The Love Sucks Club (15 page)

Chapter Twelve

Sam is already at the Pit when Roxanne and I walk in. She has one
of those looks on her face that automatically puts me on guard.

“What?”

She nods in the direction of the bar. Olivia is sitting there with
a guy in cut off jean shorts and a deplorable tank top. To be fair, I’ve worn
that same outfit before, but if they are on a date, he is seriously lacking in
the style department. The dude’s hair is longish and curly and he has a
plethora of body hair that’s visible across his back and everywhere else.

“He looks like Ron Jeremy,” I say.

“Who’s that?” Roxanne asks.

“A porn star.”

Sam laughs. “More than a porn star. He’s the world’s ugliest man
with the world’s largest penis.”

Roxanne glances back as we sit. “Olivia is sweet. Should we invite
them over?”

Coughing, Sam puts her hand up in a stop gesture.
“A. No.
And B. No.”

“Roxanne thinks everyone is sweet,” I say.

“Maybe it has something to do with my attitude in life,” she
replies. “I believe in the best in people, so people show me their best.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam says, taking a chug of her beer.

The waitress drags over to our table and mumbles, “What
ya
want?”

We order a pizza and a round of drinks. The waitress shuffles off
without acknowledging anything we said.

Sam looks after her. “Think she got that?”

“Not a chance. We’ll end up with a meat lover’s pizza instead of a
Greek.”

“And I’ll get a whiskey sour instead of a rum and coke,” Roxanne
adds.

“As long as we get something edible and something drinkable, we’ll
be ahead of the game,” Sam laughs.

Olivia and her companions appear to be deep in conversation at the
bar. I catch Sam checking them out and raise an eyebrow.

“I’m just making sure she’s involved enough in her date to ignore
us.”

“It’s looks as if she’s having a much easier time ignoring you than
you are her,” Roxanne replies.

Over on the other side of the bar, one of the local drunks is
swaying precariously at the jukebox. Michael Jackson blasts from the speakers
and Sam immediately lifts her arms in the Thriller dance. Roxanne hums along.
Leaning back in my chair, I can just make out a group of drinkers in a corner
table doing shots. It’s a pretty dull crowd for The Pit, but then, it is quite
early.

It’s time for me to get this party started. “So, The Love Sucks
Club comes to order yet again.”

“Wait. I have to interrupt.” Roxanne looks serious.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m going to have to leave the club,” she says, completely
straight-faced.

“What?” Sam looks shocked. “You can’t. If you leave, it will just
be Dana and I sitting here complaining to ourselves.”

Laughing, Roxanne leans out of the way as our waitress brings our
drinks. “Sam, come on. That’s all we do anyway. We get together and complain
about love.”

“Well, Roxanne.” I’m using a voice one might use to explain the
color of the sky to a four year old. “We are called The Love Sucks Club. It
rather makes sense that our main topic of conversation would be the
suckiness
of love.”

“That’s my point,” she replies. “We’re setting ourselves up to
fail at having a positive attitude. Okay, the name is cute and all. I just
don’t want to be part of something that indicates that anything sucks.
Anything at all.
Yes, there is
suckiness
in the world and in our own lives. We don’t have to go looking for it.”

Sighing, I slam a big gulp of water and slam my glass down on the
table.
“Oh Roxanne.
I just can’t believe you’re
breaking up with us.”

“I’m not breaking up with you. I’ll still hang out with you two.
Just not under this premise.”

“So let me get this gay,” Sam interjects. “If we change our name
to something like the We Have Hope Club or the Let’s All Believe in a Better
World Club, you’ll still be part of it?”

“I don’t know that the name of the club is truly the point.”

“I guess I see the point,” I add. “We’re all a little too old to
have a club.”

“Exactly,” Roxanne says. “If we want to get together and go do
things or collect money for charities or take SCUBA lessons or anything like
that, I would love to do it. This sitting around in a bar talking about love
sucking is depressing.”

“Still, it’s not like it’s doing anyone any harm.”

“I think it is doing harm to all of us.”

Sam shifts some of our drinks to make room for the pizza which
appears to have the correct toppings.
“All right.
Here’s my counter offer.”

Roxanne snorts. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

“We will table the motion of changing the name of the club until
next week.”

“And then what,” Roxanne says, grinning. “We take a vote? We cast
an anonymous ballot?”

