The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins (3 page)
I quickly spin off down 9th Street, heading for the back entrance to my home, but one asshole has clocked me and shouts, — LUCY! ONE MOMENT, PLEASE!
A stampede of paparazzi; a pack of red-faced, morbidly obese wheezers and skinny vampire alcoholics, blinking in the sun, suddenly give an unlikely pursuit. I’m not letting up, though; ripping my keys out and opening the caged metal door to the back stairs, I slip in and slam it shut, just as the snapping pack crush each other up against its mesh. I’m climbing the staircase, ignoring their cacophony.
Inside the apartment, the open back window streams in cool morning air as sweet as creek water, as I try to regulate my breathing. The buzzer is going intermittently, and I eventually break down and answer it, raising the phone to my ear. — Lucy,
Live!
magazine, we really want to talk to you about an exclusive!
— Not acceptable! Get the fuck away! Stop ringing my buzzer or I’ll call the police! I slam the phone down into its wall mounting. A dark instinct makes me go to the cupboard where I keep my .22 air pistol. I bought it last summer when a prowler was hanging around the building. He somehow gained entry and molested a girl who lives downstairs. I didn’t know her, although I’d obviously her seen around. I’m not sure exactly what happened, it wasn’t reported in the press, but you heard stories from other people in the apartment building. Some say the asshole raped her, others that he just bound her with duct tape and ejaculated on her. Whatever went down, he was one sick fuck.
My “pistol” isn’t a proper gun; it just blasts out lead pellets through air pressure. I’m not down with guns. Jails and morgues are full of feeble clowns who thought that carrying a firearm would compel folks to take them seriously. The incident spooked me, though, and I responded positively and started up a well-attended self-defense class for women.
I check my phone; it must have hit the TV news already as there are missed calls and voice and text messages of support from Mom, Dad, my sister Jos (a “wow, well done . . .” in her low, passionless voice), Grace Carillo from the MDPD (who ran the self-defense classes with me), Jon Pallota, the absentee owner of Bodysculpt (the fake gym I work out of), Emilio from Miami Mixed Martial Arts (the real gym I work out of), friends like Masterchef Dominic, and a host of old college buddies, and clients past and present.
This cheers me, and I take a long shower, the cold tap on full blast but never better than tepid against my burning skin. When I get out I peek through the slats of my blinds. The crowd seems to have dispersed, but stragglers could be lurking. The buzzer goes again. I answer it, right in the fucking zone to tear some cocksucker’s head off! — YES!!?
But this time it’s a woman’s voice, the honeyed tones smooth and reassuring. — I’m Thelma Templeton, VH1 programming. I’m not paparazzi and I’m not from a news channel. I don’t want a picture or a press interview. I give you my word if you let me in, I’ll be the only one who comes up. I want to speak to you about a fitness-slash-lifestyle show.
Fuck, yeah! I immediately buzz her in. Then it hits me that it was possibly all bullshit and I’ve been played. So I open my door and peer down the the hallway, ready to step back inside and slam it shut, should some asshole appear. After a few moments I hear reassuring heels on the stairs and see a woman emerge onto my floor. There’s no sign of her carrying anything, like a camera. She’s around forty, dressed in a business suit, with smooth blond highlighted hair and a Botoxed face, unnervingly immobile as she strides forward, a slightly bowlegged gait. I stand my ground, and when she gets close she’s suddenly gushing, — Lucy, shaking my hand and stepping into my cramped apartment. — This is cozy, she smiles, sitting, at my invitation, on my loveseat, and accepting my offer of green tea.
This ol’ girl’s pins are gym-toned; no cellulite or dimpled fat visible, and Thelma begins to outline her proposition. It’s a makeover show. I take some overweight, low-self-esteem bloat-bag who hasn’t dated this century or whose husband hasn’t boned her in years, and get her to lose weight and boost her confidence. Once I’ve licked her into shape, I hand her over to some fag designer, who will oversee phase two, the makeup and clothes component. — We have a few concepts, but this is the strongest and simplest model. We’d work with you developing the idea, shoot the pilot, and if the numbers stack up, go straight to series, she explains, then going through the spiel in some detail. When she’s done she stands up and asks, — Who reps you?
— I’m, uh, still deciding on representation, I lie.
— Don’t wait too long. Strike while the iron’s hot, she half warns. — There are some good people we work with regularly, I could pass on your contact details to them if you like. There’s no pressure, you have to find the person best for you, but I know one woman you really should meet, she’s called Valerie Mercando. I think you two would get along like a house on fire!
— Great!
She hands me her card, and I give her one of my totally rad embossed ones that Jon Pallota made for me:
LUCY BRENNAN
HARDASS TRAINING
No Excuses, Just Results — Be The Best You Can Be!
She takes it in a well-manicured hand. — Wow! That is so impressive, you really do have that no-nonsense, hard-edged persona we’ve been dreaming of. Somebody to shake America right out of its complacency. Somebody even more out there than Jillian Michaels!
— I’d go head-to-head with her anytime, on the treadmill, the pull-up bar, or in the ring, I tell her, feeling my jaw jut out.
— I doubt that will be necessary, Thelma laughs, — but you never know!
I escort her out the door and down the hall to the front stairs. — Wow, I’m just so stoked that I could have a series!
— Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Thelma pats her hair in place against a nonexistent breeze, as she steps toward the front door. I jump ahead, checking the coast is clear. It seems to be. Thelma’s hand grips the edge of the door, as her eyes blink in the sunlight. — A pilot first, then see how the numbers play out, she says cheerfully. — It’s all about numbers, and she pulls a pair of sunglasses from her bag and sticks them on, — Bye, Lucy!
— Bye. I hear my voice, low-key, cheerless, as I let the door swing shut, feeling strange layers of both anxiety and excitement. Through the glass door I wave Thelma off, then bound up the stairs, going back to my pot of green tea.
I grew up in a family obsessed with numbers and measurements. Dad, a former PE teacher, punctuated only by some undistinguished service with the Boston Police Department, would take me to Fenway and bombard me with every player’s stats. When a poor or decent performance confirmed a hypothesis he’d made based on those figures, he’d lean in to me and say knowingly, “The numbers never lie” or “Don’t ever trust man’s subjectivity, math comes from God. Watch the stats, pickle, always watch the stats.”
With me the numbers that dominated my youth were my standardized test scores (high = expectation) and my GPAs (low = disappointment). The discrepancy between the two made me an enigma to my mom; she could never figure me out. This deficit had to be explained in terms of character. Or lack of. My dad couldn’t have cared less about my scores, though he shared with Mom the lack-of-character paradigm. Only, for him, it was explained by my sporting failures.
Home was Weymouth, MA, a town swallowed by the Boston sprawl, and part of the South Shore “Irish Riviera.” My younger sister by eighteen months, Jocelyn, was quiet, academic, and hopelessly non-athletic. Dad tried with her, but even he had to concede defeat, so then she pretty much flew under his radar. Instead, he set about training every weakness of sloth and indolence out of me. He made me hate those characteristics in others and fight them tooth and nail in myself. And for that, and that alone, I thank him. Jocelyn, the “sugar” to my “pickle,” became my mom’s pet project. It’s very hard to say who got dealt the worst hand there.
I finish my tea, as a tired yawn rips through me, and get out to my first appointment of the day. It’s quiet now, as I check my mailbox. A card from the MDPD, telling me I can pick up the Caddy from their lot. They had to keep it in to examine the damage to the hood.
I walk up to Bodysculpt, one of the two SoBe clubs I work from. Marge Falconetti appears, a CEO’s wife who is 5’7" and 285 lbs of puffy slug (don’t think tits—waist—ass, just beachball). After some warm-ups, I get her raising a ten-pound kettlebell.
— Full extension, Marge, that’s the way, I cajole the ol’ girl, and I’m just settling into the day, battling the fatigue, and the strange creeping silence in this place. So ungymlike and even worse than normal today. Marge is actually trying, but all the time glancing at me and then past me in sheer awe. Then, horror of horrors, I follow her bug-eyes to one of the myriad television screens we have positioned around the walls. A local news channel, then, on the next screen, another one, are repeating last night’s story,
me
featuring prominently. Lester, one of the other trainers, lets out a loud cheer, leading off some clapping, as I reappear onscreen, blinking and candy-assed-looking.
— They show this again and again, on the half-hour, he grins.
— You’re so brave, Marge smiles painfully. I respond with a thin leer to let her know there will be no slacking, as I crane my neck back at the screen.
