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

  “A ‘crazy Sunday?’ That sounds like a story,” I said.

  Boy, was it. He launched into an elaborate tale, ostensibly about a party his friend threw, but it was drowned in a sea of needless details—the names of people I don’t know, the logistics of who invited who, how he came to decide to go—I struggled not to zone out. At the end of his five-minute monologue, I understood the gist was this: his buddies rented out the penthouse of the Hilton for a party that Sunday afternoon.

  “Oh, that sounds nice,” I said, glancing around for the waiter to rescue me from any more of this story.

  “Yeah,” he said, taking a sip from his water glass. “But when I got there, it turned out to be a sex party.”

  This is not just burying the lede, this is dipping its feet in concrete and dumping it off the Brooklyn Bridge.

  I stared at him, my eyes begging, Go on …

  But he picked up the menu and began considering it, his story apparently finished, according to him.

  Not to me. “Wait, what?”

  He looked up from the menu, surprised. “It turned out to be a sex party,” he repeated.

  I laughed. “I don’t know what you mean by that.”

  He frowned. “Well, it was a hotel suite, so there were bedrooms, and people were going in them.”

  “Like, couples who were already at the party together? Or couples swapping, or multiples? What are we talking about here?”

  “I don’t know what was going on behind those doors. I mostly saw people making out, and one man licked a woman’s foot.” His gaze fell back to the menu.

  “Did you … partake in any of the bedrooms or the foot-licking?”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “No.” Again, no further detail.

  All right then.

  “So, do you want to share an appetizer?”

  The rest of dinner was similarly unsatisfying. He didn’t walk me home, although he did try to kiss me outside the restaurant (dude, that’s what the walk home is for), and I left feeling frustrated. After being in a relationship for two years, I had been excited to be single again, but maybe I’d forgotten just how rough this city can be for romance. Too many women, too many options.

  As I walked home, alone, it began to rain, because sometimes life really is like the movies. After the date I’d had, the only logical place to take shelter was Magnolia Bakery.

  I walked up to the cupcake counter, where a female baker explained that they had three specialty flavors—caramel, pistachio, something called “Hummingbird”—she described them, each one sounding better than the next.

  “Help me, I need guidance,” I said, meaning it in more ways than one.

  “They’re all really good.”

  If only men were more like cupcakes.

  I picked pistachio and began to vent. “I just had the worst date. Thirty-nine years old and he couldn’t pick a restaurant, couldn’t dress, couldn’t talk—ugh.”

  “Oh no, boring?”

  “So boring!”

  She handed me the box. “Lose his number.”

  I laughed. “Done.”

  I went to pay, and a round man with a sweet face at the register said, “I’m sorry you had a bad night.”

  “Nothing refined sugar can’t fix.”

  “Girl, I feel you. You doing the online thing?”

  “I haven’t tried that yet, does that work?”

  He shuddered in reply.

  Just then, the woman who helped me earlier brought a box containing the other flavored cupcakes. “On us.”

  “No, you’re too nice!” I cried. But they made me take it, so I insisted they keep all the change, and we had a good laugh, my new friends, Brad and Yvonne.

  I went home happy, reminded of why whether I’m single or not, I’m always in love with New York.

  ;)

  By Lisa

  I’m a happy person.

  But you wouldn’t necessarily know it from my face.

  Which evidently means I’m in big trouble.

  The other day, I saw an article about a study done by several psychologists who determined that we judge others based on their facial features at rest, or their “resting faces.”

  As soon as I saw that headline, I hoped this was going to be good news for me.

  My face is always at rest.

  Unfortunately, so is my body.

  But the psychologists discovered something they called a “bitchy resting face,” which gave me pause, as I didn’t realize that “bitchy” was a psychological term.

  I also wondered if men could have a “bitchy” resting face.

  Or if that was simply called a “face.”

  But let’s not get bitchy.

  God forbid.

  Anyway, the bottom line of the study was that people with bitchy resting faces were viewed as less trustworthy or competent. They were less likely to be hired for jobs and less likely to be voted for if they ran for office. In contrast, people whose resting face was on the smiley side were instantly viewed as more competent and trustworthy.

  The psychologists called this face-ism.

  So they beat me to the bad pun.

  I wondered if these guys were psychologists or humorists.

  Actually I think these chucklehounds were onto something, because I am the happiest person I know with the bitchiest resting face.

  I found this out a few years ago, when I was being interviewed on TV about my books, and they showed me on a split screen with two other authors. I had a little earplug in my ear, and I didn’t know what it was for until the interview started and somebody started yelling in my ear:

  “SMILE WHEN THE OTHER AUTHORS ARE TALKING!”

  So I did, looking like I had just been electrocuted but was really happy about it.

  Mercifully, the segment ended, and during the commercial, the producer came up to me, and said, “You’re the only author not smiling when someone else is talking.”

  I blinked. “That’s because I listen when other people are talking.”

  Which was completely true, at least when I’m on television. Otherwise, when other people are talking, I’m interrupting.

  The producer frowned. “So, smile when you’re listening.”

  Now I was actually frowning. “But we’re talking about murder and injustice in fiction. These are serious subjects.”

