Adventures of a Salsa Goddess (8 page)

“Sam, this is my good friend Sebastian Diaz,” Javier said, giving the stranger a quick manly slap on the back. Sebastian stood a head taller than Javier and it was clear from his thick neck, bulging biceps, and thigh muscles that could barely be contained by mere synthetic fibers, that he spent a lot of time in the gym. But he’d managed to package all of it into classy casual attire, a sky blue oxford shirt tucked neatly into a belted pair of black pleated trousers.

“So, Sam, Lessie tells me you’re from New York,” Sebastian said. “What are you doing in Milwaukee for the summer?”

It wasn’t just the intensity of Sebastian’s gaze that unnerved me, along with the fact that he could have crushed my skull with a flick of his pinky finger, it was the sudden realization of the fact that I hadn’t given a single thought as to what my Milwaukee cover would be.

“I’m a researcher,” I blurted, after what I hoped no one would notice was an extraordinarily long pause. But, it was unfortunate that at that exact same moment Lessie announced I was a writer.

“Well I’m a researcher-writer,” I explained. “I do both, but really more researching than writing.”

“What exactly do you research and write about?” Sebastian asked, standing head and shoulders above the rest of us with his arms crossed in front of his body like the Jolly Green Giant.

“Men,” Lessie announced.

“—opause. Menopause,” I said without skipping a beat.

“And menstruation,” offered Lessie, who’d dragged the word out to its four syllables so there could be no possible misunderstanding.

The word fell like an anvil. A painstaking silence followed as the men took a rapt interest in the shuffling of their feet.

After a break in conversation that had stretched into an eternity, I said, in an attempt to undo the damage caused by Lessie’s proclivity for literary license, “I work for a women’s health research institute that’s doing a study on women in the Midwest. They sent me here for the summer to do, um, research and writing and you know, research and ...”

The lies bubbled up from some inner murky depths of my soul like crude oil from the ground. This was wonderful. Now I’d have another skill to add to my resume: pathological liar.

Lessie cut in, brightly suggesting we all go out to dance. Sebastian, polite to a fault, excused himself, while giving me a piercing look that I swear said, “I see right through you, I know you’re lying, and you know you’re lying. But why?”

“Shit, I’m so sorry,” said Lessie later on during the drive home.

“It’s my fault,” I told her. “I should’ve known this would come up. But at least you stopped the inquisition with ‘men- stru-a-tion.’”

The questions from Sebastian weren’t the real problem. It bothered me that Javier’s friend had apparently decided not to like me for some reason. I just hoped that Javier was the kind of man who made up his own mind about people.

The Mammary Mirage

Men are fascinated with women’s breasts. Women are fascinated by the fact that men are obsessed with lumps of flesh that are little more than fat and milk ducts. According to Freud, it all starts in infancy, but with males, the enthrallment with the mammary glands never stops. This, as it turns out, is a good thing. The only mystery is, why the hell did it take me until I was forty years old to exploit this male weakness?

Forever caught between the respectable but boring B cup and the not-quite-attention-getting C cup, I’d always felt lacking in the bosom department. And then one day last year while shopping in the lingerie department of my favorite store, I came across the amazing water bra. I lifted it off the rack. It had weight and substance and it was on sale for
$39.

I wasn’t expecting much when I tried it on, but I was completely transformed—Pamela Anderson, Jayne Mansfield, and all of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders rolled into one! I couldn’t stop staring
at my own chest. They were huge, beautiful, perfectly shaped, uplifted, separated, and I could actually claim to have decolletage! I was now a C+, bordering on a D-, well within the realm of lust-provoking cup size. And all this in just the first five minutes of my new life inside the dressing room!

When I walked out of the store, for the first time in my life men were staring at my breasts. I haven’t had so many men look at my chest since, well, ever. Now they don’t even pretend to be looking into my eyes with the furtive glance downward that they try to disguise with an innocent glance. They speak directly to my bust as if it’s a separate person deserving of its own e-mail address and Social Security number.

In this day and age of air bras, water bras, gel bras, and breast implants, it’s hard to believe that in our not-too-distant past, the sixties icon Twiggy popularized the flat-chested look. But it’s simply no longer fashionable to be without a bosom, and not just in L.A. This is true even in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, land of beer, brats, and now, boobs.

Of course some might argue that water bras are disingenuous, that they lure men on false pretenses. But this reasoning just doesn’t hold water. First, are breast implants any less dishonest? They don’t feel real and they certainly don’t look like natural breasts. I have nothing against implants, but for a fraction of the cost and in just a few seconds, why not give yourself an instant boob job with the water
bra?

