Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married (15 page)

BOOK: Jennifer Johnson Is Sick of Being Married
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We call vaginas yacht clubs and penises yachts, because Christopher suffers from acute icky-word syndrome. If he hears a really icky word, he seizes up in these painful cringe-flinches that take chiropractors and/or new Armani couture purchases to undo. We keep icky words chipper, like, “That sailor had a seriously small yacht. More like a dinghy. He could've moored ten of them side by side at the yacht club and still had room in there to wave a bottle of Veuve Clicquot.” We name specific yachts and yacht clubs. I named my yacht club Mother Teresa and Christopher named Jeremy's yacht Farfel. He named his own yacht King Filippe Roheim III.

Christopher and I go shopping. With Addi and Ellie's encouragement and Brad's corporate credit cards, I begin to buy more clothing than I've ever owned cumulatively in my life. As the girls say, I'm worth it and Brad's good for it, so why not get it?

Suddenly my enormous walk-in closet seems terribly small.

The overstuffed racks and packed drawers are brimming with shimmer and glitter and silks and satin and faille. Oceans of cashmere, supple folds of charmeuse and chamois. Twinkling crystal, amethyst, and pearly peridot buttons. Colors I could eat with a spoon. Almond, oyster, apricot, pearl. Custard, dusty rose, violet, and hickory. Even the names of these designers sound like faraway kingdoms, exotic places you'd like stamped on your passport. “Now boarding for Versace, Prada, Cavalli, Balenciaga.”

In the ongoing effort to fit into these works of art, I join an expensive gym in the warehouse district called the Sweatbox. Hillcrest has a gym, but according to Ellie nobody works out there. They work out at the Sweatbox, with “the best trainer in the world,” a big muscle-bound man everybody calls Big D. I make an appointment with Mr. Big D and go to the gym wearing my awkwardly new pink and white workout togs. I feel like a prostitute named Candy Cane. The girl behind the counter at the gym is wearing an official orange and gray Sweatbox sweatsuit. “You want Big D?” she says. I nod. I'm obviously a special client. “Okay . . . well, I just saw him outside,” she says. “Just go down the hall and out the door by the vending machines.”

“Is there a locker room where I can freshen up?”

“Absolutely!” She hands me a shiny chrome credit card, which opens the security door to the VIP clientele locker room, which looks like a futuristic lounge or intergalactic nightclub. It has chrome walls, glass benches, and blue glass floors that look like liquid and are lit from below. Inside my space-age, bacteria-free, antimicrobial, self-ionizing metal locker is a complimentary orange and gray Sweatbox towel and mini bottles of Sweatbox-brand shampoo, conditioner, and “moisturizing salve.” I have no idea where to put the salve. There are also complimentary orange flip-flops for the shower, a pair of orange plastic sunglasses for the tanning bed, and a big jumbo orange plastic water bottle that says
GET SWEATY AT THE SWEATBOX
.
All items are labeled eco-friendly, animal friendly, and BPA-free.

After changing into my workout clothes, I follow the hall and go out the heavy metal door by the vending machines. Outside, in the brilliant winter sunlight, a large black man wearing a sweatshirt that says
SWEATBOX
is sitting on a folding chair eating an orange in the sun. “Hey!” I shout. “You Big D?”

He turns and squints at me. “Yes, ma'am!”

I come out and we shake hands. I thought it would be freezing out here, but it's nice and toasty; there are outdoor heat lamps running overhead. A few of the other trainers are out there having a smoke break, which charms me. I sit down on a chair next to Big D and tell him a little about myself and what I hope to get from training. I tell him about my general concerns and specific problem areas, my milk-udder arms, my pear-shaped butt, my persistent muffin top. He shakes his head when I'm done and takes out another orange, which he slowly begins to unpeel.

“You gotta get rid of that microscope, baby.”

“Microscope?”

“Don't nobody look good that close up. You keep looking down, you always find trouble. Just look up at the sky, let your mind set on a cloud. Now, take a deep breath. Let your mind loose. Shake out your arms and legs. Just get up. Jog in place.”

“Jog in place? You mean, now?”

“Sure, go ahead if you want to. Just keep it light and keep your head up. Stay with that cloud. It's all about how you feel inside. Like that. How you feel?”

“I feel . . . good,” I say, running in place. “I feel really, really good!”

“That's it,” he says. “Just remember Muhammad Ali. Float like a butterfly, sting like a
bee
! That mean to me, be heavy but feel light. You can't listen to what other people tell you about yourself. No, sir. You read in the paper that true north is moving?”

“Wh . . . what?” I'm feeling a little winded now.

