Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (22 page)

“The image of your face when I walked into CVS was pretty amazing. I don’t think I’ll ever forget it.”

“Can we try this again sometime?”

“I’d like that. But next time I would prefer it if you wouldn’t prematurely buy condoms five minutes before picking me up for our date.”

“I promise you, I’ll never do anything prematurely around you ever again—” I was already a few too many words into that sentence before I could save myself.

THE GIRLS ON SPORTS

Dear Girls Above Me,

“You hear that? I think the guy downstairs is having gay sex! He keeps screaming out DEREK.” Nope, just watching the Lakers game.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I bet this Arnold Palmer guy named a drink after himself just to be a celebrity.” Now he can retire and take up a sport like golf.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Rachel Zoe needs to find these teams better outfits. This yellow’s seriously offensive.” I bet the Steelers call her at halftime.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Who do you think has the biggest dick on the Lakers?” Can’t you just be quiet and let me enjoy this win—definitely Ron Artest.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I know he really likes football, maybe I’ll get him tickets to a Raiders game or something.” The Raiders moved out of LA in 1995.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“He’s on some fantasy team, but don’t you think he’s too small to play football?” I can’t wait for you to go to one of his games.

THE GIRLS ON CARS

Dear Girls Above Me,

(Phone) “Mom, I’m not saying you did this on purpose, but are you aware that my car has no seat heaters?!” Classic bad parenting.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Oh my God, one of my wheel-tire thingys is flat! What the hell should I do, get a new car?” Seems like your only option.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I look fat in my photo light ticket! Why is the camera at such an unflattering angle?” I think you’re missing the point here.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Ellen DeGeneres is funny and all, but it’s really weird how much she loves her car.” Her wife’s name is Portia.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

One lazy Sunday afternoon Pat and I headed to the laundry room with only a dollar twenty-five to our name. With our quarters combined, we had just enough money to share one load of laundry without having to go get more change. Pat’s laundry basket was full of clothes that looked like a rainbow threw up inside of it. I tried warning Pat that his bright colors would never stand a chance in the wash with my darks, but he remained confident in his aquamarine briefs.

“Hey, once you’re done watching the Laker game, do you mind if I put on last week’s episode of
The Real Housewives of New Jersey
?” he asked me as we walked down the hallway. I told him sure, as if I didn’t plan on watching that myself right after the game anyway.

Cathy and Claire had inadvertently gotten me hooked on
Real Housewives
a few months earlier. If I was going to be forced to listen to them discuss the trials and tribulations of Teresa and Melissa, I wanted to at least put a couple of faces (face-lifts) to those names.…
Sure, I may have gotten slightly invested in those trials and tribulations, but I’m nowhere near ready to admit that. All I’ll say is that Teresa is one vapid excuse for a human soul.

Anyway, inside the laundry room, we found Cathy on her hands and knees with her head halfway inside one of the dryers. Pat and I shared an excited look, the same one we would have given if we had seen a real-life cast member from
Saved by the Bell
. (Except Dustin Diamond.) It was rare that I got to see either of the girls in the flesh. At this point they had become voices in my head more than real people. The girls above were sort of like Jiminy Crickets to my Pinocchio. If Jiminy Cricket carried a Balenciaga tote bag.

Cathy was busy searching for something, and I was fairly certain she hadn’t heard us enter the fluorescent room. Both Pat and I stood there in silence, not wanting to startle her in her dryer hunt. She needed all the brain cells she could muster, and if I was the cause of her bumping her head in the laundry room, I would be forced to listen to her talk about it with Claire for the rest of the day. No, thanks.

I figured my regular voice saying, “Hello there,” would be much too blaring, and if I said it in a whisper, it would be much too creepy. So instead I took one of our quarters for the laundry machine and dropped it to the ground. The chime of a coin coming into contact with a dirty linoleum floor seemed like just the right amount of noise to get her attention. Unfortunately, it backfired horribly. Cathy was surprised and slammed her head into the top of the dryer, yelling with an echo, “Bitch whores,” as our quarter rolled its way underneath the machines.