Like my natural breasts, water bras are not perfect. There’s the infamous Will & Grace episode where Grace’s water bra springs a leak on a date at a very public gallery opening, an embarrassing situation to be sure but a chance I was willing to take. I assumed that in the unlikely event this ever happened, it would be worth the story value alone in exchange for the humiliation involved.

But I discovered a far more vexing problem when I found myself on a date with a man I liked very much. At the end of fabulous date number two, Seth and I were slow dancing together in my living room. He was holding me close, when after many minutes of kissing and dancing, I happened to look down and discovered he’d been caressing my breasts but I hadn’t felt a thing because I was wearing a water bra. I felt like my best friend had gone to Maui and all I got was this lousy brassiere. Since I’d had no clue how long he’d been stealing second base without my knowledge, I couldn’t very well start moaning with pleasure at that point. So I’d kept quiet, figuring that it was better to let him think I was frigid rather than psychotic.

Despite the potential problems with water bras, I will never go back to the standard model. Not only do I feel better about myself while wearing one, I’ve learned that if you make them bigger, men will come. So get breast implants, buy a water bra, an air bra, or a bustier, just don’t remind men what breasts are really made of.

I woke to one of those gorgeous June days that reminds you of the summers of your childhood when every day was picture perfect. I couldn’t recall a single cloud, thunderstorm, or chilly or sweltering summer day when I was a kid, because like most adults I knew, meteorological amnesia had set in long ago.

Lessie plunked a tray with her special homemade batch of margaritas onto her patio t
able. We 'were outside her two-bedroom brick ranch on her backyard deck. A young couple walked by pushing a baby stroller with a bald baby. They waved to Lessie and she waved back.

“So how was blind date number three?” Lessie asked, referring to yesterday’s dating debacle, which Sally had set up through Brunches or Lunches, a service designed for “busy
professionals” to meet two new people a month for—you guessed it—brunch or lunch. The name of the service was revoltingly cutesy, but the beauty of it was obvious. Lunches and brunches were a far more reasonable time commitment than dinner and a movie. If worse came to worst, at least no one would have to feel as though they’d been trapped in an eternal dating time warp.

Which it did.

“Not worth talking about,” I said, visualizing Will, a man with a pointed face reminiscent of an anteater. The high point of the date was when he’d crossed his arms in front of his body and started scratching under both armpits simultaneously.

“I almost forgot,” Lessie said, unfolding what appeared to be computer printouts. “I surfed the Internet this morning. You’re famous.”

I found myself scanning headlines from newspaper articles across the country: “Is the Mystery Woman Living in Our City?” “Are There Any Single Men Left: Can the Mystery Woman Do It?” “Mystery Woman Battles Cupid in Fight for Rare Species!” “Welcome to Topeka, Mystery Woman. Your Mr. Right Is Right Here.”

A couple holding hands and walking a German shepherd strolled by, the father carrying a tow-headed toddler on his shoulders.

Most of the printouts were short filler-type articles, covering the basics about my assignment. Then I came to the last one.

“Oh no! Did you read this?” I cried, feeling as though I’d been punched in the stomach. “Listen to this, Lessie,” I said, and then read aloud, “‘What could explain the Mystery Woman’s unmarried status: a personality disorder, a glandular problem, or is she just a man-hater?’”

Lessie snatched the paper out of my hand. “I shouldn’t have printed that one,” she said. “Sorry.”

“The people of Bogalusa, Mississippi, think I have a gland problem! They despise me!”

“They don’t despise you, they just feel sorry for you. Here,” she said, handing me a computer printout from Newsday.com. “This will make you feel better.”

Well-known socialite and CEO of
Tres Chic
magazine, Elaine Daniels, has sent a forty-something never-married professional woman, better known as “The Mystery Woman,” on a quixotic quest for a husband to a city unknown. Daniels, who is better known for her captivating wit, business savvy, and her own frequent trips to the altar, rather than in her new role as yenta, is no doubt hoping to boost lagging magazine sales with a publicity stunt that rivals the new breed of reality TV shows such as
Joe Millionaire
,
The Bachelorette
, and
Bachelorettes in Alaska
. Whether the Mystery Woman will succeed certainly is a mystery. But her fishing expedition has captured the interest of single women across the nation, who are pinning their hopes on her success and cheering her on.

The phrases
fishing expedition
and
quixotic quest
bothered me. It wasn’t like I was searching for the lost island of Atlantis. Single men were everywhere, right? Just then I noticed a heavily pregnant woman and her husband ambling by, trying to keep up with two identical twin girls on tricycles, all of them smiling and laughing like they were the Von Trapp family.

“Is everyone in your neighborhood married?” I asked Lessie, becoming concerned that every time I went out in this city, all I seemed to come across were couples.

“I believe I am the token single woman,” Lessie admitted and then ran her fingers through her short hair.