“True north. Magnetic north. Where every compass in the world s'pose to point.” He pulls out an old battered army-green compass and holds it in his palm. “Everybody in the whole world including Jesus and Einstein said true north can't never move. Never ever. Guess they forgot to tell
old true north.
Ha! 'Cause he movin'! Nobody can tell him nothing now! He got a style now. You know what else that means?”

“No . . . I . . . I . . . don . . . don't.”

“True north moves, that mean every map they ever was in the world before now is wrong. Dead wrong. You see? Those old maps can't getcha where you wanna go no more! Need new maps, young lady, and that's where you and me come in. Why you stop runnin'?”

“Water.”

“Well, all right. Don't take too long now, they gonna say we havin' a tea party.”

“Sorry . . .” I quickly cap my water bottle and get back to jogging.

“Whole lotta men been telling people how to get places with the same maps. Only if those maps is wrong now, then those mens is wrong. And that means don't nobody get to tell you how to go now. You go your own way. See? Who says you got a fat ass? Who tole you that?”

“Well, nobody, but I have eyes and I can see what my ass is supposed to look like in magazines and on television and—”


Maps!
” he bellows “All maps. All dead-men maps. I told you . . . they done now. So you don't use them peepers to go peepin' on dead-men maps. You hear?”

“I hear.”

“Get yourself lost that way. See here, I'm looking at my compass, and it is pointing me to true north. I take a map out, it tell me to go the other way. I got to hang to my own compass to get where I'm going. You see? You got to hang to your compass to get where you wanna be. You don't listen to the rest of 'em. If they is no maps that tell the truth no more . . . we is one thing.”

“Wh . . . What's that?”

“We is free.”

12

Faux Halcyon

C
hristmas slaps us like a sharp wreath of holly right in the face. It seems like it was summer yesterday and now Christmas carols are droning and ho-ho-ho-ing everywhere you go.

You can't even pump gas without hearing them and you start feeling rage flowing inside you. Then you feel
bad
that you're so damaged you hate Christmas carols, and your anger ebbs as you convince yourself these tin-eared tunes aren't a premeditated attack, they're just what the healthy people like to listen to. But then “Frosty the Snowman” comes on and your rage flows again. This shit happens every year! This is manipulative! This is brainwashing! This is America—forced joy should be illegal! It goes like this all season, your rage flowing, then ebbing . . . then flowing again . . . then ebbing . . . then
flowing, flowing, flowing . . .
and somewhat ebbing . . .
flowing!

Keller's loves Christmas. Products we sell year-round get slapped with a red bow and 15 percent price hike for the season. The lobby is decorated from deck to halls, from Candy Cane Lane to a huge hanging wad of papier-mâché mistletoe. We have a big Rockefeller Plaza–type Christmas tree in the rotunda, right next to the special-needs shoe collection. Santa Claus, who is being played by Lenny this year, sits there on his throne for ten hours a day. Lenny wanted to make some extra money. He's endlessly patient and will let kids sit on his lap for as long as they want to. Even the moist ones.

The helper elves are supposed to promote special deals and hurry kids along; they say stuff like, “Okay! Time to go, Johnny! Santa must go shampoo his reindeer with specially formulated Ultra-Prell, now available in the pharmacy!”

Not many special deals get mentioned when Lenny's there, and nobody rushes the kids. If they do, they usually do it only once. If an unwitting elf says, “Okay, time to go, Johnny!” Lenny will calmly set the child down, stand up, and immediately drop character, even though Johnny's still right there. He'll get right in the elf's face and say, “
What
is your Goddamned problem, huh, hotshot? Trying to rush Johnny off, huh? Well, guess the fuck
what,
numb nuts! That little motherfucker will sit on my fucking lap until the Goddamned cows come home if he wants to! Understand? Because
I
am motherfucking Santa Claus! Hear me? And
no
elf steps on that! You just bought yourself a time-out in the Cookie House, elf! Go get in the Goddamned Cookie House!” Then he'll calmly return to his seat, plop the bewildered child back on his lap, and say, “Ho ho ho! What's next on that Christmas list of yours, Johnny?”

Meanwhile the banished elf will usually trudge off. Although I've seen one or two try to open the door of the Cookie House, which is just a prop gingerbread house used just for decoration. It has no working doors or windows, it's just a big box decorated with Styrofoam candy canes and lumpy mounds of snow that they set over a yellow light so the windows glow. Lenny thinks it's the elves' break room.