“Oh Mylanta, you scared the crap out of me,” Cathy said with her head now poking out.

“I’m sorry, I tried to be subtle about it.”

“It’s okay. I’m more upset that one of my thongs is missing. You didn’t come in here and take it, did you?”

“No, we don’t steal thongs after Labor Day,” Pat responded. Nice one, Pat.

Cathy got up from the ground and approached us. “Sorry, how rude of me, I’m Cathy,” she said with a hand extended.

I don’t know why I was surprised
again
that she had no recollection of meeting me on several different occasions. How many lanky bearded guys did they know? And was I possibly in the middle of an
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
situation? This could all have been a simple memory-erasing mix-up. I decided to give Cathy the benefit of the doubt.

“I’m Charlie,” I said, as if for the first time.

Pat followed suit with “And I’m Pat.”

“Nice to meet you boys.” I was so glad I had been able to provide her that pleasure five times and counting. Incidentally, I never get Cathy and Claire mixed up. Even though they seemingly share a brain, there are many subtle differences between them. You get to discern them over time, like the tiny facial variations that allow you to gradually distinguish between identical twins.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CATHY AND CLAIRE

• Cathy is a five-foot-nine-inch brunette with hazel eyes; Claire is a five-foot-two-inch blonde with blue eyes.

• Cathy has a scar on the right side of her abdomen from when her appendix was removed at age five. Claire has a similar scar on the left side of her abdomen from when she fell off her dad’s boat, which was parked in the driveway.

• Cathy never wears her cute strappy purple sandals unless
Claire also gets to wear her low-cut turquoise top with the bedazzly jewels. This was part of the Wardrobe Accord of 2011.

• Cathy has a tan line around her left wrist because the only time she wears a watch is when she’s timing her tanning-bed sessions.

• During “that time of the month,” Claire wears knee socks because her ankles get swollen.

• Cathy is a low C-cup; Claire is a high B. And I’m just now realizing the inappropriate nature of this list.

As Cathy moped her way back to the dryer in search of her thong, Pat carefully put his clothes into the washing machine, one flamboyant color at a time. I looked underneath the washer in hopes that the quarter was in close reach, which of course it wasn’t. It lay heads-up at the very back. So I rolled up my sleeves and went right in. It’s unbelievable what makes its way into the crevasses of a shared laundry room. The deeper my hand traveled, the grosser the items I came into contact with.

A toothbrush. What kind of person cleans their teeth and their clothes at the same time? Probably David Spade.

A signed headshot of David Spade. I would have taken it if it hadn’t been personally signed to someone named “My Shrimp Guy.”

A green gummy bear covered in hair. If it had been a red one, I would have considered cleaning it off for an extension of the Five-Second Rule.

A soggy light-pink slipper. Though I wondered which Cinderella from the building it belonged to, I didn’t know how “charming” I’d look combing the building for her.

My fingertips finally grazed the quarter. I reached a little bit more in order to secure it between my two fingers, avoiding the rat droppings to the left. Finally, my meal ticket to a fresh pair of socks. As I stood up, Pat was loading my clothes into the washer, along with his own. Washing our clothes together to save a dollar twenty-five was something we had done many times. I had never thought it to be out of the norm, until I looked over at Cathy and saw her reaction. She looked as if she wanted to hug the both of us. It was at this moment that I realized Pat and I were both wearing matching T-shirts and jeans.

“Can I just say it’s so sweet that you guys wash your clothes together? You two seem so in love,” she said with such happiness.

I was surprised by this labeling of myself as gay. Not so much offended that someone would think I’m attracted to men as insulted that someone would think I couldn’t do better than Pat. I’m not gay, but if I was, I wouldn’t settle for the first guy who stuck an umbrella in my drink.

