I Like You Just the Way I Am (11 page)

When I got home that night, I was sort of secretly pissed at Jason. He hurt my friend Baz. After dinner, I started asking questions.

“So, did you really leave Baz in Madrid one night because you were mad at her for getting food poisoning?”

“Did my sister say that?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

“Come on, Jenny, really?” he laughed. “Do you know me at all?”

At this point, I wasn’t sure I did. Baz seemed so cogent in her retelling, I didn’t know what to believe.

“Baz was completely psychosomatic,” said Jason. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be with someone who is constantly ordering a wheelchair everywhere they go because they feel faint? Also, I told you I don’t want to talk about her. Ever.” He walked out of the room, slightly offended.

Just then my phone beeped with a text. It was from Baz.

“I had such a nice time today,” she wrote back. “Let’s definitely do something again.”

By the tone of the text, it was clear Baz now wanted something from me. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe it was just friendship. I’m not a fucking idiot. I was a gateway drug to her actual addiction: Jason. Through me she could not only find out what her ex’s new life was like, but she could also work through her anger by telling me all the things she lacked the balls to tell him. If I were her, I’d have done the same thing.

As I was reading the text, Jason passed by. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“Your sister.”

“Tell her to stop talking shit,” he said without stopping to make eye contact.

My heart was racing. Thinking fast, I shifted my cell settings into “shady bitch mode.” I couldn’t risk Jason picking up my phone and seeing a barrage of texts from the one person on the planet he didn’t want me talking to. I already had her number listed under the pseudonym Professor Plum. But if he looked at the actual digits, he’d know it was Baz. My affair was no longer one-sided. I knew I was playing with fire, but my addiction to the attention outweighed all logic. I needed
more
.

*   *   *

Baz and I agreed
to hike Runyon Canyon together the following week. Somewhere near the dog piss-covered park benches, my guilt became unbearable. I finally confessed to Baz that Jason knew nothing about us hanging out. I needed to talk to someone, and though she was the problem, she was also my closest confidante besides Jason.

“It’s not that I don’t want to tell him. It’s just that … well, he thinks he hates you for robbing him of three years of his life and for being as nuts as his mother,” I explained delicately, using the skills I assumed I would have learned had I not dropped out of psychology grad school. “Look, I know in time he will realize his anger is misdirected and that you only represent a time when he felt trapped on a myriad of levels, you know?”

Baz looked at me, incredulous, then called me on my bullshit: “If your husband doesn’t want you seeing me, why are you doing it?”

I hesitated for a beat. The truth was, I didn’t have a good answer. I mean other than that I was an empty shell of a person desperate for love and attention. But I figured she already knew that.

“I guess I’m here because I’m a healer. I like to heal people. I’m a healer.”

For the next month, Baz and I continued seeing each other. The fact that she kept accepting my invitations to hang out, even after I admitted that Jason knew nothing about our relationship, told me she too was getting some sort of sick satisfaction out of the friendship. My assumption was that she liked knowing she had something on the guy who’d always had her by the balls. For me, it wasn’t so much that I enjoyed hanging out with Baz, but more like I’d witnessed a car accident, and I couldn’t
not
jump into the road and scream, “Clear the way, people! I’m a doctor’s daughter and you need my help!”

She and I were night and day—we shared none of the same interests, and had little or nothing to talk about other than my husband. But that was enough. I knew it couldn’t go on forever, and I justified my actions by constantly telling myself it was just a phase, something I needed to explore in order to put behind me. She started it, after all (except for the part that I started). If she hadn’t shown signs of obsession, I wouldn’t have been provoked. Besides, there was some good coming out of it. Every time I was around her, I felt great about myself! She helped me appreciate how good my life was.

I always paid for our meals and would joke whenever the check arrived that after putting up with Jason for three years, the least I could do was buy her lunch. Once, I found a box in the garage filled with things she gave Jason back during their breakup. The best part was that it was composed exclusively of gifts he bought her—as if forcing him to see the neon-colored trench coat and bedazzled Mousketeer ears was going to make him think better of his decision to leave her. I couldn’t help but think that if I’d been in her life earlier, I would
never
have let her send a box like this to anyone. That said, I loved the box, and once I’d tried every article of clothing on to make sure it fit me loosely, I started systematically gifting things back to her. You know, as like a little treat.

