Gorilla Beach (2 page)

Chapter Forty-One: Up Shit Creek Without a Plunger

Chapter Forty-Two: Hindsight's a Bitch, Bitch

Chapter Forty-Three: Depunk'd

Chapter Forty-Four: Hands Full of Sudsy Wiener

Chapter Forty-Five: Venus Gets Whacked

Chapter Forty-Six: Doing It with the Lights On

Chapter Forty-Seven: The Setup

Chapter Forty-Eight: Sex on the Beach

Chapter Forty-Nine: Fuggedaboutit

Chapter Fifty: When Anchovies Attack

Chapter Fifty-One: Daddy Knows Best

Chapter Fifty-Two: The Smackdown

Chapter Fifty-Three: Heard the One About the Girl Who Came to Seaside in a Honda?

Chapter Fifty-Four: Run 'Til We Drop

 

Dedicated to Jionni

There are a lot of gorillas down the Shore, but you're my Number One Gorillah. You're my husband and I love you, Pewp!

Thanks as always to
my parents. Mom and Dad, I love you! You've always supported me and I'm so grateful. Book number THREE! Woo hoo!

My pets are my inspiration. Special shout-out to Rocky the cat who lost a leg this year, and can still jump on the bed. Go hard, Rocky!

A million thanks to Team Snooki: Scott Talarico, Danny Mackay, Aaron, Joey, Brad, Stacey Wechsler, and Scott Miller. You guys make it all happened and I'm so lucky to have you in my corner.

Everyone at Gallery has been incredible. Lauren McKenna, you're the best editor evah. Lisa Litwack, Erica Feldon, Jen Robinson, we're killing it!

My best friends, Steph, Ryder, and Jenni are always there for me. I love you!

I
my fans and tweedos. Keep being yourself and you'll rule the world, just like me.

Huge thanks again to Valerie Frankel, my hawt Jerzey girl contributor, for helping me turn my ideas into a funny, sexy, rockin' story.

Lastly, to everyone who loves going down the shore and having a blast as much as I do. This one is for us.

Giovanna “Gia” Spumanti stepped
out of the dressing room in a white Bangin' Bride costume. It consisted of a lace-up corset, a tulle micro-miniskirt, thigh-high stockings with a garter belt, and a veil that Gia flung back over her pouf. “I know brides are supposed to wear white,” she said. “But it'd be so much hotter in leopard.”

Gia and her cousin/best friend Isabella “Bella” Rizzoli had just arrived in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, from their off-season home in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Their first stop down the Shore? The Pleasure Chest, a sexcessories boutique.

Holding a bouquet of white plastic roses, Gia strutted the length of the store aisle between racks of bondagewear and a wall of stripper wigs. She did a dramatic pose, arching her back. Her barely holstered boobs popped out of the corset.

“Nip slip!” said Bella, laughing. “You look like a slutty virgin.”

“Ooops.” Tucking herself back in, Gia said, “I'm wearing this to my own wedding. Just to make sure all eyes are glued on me.”

“They would be if you wore a burlap sack,” said Bella. “We don't have a lot of time. Maria's bachelorette party is in an hour.”

As the official Bitches of Honor at Mary “Maria” Agatha Pugliani Stanzo Manzitta Crumbi's upcoming nuptials (she was calling the event 4x4, her July 4 fourth wedding) to Stanley Crumbi, Gia
and Bella should have hosted the bachelorette party themselves. But Maria thought it'd be a hassle to have the cousins organize the event from Brooklyn. Maria's new bestie, Donna Lupo, the wife of one of the groom's business associates, insisted on planning the party anyway. Knowing Maria, who gargled with tequila and had been known to grind a lamppost when drunk, the bachelorette party would rock no matter who hosted it.

The betrothed couple had a special place in Gia's heart. She considered Maria and Stanley her “down the Shore” parents. Maria had been her boss at Tantastic, the hottest tanning salon in Seaside Heights. Stanley was the cousins' Seaside landlord. The couple had already been married and divorced before. Thanks to Gia's matchmaking and guido makeover skills, she'd helped them get back together last summer.

Big Italian weddings were a blast and a half. Gia's excitement about the event was slightly tainted. She was in the middle of a sexual dry spell, and not happy about it. Her relationship with Frank Rossi, a Seaside Heights fireman, aka the Hose, iced over during the winter. The two broke up on New Year's Day, but the end had been coming for a while. The long-distance relationship was tough. With his schedule, it was hard for them to get together. She really disappointed him when she canceled on coming to Seaside for Christmas and went to stay with her estranged father, Joe, his wife, and their new baby in Philly instead. Georgina “Gina” Spumanti was a few months old. Gia wanted to make an impression on her half sister, as well as repair the splintered relationship with her dad. Frankie grumbled, but he said he understood. She should have stuck with her original plan. All week, Joe lavished attention on his new daughter, but ignored Gia. Before the divorce with Gia's mom five years ago, Gia and Joe were as tight as sausage casing. After the split, Gia moved to Brooklyn with her mom. Joe met and married Rhonda and moved to Philly. Gia hoped her visit would revive their former closeness, but it was useless. Joe seemed unreachable. Frankie offered
to come to Brooklyn for New Year's. They went to Times Square to see the ball drop and kissed at midnight. Their last kiss. No spark. No feeling. It was like kissing a store mannequin. Gia feared her emotions had gone numb after Philly. Frankie had had enough of being kept on a string. They ended it officially the next day. She hadn't seen, texted, or spoken to the kid since.

“Attention Pleasure Chest shoppers!” said Bella to get Gia's attention. “I lost you for a second there. Where were you?”

“Gorilla Island,” said Gia. “I was surrounded by a pack of juiceheads, and they were fighting over who got to bring me Jell-O shots and fried pickles.”

“If only such a place really existed.”

“We can dream.”

A shopgirl came over. “Need any help?”

“Does the Bangin' Bride costume come in leopard?” asked Gia.

The woman's mouth twitched. “It's white. As in
bride
?” She gave Gia the “one meatball short of a hoagie” look. Gia got that a lot.

After she walked away, Bella said, “She's a snob about selling stripper clothes in a sex store?”

“Forget her,” Gia muttered. She knew what was what, that she wasn't winning any prizes for her brains. Not everyone was born to put on a rubber apron and split atoms in a kitchen with a meat cleaver. Some people contributed to the world in a different—no less important—way. To bring fun and energy and … oh, screw it. Gia's mood was wrecked, flattened like a beach ball under a dump truck.

Two years of college had been enough. She wasn't a great student and didn't see the point of prolonging the struggle. Since she'd dropped out (due to a lack of funds and interest), Gia had bounced from job to job. The only one she'd been good at was working for Maria at Tantastic last July. When Gia returned to Brooklyn in August, she was full of confidence and pumped to
reboot her life. At night she lay awake, dreaming of managing her own salon, of being the bosslady.

Reality squashed the fantasy. Forget a manager position, Gia couldn't get any job, anywhere. “No openings,” they said at the salons she applied to. She'd spent the year ripping tickets and selling candy at the local movie theater. Her mom's boyfriend ran the place. Nice boss, good wage, the job still sapped her spirit. She hated spending so much time holed up in dark rooms that stank of fake butter. She craved the spotlight.

Never thought she'd ever hate the smell of popcorn.

“What's wrong now?” asked Bella.

“Nothing.” Gia's mood was like an old man's balls—swinging out of control. She didn't want to complain on their first day of summer vakay. She'd been looking forward to their trip to Seaside Heights—her “true” home—all year. Now that they were finally here, she needed an attitude adjustment. Drawing herself to her full height of five feet tall (plus four inches of platform espadrille and four inches of pouf), she said, “Brilliant idea. Let's go to the bachelorette party as Bangin' Brides!”

“Really?” asked Bella. “Do you think Maria would like it?”

“She'd freakin' love it!” said Gia, her enthusiasm growing. “Come on, Bells! Just picture it! We'll stomp into the party like slutty virgin-bride bookends. It'll be hilarious! Maria will piss herself laughing.”

