My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover if Not Being a Dumb Ass Is the New Black, or a Culture-Up Manifesto (26 page)

“They’re a little warm,” Tracey agrees.

Gina chimes in, “I thought I was having a hot flash, too.”

“I’m more concerned about how musty they are,” Stacey counters. “Remember, Febreeze can be your friend.”

“My knees are killing me,” Gina admits. “I’m going to get up for a while.” She extricates herself from our table and stands next to us in the archway.

“And I’ve lost all feeling in my back,” Tracey adds.

Shaking herself to stop the pins and needles in her limbs, Gina observes, “This is probably why most restaurants opt for full-sized tables and chairs, rather than ottomans.”

“Did you eat on the floor in Turkey?” I ask Stacey.

Stacey frowns a bit. “Not so much. We stayed at the Four Seasons. Mostly they just had regular tables.”

“Listen, I’m sorry, guys, I picked a lousy place. And we’re probably all too old to be sitting around cross-legged on the floor anyway,” I apologize.

Tracey says, “Hey, it’s nice to get together anyway. We’ll just go somewhere different next time. Maybe we can do . . . what else is on your list?”

“Tons of stuff,” I reply. “I have so much more world to eat. What are you thinking?”

Everyone starts talking at once. Tracey suggests, “How about Costa Rican?”

“Done it,” I reply. “Dinner was great and the lizano salsa was surprisingly delicious. Totally didn’t mind the spice. The thing is, when I called to order delivery, I realized I didn’t have cash, so I asked if I could use my credit card. And they’re all ‘Oh, no, we don’t take plastic. But you can write a check as long as you have your driver’s license and social security number on it.’ And I’m like, ‘You’re kidding. I haven’t seen a restaurant that’s accepted checks since college.’ ”

“They’d take a check?” Gina is shocked. “I haven’t written a check for dinner since the eighties.”

I bang my hand down on our metal table and the water in my glass sloshes over the side. “That’s what I’m saying! Weird, right? Then I got all suspicious and thought, ‘Those bastards are going to take my social and try to sell my identity down in Costa Rica.’ So I went to the closet and fished through all my coat pockets and found enough cash to cover delivery and tip.”

Stacey sighs. As the person who spends more time with me than anyone but my husband, she’s well acquainted with my penchant for conspiracy theories. In Jennsylvania, every helicopter is black. “Jen, Costa Rica has a population that’s ninty-six percent literate, their unemployment rate is half of ours, and they have some of the most gorgeous terrain in the world. I doubt anyone at
the burrito joint
wants to steal your identity.”

Smugly, I reply, “I guess we’ll never have to find out.”

“Have you tried Indian?” Tracy asks.

“We had Indian together,” Gina says. “Hey, lemme take a good look at you.” She peers down at me. “Have your eyebrows grown back in yet?”

“They’re getting there.”

Stacey says, “What about Japanese?”

“Stacey, I’ve had Japanese
with you
.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“We’re all going to have to start taking that Geritol with memory boosters soon, aren’t we?” I moan.

Stacey then proposes Lebanese, but given how underwhelmed everyone is with tonight’s offerings, no one jumps on this suggestion, although she and I reconfirm our date to hit her favorite Lebanese place for lunch soon.

“What about Vietnamese?” Gina asks.

The rest of the group finds this to be a capital idea. And I agree, too, mostly because whatever the ladies at my nail shop have for lunch smells amazing.

“Then it’s settled,” Tracey confirms.

“So . . . ,” I say, “that brings us to the most important question of the night. Who’s watching
The Real World
?”

Tracey is shocked. “That’s still ON? I thought it ended years ago.”

And Stacey says, “I haven’t watched it since they were in San Francisco.”

I slump in my seat. “You people hurt my heart. This season kicks ass. Don’t get me wrong; I’m only watching because Eudora Welty sucks.”

This comment requires some tortuous backstory on my part.

I continue. “It’s like the people they’ve chosen are caricatures of caricatures. They’ve moved so far away from the original concept of the show, it’s an entirely different entity. Remember how once on
The Simpsons
Marge said,
‘FOX turned into a hard-core porn network so gradually, I didn’t even notice!’
Same thing. I mean, I bet these little bastards have never even heard of Eric Nies or
The Grind
. No one ever has a meaningful conversation or a decent fight for that matter. Remember when Pedro was in a rage because he couldn’t live with Puck anymore, saying he compromised his health and sanity? That was riveting! The biggest drama these idiots ever contend with is whether or not someone’s ‘fake.’ I mean, really? Fake? This is the end-all, be-all of insults now? Give me a fucking break. And there’s this one guy on it who’s supposed to be all punk rock, but when he got kicked off the show for being too big of a dumb ass to set an alarm clock, he was crying like a little bitch—”

Gina interrupts, “You mean Joey?”