“Well, it will give me a week to think of a winning argument that
will keep you in our club without changing the name of it.”

Glass breaking across the bar catches our attention. I look up to
see Olivia standing next to her bar stool, mopping at her skirt with a napkin.

“Looks like someone couldn’t hold her liquor,” Sam whispers.

“Literally,” I reply.

Roxanne stands and sweeps off toward Olivia.

“Ah Jesus.
You know, she really doesn’t
belong in the Love Sucks Club,” Sam says.

“I know. She’s too good for the likes of us.”

“You like her, though. I mean, really like her.”

“There’s a connection. I just don’t see how it would work. When
I’m her age, she’ll be eighty. That’s a big difference.”

Roxanne has her arm around Olivia and is talking to her while the
porn star continues to slouch on his stool.

“She just better not bring her over here,” Sam states. “I...aw...shit.”

“Your wish is her command,” I laugh, as Roxanne walks Olivia over
to our table.

“I’m joining your stupid club,” Olivia says, slamming into a
chair.

“Hell no,” Sam says. “It’s for homos only.”

“Sam!” Roxanne is affronted. “No it isn’t. Of course Olivia can
join.”

“Two minutes ago, you wanted to disband us.”

Taking advantage of the quarrel to grab the last piece of pizza, I
lean back in my chair and watch the fireworks. I can tell from long experience
that Sam is seriously annoyed.

“Well, now that we have another member, we are more like a club
and less like three losers sitting around in a bar.”

“First thing,” Olivia says. “We should change the meeting location
to The Grill. It’s nicer and at least there’s a sea view. We’d be out in the
fresh air. This place stinks.”

Sam throws her hand up in the air. “First thing, you don’t get to
make changes. And second thing, why were you here with Ron Jeremy if you hate
it so much?”

“Who’s Ron Jeremy?”

“Never fucking mind.”
Sam takes another gulp of her beer,
scowling.

“My date’s name is Cal,” Olivia sniffs. “But I’m sick of men. I’m
going to become a lesbian.”

“You can’t become a lesbian,” I reason. “You either are or you
aren’t.”

“Well, considering I’ve had sex with a woman, obviously I can
become one.”

“No, I’m just that good,” Sam responds.

Pointedly ignoring her, Olivia continues. “Men are just big,
smelly pigs and I’m tired of them.”

“Some women are pigs, too,” I say to the background noise of Sam
making grunting pig noises. “Becoming a lesbian doesn’t make your chances in
love any better than they do as a straight woman.”

“Well, maybe. I still want to join your club. What do you do? Try
to find ways to alleviate the loneliness? Encourage each other to emotional
growth? Analyze your past relationship mistakes so that you can do better in
the next one?”

Looking at her blankly, I stutter for a second. “Uh, kind of like
that. Except that we mostly just sit around here and talk about our sucky love
lives.”

“Well you and Sam do that anyway. I would have thought that having
Roxanne here would class the group up a bit.”

Olivia’s date ambles up to the table. “I paid the damn bill,” he
says in a nasally voice.

“Good for you,” Olivia replies. “It’s the least you can do after
spilling your drink on me.”

“We thought you spilled it on yourself,” I say.

“I’m not a complete buffoon,” she says.

“Well, come on, then,” porn star guy says. “I’ll drive you home.”

“She’s fine,” Roxanne says, putting her arm protectively around
Olivia. “We’ll make sure she gets home safely.”

“Whatever. I’m sure you’ll have an awesome night with two dykes
and an old lady.”

Standing, Sam flexes her muscles. She stands about three inches
taller than the guy and he turns around without another word. As he slams the
door on his way out, Sam looks at Olivia incredulously. “How the hell did he
even get a date with you?”

“In case you haven’t noticed, there is a dearth of eligible men on
this island. I’m running out of choices.”

“According to Susannah, all of the good ones are married or gay,”
I say.

Sam nods. “She’s dated her fair share of married men and
convicts.”

“She didn’t know he was married,” Olivia snaps.

“All right.
We’ve agreed to table the
changing of the club’s name to next week,” Roxanne says. “But tonight, we are
welcoming our new member, Olivia.”
          

Disgusted, Sam takes another sip of her beer.

“Another motion has been made to move the meetings to The Grill
instead of here,” Roxanne says. “Shall we take a vote?”

Sam pokes me and we both look at the dance floor. Our favorite
local drunk guy is moving around the dance floor by himself. It looks as if he
is trying to do a cross between the robot and some kind of disco move. As we
watch, he jumps up and down, screaming the lyrics of the song. Everyone in the
bar turns to watch as his movements get wilder and wilder until finally, on a
particularly exuberant jump, he spins around in the air and slams right into a
bar table, knocking it to the ground and falling over it. The drinkers at the
next table start applauding. Sam and I look at each other.

“We’re staying here,” we say together.

Rolling her eyes, Olivia signals to the waitress who pretends not
to see her. “The service really sucks here. And the clientele is kind of
trashy.”

“Well, we’re kind of trashy,” Sam replies.

“It wouldn’t kill us to go somewhere else,” Roxanne says. “It
doesn’t have to be The Grill. We could go to that little park off of Forest
Road. No one is ever there and they have picnic tables and everything.”

“That sounds absolutely lovely,” Sam chimes, clasping her hands together.
“We can have a little picnic and I’ll make tea cakes and finger sandwiches.”

“Excellent,” Roxanne says, firmly. “So it’s agreed.”

Olivia stands up. “I have to go to the girl’s room. One bad thing
about the park is there’s no bathroom.”

“There’s the ocean,” Sam counters.

“You’re a pig,” she says.

“Never said I wasn’t.”

She strides off to the bathroom. Roxanne looks around the table.
“I think it will be good for her to join us. I think it will be good for us,
too.”

Sam shakes her head. “I can’t see any way in which letting Debbie
Downer into our club could be beneficial.”

“Maybe we’ll all learn something,” Roxanne says.

“Come on, Sam,” I say. “It might not suck as bad as we think.”

“Fine, I give,” Sam says. “But I’m collecting dues from her.”

Chapter Thirteen

My head is aching so
much,
I might as
well have a hangover. Dragging my butt out of bed takes an act of supreme will.
I debate a quick walk up the hill and decide against it. Sam and I are doing
the island tourist thing today and that should be enough exercise for anyone.

Frank sits in the bathroom with me as I shower and follows me
through the house chirping and meowing as I get dressed. When I’m dry and
clothed, I scoop him up and hold him upside down, cradled in my arms like a
newborn baby. Kissing his big face, I coo, “
Aw,
isn’t
hims
precious? Isn’t
hims
the
sweetest
widdle
thing?” He glares at me for about
thirty seconds of this torture before sinking his teeth into my arm. I give him
one more kiss on the nose and set him on the counter for some wet food.
Susannah hates that I feed Frank on the counter. She swears that I’ll get cat
food or hair or germs or something mixed into human food and we’ll all die. All
I know is that Frank and I are equals in so far as we can be and though he may
have to suffer the indignity of pooping into a box, I do my very best to treat
him as a friend and a valued companion.

At any rate, this is mine and Frank’s house and we make the rules
so if Susannah doesn’t like sharing counter space with Frank, she can go eat at
her own place.

I can hear Sam’s truck pulling up outside, so I open the door and
usher her in. Her tourist for the day outfit consists of white board shorts
with gigantic blue flowers and an orange and yellow color themed Hawaiian
shirt. She refills her travel mug from my coffee pot while I gather a couple of
bottles of water and some snacks.

“I have to say that I am mightily disappointed in your wardrobe
choice for our big day,” Sam says.

Looking down at myself, I shrug my shoulders. “What? I look
great.” I’m wearing my standard baggy cargo shorts and a tank top, but in
concession to the tourist day, I’ve added a bright teal, red, and purple
hibiscus covered Hawaiian shirt.

Sam shakes her head. “You could have at least added a visor or
something.”

“I think my shirt is gorgeously
clashy
enough to stand alone.”

“Whatever.” She leans down to kiss Frank on the top of his head.
Frank responds by flattening his ears and looking grumpy. “He’s mad because I
didn’t bring him any beef jerky.”

We take the beachfront road all the way to the other side of the
island. It would be a lot faster to take an inland road, but if we’re going to
be tourists, we have to do it right. It’s important to remind ourselves of why
we live in the Caribbean and sometimes, just taking a drive along the shore is
enough. The water is gorgeous today. The blues are all clear and bright and it
looks as if we could go out forever and still see down to the bottom. Whenever
you talk to a sea captain or a dive instructor here, they will inevitably tell
a tale of a tourist who came to visit and asked for a vial or a bottle so they
could take some of the blue water home with them. It’s an old wives tale, which
doesn’t stop just about everyone I know from telling it to tourists and locals
alike as if it had truly happened to them.

