have two moods: happy and pissed off.” Lust. Ignited. Actually, it was Frances, my mother, who lit the match, describing him twice as having a “nice build,” which obviously grossed me out at first and then at second made me think. Soon I was spending an extra ten minutes in bed every morning, fantasizing about this nice build of his and how it would look erect. I e-mailed a new-boy alert to Adrienne and Gina with the disclaimer that nothing could ever happen because we were in the friends zone—the danger zone.

“So did you tell Jake you want to ride his pony yet?” Adrienne’s nicknames for anatomy rival an eight-year-old’s.

“I do not. Shut your mouth, monkey breath!”

“Umm-hmmm.”

I hung up on her and immediately got back to my life according to Gchat.

ME: I break out in hives whenever I’m really stressed. Guess what’s all over my back?

[Appropriate conversation in mixed company]

JAKE: Sexy, sexy.

ME: LMAO. Not boils. This isn’t medieval times. Although I’d love to go there.

[Not that I’m fishing for an invitation]

JAKE: How can you alleviate this stress? Need anything?

[Is this an invitation?]

ME: Besides a vibrator?

[Hope so]

JAKE: I’ll pick one up for you.

[Dear God.]

ME: Get outta town.

[Or in my pants]

JAKE: Dude, if you need one I got you.

I’m secure enough to stop at the store.

And buy a giant black cock for you.

I mean, I’d prefer to bring a pizza, but whatever.

Waiting for pepperoni and black olives never hurt so good. I wore a V-neck with no bra and jeans with no shoes. This was casual. What‘s a slice of pizza and an episode of Seinfeld among friends? Then again, isn’t this how things always go down in the pornos? Pizza guy, girl with no panties, a six-pack, the TV’s on but no one watching, and then bowchickabowbow!

We typed on our laptops for a few hours, me hoping he was messaging someone about the fraught sexual tension between the cushions of my very grown-up couch. And he, redacting top-secret legal mumbo-jumbo, totally unaware of my uptight nipples. That’s when I decided all Ruhbuhduh really was, was just a lot of gibberishishy gobbledygooked hogwash. A bunch of grown-ups trying to grow their own luck. Ruhbuhduh Shmuhbuhduh, might as well be Pig Latin for “Go fuck yourselves, ’cause nobody else is going to.”

Thirteen

TRANNYGATE

Only once in my life have I ever wished for a time machine—or, lacking the technology, a driver’s license.

It was Christmas in Los Angeles, which despite not looking much different than any other time is, indeed, special. I’d spent nearly a decade out on my own—even going so far as to tilt my “west sii-ide” the 90 degrees it took to claim the east—but California was still called “home.” There’d always be one week at the end of December when the weather was in the high eighties and time was frozen in the late nineties. Not only was I back, but we were. Gina knew all the old stories I only wanted to hear in L.A., my grown-up lullabies. Like that time Richard Shin threw a “bomb” made of water and single-ply from the second-floor boy’s bathroom onto Janet Lalebekeyan’s back and then she bitch-slapped him with the same wet toilet paper in front of everybody. Everybody was small enough to fit in a carry-on that week. Actually, everybody was just me and Gi.

I think we all started after I went away to college. She started calling to talk about the gorgeous eggheads I’d be meeting. Fools that we were. Eventually we became more than each other’s sounding boards—we were each other’s wailing walls. Whenever I got back into town, there was only one question: “Dude, what are we doing esta noche?”

On this particular break “we” now included a new dude named Bilal. She wanted me to meet him, and instead of being envious, I was excited. Too bad he left me wishing for a pimped-out DeLorean capable of turning back time to before the night started.

The three of us were having drinks at the bar/lounge in the Sofitel off Wilshire Boulevard near the Beverly Center. A glass of Riesling was $16, but we weren’t college or even graduate students anymore, so fuck it. Gina and Bilal had fallen in love a few months before, after a day spent in bed watching Clue—her favorite movie of all time, next to our favorite, which is Teen Witch. Unable to top his unflinching knowledge of Clue’s complete working script, Gina gave Bilal a pass on being half African.

A brief note on xenophobia and dating: