From Butt to Booty (4 page)

“Rise and shine, porcupine!” Mom thinks she’s so clever.

“Time?” It’s not even light out. Have they no courtesy?

“Almost time for the parade. Your brother and Heather will be here soon. I made eggs Benedict.”

Oh, Holy-Mother-of-Food-Poisoning, doesn’t she remember last New Year’s? Does she think we all happened to get sick and fight over porcelain thrones on a whim?

“Great.”

“Mike’s also bringing Krispy Kremes—at his insistence—and I think Heather made her family’s special breakfast casserole.” Mom fluffs the pillow that’s still warm from the head she pulled it out from under.

Thank God Mike has told Heather the truth about this family’s cuisine. When in Rome, bring a picnic. I will surreptitiously throw away my eggs Benedict, make lots of yummy noises and eat donuts instead.

I wander down the stairs. I got about two hours of sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, tongues attacked. I’d wake up gagging and then panic that not only might I not be hetero, I’m anti-tongue. I don’t want to be anti-tongue. That leads to other anti things that will leave me alone and talking to parakeets.

“About time.” Dad thrusts a mug at me. For some reason his idea of me celebrating the new year is drinking coffee with milk and sugar in it. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve been going to Starbucks since I was in first grade. Maybe the caffeine and sugar will burn off the haze of spit clouding my vision.

He peers at my face and I briefly wonder if I have an enormous zit somewhere. “Okay night?”

“Fine.”

He grunts and turns back to the TV.

I hear a car. “I’ll get it.” Mike and donuts to the rescue!

“Hi!” I’m involuntarily loud as I throw open the door. Buttocks! Mustn’t appear too eager to avoid Mom’s cooking.

“Hiya, Gertie.” Mike hands me three large boxes of assorted. “I
brought lots of extras, since we get to leave later and you don’t.” He says this last bit under his breath. “Heather’s family is having us over for dinner.”

“Thanks.” I inhale all sorts of artificial molecules and feel slightly more human, thank Goddess. “Hi, Heather.”

She smiles at me and kisses my mom on the cheek. “Thanks for letting me make my family’s traditional breakfast. It means a lot.”

She’s good. Laying it on, but not too thick to be unbelievable. I wonder if she picked a recipe out of the cookbook last night or if she actually planned ahead.

“It smells lovely, dear. And we always love trying something new.”

We do? Have my parents tried anything new in the last decade? Must consider at length later after I swallow half a box of Boston crèmes.

“The parade’s starting.” Dad doesn’t get up from his chair but instead growls in our general vicinity.

I’d love to report scintillating conversation about world issues, or in-depth discussion about the latest bestselling novel, but alas, we all sit, watch the floats and the horses and listen to the same John Williams medley played, with varying degrees of success, by marching bands from all over the country.

I pass out extra paper napkins and put a garbage bag between me and Heather while Mom serves up plates of edible and highly inedible glop. I figure with Heather’s help, we’ll avoid serious puking for dinner.

Who designs band uniforms? It’s an insult to the blind, deaf and mentally disabled to suggest that there’s a commune full of rejects designing band gear to get back at the society that displaced them, but is there any other explanation? No one looks good in
triple-ply poly and ten-gallon hats with pom-poms or feathers. I mean, not even the remotely cool drum majors can pull it off. I just spend time feeling sorry for them all.

Tangent: sorry.

Why doesn’t someone stick banders in jeans and white T-shirts? Maybe baseball caps and sunglasses if it’s necessary to accessorize? Go wild and put everyone in matching sneakers, but please not uniforms that get recycled each year to the freshmen. That’s just cruel and unusual, especially since kids are getting bigger and bigger and poly only stretches so far. And yes, I have seen just how far poly can go several times today.

“So, Gert, what are your plans for the rest of break?” Heather doesn’t understand the no-talking thing yet.

I turn my head and speak out of the side of my mouth in a low almost-whisper. “I have a sleepover with some friends and then it’s back to school.”

“That sounds fun.” She smiles and doesn’t lower her volume. Poor girl will need the rules spelled out for her after all. Must e-mail her later and bring her up to speed. Obviously, her boy toy isn’t good on family prep.

As the last horse craps on the parade route, I stand and stretch. “Later, people.” I’m going back to bed. I have serious sleep to make up for. I only feel a teensy bit bad about leaving Mike and Heather to escape on their own. I take the last box of donuts with me—they will be safest in my room, where I can devour them later.

I’m thoroughly enjoying my sleeping emptiness when Mom knocks and pokes her head in. “Gert, honey, your phone keeps ringing. Is it important?”

Don’t you think I’d have answered it if it was important? How stupid do you think I am? I can’t ignore the damn phone to sleep instead?
Is there some rule that says the phone must always be answered? I say, revolt, people! Rebel! Let the phones ring!

“Okay, I’ll get it.” I turn over and grope for the phone. “ ’Ello?”

“Gert? It’s two. Why do you sound funny?” Stephen has the gall to act all perky and chipper.

I clear my throat and lie. “Getting sick.” I have no makeup on and I’m sure I’d stink if I were to smell myself.

“Sorry. Sucks.”

There’s a long pause. I’ve momentarily forgotten my script.

“How are you?” I ask, blinking the sugar coating out of my eyes. Fell asleep on the box of donuts.

“Good. Good. You have a good time at the party?”

“Yeah.” Lie numero
dos
. Oh, Holy-Mother-of-Long-term-Relationshipage, I am doomed. “Lots of people.”

“Jenny’s pretty cool. The guys really liked you,” he says, like I passed the major exam.

