How to Meet Cute Boys (9 page)

Not a problem.

“Can you believe I’m getting married?” Audrey asked when we were safely inside my car and the Mother was driving in the opposite
direction.

I said I guessed I was a little surprised.

“I’m
stressed,
” she said. “Mom keeps giving me magazines with little Post-it notes on what she thinks the flowers should look like, what
she thinks the cake should look like …”

“Well, you’re the first daughter getting married. You get to break her in.”

I paused to blow my horn at someone who cut me off. “Do you think if I take Kiki to the wedding as my date our relatives will
think I’m a lesbian?”

Audrey sidestepped this one.

“Do you think I’m making a mistake?” she said.

“Who am I to say whether or not you’re making a mistake?”

“I think you think I’m making a mistake.”

“You love Jamie, right?”

“More than anything.”

“Then you’re not making a mistake.”

We drove for a few minutes in silence. Just as I was getting into a song I recognized they were playing on the radio, Audrey
busted out with: “Do you think Jamie is cute?”

“I think Jamie is very cute,” I said. “He’s got those great eyes. And … he’s very fit.”

“Would you have sex with him?”

“I can’t think of a single appropriate way to answer that question.”

“I mean, if you didn’t know me. If you met him while you were out one night.”

“You’ve had sex with him, right?”

“Of course.”

“And you like it, right?”

“Yeah.”

“There you go.”

“But … ahem. To be honest, ahem, he doesn’t go …” Audrey tucked a stray clump of hair behind her ears.

“Go where?”

“Don’t make me say it!” She started pointing toward her seat. “You
know
…”

“He doesn’t eat you out?”

“Ben-ja-
mi
-na.” (This being the response I usually get whenever Audrey and I talk about sex.)

“What? Don’t get all shocked. You brought it up.”

She cleared her throat again. “Well, I mean, maybe he would. If I asked him. Which I haven’t.” She inspected a perfectly manicured
nail, then folded her hands back in her lap. We were stopped at a traffic light. Her engagement ring from Tiffany’s glittered
darkly. Her skin and her blue eyes were incredibly clear, I noticed, and her pressed gray pants went perfectly with her lint-free
black cardigan. I could try my whole life, but I would never look like Audrey. My life’s too messy. She looked young.

“Do you let people … do it to you?” she asked.

“Everyone who offers.”

“Sha,” she snorted. I think it was the first time she smiled that day.

We pulled into the parking lot behind Cupid’s Garden. Walking in, Audrey told the ladies-in-waiting that I was the bride-to-be.

“Audrey,” I started to say, “what are you—”

But before I had a chance to protest, the saleswoman swished me off to the dressing room, where she whisked my shirt over
my head and started measuring away while asking me about my fiancé. So I made it up. He owns his own fashion company, I said.
He’s a graphic designer, too, I added. He’s tall and thin. Has a modern house in the hills. We’re going to honeymoon in Africa,
I said, and we’re going to have two children, Kurt and … um … Courtney. Isn’t that cute? Yes, isn’t it?

Audrey started throwing wedding gown after wedding gown through the doorway. I tried on five Vera Wangs before we found The
Dress. It was a dramatic, creamy strapless number by Christian Dior with a huger-than-huge skirt featuring enormous pale pink
silk cabbage roses tumbling down the back. It was bold. It was dramatic. It was hopelessly romantic. The saleswoman led me
out of the dressing room and put me on a little pedestal in front of the mirror. I looked at my reflection and burst into
tears. “I love it!” I screamed at my sister, who also started to cry and was clapping her hands with glee.
“I absolutely love it!”

The saleswoman handed me a tissue. “Please, hon,” she said. “Not on the dress.”

Later that night, Max came to pick me up. When I opened the door, he handed me a bouquet of carnations and a bag with
SUPER VERY GOOD
emblazoned on the side, saying, “This is for you, my dear.”

Where does he get these terms?
I thought, taking the bag and showing him into the living room.
My dear. Sweet girl. If he calls me baby doll I’m going to dissolve into a puddle of happy mushy femaleness
. I made a crack that nobody gives carnations anymore and Max shrugged. He said, “You can take the boy out of Ohio …”

I opened the bag, and in it was a navy blue T-shirt. On it was a big, fat, smiling Chinese Buddha and below him read the words
FOR GOOD LUCK, RUB MY BELLY
in Asian-style script.