As she drove us to Sheila Kelley’s pole dancing class one afternoon, I whipped out a pair of Sam Edelman sandals and dangled them in front of her face.

“Remember these?”

Upon seeing the gnarled-up gladiators, Baz burst into tears. “I can’t do this anymore,” she whimpered as she slammed on the brakes and buried her face in the steering wheel.

Baz explained that the shoes represented to her the night Jason moved out. She’d lost her temper and kicked her foot through a skylight. Unsure how that was physically possible, I just nodded and held her hand in support.

“Maybe we’ve moved too fast with things,” I said with sadness. “Maybe you need some time before we can have a friendship that isn’t fraught with these kind of potholes.”

“Or maybe we just can’t be friends,” she said.

I paused, feeling the sting of her words. But I knew deep down she was right. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t doing the breaking up. And for the first time in my life, I was willing to accept the rejection. Baz had the courage to do the one thing I’d struggled to do my whole life: let go.

Baz dropped me off at my car and I went home. When I arrived, Jason was cooking and a few of my real girlfriends were sitting in the living room, watching him. In that moment, I realized how selfish I’d been behaving. For the six months I spent investing in Baz, my real life kept moving forward without me. I allowed my obsession to alienate me from the people I actually loved. My marriage should have been my top priority, but instead I focused only on feeding my insatiable ego. Jason deserved better than what I was giving him. And it was time to focus on
our
relationship, not mine and his ex-girlfriend’s.

Like all addictions, banishing Baz from my thoughts took time. But eventually I did get to a place where she no longer consumed me. I called her when I heard her cat died. Jason and I once bumped into her at the mall. And I think I might have invited her to “Like” my Facebook fan page. But for the most part, she went back to where she belonged: the past.

5.

Show Me Your Teets

I’ve always assumed that
people who don’t own pets are serial killers. And post-college, I was in a pretty dark place. Not to the point where I’d ever be able to kill someone, but definitely in a place where I was listening to too much Morrissey. I’d spent the majority of my time at UCLA studying German literature, feminist theory, and mime. I was twenty-one years old and had just finished work on an adaptation of Kafka’s
The Metamorphosis
where Gregor Samsa was depicted as giant labia. Needless to say, I wasn’t in the greatest place emotionally. Then by pure chance, I stumbled upon a man who changed everything: Mr. Teets.

My sister, Amanda, was in college at Long Beach State at the time. One weekend I drove down to visit her. On my way, I got a flat tire. And although I wrote my thesis on the antiquated notion of a damsel in distress, I acted on my first instinct, which was to pull into the nearest gas station and start crying. A mechanic came out and told me replacing the tire would take about thirty minutes and that he hoped I could wait because I didn’t really have a choice. I smiled the way you do at people who think they’re funny but actually aren’t and sat down to wait.

Directly adjacent to the gas station was a shitty pet store with a sign outside that read
POODLE PUPPIES 100 DOLLARS
. Bored, I walked in and there he was, weighing three pounds soaking wet, the first love of my life. He was a ball of brown fuzz with blue eyes and tan markings around his face and chest. He was born January 30th, making him approximately three months old. I asked to hold him, and curiously, he wasn’t nervous. The rest of the dogs seemed to be bouncing off the walls, trying to escape, but Teets was better than that, or he was on sedatives. Either way, he seemed confident and self-possessed. There was an instant, unspoken synergy between the two of us that I didn’t feel again until I met my husband. We belonged together. After staring into his eyes for less than ten minutes, I bought him. (For the record, this was years before I knew better than to buy animals from a store, like some moronic Betty Draper type who smokes in the car with the windows rolled up while pregnant, then hands over a wad of cash to the proprietors of a backwoods puppy mill where dogs spend their lives locked in 3x5 cages. I would never make this mistake now. And so as not to endorse any future animal slavery, Teets has requested I lie and tell you he’s a rescue.) I wasn’t even looking for a dog. But just like with boyfriends, it’s when you aren’t looking that they always appear.

