Does This Beach Make Me Look Fat?: True Stories and Confessions Read online

  Nobody is breaking his vows for my cellulite.

  Frankly, that’s fine with me. There are lines I won’t cross, and that’s one of them.

  Another one is the third piece of chocolate cake. If I’m on my fourth, I know I’m in trouble.

  Also my fifth.

  Okay, maybe I’d cross the chocolate-cake line, but I never cheat on my taxes.

  Really.

  The IRS lacks a sense of humor.

  Also, jail time.

  Anyway, to return to the story, Franca and I were cycling when we approached the spot where the trail ends at a sharp curve, a traffic light, and the intersection of Route 202, Route 252, and certain death.

  This intersection always makes me nervous, and the last time we came to this traffic light, Franca fell off her bike and skinned her knee. So as we approached, I called out to her, “Careful, honey!”

  She turned around to ask, “What did you say?”

  And in that moment, she crossed into the intersection, crashed her bike, and fell exactly where she had fallen before, skinning the same knee. Not only that but I crashed into her, falling over, and skinning my elbow where I had skinned it before, too.

  If you think it’s easy to injure yourself in the exact same place twice in a row, you’re wrong.

  It’s a skill that few people possess, namely only Franca and me.

  In any event, Franca and I were lying in a crumpled mess in the intersection, our limbs bloodied and our bicycles bent up. Traffic stopped, only because Franca is so hot.

  I’m not just saying this because she’s my best friend.

  She is superhot, and anybody who bicycles will tell you that traffic will not stop for a cyclist even if he is lying dead in the street.

  You need to be lying naked in the street.

  We picked ourselves up and righted the bikes. My bike was okay, but Franca’s was a mess. We got our hands filthy trying to get her chain back on the spiky thing, which has a name I don’t care to learn.

  We succeeded but then we couldn’t get the spiky thing back under the shiny thing, and I would bother to explain the problem but we all have better things to do.

  Luckily, two nice men came over and asked us if we needed help. I couldn’t say yes fast enough, even though they were totally married and I was rapidly concluding that falling off your bicycle isn’t the way to meet single men.

  And while the guys are fixing Franca’s bike, lo and behold, who do we see racing down the trail but the Knight on the White Bicycle, who fixed my flat last time. I said to our two guys, “That’s the guy who helped us last week,” and one of the men laughed, thinking I was kidding.

  I wasn’t.

  I watched my White Knight pedal away. I didn’t chase after him or otherwise embarrass myself.

  Until now.

  Then one of the other men asked me, “Hey, aren’t you that author, Lisa Scottoline?”

  To which I answered, “No, absolutely not. Nobody as cool as Lisa Scottoline would keep falling off a bicycle. But I read her books and they’re awesome. Have you bought one lately? You should.”

  So that’s what I learned from my latest bicycle misadventure.

  That this is America, and good Samaritans abound.

  And if you can’t sell one thing, sell another.

  Life Among the Ruins

  By Francesca

  I would never let a man ruin my life.

  But they sure can ruin my favorite places.

  For instance, there’s a Mexican restaurant near me that has the best fish tacos in the city. The tacos are never soggy, they don’t skimp on the guacamole, and there’s nothing freaky under the fry batter.

  If I could marry those fish tacos, I would.

  Unfortunately, the romance of the restaurant has been ruined ever since my last boyfriend and I had the Breakup Talk there.

  It’s a decision I deeply regret. I should have protected the tacos.

  So I made a conscious effort to go back there with a girlfriend a couple weeks later, to reverse the transformation from the Place My Boyfriend and I Broke Up back to Home of the Insane Fish Tacos.

  Everything was going to plan, I could feel the bad juju dissolving like salt on a margarita glass, and at the end of dinner, I signed our check with an optimistic flourish.

  Until our waiter asked for my phone number.

  Flattering, but awkward. And worse? I gave it to him.

