Turds in the Punch Bowl (A Story of No Ordinary Friendship) (11 page)

So there we were, Joe and Snowflake, swaying back and forth, holding hands, wearing short shorts and tennis accessories. We glowed in the blacklight. I have never felt so white, or dayglow peach, as one might call it. In fact, with the lights down low, it was difficult to tell how many others were on the floor with us. We kept bumping into people. The blacklight only illuminated the white skates and white teeth of our fellow couples. And then there was us; two ghost-like apparitions scooting forward, singing R&B and trying to be suave among all the teeth and skates. It felt like a twisted version of Alice and Wonderland where the Cheshire cat was multiplying by the minute.

We had our slow skate and quickly removed ourselves from the floor. When the lights came back up, there was no shortage of jokes thrown our way; anything from “is that Donny and Marie?” to “hey Jane Fonda, let’s get physical!” Suddenly, I didn’t feel bad; they couldn’t keep their Caucasians straight either.

We took off our skates and took a few minutes to acclimate to our heels and soles again. It’s the weirdest feeling transitioning from wheels to toes. I’ve never understood that. Anyway, we slipped out the front door, but not without more comments from the chocolate covered peanut gallery. “White night is Wednesday,” someone informed us.

“Thanks Homie,” I called back with a Southern twang, flipping my ponytail and accidentally eating my hair.

“Just get in the car,” Joe scolded me. “You’re going to get us shot.”

In all honesty, it was a pretty rough crowd and we were not in a safe part of town. We were far removed from the swank hotels and casinos on a lone highway lined with Mexican cantinas, auto body shops and a roller rink. It wasn’t the smartest thing to assume I was in good company. Joe stuffed me in the passenger seat and we drove away.

“Note to self, no roller skating on weekends,” Joe mumbled.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “I had a blast! You didn’t have a good time?”

“It was fun,” he admitted, “but I don’t particularly like glowing.” We both laughed and settled in for the long ride back home.

“Speaking of glowing,” I added, “I’m not really tired. Are you sure you want to go home? Or maybe you want to stop by Striptease first to show off your blacklight tattoos again?” I knew Joe couldn’t say no to a strip club and I thought it only right to boost his confidence back up after feeling especially pale and small-weinered.

“What’s tonight,” he asked rhetorically, “Friday?”

“Yep.”

“You know who’s working there tonight, don’t you?”

“Who?” I asked, copying the overly excited expression on his face.

“Jules!”

Joe’s ex-wife had taken up dancing when they first moved to Las Vegas. She wasn’t any good at it, and usually ended up owing the house more money than she made. She just moseyed around trying to make friends. Eventually, she made one in the bouncer and ended up leaving Joe for him. Joe’s relationship with his ex wasn’t much different than my relationship with Steve. We both got a kick out of witnessing where they were now, what they were doing and who they were screwing. It was a guilty pleasure, I presume, to laugh at their expense.

“You in?” I wanted to make sure.

“Are you kidding? I will be front and center for her show on the main stage. She hates that!”

We parked under a streetlight to lessen our chances of having our car broken into and went inside. Striptease was in an industrial park and only employed the skanks who were too ugly to work the more pristine clubs near The Strip. After exchanging our bills for a handful of ones, we made our way to the center stage. Joe’s arms were glowing like the felt painting of Elvis I had in my basement when I used to smoke pot. We immediately knew which girls smoked the reefer because they swarmed around us and doted all over Joe.

“Oh my Gosh, your arms are so cool,” they would say. “Do you want a dance?”

We politely declined and waited patiently for Jules to be up.

“And now, put your hands together and your dollars in your mouths for Diamond,” the DJ announced.

Jules was definitely no diamond in the rough. Unless you want to say she was certainly more flawed than a VS1 and beyond Q on the color scale. As far as her shape, she was in shape, if round is a shape that is sought after. Except for her ass. It was shaped like a refrigerator. She had a hooked nose and two moles on her chin that she frequently had “shaved”. I have no idea what that means, so don’t ask. If she was any rounder, she may have resembled one of the women on Witches of Eastwick. She had tiny ankles and I had a hard time figuring out how they supported her weight. She wasn’t a particularly large girl, just proportioned irregularly; a flawed Diamond.