It's a good Christmas. The lines at Keller's grow delightfully long, and the managers all report high numbers. Sales are good. Best of all, the Christian Lambs of God have decided to invest generously in Keller's and they're shipping job lots of merchandise to our loading docks from all over the world, so everyone's in a festive mood. Plus Ellie and Addi spread delightful gossip about me with their girlfriends who shop at Keller's, and suddenly when I go to the store, I'm greeted with a new respect, even from the cosmetic girls, who say things like, “I heard your husband bought you a diamond bigger than a walnut!” and “A little bird told us Mr. Keller is taking you to Paris!”

It's all untrue, but I confirm every rumor with a sly smile.

Not everyone is smiling at me. Christopher summons me like a bishop down to his lair and points accusingly at the Olya doll boxes lined up against the wall. The Prophets of Profits at CLOG Industries are pushing a Russian peasant doll for Christmas, Olya from Olkhovka. Unfortunately she's not a big seller. Dressed in loosely stitched, tattered clothes and with gray strips of glued felt for shoes, Olya the peasant girl is supposed to incite warmth and sympathy in others, but even kids know a doll with acute depression when they see it.

“These dolls are from some toxic waste dump!” Christopher says angrily.

I shush him. “Christopher, I know you're upset but keep your voice down. The CLOG guys are in the store today.”

“Where?”

“They're tied up in meetings. Don't worry about it.”

He demands to speak to them and I tell him that's not going to happen.

“Then
you
ask them,” he says. “You ask them why these dolls have hazardous-material warnings hidden behind the shipping labels, just like the Angel Bear boxes.” He peels off a sticky-backed shipping label, revealing yet another large yellow diamond with a black skull in the center.

“Great.” I sigh.

Christopher snorts. “Great? Sure. Have a very merry plutonium Christmas.”

I tell him I'll see what I can do.

Meanwhile there's an avalanche of holiday parties to go to. Since Brad usually has to work, Ellie and Addi escort me to cocktail parties, dinner parties, charity auctions, club functions, museum receptions, wine tastings, fashion shows, theater premieres, and symphony balls. Addi hosts a charity auction and fashion show at her house every year for the cancer society. I go over to help her. Two hundred guests are due in an hour for cocktails and a fashion show and storm clouds are gathering over her Excelsior mansion. Downstairs, close to a hundred staff people, caterers, sound and lighting technicians, event planners, valet parking attendants, models, hair and makeup artists, and jewelers buzz about the place.

A transparent Plexiglas runway has been installed a half inch beneath the water in the indoor swimming pool for the event—and for local designer Johann Johansson. “If there's a blizzard, I will tear my Goddamned hair out,” Addi says from the styling chair in her master bathroom, where a makeup artist puts on the finishing touches.

The two-hour event involved a three-day production that began by laying a wooden floor on the snowy lawn and pitching an 1,800-square-foot tent above it for cocktail hour. The big top houses a bar fully stocked with top-shelf liquor and Veuve Clicquot champagne and a kitchen area where Christafaro's catering staff whips up thousands of canapés and servings of caviar. As arrangements of white hydrangeas and roses from Larkspur & Co. are placed on each cocktail table, guests begin to trickle in—and the snow begins to flutter down. Just before the fashion show begins, a woman in a sparkly black dress uses her strappy high heel to drag industrial floor mats over the stone steps that lead guests from the tent into the house.

Happy guests are seated in rows of white Chiavari chairs beside the runway. Bright lights and specially choreographed music accompany a team of Miami models wearing chic fashions—and several million dollars' worth of Cartier jewels.

Oohs and aaahs ensue.

Afterward the auction takes place back in the tent, where the highest bidders take home such tantalizing prizes as dinner for two with Bobby McFerrin, a vacation rental home at Sundance, and a year's fur storage at McPhee's Furs. All in all the event is a success, except that the day afterward Addi discovers two used condoms in her guest room and vomit in the Ming vase upstairs.

Ellie's son catches the measles, so I offer to host her holiday book club. I pick Virginia Woolf's essay on Coventry Patmore's poem “The Angel in the House.” The poem is about the ideal Victorian wife, who was immensely charming and completely unselfish. She excelled in the domestic arts and sacrificed her own desires daily. She was eternally devoted and endlessly submissive. She lived to serve her family and thought nothing of herself. Self-sacrificing, pious, and chaste, she was also kind, loving, and powerless. She spoke softly. She never lost her temper and remained charming in even the most unsettling situations. She never needed help. She was always smiling and beautifully dressed and smelled lovely. I thought we'd talk about modern feminism and unrealistic ideals, but instead of discussing any of that, I hear a shriek from the kitchen.

Addi has discovered the Ice Empress. The ladies make me give them a full demonstration of the geisha's repertoire and Addi starts giggling, then snorts wine up her nose. She speaks Japanese, and apparently our little ice princess has been cursing at us and calling us names.