My eyes light up. “You’re watching? YAY!!”

“Yeah, but you know what’s sad?” Gina says slowly, shaking her dark curls. “We were the target demographic when the damn series premiered, and now we’re old enough to be these kids’ parents.”

No.

NO. That can’t be right.

“Wait, what? No. These guys are, what, early twenties? I guess, yeah, Derek celebrated his twenty-first birthday a couple of weeks ago. Major drama. Boy troubles. Anyway, if he’s twenty-one, that means I’d have been . . .” I furiously do the math. Fingers and toes may or may not be involved. “Oh,
God.
They don’t know what
The Grind
is because they were three when it premiered. Which means I’d have been twenty-one when some of these kids were born. Which means I actually
could
be their parent.”

I stare at the table in stunned silence.

I guess I was wrong.

Apparently there IS something in this world that sucks more than Eudora Welty.

We’re having Lebanese today, and there’s almost no difference between it and other kinds of Mediterranean cuisine, save for the liberal use of sumac, which is kind of a bumpy red, sour spice that Stacey had to assure me was not poison but it totally sounds poisonous but I guess they wouldn’t be in business long if they made a habit of poisoning customers but other than the sumac everything was like every other Mediterranean place, which by the way totally encompasses the Middle East but no one actually says it’s the Middle East, kind of like how the rugs are called Persian and not Iranian because that’s not a selling point and anyway the hummus was like any other hummus and the falafel was like any other falafel and of course there was lamb because there’s always lamb and the Middle East must have as many sheep as they do grains of sand as in there are so many that they cause traffic jams but instead of horns all you hear is “Baa! Baa!” because they’re frigging everywhere kind of like Bank of America ATMs and it’s probably a lot like in the movie
You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
where Adam Sandler is always using hummus for everything like brushing his teeth and styling his hair only in real life everyone would be washing their glasses with lamb and waxing their cars with lamb and when something great happens, they’re all “That’s LAMB-tastic!” and I had Lebanese coffee, which is like Cuban coffee on crack, which is like regular coffee on crack, meaning it’s like coffee to the second power and I had a whole pot of it because they put cardamom in it which made me exclaim,
“This must be what it was like to drink coffee with the three wise men!”
and then I interrupted myself and said,
“No, wait, this is what Jesus tastes like!”
and did I mention I drank a whole pot, which probably translates into about twenty regular cups of Joe and I told Stacey I’d turned into Cornholio and she didn’t understand what I meant and I was all “How can there be a pop culture reference that I get and you don’t since we’re kind of the same person except for the politics, pets, and pearls?” and she said that when the show was on she was working full-time and going to grad school and married and also working part-time to make ends meet, so there wasn’t a lot of room in her schedule to watch cartoons and now I kind of think I can fly.

Comin’ down, man.

from the desk of ms. jennifer ann lancaster

Dear Karen,

I forgot to give you the number of where we’re going to be in New York, so it’s taped next to the phone in the kitchen.

Thanks again for being so flexible about us adding three kittens to the cat-sitting reservation. I think you’ll find that they’re loving and sweet and should be no problem whatsoever. Your check with the new total is attached. Please enjoy this bottle of wine on the counter, too.

Thanks,
Jen Lancaster

P.S. Out of curiosity, are your shots up-to-date?

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I Love New York 2

“W
e’re here for our panel van, please.”

Fletch and I have just flown into LaGuardia. The Hamptons are two hours away, and we’ll be on our way as soon as we pick up our rental car. I thought a convertible at the beach would be really fun, so that’s what I reserved. However, Fletch has an unbroken string of bad luck when it comes to rental cars and has never once gotten what he ordered. He’s sure that there’s no way we’ll get a convertible, and instead we’ll be stuck with the only vehicle left on the lot—a big white contractor panel van.

“Stop it,” I hiss at him before turning my attention to the clerk. “Last name is Lancaster—we have a reservation.” I hand over my credit card and driver’s license while the clerk puts my information into the computer.

“Here we go, Miss Lancaster. I have a LeBaron convertible waiting for you.”

“Ha!” I bark at Fletch. “I told you so!”

We complete the transaction and place our bags in the car, and we’re ready to go. All we have to do is hook up the GPS.

Twenty minutes and one profoundly explicit string of profanity later, we’re on the road. Fletch has chosen to drive because I’m too slow and too cautious, and I prefer to have both hands free in order to flip birds when needed. Yet I don’t need to make obscene gestures at anyone, not even once. I’m deeply impressed by how much more polite New York drivers are than Chicago drivers. That’s not a bet I’d have taken. At home, braking is for cowards and turn signals for the weak. George Wallace says anything going less than sixty miles per hour in Chicago is considered a house. But when other drivers here see a car trying to merge, they get out of the way, rather than considering the move a thrown gauntlet.

I don’t know what to expect in the Hamptons. None of my friends has ever been there, since it’s not a Midwestern thing. Depending on traffic, today’s drive could take three hours. If you start the clock when we left our house this morning, by the time we get to our hotel, we’ll have been traveling for more than nine hours. I guess Chicagoans would rather spend nine hours going somewhere else.
²²⁸

The other weird thing about the Hamptons is there aren’t any hotels, per se—you won’t see a Hyatt or a Holiday Inn, and if you run into a Hilton, most likely she’ll be walking Tinkerbell on the beach. New Yorkers have tried to explain the concept of the Hamptons to me—essentially, it’s a tourist area that goes to considerable lengths to discourage tourism. People either own or rent houses up there, and the expectation is that nonresidents should stay with friends. A few inns exist but are priced so stratospherically that no riffraff could possibly infiltrate.

Yet we’re going anyway.

After we get to the inn and unpack, I insist we go to the ocean. We’ve got parking passes to five different beaches, and since the beach pass costs us a (refundable) seven-hundred-dollar deposit, I’m not about to let it go to waste.

Before we hit the waterfront, we drive around downtown East Hampton for a while to get our bearings. What looks like any typical sleepy little beach town proves deceptive upon closer examination. In place of all the cheesy T-shirt shacks and penny-candy places and ice-cream shops are satellite stores of Catherine Malandrino, Coach, Tiffany & Co., Michael Kors, and Gucci. To be fair, you can still buy candy here at Dylan’s Candy Bar
²²⁹
but you’d better have more than a handful of pennies.

I have no plans to shop because I don’t need any Theory or Alice + Olivia jeans.
²³⁰
Regardless, this is the quaintest Main Street I’ve ever seen. The sidewalks are so clean they’re practically polished and almost every store is fronted by huge, blooming flowers. The Ralph Lauren store’s halfway hidden by gigantic white bead-board troughs brimming with violet-blue hydrangeas, each blossom as big as my head.

I feel like I’m on another planet as no one on the street is shouting or swearing loud enough for children to hear. Mostly I just see deeply tanned families, languidly strolling the boulevard under a canopy of mature trees. And they’re all wearing madras plaid.

I already love this place.

We drive to Egypt Beach, passing the kind of mansions one only sees in the movies. They really exist? And what, exactly, does one do with a twenty-thousand-square-foot beach house? More important, how’d they get it in the first place? That’s what I want to know.

We pass places I’ve somehow already heard of, like Further Lane, Lily Pond Road, and Montauk Highway. Right before we get to the beach, I see the Maidstone Club. Not sure how this name has become a part of my internal database, either. All I can figure is my subconscious watches
Gossip Girl
, too.

The second we get to the beach, I throw off my shoes and make a mad dash for the shoreline. I navigate around the beach grass and past the fencing and over the pale sand, and there it is, just like I remembered it. I maintain there’s nothing more majestic than the Atlantic Ocean, particularly right now, as the sky’s a dozen violent shades of gray and purple with a pending storm.

The beach is practically deserted at this time of day, which makes sense because the parking lot is tiny and permit only, plus each of the mansions out here is spaced a good tenth of a mile apart.

I breathe in the salt air and revel at the feeling of soft, damp sand between my toes. And I’ve soaked the cuffs of my capris in the surf before I realize that Fletch isn’t with me. Where the hell did he go? I scan the beach to the east and west and don’t see him. I wait a few more minutes, and when he doesn’t appear, I trudge back up the incline to the car, where I find him smoking.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“I’m smoking,” he replies.

“Are you coming down to the water?”

He shrugs. “I’m not finished smoking.”

“Okay, so you’re here at the mouth of not only one of America’s most beautiful beaches, but also one of the most exclusive, and you’re all
‘Hey, look! Nature is one giant ashtray!’
Finish it up, don’t you dare leave the butt on the ground, and let’s go.”

“Nah, I don’t really want to go down to the beach.”