  “Smile anyway. It’s a visual medium. If you’re not smiling, people will change the channel.”

  The producer went away, the TV show resumed, and I tried to keep my smiley-face on while we talked about gruesome major felonies.

  Needless to say, they never had me on the show again.

  Because they lacked a sense of humor, which means knowing when to smile and when not to.

  In any event, I’m guessing that most people I know have a bitchy resting face.

  Or maybe when you get older, your face just falls into lines and everybody else thinks that’s bitchy.

  I have a group of great girlfriends, and I can picture what every one of them looks like when she’s listening. They look serious, caring, and thoughtful, not bitchy.

  That’s why they’re my friends.

  I challenge anybody out there with a brain to have a resting face that’s anything but bitchy.

  The test of this might be as close as your smartphone. Did you ever inadvertently turn on the camera function to selfie mode when you were looking down?

  Yikes.

  I myself have actually gasped at the sight of myself in my own phone.

  I don’t look bitchy, I look dead.

  Or maybe I look like a dead bitch.

  In truth, women my age are not taking many selfies. Most of the time we don’t even want our picture taken at all. The best way to get a group of middle-aged woman to run away is to aim a camera at them.

  In fact, I’m pretty sure that you could rob a bank that way.

  You don’t need a gun, just a smartphone.

  Hold up the camera and threaten to take their picture
.

  “Okay, everybody say, Flee!”

  It’s a Miracle!

  By Lisa

  I’m a mystery writer, but now I have a real-life mystery to solve:

  There are three cats in my house.

  Which one is peeing in my bedroom?

  Where is Nancy Drew when you need her?

  By the way, if you don’t want to hear about wee-wee, read no further.

  But if you, like me, are plagued by the problems of the pets that purport to love you, come along for the ride.

  Bring your own blue roadster, like the Girl Detective.

  You won’t need a magnifying glass, but a roll of paper towels and a jug of Nature’s Miracle would come in handy.

  If you don’t know what Nature’s Miracle is, you’ve come to the right place.

  If you ask me, Nature’s Miracle is Chocolate Cake.

  But that’s not the kind of Nature’s Miracle to which I’m referring.

  It’s not as if I’m capitalizing things for fun, though capitalizing things is fun for writers.

  Ours is a quiet life.

  By way of background, I own three cats, all of which lead complicated lives.

  Vivi is a gray cat who is adorable, but has intimacy issues, and as such, has nothing to do with me. She lives in the dining room, which I never use, so it’s blocked off by a gate, which prevents the dogs from bothering her.

  Mimi is a friendly black-and-white tuxedo cat, who has since moved with Daughter Francesca to Manhattan, because that’s where you live if you’re wearing a permanent tuxedo.

  Spunky is a tan, long-haired cat, whom I adopted after my beloved next-door neighbor Harry died, and there was no one to take in his cat. I thought that he was going to die any second.

  That was five years ago.

  No one knows exactly how old Spunky is, and I thought he was sixteen.

  I think he’s three.

  I will be dead before this cat dies.

  Be that as it may, because I thought Spunky was in his dotage and deserved a quiet life, maybe even quieter than mine, I put him and his litter box in Francesca’s room, so that he would be completely out of the way and could sail off into the sunset.

  So anyway, last week, Francesca came home to visit, bringing Mimi, and the three cats had the run of the second floor.

  In short order, I began to notice puddles in the corner of my bedroom, then in the corner of Francesca’s bedroom, and finally in the corner of my office.

  In short, this is disgusting.

  So I cleaned up the cat pee, then started pouring Nature’s Miracle on top of the stain, because Nature’s Miracle is something that is supposed to remove the smell of urine.

  But the thing is, Nature’s Miracle smells like urine.

  Either that, or it doesn’t work.

  This would be a distinction without a difference.

  In the end, I’m guessing that the shame is on me. I might be the only person in the world who buys a product that bills itself as a miracle and expects it to work.

  Do miracles exist?

  In my life, the only miracle I’ve ever experienced is divorce.

  But to stay on point, maybe this isn’t the fault of Nature’s Miracle, a thought that leads me, by my powers of deduction, to a darker truth:

  When a cat pees somewhere, it’s going to stink to high heaven no matter what you spray it with, including Febreeze, Lysol, or Chanel No. 5, all of which I tried, in that order.

  Then, after I cleaned all the cat pee and doused it with an allegedly miraculous product, I tried to figure out which cat was the culprit.

  They weren’t talking.

  I tried closing various doors and putting up different gates, then observing which cat did its business in which corner, but they outsmarted me.

  Because I sleep at night, and they don’t.

  Next, I bought new litter boxes and put them in the corners of my bedroom, Francesca’s bedroom, and my office, trying to beat them at their own game.

  But one of them, or all of them, peed beside the litter boxes.

  So I cleaned up the mess again, doused it with you-know-what again, and closed the doors to my bedroom, Francesca’s bedroom, and my office.

  Now I walk around my house as if I live in a hotel, with all the doors shut.

  Who dun it?

  I Want What I Want

  By Lisa

  A fun thing about being single is that you can reverse man-shop.

