her color more electric and to help her burst into womanhood, and I have to tell you, it’s like they worked overnight.” I figured that any adult with a desire to go paintballing would have no trouble believing that there were growth hormones available for goldfish.
“Wow,” he said. “That was really thoughtful of you. I didn’t even think you liked fish.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous.” I snorted. “Who doesn’t love fish? They’re so…crazy.”
Later that night, Darryl came over to my apartment with pictures of him and Hulk Hogan on the set of their movie. Darryl barely recognized Maude when he first saw her. “She looks amazing.”
“I know. She’s so much more…upbeat,” I said. “It’s amazing what a couple of vitamins can do.” I needed to change the subject. “So tell me about the Hulk. How long does it take for them to make his whole body so green?”
“It was Hulk Hogan, Chelsea. Not the Incredible Hulk.”
“Right. That’s what I meant.” Even though the last thing I ever thought would turn me on in the way of copulation would be a picture of Darryl being headlocked by Hulk Hogan, I needed confirmation that I was attractive on some level, and decided to face rape him. Just as we were rolling onto my bed and Darryl was getting ready to mount me, my doorbell rang.
I walked out of my bedroom to the front door while fixing my clothes, and opened it to find Big Red.
“Oh my God!” shot out of my mouth before I could stop myself. “Hi.” Then I said it again. “Hi.”
“Can I come in?” he asked.
“Oh, sure,” I said, without moving.
“Are you going to move, so I can come in?”
“Yes, but I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, and grabbed my vagina dramatically to look convincing. I walked back into my room as calmly as I could and shut the door.
“Get in the closet,” I told Darryl.
“What?”
“Do it!” I whispered as loudly and as violently as I could through clenched teeth.
“Fine,” he said, and walked toward the closet, which was filled with cardboard boxes. It didn’t take long for both of us to realize there wasn’t enough room for a car seat, never mind a full-grown human.
“Shit,” I said, looking around the room for other alternatives. “Get under the bed.”
“Oh my God.” He slid underneath the bed, grazed his forehead on the frame, and rolled his eyes at me.
“Thank you,” I said, and turned to leave the room. Austin was standing at my bedroom door when I opened it and he scared the shit out of me. “Aaaah!” I screamed. “You scared me!”
Big Red smiled and walked over to the chair in front of my computer, turned it around to face my bed, and sat down. “You’re probably wondering why I haven’t called,” was his opener.
I ran over to my bed, sat down, and made as many adjustments to my seated position as necessary to completely dislodge the comforter and have it land on the floor to h
ide Darryl’s naked body. Once I had accomplished the task at hand, I met Austin’s quizzical gaze.
“I’m sorry, I have ringworm. Anyway, what did you want to talk about?”
“Ringworm?”
“Yup.”
“Don’t you get ringworm from dogs?” he asked. “You don’t have a dog.”
“You can also get it from fish,” I stammered.
I coughed loudly after saying this in hopes of moving the conversation forward.
After a moment, he started. “Well…I mean, I really like you, Chelsea. I think you’re really fun, and you’re smart, and you’re pretty…” Normally, I would have interrupted this terrible cliché of a breakup, but I knew that as long as he was talking, it meant he couldn’t see Darryl.
“I just have to be honest with you,” he went on. “I feel like maybe we are getting really serious in a short amount of time and I don’t know if I feel comfortable with that. I have a lot of opportunities right now, and I don’t want to be nailed down to one woman.”
The fact that Austin was telling me that he had other opportunities while I had another guy under my bed was ironic. It’s not like we were in some serious committed relationship. Yes, I liked him, but he was acting like I just told him I wanted to have his orange babies.
“What are you talking about?” I asked him.
“Well, I mean, your family was great and everything, but I don’t think I’m ready to be in that serious of a relationship.” The idea that Red thought meeting my drunk aunt and uncle meant that we were on the brink of getting engaged was ridiculous. I understand that meeting someone’s family usually means you’re taking the relationship to the next level, but not with my family. Obviously, if I was serious about having a relationship with someone long-term, the last people I would introduce him to would be my family.