This exasperates me. “Why not? I’m sorry, did we not just travel nine hours? And now you don’t even want to take one look at the main attraction?”

He stubs out his cigarette and places it in a beach trash can. “I want to see the water, but I’m wearing Allen Edmund loafers. I don’t want to get them sandy.”

“I’m sorry, who are you, Simon Doonan? Giorgio Armani? Tell me, who wears Allen-fucking-Edmund loafers to the beach?”

“People who want to look nice,” he quips.

And . . . I’ve now reached my breaking point. The stress of getting ready for this trip and trying to culture up enough so I don’t feel foreign in my own skin and taking care of all the furry, ANGRY little patients in my house finally overwhelms me. Silently, I slip on my flip-flops and climb back into the car, pulling the door closed harder than necessary.

Fletch pokes his head in. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“NOTHING,” I snap, eyes straight ahead.

“Your ‘nothing’ is always something. What’s going on?”

“What’s going on? What’s going on is that I’m all freaked out that I’m going to make an ass of myself in front of all the authors I admire most in the world or accidentally commit some kind of politically motivated hate crime at the dinner. And you’ve been no help whatsoever. You’ve been obstinate every step of the way. You argued with me about when we should leave and what we should rent and where we should stay and what you should wear, and it turns out I’ve totally made the right call on everything—”

Gently, Fletch interrupts, “Jen, I’m not wearing a seersucker suit and straw boater to your event.”

“Why not?” I protest.

“Because I’m not the Great Gatsby.”

“YOU WOULD HAVE LOOKED FANTASTIC! AND LITERARY!”

“Yes, if we were going to Authors Night, 1924. ‘Gretchen, you need to stop trying to make “fetch” happen.’ ” Well, great, how am I supposed to stay mad at anyone who delivers a perfectly timed
Mean Girls
quote? “Would it make you happy if I look at the water with you?”

“YES.”

“Then I’ll go.”

“Thank you
.
”

“I need to take my shoes off first.”

Argh.

We stroll back down to the beach and Fletch spends the whole time humoring me, which I appreciate. I stick my feet back in the water—bracing!—and Fletch hangs along the shoreline, admiring the architecture behind us.

“I read that both Martha Stewart and Steven Spielberg have places out here. I wonder if one of those monster houses is theirs?” I muse. “How surreal would it be to just run into one of them out here?”

“Actually, that’s not surreal, that’s more of an odd coincidence. Surreal would be if they were driving a birthday cake in the sky, and the whole thing started to melt.”

I glower at him. “You realize I hate you a little bit today, right?”

“What? You’re a writer and you’re trying to improve yourself; I’m doing you a favor by helping you use vocabulary words correctly. You should thank me.”

“No, I should
drown
you. FYI, you’re being an enormous pill. Why can’t you act like you’re happy and thankful we’re here?” Frustrated, I kick a wad of sand toward the water.

“I’m ecstatic to be here, actually. This is the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. I already never want to leave.” He leans in and gives me a big hug, pasting an enormous smile on his face. “See? I’m hap-hap-happy. I’m only teasing you because I’m in a great mood.”

Mollified, I hug him back. “Hey, honey, do you want to sit and watch the surf roll in for a while? The storm clouds are magnificent and our dinner reservations aren’t for a couple of hours.”

“I can’t. I’m wearing my Hugo Boss jeans. I don’t want to get sand all over them.”

I run my hand down my face and under my chin. “Honey? This? Right here? Is exactly why people think you’re gay.”

At dinner, Fletch can’t decide on a wine, so I commandeer the list and ask a number of questions about particular grapes and geography. I finally choose a lovely Brunello di Montalcino, and when I taste it, it’s like cashmere on my tongue.

The best part isn’t just the drinking. It’s when the sommelier compliments me, saying, “You have an extensive understanding of Italian wines.”

Huh. When did
that
happen?

This morning at breakfast, Fletch is thumbing through a magazine called
Dan’s Hamptons
. It’s more of newspaper, really, full of typical local ads for stuff like Rolexes and private jets and multimillion-dollar real estate listings. I feel like Brenda Walsh on her first day at West Beverly High—cowed and intimidated by how different everything is from Minnesota, yet just a tiny bit exhilarated.

“Uh-oh, there’s a crime wave going on up here, according to the police blotter,” he ominously intones.

“What? You’re kidding.” For the first time in my life, I’m in a place safe enough that I don’t feel like I have to lock the door before I even finish shutting it. I figure the worst thing that could happen up here would be a drive-by snubbing. But a crime wave? Really? I’m shocked.