“You should measure now, that brace has to be making you look taller,” I said, smiling uncontrollably as I pictured David and my dad standing back to back for an official measurement.
David thought about that for a second, then said, “Let’s go over your case list.”
I never thought I’d be so happy to talk about subrogation.
After I left David’s office, I told my co-worker Kimberly about David’s insane height comparison to my father. She told me that when she was in his office hearing the story about his amazing strength and recovery from neck surgery, David had compared himself to Warren Sapp, once a multiple all-pro defensive tackle for the Bucs and retired for several years, but David wasn’t exactly up to date in the realm of sports. Apparently, “pound for pound” David was stronger than that “fat ass” Sapp. What the hell else had David’s mother done to him to make him so delusional? Dropping him as an infant could not have done all of the damage.
Later in the day, I met my dad for lunch. His office is a few miles away from mine, so we meet once a week. Dad picked up sandwiches and salads and met me at my house to eat them. We sat on the back deck, which was started by Jason during his last summer vacation. Jason is big on starting projects, but not finishing them. He built me a deck that fit one chair on it, then quit. Fortunately, Danny finished the deck and accepted payment in the form of a steady supply of cold beer.
The weather was a little hot, even in the shade, but it was nice to sit outside. Dad was finishing up a Tootsie Pop when I arrived.
I said, “Let me guess, cherry.”
Ten years ago, Tootsie Pops began to celebrate Valentine’s Day by selling bags of special Valentine’s Tootsie Pops, all of which were cherry flavored. This has drastically improved the quality of my father’s life. He calculates that there is an average of fourteen Tootsie Pops per bag. Ideally, he likes to have two per day. Therefore, he buys fifty-two bags of cherry Tootsie Pops every February and squirrels them away in the house, eating a bag a week. It is not uncommon to find him in the big corner office of his CPA firm eating cherry Tootsie Pops like a five-year-old while planning the financial future of large corporations.
“It is cherry as a matter of fact. How are you, Jenna?”
“Doing good. How tall are you?”
“Six-two.”
“David said you’re five-nine and that he benches eighty more pounds than you, I think you should beat him up.”
“Excuse me?” Dad said.
“You going to beat him up?” I asked.
“I’ll probably let it slide.”
I give my dad a lot of credit for developing my personality, which may or may not be a good thing. Obviously, there’s the genetics; but mostly he tormented me into having a sense of humor. Looking back, I can fully appreciate how much fun this must have been for my dad, but at the time I cried myself to sleep.
As a kid, I did not understand that the wailing of the fire alarm did not necessarily mean there was an actual fire. My dad realized this when Mom baked grouper with the oven door ajar. As soon as the smoke alarm went off, I ran out of the house. After this discovery, the fire alarm game became dad’s favorite party trick. Whenever my parents had company, he showed off his little daughter’s intellect by lighting a match next to the fire alarm and laughing his ass off as I ran out of the house screaming. When I finally came back into the house, he said he had to fight the fire all by himself and didn’t appreciate me leaving the rest of the family to burn to death. The next time he did this, I tried to convince him to leave with me but he wouldn’t do it, he had to stay and protect the family. I thought about helping out, but ultimately, I ran out of the house leaving them to die a fiery death without me. The guilt kept me up nights.
At my first grade birthday party, dad held my cake up to the fire alarm and all of my friends made fun of me when I ran out of the house screaming. My birthday parties were always a time for dad to humiliate me. In second grade I had a sleep-over party with fourteen friends. When we finally went to sleep, Dad played my mom’s Halloween audio cassette of wolves howling and “ghost” noises. Once we were all awake and scared shitless, he and John jumped out from behind the couch dressed up like ghosts, and screamed. My mom really appreciated all of the piss and shit stains on her carpet courtesy of my terrified friends.
The third grade party wasn’t much better. Dad told me to sniff the flower on my cake. I had seen this trick before and wisely declined. In response, Dad told me I was a smart girl, then lifted the cake to my face and smashed it. It was an ice cream cake and gave me an externally induced ice cream headache which I found surprising, even as I began crying. I kept crying during the thirty-minute shower that I had to take during my birthday party in order to get the icing out of my hair. From fourth grade on I abstained from birthday parties in the presence of Michael Rosen.
My pregnancy plan was surely an extension of my dad’s old pranks. Granted, his pranks were just jokes, whereas mine served my self-interest. I thought about telling Dad about the invented pregnancy. Even though he hated competitive cycling, he should understand my obsession with competition because I inherited it directly from him.
He played competitive sports every spare minute of the day from the time he was born until he entered his mid-forties, at which time he still exercised religiously, but his competitive nature was forced to find other outlets. For instance, when Dad got contact lenses for the first time at the age of fifty, he spent an hour perfecting his technique, then asked me to time his performance. His latest competition is as a highly skilled omelet flipper. Each Sunday morning, after my dad’s bike ride, swim and trip to the gym, he makes omelets while my mom reads the paper. Dad lets her read in peace for a time, then calls her name frantically, at which time she must look up from her article and applaud the velocity and precision of “the flip.”
If anyone would understand the urge to get the fuck out of an office and enjoy the outdoors six hours a day racing strangers all over the country, it was dear old dad. In the end, I decided not to tell him because there was a good chance that, in addition to understanding, he would become a raving lunatic and disown me.
* * *
By the end of November, Paul and I had been dating nearly a month. A record for me I had never even come close to approaching. I wasn’t sure what base we were on, but it wasn’t home. I wasn’t even remotely into him anymore, but I was determined to make it work because I hadn’t found anything wrong with him, and I really needed to date someone longer than a month and get laid, because that streak was extending beyond the two year mark. Accomplishing these two goals before my thirtieth birthday would go a long way toward helping me feel like a normal woman. If ugly people, psychopaths and even Sarah Smith, the wonder paralegal, could handle that, surely I could.
On a Thursday night, I invited Paul over to cook for me. I wanted it to be romantic, but I don’t cook, so this seemed the best option. Paul brought ingredients to make his family’s recipe for Cincinnati Chili. I was prepared for the evening. I looked great, had clean bed sheets and plenty of empty peanut butter jars. In essence, empty peanut butter jars are my sex toys because my dog licks the peanut butter remnants while I have sex. Without them, or something equally yummy and time consuming, Sonny tends to howl and try to eat his way through my bedroom door, creating quite a ruckus. I had over two years worth of peanut butter jars that I stockpiled just in case I met someone. Unfortunately, they tended to serve less as a distraction for my dog and more as a reminder to me that I’d been celibate for an inordinately long stretch of time.
Paul cooked his chili, which tasted remarkably similar to spaghetti with cinnamon. We ate on the deck and played fetch with Sonny, who became excited and started humping Paul. It was frustrating that my neutered dog was getting more action than me from Paul. Sonny never humps me when it’s just the two of us. But the second company comes over, Sonny gets really excited and starts humping anything in sight.
Initially, I tried solving this problem by having my friends tell Sonny that they had a headache. When that didn’t work, I bought Sonny a girlfriend, a stuffed elephant that was slightly larger than him. Whenever Sonny started humping my friends’ legs, I substituted their leg with his elephant. Sonny is not a gentle lover. He grabs his elephant by the trunk, thrashes it around, then humps it. My friends found this hugely amusing and it has become such a famous party trick that the elephant has become extremely tattered and worn out. Now, whenever Sonny shakes the elephant, its stuffing falls out of the holes where Sonny ripped out its eyeballs, and I have to clean every time a guest leaves the house.
Paul was familiar with Sonny’s humping problem from past experience. So, when the humping started, Paul walked into the house dragging Sonny on his leg, and got the elephant. We watched the animal porn for a while, then went into the house. Paul brought a movie over, put it into the DVD player, and sat on the couch. I sat down next to him and initiated a make-out session. We were both fully clothed and on top of each other when I finally called a time out and invited Paul into my bedroom. I littered the floor with peanut butter jars, and shut my bedroom door.
Ten minutes later, we were still fully clothed. I was bored and absent-mindedly cracked my knuckles while he was kissing me. Then I said, “I have condoms.”
