Charmed Thirds (12 page)

“You
what?
That’s
hilarious!”
Jane cackled.

I tried explaining that it wasn’t funny at all, that it was degrading and weird and uncomfortable and gave me an icky
uh-oh
feeling like you get warned about in antimolestation videos in elementary school.

“You walked out on them?” Jane slapped both hands on the dashboard in shock. “But you love that magazine! How can you suddenly decide that it’s not you! It’s funny! Ha-ha! Funny! Jokes! Remember jokes? Remember laughter?”

“Har-dee-har-har,” I replied.

She popped in a CD mix that she had made for me. An Eminem/ Depeche Mode mash-up burst from the speakers:
It’d be so empty without me . . . I just can’t get enough . . . I just can’t get enough . . .

“So! When do I get to meet the famous Marcus Flutie?”

“Tomorrow.” I smiled at the thought of it. “He’s giving us ‘girl time’ tonight.”

I’ve been looking forward to introducing Marcus to Jane, for educational purposes. Jane is a very together chick, and there is only one thing about her that I do not get at all: her boyfriend. First of all, he’s got a chin-warmer; you know, all bushy below the mouth but completely naked above it, a peculiar facial-hair fashion that has never worked on
anyone
in
any
period of history. And he’ll wear the same thrift-shop corduroy blazer every single day until the elbows rub down to a greasy sheen. He’s undertall and underweight and would need to gain about fifty pounds before he’d look healthy enough to achieve heroin chic. Finally, his face always has that flared-nostril, openmouthed look of a person about to yawn.

But I’d forgive his physical flaws if his personality wasn’t so beyond redemption. He’s so godawful that I hate saying his name because it provokes a visceral puke-in-my-mouth repugnance, which is sad because it’s the same as a certain cinematic hottie who has provided me with many a sexual daydream. Which means Jake
(bleeech!)
has all but ruined
Sixteen Candles
for me.

Need proof? There’s the time he heaved a heavy sigh and hesitated for a few moments before joining us in the cab taking us to Roseland to see the Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, because “New York City hasn’t made a significant contribution to the music scene since The Ramones.” At the club, he slouched in the corner, arms crossed and unsmiling, until Jane took him out of his (our) misery midway through the set.

Or the time a bunch of us went for Italian at Carmine’s and Jake
(bleeech!)
got so bored with our conversation about all the antiwar protests on campus that he literally rested his head on the table like he was taking a nap. He only snapped to attention when Jane turned the conversation toward a topic he likes: himself.

Or the time I introduced myself.

I said, “Hey Jake!
[Bleeech!]
I’m so happy to finally meet you.”

And he said, “Uh-huh.” Then he turned his back on me, walked into Jane’s room, and slammed the door in my stunned face.

As a self-appointed “Poli-Poetics” major at Brown, he wasn’t around to foul us with his presence too often. But on these three occasions that I had the misfortune of sharing air with him, I couldn’t understand why Jane would bother being
friends
with someone like him, let alone have sex with him. Jane is the reason for the existence of self-help books like
Why Smart Chicks Pick Total Dicks.
How she can be so observant when it comes to other people, yet totally blind to her own errors is beyond me. She’s always making excuses for his obvious flaws—He’s really shy! He’s not comfortable around new people! He’s different when it’s just the two of us!—all of which sound exactly like the types of things people say about puppies and babies when they misbehave. If Jake
(bleeech!)
made a steamer on the rug right in front of me, Jane would sheepishly shrug her shoulders and say, “He isn’t potty trained yet!”

I’m Jane’s closest friend at Columbia, but I know that if it came down to choosing him or me, I’d come out the loser. Which is why all I can do is smile as tightly as I possibly can to keep the words from screaming out of my mouth:
WHAT
ARE
YOU
DOING
WITH
THIS
ASSHOLE!!!

So I’m excited to introduce Jane to Marcus.

“I can’t wait,” Jane said.

Neither could I.

the tenth

With Jane here for only three days, I wanted to make them memorable. She’d already been to Sleazeside during the
MTV
Beach House summer, so the boardwalk didn’t hold the cheesy allure that it usually does for out-of-town guests. I wasn’t sure how we’d pass the time, until Jane ripped a page out of our newspaper at breakfast.