“She won't be embarrassed?”

“Have you
met
Maria?” The bride never saw a plunging V-front, skintight, Lycra, camo-print jumpsuit she didn't crush on hard. Her acrylic nails were longer that her fingers. Her pouf defied the laws of gravity. “She doesn't know the meaning of the word
embarrass,
” said Gia. “Neither do I.”

“Sold,” said Bella, smiling, warming to the idea. She called to the snooty shopgirl, “Hello? Yeah, we need another Bangin' Bride costume.”

“What size?” asked the woman, smiling.

“A medium.” All shopgirls loved Bella. She was tall and athletic, with perky silicone half-melon boobies.

Gia was a small. Shapely, soft, and perfectly proportioned with a generous rack, she measured sixty inches of sexy. But, by any conventional standard, Gia didn't compare to Bella's sinewy, streamlined body that looked awesome in
anything
. Suddenly, Gia had second thoughts about the two cousins wearing the same costume.

Do not go there,
she thought. Whenever Gia had one of those shaky body-image flashes—the kind that went, “I wish I was taller … skinnier … had a tiny waist … longer legs …”—she immediately squashed it and replaced it with something positive, such as, “My tan is mad hawt … I heart my juicy badonk … My boobs are total boybait … ,” etc. Having had some eating issues in high school, Gia was careful to keep her thoughts positive. Turning the negativity around was her secret trick, and it worked.

The shopgirl brought Bella the costume on a hanger. “Should I put it in a bag?”

“I'll wear it out,” said Bella, and took it into the dressing room to change.

“We need a dozen penis pops, too. And a leather whip, and these pink, fur-lined handcuffs,” said Gia. “Do you gift wrap?”

“This is it,” said
Bella, pulling up to the curb at Boulevard and Sumner, only a block away from their favorite Seaside clubs, Karma and Bamboo. The sign out front read
THE COWBOY CLUB,
with a corny neon silhouette of a man in a ten-gallon hat, boots, and spurs. Bella cringed at the sight. “You sure about the address?”

“Yes,” said Gia defensively.

“Just checking.” Bella had a right to ask. For one thing, this club looked as if it'd beamed down from Oklahoma. For another, Gia wasn't exactly reliable about addresses, start times, or phone numbers. Granted, she didn't screw up every time, only 70 percent.

They got out of Bella's 1996 Honda. Bella closed the door carefully, afraid it might fall off if she slammed it. The Cowboy Club looked dead. Unlike every other place in Seaside, it had no line or bouncer checking IDs outside.

Gia noticed, too. “Nine on a Friday, and there's no one here?”

Bella shrugged. It was weird. She pushed the padded doors to get inside. They entered a cavernous main room. It was dark, except for spotlights aimed at giant posters of western scenes on the walls. Dry prairies, buffalo herds, and the Dallas football-team cheerleaders. Country music blared, loud. The girls cupped their hands over their ears to block the sound.

“Arrrgh!”
screamed Gia. “My ears are bleeding!”

The tune was awful. Some mopey hayseed whining about his truck or his dog or how his wife left him for a horse. Each twang struck Bella like a steel guitar to the skull.

For Maria's sake, they pushed onward. The interior didn't improve as they crept into the belly of the club. The bar was big, but understocked. At a glance, Bella counted only a few bottles of booze. What kind of club had only a few vodka options? And where was the bartender? Ceiling lights flickered across the dance floor in tune with the “music.” No dancers, though. The banquettes against one wall were empty, too. Bella felt self-conscious about her Bangin' Bride costume now that not a soul was around to appreciate it. She pulled down her miniskirt, tugged the corset up, and followed Gia, who could move surprisingly fast in four-inch heels.

“It's like a ghost club,” said Gia.

“This can't be the right place.”

Toward the back, they noticed movement. A peal of laughter rang over the music. They noticed a small gathering of … bears? No, women in fur coats. A tight circle of them. Bella could make out their dark silhouettes.