He said, “That’s not it. You’re going to think this is weird, but I’m saving myself for marriage.”
“Get the fuck outta here.” I said laughing. Paul wasn’t laughing, so I asked, “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t know you were religious.”
“I’m not, but I went to twelve years of Catholic school and I think it’s important to wait until marriage before having sex.”
“That rule was invented when people got married at the age of twelve and lived until they were twenty-five. It’s inapplicable today.”
“Sorry, I know it sounds weird, but it doesn’t mean we can’t still have fun.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you know.”
“No, I don’t. I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re a twenty-five-year-old virgin by choice. What is the other way you have fun?”
“Oral and, well, anal if you want.”
“You’re kidding right?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “It’s not sex.”
“You mean to tell me that, for God, you only engage in oral and anal sex?
Paul turned red and mumbled, “I’ve never had anal, but I’m okay with it if you want.”
“Did the Jesuits teach you that? No wonder they’re okay with molestation, they don’t think its sex.”
“No they didn’t teach us that,” Paul said, getting visibly angry. “It just makes sense.”
“Actually, it’s completely illogical. It’s amazing that you blend into society like a normal person. I’m stunned,” I said.
“This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not laughing,” I pointed out.
Paul paused, looked at me earnestly, and said, “You know, I don’t care that you’re not a virgin if that’s what this is about.”
“That thought actually never crossed my mind. As an aside, you’re not a virgin either if you’ve come in a girl’s mouth while the two of you were bare-ass naked.”
“Of course I am,” Paul insisted. Then he said, “Stop making fun of my religion.”
“I don’t care what religion you are so long as you’re not religious,” I replied, just as earnestly.
“It’s not just religion. You’re treating me like a freak when this is just a decision I’ve made.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just that personally, I think you’re crazy. Honestly, I would respect you more if you told me that this isn’t really your belief system and it’s just your ploy to create an all-oral sex relationship.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Paul insisted.
I opened the bedroom door, grabbed the untouched peanut butter jars off the floor and got dressed. Paul followed me out the door and went home.
* * *
The next day on the Island, Paul rode up to me and asked how I was doing.
I said, “Still in shock. You?”
“Still a little humiliated. Why don’t we grab dinner tonight?”
Wow, he still thinks we’re together. “Paul, I don’t think this is going to work out.”
“Why?” he asked in all seriousness.
“Didn’t we already cover this last night?”
“That’s it? You can’t make a sacrifice for a while and see how it goes?”
That thought actually did cross my mind for one fleeting second. I thought, I can deal with this for a bit, during which time I’ll convince Paul that his views on sex are warped and irrational. However, the real issue was that the relationship was going nowhere and now I had the perfect excuse to end it. While I was sure I could change him into a well-adjusted atheist, I was far from gaga. So, I decided it was best not to spoil him for his future wife.
I looked at Paul and said, “Sorry, your warped stance on sex is kind of a deal breaker for me.”
“You’re really breaking up with me over this?”
“Yes, and it’s not me, it’s you.”
Paul sprinted off with a pissed look on his face and I let him go. A few minutes later, I met up with Danny. He immediately asked me why I wasn’t riding with Paul. I swore him to secrecy, then told him the story. He laughed his ass off for a good three miles.
That Sunday night at dinner, I told my family about Paul. I hadn’t planned to tell them. But after a half hour of listening to how picky I was and how I broke guys’ hearts for no reason, I was forced to defend myself. I was glad I had such a good reason to dump him. Dumping him for improper earwax levels would have set my mom over the edge.
I said, “Paul’s a virgin.”
“So deflower him,” my mom said, a bit too eagerly for a mom talking to her daughter.
“By choice, Mom. He is a virgin by choice. He’s saving himself for marriage.”
I told them the whole story. My dad said, “Well that’s one I haven’t heard before.” Mom laughed. Jason said that from here on out, he was dating exclusively within the Catholic faith. Julie’s comments were restricted to a “that’s so fucked up” every few minutes or so, and John didn’t believe me. On the plus side, they were all off my back for dumping Paul the Wonderful.