“Oh, no, no, no, sweetie. We’re not homosexuals,” Pat responded a little too fabulously.

Cathy’s smug look made it very clear that she didn’t believe him. She gathered her clothes, giving up on the lost thong, and on her way out she gently patted me on the back, as if she felt sorry for me. So not only did she think we were a couple, but she thought I was the abused partner in the relationship. Did that make me a “bottom”?

Pat chuckled like a giddy schoolgirl. “I can’t believe she thought we were a couple!”

At that moment, I felt as if we were both living a lie. There was no doubt that Pat was fabulous. But we were both in the closet about his sexuality. He as a gay man hiding his homosexuality and I as that gay man’s heterosexual roommate, facilitating his casual denial.

It’s not that I didn’t want him to be gay; in fact, it’s the opposite. I really wanted him to be gay. I just wanted it to be official so he could be as gay as humanly possible, not just in the closet, but all over the house. I thought about what that would be like. We’d be able to openly discuss men without Pat’s obligatory asides about how balls are not as sexy as breasts. Pat, the most fabulous guy I know, would then be able to bring equally fabulous guys home to spend the night. Pat, his lover, and I could stay up late watching horror movies and bake gluten-free cookies together during the super-scary parts. At night I would wear earplugs out of respect, allowing Pat the freedom to make a bit of noise, just as he did for me when I had a girlfriend. Then in the morning I would wake up the boys by way of a soothing bell, which would let them know that their fresh-fruit yogurt parfaits were ready to be eaten. Then, in the afternoon, we would all go shopping and stop off for a late brunch. There were so many places I never got to go.… Okay, this tangent is becoming a smidge too elaborate. But my point is that I wanted Pat to live happily ever after as a gay man.

So, now the question was, how could I myself emerge from the closet and then turn and yank my roommate out after me, so gently that he would feel as if he’d strutted out of there all by himself?

“I wonder if Cathy thought we were a couple because you were acting all gay on your hands and knees looking for that quarter,” Pat said while casually applying some cherry lip gloss.

“That must be it,” I responded. “I’ll try to watch that in the future.”

A week later
, while in line to get my morning soy chai latte and blueberry scone, I overheard a very interesting conversation between the two elderly gentlemen in front of me.

“I even cut Brussels sprouts from my diet, but my gas is still incredibly pungent, or so my wife says.”

This was followed by something even more interesting, not to mention relevant to this chapter:

“Did you hear that tonight kicks off the gay pride parade in West Hollywood? Are you going?” the guy with gas and a Ron Weasley–looking toupee asked.

“Oh, it’s this weekend? What a glorious event. I remember the days when I used to sip pisco sours and march in nothing but sunglasses and a boa.” This guy was literally Pat in fifty years.

“Well, I can’t stand it! It practically gridlocks the whole city, and no matter where you look all you see are cheery men in assless chaps.”

“What’s wrong with cheery men in assless chaps? The parade gives gay men and women a place to go where they feel accepted. It’s what got me to finally admit I was homosexual!”

“You’re homosexual? I thought that was just a phase in the seventies.”

“… Do you mean seventies the decade or seventies the age?”

“… I’m not sure.”

The odd couple’s banter, so much like a conversation Pat and I were primed to have forty years from now if I didn’t get him to come out immediately, gave me an idea. What if I were to take Pat for a drive and “happen” to stumble upon the gay pride parade? If the traffic was as bad as future-clueless-me suggested, then Pat would be
forced to sit in my car and gaze out into a world of oiled, glistening leather and perfectly waxed chests. There would be no better place for Pat to finally admit he was gay. My plan seemed foolproof. And I know it sounds stereotypical and that it wouldn’t be ideal for every gay roommate in the world, but given Pat’s fabulousness, it was perfect for him. This was finally the safe haven he needed, and as his dear friend, I was going to share it with him. I sent Pat a text that read, “Pisco sours and joyride around this fabulous city?”