“I
love
it,” I said. “But”—I held it up to myself—“what are you getting at?”

Max smiled and gave my stomach a little pat. “For luck. Let’s go. We’re going to be late.”

We were going to Spaceland to see a band I’d never heard of before called The New Year. In the car on the way over, Max explained
they were pretty much think-tank-indie-rock types, two of whom used to be in a band called Bedhead, all of whom took their
music as seriously as anyone currently studying at Juilliard. Apparently the drummer was a friend who stopped by the warehouse
sometimes for free Super Very Good clothes. I was curious, so I asked Max how he got to start his own company anyway. He told
me how he’d gone to Rhode Island School of Design, but he wasn’t that interested in studying so he left. He’d started the
company with twenty thousand dollars, mostly money scraped together from some professional skateboarder friends. I imagined
Super Very Good was worth a lot more now. His house, however, was a rental. Max said he didn’t feel ready to buy, and he was
pouring all his money back into the company. This explained the roommates, Seth and Stuart (Max called them Fred and Barney),
whose presence I’d sensed the night I slept over (the pizza boxes and a photo of Britney Spears taped to the refrigerator
were dead giveaways), but whom I’d never actually gotten to meet. I was so impressed by Max, by his job, by every blond hair
on his head …

“Why don’t you have a girlfriend?” I asked.

“Oh. God. I haven’t had a girlfriend since high school.” He laughed. “It’s fine. Although, you know, I hate sleeping alone.”

I gave him my best sidelong glance. “Don’t even try it.”

We parked and Max took my hand as we walked to the club. I gave my ID to the bouncer. But then I saw something bizarre—Max’s
was fake.

Now, I’ve seen some fake IDs in my life. When I was in college, I put myself through my last year of school by working nights
as a bartender. Because I was sick of cleaning up kiddie puke, I used to cut up fake IDs with a pair of scissors I hung on
the wall with a big red ribbon. It was one of the only times in my life that I’ve ever really been in a position of power,
and I got a good laugh from the bar backs whenever I did it. But this bouncer, he didn’t even notice that Max’s “Alaska” driver’s
license was a laminate, when Alaska doesn’t do laminates anymore. I looked at Max like,
What’s going on?
His face remained a blank.

At the bar, I ordered the usual scotch and soda. Max got a Sprite.

“So,” I said, looking him over. “You an ex-convict or something?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“On the lam? On the run? In the witness protection program?”

“No. No. And, no. Why?”

“Well”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“you have a fake ID.”

“So? Until recently, so did you.”

He was looking at me like I was being really weird, the straw from his Sprite stuck in his mouth. I was looking at him like
he was being really weird, beads of water from my scotch condensing in the palm of my hand.
Why would I have a fake ID for six years?
I wondered, reaching for the napkin.
Why would I have a fake ID when I’m old enough to go to a
… And that’s when it hit me.

“Max, how old are you?”

“Ben, how old are
you?
”

A beat. I squinted at him and said, “How old do you think I am?”

“Dunno. I never really thought about it. What, are you, like, twenty-three?”

I shook my head. This was bad.

“Okay … twenty-two … Twenty-one?” He was smiling.

This was not good. This was not good. This was so not good.

I proposed that we both say our ages at the exact same time.

“You’re on,” he said. He was starting to look a little worried.

“All right. You be the counter.”

Max held three fingers up. One went down. Two went down. The third went down and I yelled out, “Twenty-seven!”

Max was silent.

“Twenty-seven!” I yelled again, trying to keep my sense of humor, “Max … it’s your turn.”

He smiled weakly. “Okay,” he said. “Don’t freak out. It’s not a big deal.”

“Go on.”

“I’m twenty.”

It took me a minute to scrape my jaw off the bar.

“You’re joking.”

“I wouldn’t joke about that.”

“You’re twenty?”

“Yeah.”

“Twenty.”

“Yeah.”

Twenty.