  What was I thinking? Well, to be honest, he was hot and had an accent, so thinking was difficult—but I knew nothing about him, I wasn’t going to date him. I was just vulnerable!

  Clearly it’s still The Place My Boyfriend and I Broke Up, and if you take me there, ply me with tequila, and tell me I’m pretty, I’m either going to cry or make out with you.

  The guy did text me and I declined.

  So now I definitely can never go back.

  Adios, Baja Fish Tacos of my dreams. I’ll see you in takeout.

  Even the places with good memories of my ex—especially those places—are ruined, like our favorite brunch spot. We spent so many sunny Saturdays sitting outside with Pip, we befriended a waitress, Taylor. I could’ve given up the lobster egg scramble, but I couldn’t give up Taylor, with her excellent service, cool side gig playing rock-cello, and fabulous lipstick colors.

  Do you know how hard it is to find the right red?

  So I decided to rechristen it as a dinner spot. The different lighting and menu worked in my favor as I waited for my friend to arrive, but then Taylor stopped to say hi and asked how my boyfriend was doing.

  I told her we broke up, but that “I’m getting custody of you in the divorce.”

  Truth be told, I’m lucky to have created enough good memories with someone to leave my surroundings a little altered. Past loves are allowed to ruin restaurants; they’ve earned that.

  And I’m on a diet anyway.

  But now a random man is messing with my gym, and that’s unacceptable.

  As you may recall, I fought for this gym membership. I worked out all summer, lost fifteen pounds, and paid enough each month to break a sweat just looking at my bank account. The perk that makes this gym worthwhile is its rooftop pool. It’s my reward, my oasis, my Happy Place.

  But last week, a middle-aged man in the pool chair beside me struck up some friendly small chat, and I obliged, as I would any polite stranger. And what does he do?

  Gets my email address from my website and sends me sex poetry about me.

  It was not flattering; it was explicit, deluded, and disturbing.

  And, in my professional opinion, very poorly written. Buddy, if you’re reading this, try journaling to build your skills, and keep reading.

  I was devastated to have my Happy Place turned into the Place Where Some Creep Imagined Me Naked, but autumn was around the corner.

  Sir, consider yourself saved by the bell. Because next summer, I won’t be so nice. The communal pool is not your Lady Hunting Ground or open mic night for your Perv Poetry Slam. Mess with me again, and see it become the Place a Five-Foot-Five Woman Told You Off and Made You Cry in Public.

  You’ve got a second chance to stay out of my way.

  Don’t ruin it.

  In It to Win It

  By Lisa

  I have a new financial plan.

  I’m playing the lottery.

  I don’t know why I started, but it might have to do with the fact that I’ve been thinking about it for forty-five years.

  Or the fact that some of my friends are retiring, and my retirement is now pushed back to 2022.

  Meaning that I will have to be 2,022 years old to retire.

  And then I happened to be driving to New York, and you can’t drive anywhere without seeing those lighted-up billboards with astronomical numbers for the Powerball jackpot.

  There were so many zeros, it reminded me of my marital history.

  LOL.

  Also, I remembered that Mother Mary always used to play the lottery and she actually won. Neve
r the big payout, but $50 here and $100 there, just enough for me to think that I should try my luck.

  So I bought my first lottery ticket on Sunday afternoon, after my bike ride, standing in line like a rookie. The lady in front of me chose her numbers, filling the circles on a sheet that reminded me of taking the SATs.

  But math and I never got along, so I let the machine choose my numbers, and when the impatient clerk asked me how many tickets I wanted, I had to ask them how much it cost per ticket, and so I went whole hog for ten bucks and he gave me back a tiny piece of paper that look like a Dunkin’ Donuts receipt for a cup of coffee.

  I stuck it in my wallet, excited all the way home, dreaming of the things I would do with my million-dollar jackpot.

  I have dreamed about winning the lottery for years, but I never actually played until now.

  It’s hard to win if you don’t play.

  Maybe that should be their new slogan?

  The clerk had told me the drawing was on Wednesday night, and when I went home, I checked the website, which was cheerfully multicolored, heavy on the green, for obvious reasons.

  And embarrassingly enough, I have to admit that I counted the days until Wednesday night.

  I thought the drawing was at seven, but that turns out to be one of the other lottery games because who knew there’s not just one lottery game but about 3 million and they all have different rules and different times for the drawings.

  Sheesh.

  So when Wednesday night rolled around, I grabbed my little tickets/receipt out of my wallet and hurried to the website and waited for the minute hand to go from 10:59 to 11:00, to see the winning numbers.

  Numbers appeared on the screen, five white balls with numbers and one red one, and then I looked down on my ticket and realized the problem.

  I couldn’t read the damn thing.

  There were five lines of numbers, twenty-five numbers in all, and then the Powerball number on the far right with QP next to it, and I still don’t know what QP means.

  I had no idea if I had won.

  I do have a modicum of common sense, so I figured that if I had a line of numbers that matched, I was $50 million richer, but then I clicked on the How to Play page, and it turns out there are about 3 billion other combinations that qualify as a winning ticket.

  Who knew?

  Mother Mary, undoubtedly.

  I could win $1 million if I matched four white circles but not the red one, or four dollars if I matched the red circle but none of the white ones, and it was so many different permutations that I felt like I was taking the SATs again.

  I couldn’t figure out if I’d won anything but I couldn’t bring myself to throw the ticket away, in case it was a winner.

  It was a no-win situation.

  And now I feel like a loser, in more ways than one.

  But I’m buying another ticket.

  I’m powerless over Powerball.

  My Buddy

  By Lisa

  As I write this, I’m not sure whether it’s going to have a happy ending or not.

  Which makes it just like life.

  Because last week, a little pony that I happen to love, named Buddy, took very ill with colic. Basically, colic means a bad stomachache, but if it’s bad enough, like an impacted colon, it can kill him.

  You didn’t know I was going to say impacted colon in a humor book, did you?

  If you can’t identify with having a sick pony, I’m guessing you can identify with the point of this little story, which is that it’s hard to give up on something you love.

  Whether it has fur or not.

  By the way, Buddy is thirty years old.

  And just FYI, ponies can live up to thirty-five or even forty years old and beyond, so Buddy has plenty of time left.

  In fact, he’s only middle-aged, like me.

  If fifty-nine is middle-aged.

  WHICH IT IS.

  In any event, one night last week, Buddy didn’t eat dinner, which is not like him.

  See how much we have in common?

  I called the vet, who said that he had colic and that he might need surgery. So I loaded Buddy in the horse trailer and drove him over to see the geniuses at the Penn Vet’s New Bolton Center. The vet on call that night was Dr. Southwood, one of the country’s leading experts in colic surgery, in addition to being one of the nicest people you could ever meet. I say this because, among other reasons, when she saw a grown woman crying over a pony, she didn’t point and laugh.

  She recommended surgery, and the thought terrified me because I didn’t think you could operate on a thirty-year-old pony. I blurted out, “But he’ll die!”

  To which she said, “I operate on ponies his age all the time. I don’t give up on him, just because he’s old.”

  I thought to myself, there’s a lesson in that.

  When bad stuff happens, I try to find the lesson in it.

  If I can’t find the lesson in it, I try to find the humor in it.

  If I can’t find the lesson or the humor in it, it’s my second marriage.

  So Dr. Southwood operated on Buddy, and she saved his life. He looked pretty good for a day, but then he started to look bad and developed a different problem.

  I’m trying to save you the colon talk here.

  Dr. Southwood said, “I think we might have to operate again. Do I have your permission?”

  I answered, “Absolutely. Don’t give up on him just because he’s old.”