There I am, kicking the gun-toting weakling into submission. It’s a pretty fucking neat front kick, farther up than I thought, the ball of my foot striking him at speed between his shoulder blades. I’m right on his back as the camera moves closer, my ass in my panties where the skirt has ridden up blacked out by digibars. I see myself slam a couple of hooks into his body which I honestly couldn’t remember throwing. His passivity looks spooky, as if I’m sitting on a corpse. I hear a voice screaming, — I phoned this in, as the image shuffles, then I’m in midshot and the tarmac darkens with his urine. Then, a more professional shot of me through the glass of the police car.
Jesus, I’m even keeping pace with the two fifteen-year-old conjoined twins from Arkansas. The girls have had a falling-out as one of them wants to go on a date, meaning that the other, the physically weaker one, will literally be dragged along against her will if she disagrees. I’m thinking of how it might have been to be attached to Jocelyn, have to drag her along to my shit, or, worse, be taken to hers. No fucking way.
All America is enthralled by the so-called morality issue, which really is a degenerate’s wet dream. Reading between the lines, one chick wants to fuck her boyfriend, the other is giving it the religious shit. Those girls have divided the nation. I caught some of it with Miles last night, before we got fractious when he contracted pussy vertebrae. Guys like him think that the would-be beau of Annabel, one of the twins, is one sick but lucky little fuck. I remember those twin chicks at high school, always getting hit on by guys about threesomes, who then genuinely wondered why they were grossing the girls out. Would any of those morons want to fuck their brothers? It’s called, like, empathy, but even that basic emotion is barely part of Miles’s makeup. However, some squeaky-clean kid, Stephen Abbot, who makes Justin Bieber look like the bastard love child of Iggy Pop and Amy Winehouse, is pouting at the screen. — I’ve known the girls awhile and I really like Annabel. It ain’t like I’m some pervert. It’s just about going to a movie and grabbing a soda and maybe some candy. But some folks jus got dirty minds and there’s always some tryin to make it into somethin it ain’t.
As Annabel nods, the other twin, Amy, cuts in and says, — That ain’t all it is. They kiss a lot and it’s gross!
I tear myself away and watch Marge grunt her way through the last set. Then it’s time to load her stout carcass onto the treadmill. I flick it onto 3.5 mph, enough to force her to get with the project, then ramp up to 5 mph, solid trotting speed. — Go, Marge, I shout as she reluctantly lumbers into her stride.
— Jesus H. Lester (5’11", 185 lbs) is looking to the TV and saying to his client, some nice thirtysomething,
motivated
college professor chick, who strides evenly on the next treadmill. — It’s tough on those girls, that’s for sure.
What-fucking-ever. Let them debate the philosophical issues; I tweak the groaning Marge up to 6 mph, as I start pondering another number: 33. My birthday last week. The age that most real athletes seize up. That’s when you can tell it’s a real sport and not a game: are they finished at 34? They say that 35 is officially middle-aged. I
cannot
afford to buy into that. Part of me cheers when every gangbanger or lardass, like the sweating Marge, ends up on a slab before their time. Bullets or burgers, I don’t care how they bite, as it sends the stats for those of us who
try
to avoid either soaring to the heavens. Marge busts out with some pathetic protest as I push her up to 7 mph. — But—
— You’re good, honey, you’re good, I coo.
— Heugh . . . heugh . . . heugh . . .
But I’m at an age when a woman is expected to have certain things: a husband, perhaps a child or two, a home, and plenty of debt. I got the last to the tune of $32,000 in student loans and credit cards. No mortgage, just a thousand bucks rent to make each month on a crappy one-bedroom apartment on the Beach. I look at the row of photographs of us all, the personal trainers: me, Lester, Mona, and Jon Pallota, who opened this place. Jon looks tan, fit, with his wavy hair and easy smile, and how I’ll always remember him, but that was before his accident. Life can change so quickly: if you don’t grab the fucker it’ll slip by you.
— OH . . . OH . . . OH . . . Marge is petrified, her ass swinging like a semi-truck fishtailing back and forth across a three-lane highway.
— Nearly there, honey, and FIVE . . . and FOUR . . . and THREE . . . and TWO . . . and ONE, and the machine slides back to 4 mph, for the cool-down, and Marge is gripping the handles now, splattering the belt with sperm-thick sweat. — Well done, girl!
— Oh . . . oh my God . . .
I slap the red halt button. — Right, climb off and pick up that kettlebell again and gimme a two-handed swing for twenty reps!