Our first stop is the pier at East Beach. Sam and I live on the
working class side of the island. Most of the people there have jobs and many
are struggling to get by. There is quite a bit of poverty, but it is also rich
in local culture. The east side of the island has all of the multi-million
dollar homes and the huge, fancy resorts. This is where you can find the
specialty food shops, the expensive jewelry stores, the trinket shops and the
boutique clothing stores. We don’t tend to spend a lot of time over here, but
it is nice to drive over every once in a while, mainly because this side of the
island hosts the cruise ships. There is no better place for people watching
than in a crowd of cruise ship passengers. Parking the truck, we slip into the
crowd of cruise shippers and move with the flow of people. Sam points out a man
wearing a black mesh see-through shirt. “1980s gay dance club fashion,” she
whispers.

There are enough men wearing black dress socks with shorts and
sandals that I stop pointing them out. We wander into a souvenir shop and Sam
picks up a t-shirt that has two giant roosters with surfboards. The caption
says, “Cocks on vacation.”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Come on,” she wheedles. “We can get matching ones. It’ll be
perfect.”

“Oh what the hell.”

The saleslady barely looks at us as we approach the counter with
the shirts. Sam clears her throat until the woman looks up. “We’d like to buy
these please.”

The clerk, who looks barely eighteen, sighs deeply and drags
herself over to the cash register. She rings up our shirts without smiling.
Handing over the money, Sam says, “You may not like cruise ship passengers, but
they’re the reason you have a job.”

“Yeah,” the clerk replies. “Well, they leave trash everywhere.
This island was beautiful before the cruise ships started coming.”

“Cruise ships have been coming to this island since 1980. What
year were you born?”

The young woman slams the change down on the counter and turns
away from us. Sam calls after her, “I don’t think
it’s
cruise ship passengers throwing old refrigerators and used tires back in the
bush.”

“Come on.” I pulled at her sleeve and we leave the store. “Why do
you have to do that?”

Pulling off her Hawaiian shirt, she slips her new cock shirt on instead.
Following suit, I do the same. Now we not only look like tourists, we look like
idiot tourists. We wander back into the crowd and head for the main boardwalk.
Sam is still fuming.

“Seriously, dude. What is wrong with you?”

She grimaces. “I just hate that bitchy attitude. If you work in
customer service, you better damn well act as if you care about customers.”

“Well, she’s a teenager. They don’t care about anything.”

“I just hate that snootiness.
Like she’s doing
us a favor to take care of our purchase.
I don’t get why cruise
ship
passengers ever come back here after getting that kind
of attitude.”

“They probably don’t.”

She opens her mouth to answer me, but is interrupted by a large
hairy man in a “Cocks on vacation” shirt. He slings an arm around her and leans
in close, whispering, “Hey, we have the same shirt. Great minds, right?”

“Uh huh,” she responds. “Great.”

Maneuvering out from under his arm, she rolls her eyes at me.
Laughing, I show him my shirt. “It looks like we’re all soul mates.”

“Oh yeah,” he yells.
“Totally!”

He turns his head and yells back over his shoulder. “Hey, Bob! I
found us our double dates.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sam mutters to me.
“Only us.”

“How drunk does a man have to be to hit on us?” I ask, laughing
again.

“Well, I mean, we are sexy bitches.”

“That part is a given. But we do look like dykes.”
      

Bob has reached us and is grinning like an idiot. He’s wearing
tiny jogging shorts and a nylon tank top worthy of Richard Simmons. Trying to
be subtle, I glance down at his feet and press my lips together to keep from
laughing out loud at the obligatory black socks and sandals. He holds out his
hand and I shake it.

“I’m Bob,” he says. “Who are you?”

“I’m Dana, this is Sam, and we’re leaving.”

“Aw, come on,” says the original guy. “We want to hang out with
you.”

“I mean, it’s kind of fate,” Bob says.

“Because of our shirts?”
Sam is trying to look annoyed
but I can tell she’s having a good time.

“Yes. So come hang with us. It’ll be fun.”