The most important thing to know about Teets is that, unlike most dogs, he’s an actual person. I’m not one of those animal freaks who will tell you that all dogs are created equal. Some dogs are just dogs. Teets, however, is a person in a small dog-sized fur suit, and has to be treated as such.

When I placed him on the seat next to me in the car, he informed me with his eyes that he was both a gentleman and a scholar. He implied that he’d be willing to provide me with a lifetime of complete emotional support in exchange for a per diem of fancy meats and cheeses. Teets demanded respect—and a monogrammed suede doggie bed from L.L. Bean. It was a fair trade and a match for life.

I wanted to give my new significant other a name that matched his level of sophistication. He couldn’t be something common, like Tiger or Barney. He needed a name with gravitas. Aside from looking like a young Richard Dreyfuss, there was someone else he resembled: John W. Teets.

The original John W. Teets was an Arizona business tycoon who was the retired CEO of the Dial Corporation. He was a mentor to my father and the one family friend who even as an adult I wasn’t allowed to address by first name. I decided this regal toy poodle should command the same respect.

As a puppy-man, Teets was the model of elegance and class. I spoke to him only in German, but I think he picked up English from friends at the dog park. He insisted on drinking his water from a glass, and slept with his head propped on a Tempur-Pedic pillow. He never used a leash. He found them antiquated and offensive. He hated swimming but did enjoy wading up to his ankles in koi ponds, pretending to fly-fish like Brad Pitt in
A River Runs Through It
. Teets never believed in pants but occasionally donned a festive ascot or sweater vest when the mood was right. He was modest when using the restroom and pooped strictly in flower beds that could conceal his final product. He rarely misbehaved, and when he did, it was typically just a mutual misunderstanding.

For the most part, things were copacetic. And the two of us lived together in perfect harmony—until eventually, I ran out of money. At the time, Teets wasn’t working and I was barely pulling in enough cash to cover his Fiji Water and organic bison chews. I knew downsizing meant our having to share a place with someone more financially stable but undoubtedly less snuggly.

*   *   *

The last time I’d
had a roommate was my freshman year in college. Because I failed to turn in my housing application on time, I was condemned to a 150-square-foot, three-bunk dorm located on the only all-girls floor on campus. The dormitory opened up to new occupants on a Sunday. Knowing I needed to secure first dibs on the lesser of the three evil bunks, I wrote myself a doctor’s note claiming that if I didn’t move in the night before, I’d die of leukemia. My dad/co-conspirator signed the letter and changed the reason to something more believable. I think juvenile diabetes.

I woke up at 4:59
A.M.
Monday morning to the sounds of my new roommate Hazel Buchheimer jimmying the dead bolt and barging in. The overachieving softball star from Greenwich, Connecticut, was horrified when she found me completely moved in and sleeping soundly on the top bed. I removed my sleeping mask and pretended to have diabetes until her parents were out of sight. About two hours later, Lupe Estevez, whom I referred to as Emilio Estevez for the rest of the year, marched in. She’d taken the bus up to L.A. from San Diego and was already pissed that both Hazel and I were white and owned cars. The friction among the three of us was palpable, and with time devolved into all-out war. Hazel started hiding food from us in her padlocked closet. Estevez reported me to campus police for streaking naked through the book fair. And I picked the lock to Hazel’s food closet and framed it on Estevez. By the end of the year, none of us were on speaking terms. Except for when I think Hazel and Estevez would talk about me behind my back, and totally be on speaking terms. Traumatized, I vowed to spend the rest of my life living solo.

So years later, when my friend Indra’s brother, Herschel, moved to L.A. and brought up the idea of moving in with Teets and me, I laughed. Hershel was an Orthodox Jew with zero hot friends and way too many Phish CDs. He was only two years my senior but already felt middle-aged because of his crazy beard. He worked in the world of finance while I worked in the world of taking cute pictures of Teets.