“Well, at least you’ve got a hot date tonight,” I said, trying not to sound envious. But I couldn’t help it. It had been four days since I’d gone out with Robert Mack, and I hadn’t heard from him. And I’d been hoping that Javier would ask me out despite our age difference.

Lessie looked at her watch. “Yeah, I have three hours to buy a new outfit, get a manicure and pedicure, shave my legs, and get a boob job,” she said.

“A boob
job? You’re not serious?”

“When I lost all my wei
ght they went from double Cs to microscopic,” she said, cupping her hands over her chest. “They look like peas.” She peered inside her V-necked sweater, and frowned. “No, peas are too big, more like grains of sand.”

Tres Chic
had done a story on breast implants a few months ago. So many women were getting them now that pretty soon the real thing would become as rare as raw hamburger. In the not-too-distant future, museums would have displays of A and B cup bras, right next to the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeletons and the mummies.

Why did so many truly beautiful women like Lessie think they were less than perfect just because they didn’t look like Barbie dolls? I assured Lessie that she didn’t need to change a thing about her appearance since most women would gnaw off their right arms to look as good as she.

“Have you tried water bras?” I asked her.

“No. Why?”

I told Lessie about my discovery last year of water bras and how they’d changed my life, along with the story of the problem with water bras that I’d discovered on my second date with Seth, the architect who I’d dumped last New Year’s Eve.

“That’s hysterical. You should make that one of your humor columns,” said Lessie. Excellent idea!

“Now before I leave, one piece of unsolicited advice: no lace and no thongs for tonight.”

“I’m not going to sleep with Eliseo,” she said, looking as confident as a vase of wilted daises. “It’s only our second date.”

We’ve all heard the stories, more like urban legends really, of women who jump into bed on the first or second date with highly eligible studs whom they later marry. But these events were exceptional, infrequent phenomena, like seeing Hailey’s Comet or finding the long-lost Dead Sea Scrolls. I just hoped that Lessie was being careful and wouldn’t get hurt.

As I drove back toward my apartment, I thought briefly about stopping off at Bradford Beach to see if Zack was there, before deciding that even if he was, I had no interest in becoming one of his beach concubines. Who needs you Mr. Best Looking Man in the Universe? You had your chance.

I collapsed on the lawn chair on my balcony, falling asleep to the sound of motorboats and wave runners racing across Lake Michigan.

I’m seated on the back of a wave runner wearing a fluffy wedding dress that looks like a French pastry as my veil trails out behind us, floating inches above the blue water. I grip my fiance fiercely around his trim middle. Great giant waves periodically wash over us, hitting me full in the face, causing thick black streaks of mascara to run down my cheeks and smearing my lipstick grotesquely, so that I look like one of those sad clowns that frighten children. My fiance is wearing a black tuxedo, but I’m distressed that I can’t see his face. I shout into his ear three times, “What’s your name?” But he doesn’t answer. The minister riding parallel to us drops his Bible in the water. I
keep shouting to him, “Is it time to say ‘I do’ yet?” But my words die on my lips.

“I must’ve been temporarily deranged to agree to do this assignment,” I said to Elizabeth, whom I called as soon as I’d woken up from my matrimonial nightmare. “I had more fun at my first mammogram last year
.”

That was almost true. In fact, I’d practically pulled my completely unrecognizable breast out of the machine because I’d been laughing so hard. The nurse had given me a strange look and then told me that most women were writhing in pain during the procedure. But I couldn’t help it. To me, my flattened breast had looked exactly like a pancake with a nipple.

“Have the dates been that bad?” Elizabeth asked.

“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”

“Sam, you’re getting paid to find a husband,” pointed out my ever-practical lawyer friend. “My advice is suck it up and just do it!”

“I’m trying to decide if you sound more like my mother or a Nike commercial,” I said.

“What have you got to lose?”

“Frankly, I’m not feeling exactly positive and upbeat at the moment,” I told her. “I’ve met two guys I like. One never bothered to ask for my number.” I paused just long enough to conjure up a wistful memory of Zack. “And the other hasn’t called,” I added, referring to
Robert Mack. For some reason I wasn’t prepared to tell Elizabeth about Javier yet—not that there was anything to tell since he hadn’t even asked me out.

“So call him,” she said. It was just like Elizabeth to make everything sound so simple. Never one to play games, she had always told men exactly how she felt about them, taking the approach opposite to mine. But the best method for dealing with
men must lie somewhere in the middle, since we were both still single at forty-one.

“Are you crazy?” I retorted and then countered with several of the salient passages I’d memorized from
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
. “If I call him and he’s being a blowtorch, he might turn himself off. Or maybe he’s a barely flickering candle that I’ll surely snuff out by showing the slightest amount of interest in him!”