“We
must
do this!” she said. “Won’t it be a
riot?”

I read the torn piece of paper.

“The Glam Slam Metal Jam?” I asked, not really knowing if she was serious or not.

“Poison! Warrant! Quiet Riot! Six hours of glam rock glory!”

For the record, I’m into the eighties, but I’ve never been a fan of the hair bands. But I didn’t want to be a buzzkill.

“We’ve only got eight hours to get our outfits together!” she said.

“Outfits?”

“The only way to get in the glamming, slamming, metal jamming spirit is to dress the part, right?”

“Sure!” I replied, trying to match Jane’s enthusiasm

For inspiration, we consulted Bethany’s high school yearbooks, as she very conveniently started high school in 1987. We marveled at the foot-high bangs and plastic earrings and saw that we had our work cut out for us. Because my sister’s look back then was more Debbie Gibson than Lita Ford, we couldn’t piece together an entire outfit from oldies-but-goodies from my parents’ attic. However, there was one notable, notorious exception, one that my mother was all too thrilled to mention.

“You can finally wear The Jacket!” Mom exclaimed, pulling out a plastic dry-cleaning bag.

The Jacket, which cost $150 in 1987, was the most expensive piece of clothing my mother had ever bought Bethany. Made out of white leather, The Jacket had huge padded shoulders and long fringe running across the chest and back. When Bethany begged for it in ninth grade, she was inspired by Sloane Peterson, Ferris Bueller’s very cool girlfriend, who wore a similar jacket in the movie. But not two months after she got The Jacket, NJ’s own
JBJ
(that’s Jon Bon Jovi to those of you in the other forty-nine states) wore a black leather version in his seminal “Livin’ on a Prayer” video. Instantly, her beloved jacket was sought after by Pineville High School’s headbangingest students, and she just couldn’t wear it anymore. My mother has kept it in the closet ever since, as a reminder of what a spoiled brat Bethany was back then.

“The Jacket that was going to make your sister happy for the rest of her life!” my mother said, still annoyed sixteen years later.

“Well, everything we know about happiness is wrong,” I said.

“You can’t really believe that,” Jane said. “It’s too depressing.”

“It’s true,” Marcus said, entering the room and the conversation.

“Marcus!” shouted Jane as she charged toward him. “I feel like I know you already!”

“His reputation precedes him,” my mother muttered, twisting her lips into more of a sneer than a smile as she retreated from my bedroom.

“So Marcus,” Jane said, grabbing two fistfuls of white cotton T-shirt above each of his shoulders. “Guess where you’re going tonight!”

“I’m going somewhere?” Marcus asked, sliding out of Jane’s grip.

“The Glam Slam Metal Jam,” I said, showing him the newspaper clipping.

“Really?” Marcus asked, smoothing over the rumpled fabric at his neck. “You hate hair bands. And you hate nostalgia for hair bands even more.”

And before I could answer, the phone rang. My mother yelled from downstairs.

“Jessie! It’s Bridget!”

“And you say you aren’t popular,” Jane teased. “Tell Bridget she
must
come with us!”

“Hey, Bridget; I was going to call you,” I said instead.

“That’s, like, your motto for the summer,” she said, not without reason.

“I know, I know,” I said. “But I’m going to make it up to you bigtime. How’d you two like to join me, Marcus, and my friend Jane from school at the Glam Slam Metal Jam tonight?”

Pepe got on the line. “What’s this about?” I explained how it was a hairbandapalooza, and how they’d have to show up in all their glam rock glory or not at all.

“We’re in,” Pepe said. “I’ll drive.”

“Cool,” I said.

“Au revoir,
Jess.”

“Au revoir,”
I replied with a pang of sadness, the way I always do whenever Pepe and I speak French now, which is rare and never goes beyond
au revoir
or
bonjour
or the occasional
oui.
Long gone are our private conversations in a language that no one else understood. Such intimacies are reserved for Bridget alone, as they should be. He got over his foolish, fervent crush on me and found someone so much better. And I’m happy for them. Really.

“So Bridget goes to school in California, like you,” Jane said to Marcus. “And her boyfriend is going to school in New York, like you,” she said to me.