“Um, would you excuse me for a minute?” I didn’t know where to go, so I made a dash for the bathroom, knocking over some guy’s
beer on the way and not even stopping to say sorry. I wanted to splash cold water on my face. Then I got there and realized
I was wearing makeup so I couldn’t. Instead I snuck a cigarette in the bathroom stall. I wondered if everyone was thinking
the same thing I was:
And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you will know
…

When I got back, Max looked a little green. “I didn’t mean to mislead you,” he said. “I thought you might be a
little
older than me, because of the writing job and all, but only by a couple of years. You look
young,
B.”

I ignored the fact that he’d just shortened my name to one letter, which, I have to say, was pretty endearing.

He asked, “Is it really such a big deal?”

Maybe. Yes. Maybe. It certainly
felt
like a big deal. The first thing I wanted to know was whether or not he’d been lying to me. The company, the house, all of
it. But Max’s answer made sense. He said he’d started the company his first year in college. He left to run it before the
year was out, and that pretty much accounted for what had happened since. He was about to turn twenty-one, he said. In two
weeks.

“So I’m a cougar,” I moaned, putting my head in my hands.

“A what?”

“An older woman who picks up younger guys.”

“They call that a cougar? That’s funny.”

“It’s not.”

“Oh, so what, right?” He put his hand over mine. “Look, I’m still the same guy. And, to be honest, I don’t really care how
old you are. You’re too adorable to pass up.” I started to melt. He could sense it. “My little cougar,” he said, poking my
ribs. “Grrrr.”

Later, just before Max pulled the boxers off me once again (oh, like you would have gone home), we turned it into a game.
I pointed out that when I was having sex for the first time, he was learning how to ride his BMX bike. He remarked that when
I was learning how to drive, he had a crush on his baby-sitter, who was my age and was now married with two kids. When I was
going to college, he was busy collecting Power Rangers. Max started kissing me. I opened my eyes and was relieved to find
that his were shut. This gave me a chance to really inspect his face, or at least the top half of his face. His long eyelashes
curled just above his cheek. Up near his ears, tiny hairs glowed, downy. Outside, it started to rain. Big drops that splashed
the asphalt like the sky was giving the ground a well-deserved spanking. Through the open window, the world smelled different,
like earth and clean leaves. I slid my hands down Max’s perfect stomach, washboard without effort, as most twenty-year-old
stomachs are, and I could feel him pressing against me just below my navel. It wasn’t insistent, but asking permission, so
I angled my hips away, saying no. For now.

“Too soon,” I whispered.

“Mmmm,” Max said, never leaving my mouth. I continued to watch him kiss me, fascinated. I wondered if every guy, while kissing
a girl, looked like he could so easily fall in love.

In the morning, however, when I left Max’s warm bed, the sunlight an incriminating glare on the freshly washed sidewalk, it
didn’t seem so easy.
I’m twenty-seven years old,
I thought.
I put on wedding dresses and I cry
. As I unlocked my car door I wondered if, when Max stood on his porch and kissed me good-bye, he could see wrinkles around
my eyes. I’d never thought I had wrinkles before, but what if I did? Maybe I didn’t look as good as the last girl who’d left
his house. She was probably a college senior. Or a waitress from the Back Door Bakery down the street. Pulling onto Silver
Lake, I called Kiki from my cell. On the third ring, she answered.

“Kiki?” I said. My voice had a catch.

“Ben? Is everything okay?”

How dismal my situation really was hit me the minute I heard her concern digitally wafting through the air. “When I saw
Star Wars
for the first time, Max …” Was I going to cry? “Max … was an embryo.”

With her shocked silence for company, I started my drive home.

Kiki arrived armed with a fresh pack of cigarettes, a sixer of Amstel, and sunscreen, and arranged the supplies on the decrepit
picnic table that sat like an abandoned shipwreck outside my apartment. I checked the SPF number while flicking on my lighter.

“Oh good,” I said. “This won’t wash off while we do sports.”

Kiki smiled. “So how old?” she asked, handing me a beer.

“Twenty years, eleven months, two weeks,” I said.

Kiki sat across from me and lit her cigarette with one of those long matches my neighbors used for the barbecue, which I was
afraid of since it was gas and I always thought I was going to blow myself up. The crunchy, patchouli-fumigated guy who lived
next door grilled veggie burgers on it sometimes, but only when my window was open so my entire apartment ended up smelling
like a Phish show on fire. I used it as an ashtray.