“Look, guys,” Sam says, grinning. “We’re not interested. We’re
lesbians.”

“Please, girlfriend,” says the original guy, waving a beefy hand
around. “Do you think I can’t recognize a couple of dykes when I see them?
We’re the gays.”

Snickering, I take a second look at them. “Sorry, guys. I would
never have guessed you as gay in a million years.”

Bob puts his hand on his hip and
cocks is
chest forward. “Why is that?”

“Because you’re dressed like slobs,” Sam says.

“I’m dressed like Richard Simmons, for Liza’s sake,” Bob declares.
“How could that
not
clue you in?”

“Anyway,” the other man says, “we’re on vacation. We can look as
slobby
as we want.”

The big guy, whose name turns out to be Manny is excited to find
out that we’re locals and insists that we take them to a local gay place.

“There really aren’t any particularly gay places around here,” Sam
says. “I mean, there is one gay bar on the island, but we’d have to leave the
boardwalk to go to it.”

“There won’t be anything going on there at ten o’clock in the
morning anyway.”

“Well, where do homos hang out for fun?” Manny is dumbfounded.

“Manny, where are you from?” I ask.

“Santa Cruz, California?”

“So, civilization, basically.”

He and Bob laugh and we decide to continue walking along the
boardwalk instead of going to the bar. None of the stores catch their attention
until we see a colorful sign advertising an adult novelty store a couple of
streets off the boardwalk. Of course the guys want to go into it.

“Oh come on,” Bob insists. “You wouldn’t take us to the gay bar.
The least you can do is let us
look
at Caribbean theme
dildos.”

“It’s a great idea,” Sam says. “If I went in there with Dana, it
would look as if we were shopping for something together. This way, it’s just a
group of friends going into a sex shop together.”

“A healthy all American activity,” I say, flatly.

“Come on,” Bob grabs my hand and pulls me into the shop. Sam and
Manny are already in there, giggling over penis shaped ice cube molds.

“I actually love these,” Sam says. “I could make a bunch of them
and bring them to Rick and Karen’s party next week.”

“Oh, straight people love penis shaped ice cubes,” Manny squeals.

The shop is surprisingly full of tourists. I wouldn’t imagine that
sex toys would be high on the list of vacation souvenirs, but perhaps vulva
shaped cookies and naked lady playing cards are popular amongst the cruising
crowd. Approaching the front desk, I smile at the woman behind the counter. A
slender black woman with a soft smile, and pretty eyes, she looks to be in her
seventies. Her mostly gray hair is cropped close in what could almost be a buzz
cut. She notices my discomfort.

“First time in here?”

“Yes,” I reply. “If I were to purchase a sex toy, it would have to
be through the anonymity of the internet.”

“There is no anonymity on the internet,” she counters. “The
government knows everything you do...or buy.”

“I don’t disagree that they could find out anything about me that
they want to know,” I say. “That’s supposing they actually want to know
anything about me.”

“True enough,” she laughs. “You’d have to be pretty important for
the government to care about whether or not you had ever bought a vibrator.”

“I don’t think I’m that important,” I say, laughing.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, slyly.
“The famous
island writer.
There are some who would be very interested in your sex
toy purchases.”

Given pause, I lean back a bit, studying her. It always throws me
a bit when someone recognizes me in public. I don’t generally put my pictures
on my books and I rarely give interviews, so unless someone knows me in real
life, they don’t usually equate me with my books.

“My name is Nadia,” she says, holding out her hand. “My daughter
is a big fan of your books. One of my friends pointed you out in the crowd at
the animal shelter donation drive last month.”

“Well, that’s cool. Now you can say that you saw one of her
favorite authors at your sex shop.”

She laughs. “My sister and I opened the store together many years
ago. My former husband, may he rest in peace, was tolerant of the idea. He
thought it was funny, though he refused to let me come to the store by myself
after dark for many years.”

“Have you been successful?”

“You’d be amazed by how much money we make, despite the religious
majority on this island. Of course, having a sign on the boardwalk to direct
tourists over was one of the smartest things we ever did.”

We both look over at a particularly loud screech of laughter from
the corner. Manny is waving a huge plastic vagina at Sam and she is doubled
over laughing. Bob pretends to be fanning himself in front of a display of
purple dildos. Looking back at Nadia, I wonder how a classy woman like her even
thought to open a store like this.