“Yeah, liked them.” Ricardo was cool; the rest were a little too drunk to apply adjectives to.

“Ricardo kept going on about you after you left. Should have heard him saying your name. Hilarious.”

Sure. That sounds rocking funny. Apparently, my boyfriend thinks I’m an object of humor and the exchango-mano enjoyed my company. Funny. Real funny. This is why I got a ride home from Maggie’s NYU sister—that and the fact that I was so not riding in a vehicle with drunk Stevie behind the wheel.

“So?” Stephen draws it out.

“So? Family good?” I really should be more attentive. I’m sure I’m not being a good girlfriend.

“They are. Crazy. You see that show this morning?”

“We had to watch the parade.”

“Rose Parade? That’s cool. We were treated to Dr. Phil’s Holiday Family Makeover. My mom TiVo’d it so she could stop it and make us all do the exercises.”

That’s hideous. I thought my mom was the only one who watched bad talk show reruns. “Wow.”

“Yeah. Look, I really like you.”

“I like you, too.”

“I feel all, you know, safe with you, like I could tell you anything.”

Wow, um, really? Because I don’t think I feel that way at all. “Me too,” I say, since the silence kinda demands it.

“So I’m not sure how to say this—”

Oh, Lord, he’s breaking up with me. I sit up and blink in the dark. I’m getting dumped on New Year’s Day. I was a ball-dropping kiss and nothing more.

“I have a small dick.”

What? He did not just say that.

“I’m sorry?” The bacteria on the eggs must be replicating in my brain, causing all sorts of irrevocable brain damage. And ear damage.

“My penis. It’s small,” he says again.

Good God, what the hell do I say? I have to say something.
Your tongue makes up for it
. I try to laugh a little to break the tension. That makes it worse. Are we really in the place in the relationship where you can fart freely and overshare insecurities? God, that was quick. I thought you had to have sex half a dozen times and do holidays at the other family’s house before you got to be this free.

Must say something supportive and not totally mortified. “I’m sorry.” Think. Think. Is there anything worse for a guy? I don’t
know. Think. “Maybe it’s not. I think my boobs are small.” Not really, but I’m so not using the V-word on the phone with a guy I’ve been dating for a couple of months. Besides, I’d be lying if I mentioned my vagina. I have no idea if it’s small or humongous. I’d like to keep the lying to a minimum.

“You think your boobs are small?” he asks.

“Yep.” Brain hemorrhage right now, please. Quick death.

He’s grunting and breathing. “Well, they are a little small. Have you thought about getting a boob job?”

Have you thought about getting your dick expanded? “No, they’re still growing.”

“Oh.” He sounds deflated.

I feel the need to soften my last comment. “I’m sure yours is, too.”

“What?”

“Growing. Your penis. Is still growing.” I’m almost whispering this, hoping my mother isn’t listening for the first time ever at my door. She’ll never believe I’m as shocked as she is. We are not having this conversation. I’m in an E. coli–induced nightmare. I will wake up in a hospital surrounded by balloons and flowers.

“Sometimes, but I don’t think it stays that way.”

This could not get worse. Couldn’t. Must get off the phone. “I have to go. My dad is yelling for me.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Sure. Later.”
Like when I know what to say to you
. I just can’t get the image of a teeny-tiny dick out of my head. I don’t want this picture in here. Get it out. Get it out!

I hang up the phone and stare at the ceiling. Did that really happen? Let me be hallucinating.

Please. I am not that lucky.

“How was your New Year’s?” Adam’s much-needed call breaks my small-penis-am-I-gay-inflicted trance.

“Uh.” Language is beyond me.

“What’s that mean?”

“Uh.” The idea of Stephen’s small dick is just painfully mortifying—so is that proof I’m gay? Although frankly, if Stevie was a girl I’d have to kill myself. What does this mean?

Adam waits a second to launch. “Whenever you’re ready, but in the meantime we had a fabulous time. Incredible. Love cuddling. He’s so cute and smells so—”

“I—I—gay?” I stammer.

“What?”

I try again. “Am I gay?” I have to move the phone away or risk the laughter damaging my eardrum.

Adam calms down long enough to ask again, “What?”

“I am not repeating myself.” He so heard me the first time.

“No.” He sounds adamant.

“You’re sure?” Don’t gay people have a sixth sense about these things?
I smell gay people
or something?

“Why do you ask?”

“Cuz,” I hedge.

“He’s a bad kisser?”

“I don’t know, that’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

“One has nothing to do with the other.”

“Huh?”

“If you’re gay, a kiss can be nice but take-it-or-leave-it. Don
Juan could kiss you with a millennium of knowledge and you’d ask him to pass the salt.”

“Oh.”

“But if you’re with a bad kisser, your orientation is so not the issue.”

“Oh.” Really? Could it simply be a case of badness? Thank Goddess, or God—the devil even. I’m just happy.

“Stephen lack chops?” Adam wants details.

“His tongue seems abnormally large.”

The cough can’t conceal a laugh. “I’m sure his tongue isn’t setting records for size.” For Adam’s sake, I’m glad he’s not eating right now, because he’d so be needing a long-distance Heimlich.

“And that’s the other thing.”

“What?”

“Size.” I can’t even bring myself to repeat this. It sounds like bad reality TV even in my head.

“Of his tongue?” Adam sounds confused and frustrated. Not that I blame him. I’m not Miss Articulate at the moment.

“Are you happy with your size?”

“Of my tongue?”

“Your codpiece,” I clarify with what little dignity I have left.

“My what?”

“Your dick.” Oh my Lord, I am reverting to a nine-year-old wannabe Pops language.