Her daily greeting,
“Naniga hoshiino?”
means “What the fuck do you want?”

Her cute little sign-off,
“Kutabare!”
basically means “Go fuck yourself.”

All of our names are nasty
.
“Inpo Pho” means “Pho the impotent weakling.”

“Brad Baka Ka,” the term she used for Brad, means “Brad the stupid asshole.”

Christopher's name, “Chin-Chin,” means, quite simply, “Dick.”


Shine,
Star Fan!” means “Die, Star Fan!”

My favorite name of course is my own. Elegant yet simple. “Jen Aho-Onna” means “Jen the dumb bitch.” Only Trevor's name is nice. “Akiko” apparently means “Bright child.”

Perfect.

In the kitchen, Addi laughs so hard, I think her sides are going to split open. She says it's probably a special program that runs just for Americans.

I smack Pho. “I
told
you to tell her we were
Canadians,
didn't I?”

He shrugs.

“I told you nothing good
ever
happens to Americans! You'll see!”

He rolls his eyes and leaves. Enraged, I smack the refrigerator screen and angrily confront the Ice Empress.
“Naniga hoshiino?”
she says. “
Moshi-moshi,
Jen Aho-Onna!”

“Don't you
moshi-moshi
me, you dumb bitch. I
know
what my name means.” I tell her I have a new name for her
.
“Dead!” I shout, and dive down to the floor, where I yank the industrial electrical cord like hell, grunting, “Ehn . . . ehn . . . ehn . . .” while everyone's screaming at me to stop, the refrigerator will fall over, I'm going to get crushed . . . until I rip the cord out of the socket and the refrigerator powers down. The screen goes blank. I sit there panting on the floor, holding the limp cord. “Pho!” I shout. “This is your chance!”

Pho pops his head out of the study cubby. “What now?” he says.

“You're a cyber-ninja, right? Well, this thing's just a cold computer. So reprogram it.”

He frowns at me. “What?”

“Reprogram it! Rip off the doors, yank out the wires, cut the mother-effing motherboard in half. Just make her
obey me
.”

“I can't . . .”

“I'll pay you. A lot.”

“But I don't know how to—”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“What?”

“I will pay you
ten thousand dollars
to make this Goddamned bitch
behave . . .”
I sit there on the floor, panting, still holding the limp cord. “So?” I wheeze. “Do we have a deal? Come on, Pho, this is probably exactly how Bill Gates got his start.”

“Okay.” He shrugs. “Deal.”

I look at everyone in my kitchen and say, “Well . . . 'tis the season to be giving!”

I decide to pick a charity cause of my own, which is animals. At first I wanted to do something specifically for Ace. Since a snobby elitist dog show like Westminster would never let “damaged goods” like Ace into their precious special competition, I thought the world could use another dog show: the Handi-Capable Dog Paralympics. A special dog show for “special dogs” who want to compete in dog shows too. There could be physical competitions, like a three-legged dog race and a wheelchair obstacle course with a special textured lane for the blind. We could have a mentally challenged division for the inbreds, with a stick fetch-off for the stick obsessed, a tail-chasing competition for the neurotic twirlers, and a blue ribbon for the best incessant barker. Alas, I cannot find enough like-minded souls who share my vision, so the Handi-Capable Dog Paralympics will have to wait.

Luckily I have another idea. I set up a special fund called the Ace Award at the local emergency animal hospital. It's for pet owners who can't afford emergency care for their pets. I get the idea when Ace eats a bottle of aspirin and I have to take him to the animal emergency room. There's only one in the city. It's open twenty-four hours a day and it costs a fortune. The emergency room vet gives Ace a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide and he throws up. The bill is three hundred dollars.

“But a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide costs
ten cents,
” I argue at the front desk.

“Well, the room it was administered in cost
ten thousand dollars
to renovate,” says the stalwart bulwark of a woman at the front desk, a vet tech named Greta. She's huge. Her face looks like an angry beach ball. I pay my bill, muttering, and as I'm packing up Ace to go home, a sobbing couple comes in with their bulldog, Scout, who was run over by a Lexus SUV. He'll need extensive surgery right away. I overhear Greta tell them the procedure will cost three thousand dollars and they'll need payment up front before they can operate.

“But we don't have that much money!” the woman cries. “Can't you operate anyway?”

Greta says she's sorry, but it's policy. The woman sobs louder and the guy offers to pay in installments, says he'll call friends and family, that they'll raise the money right away, but Greta just calmly shakes her head and says she's sorry.
It's policy.
I'm shocked. I start arguing with her again. “You mean to tell me you're just going to let that bulldog die in here?”

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