Diamond had only taken one step on stage before she recognized her ex-husband waiting for her. I think it threw her focus off. Despite stripping for two years already, she was still a novice on the pole and apparently had to concentrate real hard to work it. To add, it seemed it took ample focus to also walk in her platform heels, because upon her third step on stage, she ate it. There went Diamond, tumbling down in what sounded like a bone-shattering fall. Her small ankles didn’t hold up well after all. The crowd cheered and she stumbled to her knees before gaining her balance again. Poor Jules, she was so embarrassed.

“Good one!” Joe called out above the claps.

“Joe,” I kicked him under the stage, “be nice.” I only half meant it. I knew she was a bitch, but the sight of her ex-husband and ex best friend sitting together at the front of her stage while she was required to disrobe and try to be sexy probably wasn’t the easiest task, even without his heckling.

“Nice? Are you fucking kidding me?” Joe said loudly. “Nice is having your wife leave you for the bouncer at her strip club so you can finally have your freedom! Now that’s nice!” He sounded like he’d been drinking, but I knew from our earlier experience that lemonade was the only liquid in his system. I realized I would never win this conversation so I let him continue.

“Diamond, hey Diamond!” Joe called. “I’ve got your dollars!”

Jules ignored him for a moment, but then crawled over. She must have needed the money to pay her house fees.

“Hi, Joe,” she greeted him, dreadfully.

“Shut up and dance!” he hollered, stuffing a few bills in her bikini bottom.

She left in a hurry and made her way to the pole. It didn’t take long for her concentration to elude her again. She climbed all the way to the top of the pole, swung upside down and began her decent, which I assume was supposed to end with some sort of sexy splits. Instead, she lost her grip about half way down and landed on her head and shoulders with a louder thud than her first fall. This time I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh my God!” I covered my smile with one hand and pointed with the other.

“Oh shit!” Joe laughed, followed by similar comments from the crowd.

It took me awhile to compose myself and wipe the tears from my eyes. Part of me felt sorry for her, but the other half just wondered how the hell Joe ever fucked her. Hell, he even married her! I hoped she had some redeeming qualities that I still, even after six years of knowing her, had somehow missed. Joe couldn’t stop laughing either.

By the time I could sit up straight again after being doubled over for ten minutes, Diamond was gone and Joe’s lap was full. He was telling all the other strippers how Diamond was once his wife and they were all pitying him in the most delightful way. It was then that I knew somewhere deep inside Joe had some swagger. It didn’t take a night out roller skating with Cheshire cats to rebuild his confidence and get him back in the game. All it took was watching his ex-wife make a mess of herself in public to realize he wasn’t such a mess after all. For the second time that night Joe was glowing, and this time it got him laid.

Back when Myspace was cool, which seems like eons ago in the ever-advancing social media market, Joe and I were a pretty hot commodity (at least we’d like to think so). Joe surfed the net daily for potential mates and I scribbled a lot of blogs about Joe to help reel in the ladies for him. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t. Like the time he hooked up with one of my fans named Courtney. She was a portly girl whose IQ teetered on zero. We once evicted her from a house party for being stupid. She was cute in a roly-poly sort of way, but boy did she have a mouth on her. She was the loudest individual I have ever encountered. She was like a potato bug with a bullhorn. Her mouth was so big she won our annual Easter morning Peeps-eating contest by four. A feat never matched or beaten by any other human being.

Joe and Courtney dated for a few months. I am pretty sure her mouth came in handy as a dispenser for things other than marshmallow rabbits and chickens, and that’s what helped extend her stay. He also kept her around because she let him shove her face in the pillow with the back of his foot during sex. I was always morbidly amused by his description of this particular maneuver, but never asked too many questions for fear of wanting to try it one day. Just not with him. In the end, it was Courtney’s innate ability to never shut up that eventually landed her a kick in the pants and a parting gift. (I believe he gave her a piece of duct tape, right on her kisser.)

