“She doesn’t have it in her to be a slut,” said Manda. “Her one foray into slatternly behavior can only be qualified as a complete and utter disaster.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked with irritation.
“Len called me back,” she said.
“Hmm,” I replied.
“Who’s Len?” Dexy asked.
“The love of my life,” Manda replied.
“Oh, puh-leeze,” I said, mocking Manda without her even realizing it.
“Well, he could have been the love of my life if you hadn’t, like, totally traumatized him when you stole his virginity.”
“What are you talking about?” Dexy was enthralled.
Manda smirked. “Because of your vagina dentate, he’s renewed his vow of celibacy. You’ve turned him off pussy for good!”
“Who’s Len?” Dexy asked me. “And did he really say that?” she asked Manda.
“Len is someone I dated in high school who dumped me to date Manda,” I said. “Manda dumped him to date Shea. And this week Manda dumped Shea and wants Len back….”
Manda tapped her foot impatiently. “You forgot the part about fucking him last summer and turning him off pussy for good!”
Dexy literally flipped her wig. “J!” she cried, picking her fake hair up off the floor. “You slut!”
“Thanks for ruining my last chance at true love,” Manda continued.
“Manda, I didn’t want to have to do this.” I sighed.
“Do what?” she asked.
“Let you hear the messages Len left on my cell after you spoke to him.”
I wasn’t going to let you in on them, either. Doing so seemed rather gratuitous and possibly hurtful, which is why I hadn’t mentioned them until now, even though I first heard them yesterday morning on the bus to Pineville.
Three messages left on my cell in the middle of the night give credence to your long-held belief that too much conversation inevitably leads to someone saying something best kept to himself. I will now let Len Levy’s own words speak—inarticulately and elliptically yet honestly—for themselves.
Message Number One
“Jess. Um. Hey there. It’s, um…Len. I know this is out of the blue but…um…maybe Manda told you that we talked. And I just want you to know that I led her to believe some things that weren’t true, just because she caught me off guard, and I didn’t know what else to say, and now I feel bad about it, which is why I’m calling you. What’s the best way to reach you, anyway? So. Um. Manda told me she was still in love with me. And that the whole thing with Shea was a big mistake. Can you believe her nerve? You live with her, so I’m sure you can. She made it very clear that she was interested in having sexual relations with me. Um. She said it was the greatest regret in her life, not having sex with me. Well, I was quite taken aback by this. I mean, I haven’t had any contact with her since I…you know…since I walked in on her with her girlfriend. And I had given up on her long ago. I have a new girlfriend now who makes me very happy. And well, I sort of panicked, which is why I lied and told her I was celibate. She jumped to conclusions and—”
Message Number Two
“Jess. Um. Hey there. It’s, um…Len again. I got cut off. Anyway, um. So I was saying that Manda said she wanted to have sexual relations with me. And I didn’t know what else to say, so I, um…told her I was celibate. Which, um…I am…um…not. And then she started going on about how you must have been, um…well, I don’t need to get into detail, but she was describing your capacity for physical intimacy in not-so-generous terminology. And, um…I just didn’t agree with her, but I didn’t…um…say anything to refute her accusations either because it seemed like the best course of action, the easiest way to extricate myself from the conversation and from her life forever. But in doing so, in taking the cowardly, non-confrontational way out, I did you a disservice, and I am truly sorry. I don’t want you to think that our one night together had traumatized me in any way. In fact, it was quite nice and I don’t look upon it with regret at all. Well, um…that’s not entirely true. I sort of regret it because it—”
Message Number Three