“Yes,” Marcus and I said simultaneously.

“Interesting,” Jane said cryptically, shifting her attention back to Marcus.

“It’s not interesting as much as it’s inconvenient,” I said.

“It is how it is,” Marcus said.

“So!” Jane gushed, clasping Marcus’s hand. “You
must
come shopping with us! Unless you’ve got some choice acid wash hiding in your closet.”

“I’m gonna take a pass,” he said, looking first at Jane and then at me.

I tried my best to mask my disappointment. I didn’t want Jane to see that I thought our night would be ruined because of my boyfriend’s absence.

“Why?” I asked, calmly. “Won’t it be fun to hang out with Bridget and Percy?”

“I’m just not in the mood to play dress up.”

And then we just kind of stood there for a few moments.

“Well, we
must
go if we want to find the right outfits at the consignment shop.”

If I hadn’t memorized every millimeter of Marcus’s face, I wouldn’t have noticed the almost imperceptible wrinkling of his brow at the word
must.
He muttered his good-byes and I followed him out the door.

“Hey,” I said, reaching for his fingertips before he stuffed them in his pockets. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” he said. “I just don’t feel like going, that’s all.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I get the sense that something else is going on here.”

“You hate hair bands.”

“So?”

“This reminds me of one of your assignments for
True,”
he said. “Proving how
game
you are.”

“This is different,” I said defensively. “Because Jane is my friend.”

Marcus looked like he was about to say something, then stopped himself.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

Of course it wasn’t nothing. If I were to guess, whatever he was about to say had something to do with Jane’s use of pushy imperatives.

Marcus thrust his hands inside his loose pockets. “Go have fun with your friend. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

It wasn’t a fight. Not even close. But I felt conflicted because Marcus was obviously disappointed in me. But who was he to say why I was going?

As I watched Marcus drive away, Jane came from behind and swung her arm through mine.

“C’mon,” she said. “We
must
get skanked.”

With a budget of $25, Jane and I set out for Good Stuff Cheap, a dumpy strip-mall consignment shop that would never be confused for a vintage shop in the Village.

“This place is so crappy!” Jane exclaimed once we were inside, not caring who heard.

“It
is
Pineville,” I said, covering my embarrassment with sarcasm.

“It’s perfect. Just look at these!” Jane quickly slipped on a pair of white spandex bike shorts. They were so tight that I could see her unborn children.

“Perfect,” I said, finally sort of meaning it.

I really started to cheer up when I unearthed peg-legged, acid-washed Sassoon jeans with bows at the ankles. The jeans were an ideal match for the screaming pink push-up bikini top, over which I wore a perforated half-shirt.

“What do you think?” I asked, modeling my outfit for Jane.

“Brett Michaels would definitely have sex with you,” she said appraisingly. “And he wouldn’t even bother to learn your name.”

At this point we were enjoying ourselves so much that I’d almost forgotten about what had happened with Marcus back at the house.

Almost.

We raced home and barely had enough time to tease our hair, not an easy feat with my current coif. (
DAMN
MY
HAIR
.) We smothered our eyes with black eyeliner, and slapped on red, airbrushed press-on talons. We were skankified.

“Your friends better outdo themselves,” Jane warned.

“Oh, don’t worry. They’ve both got a flair for the theatrical.” I went on to explain that Bridget is an aspiring actress, and that Pepe once dressed up in an authentic rhinestone jumpsuit for his talent show- winning performance as The Black Elvis.

I was right. They didn’t disappoint. Bridget still managed to look gorgeous, even with roof-raising bangs, red-rinsed jean shorts, and an oversized shoulder-padded T-shirt. But Pepe outdid us all. He was shirtless under a pleather vest covered in decorative metal grommets, and he had squeezed into jeans so tight that one wine cooler too many and they would surely explode off his body with a force that would rival the onstage pyrotechnics. The final, perfect touch? A platinum, curly wig in the Dee Snider tradition.

“It’s an honor to meet you both!” Jane whooped.

“Likewise,” Pepe said, admiring her outfit. “The Glam Slam Metal Jam is probably the only place on earth where white spandex bike shorts will be the norm.”

Pepe, like the rest of us, assumed that the majority of concertgoers would also show up in heavy metal drag.