After the breakup, Joe encountered another long dry spell. I first thought this spell was brought on due to Courtney’s posts on a Don’t Date Him site, but I later realized Joe had just stepped in desperation again. This wasn’t your average dry spell either; it was also a lonely spell. And when Joe feels lonely, he does what any other red-blooded American male would do. He joins
every
dating site he can.

Joe was registered on Match.com, PlentyofFish, eHarmony, and SexwithMidgets. You name it, he was on it. He met tons of girls online, but never in person. There was always an excuse that inevitably led to the cancellation of any planned date. I felt sorry for Joe. He couldn’t seem to catch a break. That was until one day when he struck up a conversation with a beautiful girl on Myspace named Christine.

“Monkey!” he called to me from the office. “I got one!”

“One what?” I yelled back, running up the stairs thinking there was an emergency. I hoped he had caught one of the little lizards that occasionally scurried into our house.

“Woo-hoo-woo!” he whooped in falsetto as he ran into the hall, jumped up and clicked his heels together like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz when he first set out to find himself a brain. “I got a message from Christine!”

Joe acted this way whenever a girl emailed him. It was this over-reaction to the smallest of gestures that first led me to believe that he had very low standards. Well, post-Jules, at least. Joe was beaming. I hadn’t seen him smile like that in months. It must’ve been a good message. “So what did she say?” I inquired.

“She said hi!” he was so ecstatic that he failed to realize this was not news; of any sort.

“
Hi
?” I repeated. “She said hi.” I looked at him inquisitively. “Anything else?”

“Not yet!” he boasted, turning around to lead me into the office so he could show me the evidence. “See. She messaged me!” There it was in black and white, plain as day. The screen said 'hi'. I asked Joe to show me her photos so that I could better gauge his enthusiasm.

Christine was a super cute girl with long, dirty blonde hair and eyes like Cleopatra. Though she was Caucasian, she was extremely exotic. She had a rockin’ body and an intoxicating smile. I immediately wondered what the hell she wanted with Joe; apparently from her message, to strike up a conversation. And so they did. But not until after Joe wasted half the day asking me what he should write back.

“What do I say, Monkey?” he asked. “I have no idea what I’m supposed to write back.”

“How about ‘Hello, nice to meet you’ or ‘Hey’ or just say ‘Hi’ back to her with a smiley face? Girls love smiley faces.”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to come off as too excited or desperate. Shit, I’m all flustered, Jen! I don’t know what to say!”

I counseled Joe on his dramatic nervousness and helped him calm down after an hour or so. In the meantime, her message just sat on his screen awaiting a response. By the time he got up the nerve to approach his computer and reply, she was no longer logged in.

“Oh good,” Joe exclaimed. “She’s not on.”

“Why is that good?” I asked, completely confused.

“Because that gives me time. Then I don’t feel pressured to respond right away.”

I wondered if he even knew what a jackass he sounded like when that statement left his mouth. “Do you have any idea how stupid you sound right now?”

“Stupid’s better than desperate!” he reminded me, and he was right. A quick response may have been too much coming from him. When forced to think on his feet in front of a cute girl (if he can make it past the light-headedness and fear of passing out because he forgets to breathe), his tactlessness never fails to rear its ugly head and leave him wondering why everyone has slowly dispersed from our company.

I excused myself to go eat dinner and by the time I returned he had composed a brilliant email to Christine. It said, “Hi cutie.”

* * * * *

Two months and twelve hundred emails later, Joe was in love. It was official. He was having a full blown online relationship. He would talk to Christine through Myspace eight to ten hours a day. It was like a full-time job, and I was lucky if I could get him to break away for lunch. I was starting to call Sierra Gold our
old
stomping ground. I had to do something about this, and fast.

“Why don’t you call her?” I asked one day while he was sitting at his computer waiting twenty minutes for her to respond to his email.

“Because I don’t have her number,” was his answer.

“Maybe you should ask her for it.”

Joe seemed puzzled by this request. I began to wonder if he had ever asked a girl for her number before, but then recalled a night that he got smacked when his approach went terribly awry (something to do with asking if her phone number started with the same amount of piercings in his penis). “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said with a smile. Of course he hadn’t, that’s why he didn’t have her number.