“Jess. Um. Hey there. It’s, um…Len again. I got cut off. Um. Again. This is just like that movie. What is it? I wish Camilla were here; she would know. Camilla is my girlfriend. Did you know that? She’s great. So great. Um. I was saying that the only regret that I had about that night in the basement of Wally D’s Sweet Treat Shoppe is that it kind of, maybe I shouldn’t even say this, but why not? We’re both happy in our relationships now. It made me realize how much more I should have appreciated you when we dated in high school. Like, we should have had sex in high school. It would have been the first time for both of us. And maybe, I don’t know, maybe things would have turned out differently. I would have never left you for Manda and, well, it’s so easy to romanticize what never was. Not in this particular dimension of the multiverse, anyway. Ha-ha. Remember that conversation we had that time about the multiverse? It was the afternoon after…So I’m working with theorists who are using quantum equations to prove that the concept of time is an elaborate illusion. Our universe might be like an enormous hologram that only appears to be three-dimensional. It’s complicated, and your eyes are glazing over just listening to me. I don’t want to get cut off again and I’m talking too fast and I think I’ve said too much already. I’m gonna go. If you ever want to talk, you should call me. Or text or…Maybe you shouldn’t. You don’t have to. Um…Okay. Tell Marcus I said—”
As Manda listened to these increasingly urgent messages, she tried—and failed—to arrange her face into an impassive expression. The longer she listened to Len’s voice, the more strained and artificial she appeared. I almost felt sorry for her. I came close to pointing out the obvious, that Len’s confessional phone calls to me meant about as little as hers to him, all being born out of nostalgia and misdirected longing. But then I remembered her role as the gleeful instigator behind my current estrangement with Hope and I didn’t feel the least bit bad.
When Len was finished talking, Manda snapped my phone shut and tossed it back to me in silence. She then snatched up her own cell phone off the IKEA coffee table and started scrolling through her text messages.
Dexy was beside herself with curiosity. She was bouncing up and down, dangerously so, in her platform sandals. “Was Len before or after Marcus?”
“During,” Manda responded tartly, still concentrating on her phone. She was now scowling at something on the display screen. “Oh. And did you know that Len was Marcus’s best friend?”
Not that you ever expressed even the slightest bit of jealousy over this one-night stand, but I was tempted to defend myself here, and claim that this traumatizing lay had not occurred “during.” But I can’t really say that, because even when we hadn’t spoken to each other for months, then years, and hadn’t communicated at all beyond those one-word postcards (when will FOREVER come?), you never officially broke up with me. Nor I with you. And those notebooks, oh, those stolen notebooks I’ll never read, serve, even in absentia, as more than adequate proof that you never stopped thinking about me during those years apart. And I can just come right out and say that I never stopped thinking about you, either. And if I’m being completely honest, I’ll confess that I thought about you that very night as I writhed on top of Len. I thought about you when I was fucking him, as I thought about you every single time I fucked that assclown Kieran during our intense and unhealthy four-month sham of a relationship. I thought about you if only because I wondered how long it would take me to stop thinking about you. I thought about you, and how I might never be able to forgive you for all the girls who came before me, nor myself for all the men who would come after you.
But that’s the trouble. My indiscretion with Len did indeed take place “during.” It had to, because there was never any “after.”
“During? His best friend?” Dexy wriggled one eyebrow, then the other, and slapped me on the back in congratulation
s. “You are a slut!” Then before I could say anything else, she held up a white plastic supermarket shopping bag with the words THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU printed on it in red letters, through which I could see the muted greens and blues of the outfit she had brought for me.
“Idiot,” Manda muttered to her phone. She angrily thumbed a response, then stomped down the hall to her bedroom. Before she reached the door, she shouted over her shoulder, “Hope hasn’t been here in two days! And Ursula wants your hundred sixty-six thirty-three!” Then she slammed the door so hard that I could hear her framed vintage Guerrilla Girls poster falling off the wall and crashing to the floor.
And before I could express my concern regarding either of these updates, Dexy took me by the shoulders and steered me toward the Cupcake.
“Come on, slut, let’s get you dressed!”
sixty-two
Dexy looooooooooves the Cupcake.
“It’s adorable!” she gushed as she plugged her pink iPod into my speakers. “It must be, like, a nonstop slumber party!”
“Not lately,” I said hesitantly. “Hope and I are sort of, I don’t know, but I think we might be in a bit of a fight. Or something.”