  By which I mean, until I find a man I want to be with, I like to pick out men I don’t want to be with.

  I call it The Better Off Dead Game, but it could just as easily be called The Better Off Celibate Game.

  Of course, celibacy is not as bad as death, but they are related concepts. As in, I’m dead below the waist, but on the bright side, I can still watch TV.

  Anyway, no matter what you call the game, I play it all the time, which might be why I spend my Saturday nights with dogs.

  Like the other day, I was in New York, where Francesca, Laura, and I had a meeting with our wonderful publisher Jen, after which we went to a bar to have a celebratory drink. Francesca and Jen ordered wine, but I had just turned in the manuscript of my next book and had been dreaming of a margarita, so I ordered it as soon as I sat down. So did Laura.

  Nevertheless, the bartender handed us drinks menus. “Ladies, we have great specialty drinks you should try. I recommend the Sofia.”

  I didn’t open the drinks menu. “Thanks but I’m dying for that margarita.”

  Laura said, “Me, too.”

  Jen and Francesca chimed in, “We’ll have the wine.”

  The bartender frowned. “You didn’t even look at the drinks menu.”

  I said, “I know, I want a margarita.”

  The bartender kept frowning. “At least look at the drinks menu.”

  So I did, God knows why, but I couldn’t read it without my reading glasses, and neither could Laura. Plus we both wanted a margarita, so we asked for one a third time.

  At which point the bartender asked, “You’re really not going to try the Sofia?”

  I answered, firmly, “No, can we please have our drinks?”

  He went away, scowling.

  And I knew I was Better Off Dead.

  Hell, I was even Better Off Celibate.

  See? It’s a fun game, right?

  But wait, there’s more.

  It was a quiet Sunday morning, and I was riding my bicycle on the trail with Franca. The trail was hardly crowded except for a few other people riding bikes, walking, or jogging together.

  Suddenly a man with two small kids started yelling at us, “You should ride single file! You should be riding single file!”

  I didn’t understand what his problem was, because we were nowhere near him or the kids. Franca and I are insanely obsequious on the trail, always riding single file when it gets busy, letting people go ahead of us, and generally being Codependents on Wheels.

  Most of the time, we’re just trying to stay upright and not crash anymore.

  So I called back to him, nicely, “Don’t worry, we’ll go single file if somebody else comes the other way.”

  The man yelled back, “You should ride single file ALL THE TIME!”

  But we kept rolling, and he kept yelling at us, then he switched to yelling at the next twosome who rode by.

  Yikes.

  Wanna play?

  Better Off Watching TV.

  In fact, Better Off Watching Infomercials.

  To my thinking, both of these guys are really the same type of guy, a variation of Mr. Take Charge. And I always liked that kind of guy when I was younger. I wanted a guy who had all the answers, handled any situation, and basically was a combination of Daddy, Superman, and Bradley Cooper.

  This last because, are you blind?

  And honestly, I don’t think it’s Mr. Take Charge’s fault that he takes charge, because just as I got the message that that was what I was supposed to want, I suspect he got the m
essage that was what he was supposed to be.

  Or maybe what happens is that Mr. Take Charge stays the same, but the women change, like I did.

  We grow up, if we’re lucky.

  We get older and realize we don’t need adult supervision.

  We are the adult supervision.

  And as I got older, I realized that Mr. Take Charge morphs into Mr. Control Freak.

  And probably from there into Mr. Ray Rice.

  It’s taken me decades to figure out exactly what I want, and to be able to ask for it.

  And it’s not Mr. Take Charge.

  It’s a margarita.

  No more Mrs. Nice Guy.

  The Mutual Fade-Out

  By Francesca

  I just pulled off the greatest trick of any dater: the mutual fade-out.

  This is the holy grail of the socially anxious. The royal flush of the reluctant in romance. The coup de grâce of the codependents.

  For those who aren’t familiar, a fade-out is when you’re dating someone who you don’t want to see anymore, so you just gradually stop returning their calls and texts until they give up on you. No explanation, no honesty, no opportunity for personal growth, no closure, just … a relationship fade to black. It’s the path-of-least-resistance method of breaking things off. It’s cowardly, really.

  That’s why people love to do it.

  But the mutual fade-out is the only way to get away with the blow-off guilt-free, because you both do it to each other at exactly the same time.

  I thought it was urban legend.

  In the past, I’ve resisted the siren song of the fade-out. The thought of leaving a guy wondering what happened and feeling bad about himself gives the codependent in me a cold sweat, so I’ve always forced myself to offer a tactfully vague goodbye.

  Of course, my penchant for half honesty has blown back in my face plenty of times.

  I once texted a guy after a second date that I really loved meeting him but I thought we’d be better as friends.

  He wrote back: “Yeah right. Why don’t you just be honest and say you never want to see me again?”

  Um, because I’m not an animal, sir.

  See, that was someone I should’ve faded out.

  When I’m truly honest, they complain about that, too. There was one guy who drank way too much when out with me and a bunch of his buddies. After returning from the bathroom to find me chatting with his friends, he hooked his arm around my neck and accused me of flirting with his bros. Then he bent me down into a headlock right in the middle of the bar and slurred into my ear: