THE world is a better place when I wake up because at long last, you got into a fight with Peach. She told you she thinks your shrink is no good and you stood up for your shrink and for yourself. I’m proud of you. And the best part is, now that you’ve got your head on straight again, you are the you I know and love. You wrote to me in the middle of the night:
Okay, this is way too many words and it’s way too late but do you ever just feel like telling everyone in your life to fuck off? I don’t want to be that girl bitching about her friends but right now, may I just say . . . my friends are bitches! I try so hard to get them together, you see that, and they all bicker and make my life impossible and Chana won’t go somewhere if Peach is gonna be there and Peach won’t go somewhere if they have happy hour specials because she thinks drink specials bring out the riffraff. The point is . . . And now it’s five A.M. and I haven’t finished my piece and I have to be workshopped today and just plain ugh, you know? And there’s this Blythe girl, this monster, she hates me, and she’s gonna attack this cowboy story and okay. I am so babbling. But basically, the sun is coming up and I am thinking of you. See you soon, assuming you don’t decide I’m a crazy person after reading this e-mail? Night.
And just like that, you’ve made my day. I wrote back to you short and sweet:
Dear Beck, I’m buying you six drinks tonight. Joe
You loved it and I got a smiley face and we have a date tonight—yes!—and I’ve made all the right moves—yes!—and I put the typewriter I took to bed back in its place and my hair looks good today—yes!—and Curtis is working tonight so I don’t even have to close up—yes!—and Peach is out of the picture—yes!—and I cum so fucking hard for you, Beck. Who knows? Maybe tonight, it happens. I go all the way to your neighborhood and buy two cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. They smell fucking good and I want them but I am a good boy, Beck, and I have ideas about what to do with all this icing.
BUT then . . . then. We’re supposed to meet at nine and you call me at 9:04 and you are breathless, on your way uptown. It’s a long story, you say, but Peach is alone at home, and she thinks someone broke in because the furniture on the terrace has been moved around. You sound like her in this state of panic. “Joe, listen to me.” You persist. “Whoever broke in shifted her chaise.”
I interrupt. “But they didn’t steal the chair?”
“No,” you say and you sigh. “But someone broke in, Joe. She’s scared.”
“Of course,” I say and you go on but it’s not as dramatic as you’re making it out to be. I didn’t break in and I didn’t move her chaise. I used a service key I found at the party. And I didn’t steal anything. I’m more like Santa Claus because I brought an acrylic jacket for that Bellow, so the bitch should say thank you.
“Peach says sorry,” you swear to me. “She feels horrible but she is just terrified of having a stalker again.”
I won’t even dignify the word again and I can only imagine the horror stories Peach has spun in years past.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say and I sound like I mean it and I tell you to be safe and you like me. I forgive you. I do. You’re a loyal friend and chaise is not your word, it belongs to Peach. I eat both cupcakes and the icing is stale and it would taste so much better if I were licking it off your tits. You tweet a photo a little while later. There are mini cupcakes much smaller than my big Magnolia cupcakes on those bright plates and a giant bottle of bullshit candy cane vodka. You write:
#Girlsnightin
There’s no way you could know about my cupcakes. But sometimes, I wonder.
18
YOU do make it up to me the next day. But it’s not over six drinks and two cupcakes in a dark bar. Instead, we meet for lunch and you tell me all about Peach’s depression, her loneliness. We’re in sexless Sarabeth’s drinking water (also nonsexual), and sampling artisanal jams (supremely nonsexual), and all you want to talk about is Peach (fully asexual). You feel responsible for her because she doesn’t have any family around and we’re only supposed to go to places like this after we have sex and I can’t figure the logic in any of it.
“She’s perpetually an orphan,” you tell me.
“But, you don’t have family around either, Beck,” I try.
“I know,” you say and you pick at a popover. “But I left home. It’s natural. Her family left her. It’s sick. They literally all moved to San Francisco the second we graduated.”
I’m not surprised and you move on to bitching about Blythe and I listen and I nod and I listen and I nod and I eat a fucking popover and you go in the bathroom and e-mail Peach: I just have to say, Joe is an insanely good listener. Don’t lose faith in people!
Peach writes back a lot, suspiciously fast:
That’s so sweet! Don’t be hard on him, Beck. He sounds like he has potential. I was telling my yoga teacher about your Joseph and she compared him to Good Will Hunting. Is he any good at math? Anyway have fun at lunch! I hope you took him somewhere nice! You are a doll for checking in and please rest assured, my faith in humanity is completely restored. I love being single. We are too young to be tied down, for sure. Have fun with Joseph! I bet he’s learning so much from you and that’s awesome!
You come back to the table and ask me if I liked math when I was little. I tell you no and when I ask you why you are asking me about math, you shake it off and go back to bitching about Blythe. We get more coffee and I’d like this all so much more if it was happening after we sealed the deal. I can’t kiss you good-bye in the middle of the day and what if this is your way of putting me in the friend zone? Is there a friend zone or is that a myth? Does the smart chick end up with Good Will Hunting? I can’t remember.
When we part ways outside of Sarabeth’s, we hug like cousins and you’re not as close to me as you were the night we almost built the bed together.
“This was fun,” you say.
“What are you up to later?”
“Girls’ night.”
“But you had cupcakes with the girls last night.”
You caught me and you’re cute. “Joe, have you been stalking my Twitter?”
“A little,” I say and maybe I could kiss you. It is kind of cloudy, like fall in Hannah.
“Well, the thing is, last night was Peach night and tonight is Lynn and Chana night.”
“Maybe tomorrow night?” I say and begging you is the opposite of kissing you. I should have let it go.
“I really have to write tomorrow night, but we could get together earlier. Lunch?”
I agree to lunch and you’re gone and it’s a long walk to the shop and I’d like to hate Tucker Max and Maxim magazine and Tom Cruise’s character in Magnolia and think that women aren’t as simple as they’d all have you believe. But right now, I almost have to steal a move from the Frank T.J. Mackey playbook Seduce and Destroy because I am screwing up. Not fucking you that night I built your bed, not, at the very least, trying to fuck you was clearly a mistake. I am screwing this up, and it’s the greatest mistake of my adult life. I didn’t even kiss you after I listened to you overanalyze your life for five hours. I suck, royally, and you might think I’m putting you in the friend zone.