“Color me shocked! Shocked.” Dexy gasped dramatically. “What happened? Is that why she’s disappeared? Where do you think she is?”
“Probably at the studio preparing for her show tomorrow night.”
“What might you be, I don’t know, sort of in a bit of a fight over?” she asked, mimicking my indecisive language.
And then I told her, in as few words as possible, and with little embroidery or embellishment, all about the shared confidences between you and Hope. And to be honest, as I was telling her, the story already seemed like the organic yogurt, well past its expiration date. It all seemed so long ago.
Dexy listened with rapt attention. And when I finished, she was quiet for a second as she scanned through the catalog of songs stuck in her brain. Then she opened her mouth and started rapping, which you might think would be less devastating to the auditory canal because of the absence of actual notes, but this performance was somehow even worse than her singing. Then again, not even the originators could pull off those lyrics:
“Cats brawling with them claws out/Bitch YUB Trippin’?/I’m balling with my balls out/Bitch YUB Trippin’?”
Even with the inclusion of the title, I still (barely) recognized this as “Bitch (YUB Trippin’?),” dismal bad-boy-band Hum-V’s biggest hit, the video in which model/actress/video babyho’ Bridge Milhouse (aka Bridget Milhokovich) played one of the aforementioned “bitches,” a role that required her to do little more than make out with the baddest boy bander under a fire-hose downpour in a pervert’s dream of a soaking-wet transparent white T-shirt. That video was in medium-to-slow rotation on TRL for about a month back in 2001, and Bridge (as she prefers to refer to herself when talking about her modeling/acting/ video babyho’ing days, which is next to never because she’s so completely embarrassed by them) even attended a televised teenybopper awards show on the arm of the same Hum-V hottie who, about a year ago, was busted for dealing coke to the types of striving, starving starlets Bridget chose not to be.
I almost shared this all with Dexy because she truly believes, and has told me on several occasions, that she has been tapped by the Gods of Starfucking to be worshipped and adored by the untapped masses.
“Worshipped and adored for what?”
“For being Dexy!”
Well, no duh.
Dexy relishes any real or bullshitted connection to Fame, Fortune, and Fabulosity because it brings her that much closer to her Fate. In fact, if I had told her this story about Bridget and Hum-V, I don’t doubt that she would have appropriated it for her blog, turning herself into the lifelong best friend of the former model/actress/video babyho’ who so recklessly and foolishly abandoned the road to stardom for—can you imagine?—college. College! How common.
But I didn’t mention any of this. Instead I said, “That’s not funny.”
“Sorry,” she said dejectedly. Then she cued up her playlist, designed to get me in a party state of mind. She clicked through her selections until she found what she was looking for. I wasn’t sure my speakers could handle the disco that burst forth in a frenzy of horns, frantic Latin percussion, and a foursome of female vocalists panting with lust.
“Push push in the bush,” Dexy gasped along with the song. “You know you want me toniiiiiiight!” Dexy shimmied with pornographic abandon, the twins’ three-by-five daisy garden rug becoming a dance floor for one.
I cut the disco. “Dexy, I have to ask you something.”
“I have to ask you something first,” she said. “Is Paulie What’s-his-name going to be there tonight?”
“Parlipiano.” When we were at Columbia, I had told Dexy all about my hopeless high school crush-to-end-all-crushes on Paul Parlipiano, but she had only met him in person at my early-graduation brunch last December. “Uh, I don’t think so. He started grad school this week….”
“Oh, thank God,” she said, raising her palms to the heavens. “We need to find you a fun new fag!” She turned the volume way up and started galloping and swinging an imaginary lasso in time with the beat.
“Dexy!” I covered my ears.
“He can’t dress, doesn’t gossip, and hates musical theater!” She did a sign of the cross in 4/4 time to counteract this last blaspheme. “What homo hates Broadway? He’s the worst gay sidekick ever!”
I switched down the volume yet again and looked deep into her eyes, trying to determine if her pupils were dilated or what. “Can I ask you a question now?”
“Ask me, ask me, ask me,” she sang, mangling Morissey. “Ask me, ask me, ask me.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“Of course I am!” She turned the volume way, way up. “Are you ready? Are you ready for this?/Do you like it? Do you like it like this?”
“Dexy!” I turned it down again. “I’m serious.”
She pinched her lips together, the imitation of a shrewish school-marm, albeit one wearing gold lamé. “Of course I’m on drugs. I’ve been taking the best prescription-only psychotropics since I was twelve.”
“I thought you started taking them when you were fifteen….”
“Whatever,” she said, waving away such a minor detail. “Can we put the music back on now?”
“Are you on anything that has not been specifically prescribed by your psychiatrist, and in the appropriate doses?”
“Why are you asking me this?” she asked. “Let’s have fun!” She turned back to the Mp3 Player and clicked on a new song.
“We were born to be…A-LI-YI-YI-YIIIVE!” Dexy was doing a variation on Travolta’s shoot-from-the-hips shuffle. “Born! Born to be alive!” Her eyes were closed in ecstasy.
“I can’t have fun because you’re scaring me,” I muttered to myself, though she didn’t hear me over the music. I just braced myself against the small windowsill, practically hiding behind the wholesome pink-and-white-checked curtains as I watched and listened to Dexy’s atonal disco ball bacchanal. I was worried that she was working herself up to a monumental breakdown. I’d seen Dexy break down before, the summer before our junior year of college, and it was preceded by an atomic-bomb flash of brief and immeasurable energy.
Dexy finally opened her eyes and saw me cowering behind the gingham curtains. Her expression turned serious in a way I was unaccustomed to seeing. She turned off the music.
“Okay,” she said in a defeated tone. “You win. I’ll tell you the truth.”
This promise of total disclosure caught me utterly by surprise. She took my hand and led me to the bottom bunk. We sat down together, so close that our knees bumped. She opened her mouth, and just when I thought she’d confess that yes, she’d been blowing rails all afternoon, she went a whole other way.
“I’m not boning a sexygenarian.”
“You’re not?”
“No,” she said glumly, resting her elbows on
her knees. “Never was.” She placed her chin in the cradle of her hands, like a kid soured by a time-out for bad behavior.
“So you don’t live in his apartment with views of Gramercy Park?”
She looked up at me forlornly through her fake eyelashes. “The Gramercy Park part is true, but the daddy paying my rent is my biological dad, not some sick Freudian substitute. And it’s not a chic pied-à-terre, but a single room in the Parkside Magdalene Home for Young Businesswomen.”
“The wha—?”
“The Parkside Magdalene Home for Young Businesswomen,” she repeated. “It’s a hotel for women run by the Salvation Army.”
It took a second for this to sink in. And when it did, I crashed back onto the bed in hysterics.
“Dexy!” I blurted, in between bursts of laughter. “Only you would be more ashamed of living at a hotel for women than prostituting yourself to a geezer!”
“It’s worse than Bible college! No men allowed past the lobby! I haven’t been laid in three months! That’s my longest dry spell since I was fifteen!”
“Is anything on your blog true?”
“My name is Dexy,” she said. She tapped her wig in thought. “And I do work in retail, just not at a sex shop. I work…” She took a deep, deep breath. “You must promise not to laugh.”
I had barely recovered from my last fit, but I pressed my lips together and held up two fingers in Scouts Honor.
“I mean it, J,” she said sharply. “You. Can. Not. Laugh. Not so much as a giggle or a twitter or a snort.”
I nodded solemnly, seriously, but a smile already twitched in the corners of my mouth.
“I work at the Gap.”
There was one second of silence—my attempt to be the kind of friend who pledges not to laugh and actually makes good on it—followed by five straight minutes of hysteria because I am not the kind of friend who can not laugh at something so ludicrous as the idea of Dexy—dramatic, costumed, whole-wide-world-is-her-stage Dexy—peddling the khakis and cords and T-shirts that are the staples of my unimaginative wardrobe.