  So she operated again, and saved his life again, and six days later, he’s doing terrific. I visit Buddy every day in the hospital for a couple of hours, and he’s a lot smaller than the fancy show horses they have at New Bolton, but he knows he’s as important as they are, and he is loved.

  My little pony, Buddy

  He doesn’t think he stopped counting just because he’s thirty, either.

  He’s been fighting for his life, and right now, it looks like he’s going to win.

  He’s still at the hospital, but he’s letting me know he wants to go home by turning his feed bucket upside down and neighing at a cute little white pony across the way.

  He’s an aging stud.

  He’s the Michael Douglas of ponies.

  Or the Kevin Costner.

  Or the Robert Redford.

  Or the Al Pacino.

  I could go on, but you get the point.

  I might be crazy, but a lot of those guys look as good to me as they always did.

  In fact, Kevin Costner looks even better.

  So does Robert Redford.

  To be real, Al Pacino looks worse, but he can still dance.

  Buddy can’t fox-trot, but he can trot.

  And I’m going to make sure his stall is clean, for when he comes home.

  Check, Please?

  By Francesca

  The difficulty of dating in New York City is the stuff of legend. Television and film have completely contradictory takes on it, showing it to be at once incredibly easy and impossibly difficult.

  They’re not wrong.

  The sheer volume of people allows for lots of dating interactions among wildly incompatible people. But the truth is always stranger than fiction, and the behavior I’ve encountered on dates makes me think that some of these men have never read a book or seen a movie in their lives.

  Aliens could manage a first date better.

  Let’s start with appropriate topics. It’s common advice to avoid hot-button issues like politics, religion, and sex on a first date. But it goes without saying that there are some subjects best left for later—or never.

  I’ve been on two different first dates with two different men who discussed their love of enemas.

  You heard me.

  ENEMAS.

  The first guy discussed it in context of a broader conversation of “things my ex-girlfriend introduced me to that I still enjoy,” already a winning first-date topic, then he actually tried to convince me to go to his enema … practitioner?

  Proctit
ioner?

  “You have to go to my guy. He can seem shady at first, since he works out of his apartment and the place is kind of dirty, but I can vouch for him, he’s the best.”

  He was like Yelp for your butt.

  Check, please?

  The next enemaniac I encountered managed to top the butt-Yelper, no pun intended. The second guy’s enema practitioner was his mother.

  Where’s Sigmund Freud when you need him?

  Again, my date offered this information unprompted and without reservation. I should commend him for his openness, but some doors are supposed to remain shut.

  Back doors.

  This was several years ago—the punchline? Mama’s boy got married last month. In the pictures on Facebook, his new wife looked normal and cute.

  Good luck, sweetie. Make sure he keeps the coffee cans clearly labeled.

  Emily Post doesn’t cover this, but I will: please don’t talk about your butthole on a first date. It’s unappetizing.

  Which leads us to Rule Number 2: Keep it classy.

  Once, I was out to drinks with a guy, and the female bartender happened to compliment me on my curly hair.

  After I thanked her and she left to get our drinks, my date commented, “You must get that a lot.”

  “Oh, from time to time,” I said, flattered. “Everyone has their good points. What is it about you that gets the most compliments?”

  Without missing a beat, he answered, “My dick.”

  I guffawed right in his face. I thought, this guy has great comic timing.

  However, he was not amused. “What? It’s true.” He looked at me like I was the inappropriate one.

  Seriously?

  Needless to say, I was no longer interested in verifying his claim.

  And some people just don’t know how to tell a good story. My friend says it’s the writer in me that puts such importance on this, but believe me, when you’re looking for someone to sit across the table from for the next fifty years, it matters.

  Just last night I went on a terrible first date. There was a lot that was not ideal, but his main offense was that conversation was like pulling teeth. He began stories where they should have ended, and ended stories where they should have begun. It’s hard to explain, so let me give you an example.

  When he mentioned that he’d had a “crazy Sunday,” I pounced on the opportunity to encourage him to speak more than a few words at a time.