was nowhere in sight. “You look like my mom’s dim-witted golden retriever when it’s chasing a ball back and forth across the living room,” Dirty Steve shouted at me over the counter. “What are you doing, anyway?” I was so embarrassed I just went back to work right away, missing most of my break. But Patrick never came by at all.
Sheepishly,
Roxy
CHAPTER FIVE
August 16, 2012
Dear Everett,
I was so ashamed by Dirty Steve’s comparison between myself and his mother’s dog that yesterday I pretended to myself that the near-freezing air of Beer Alley—in the manner of a poorly thought-out “high concept” sci-fi film—actually incubates a rare disease that causes those infected to instantly develop a full acne beard. I have always had strong visualization abilities and this technique actually kept me from going near Beer Alley for my entire shift.
Last night Annie and Artemis and I decided to meet at The Highball for a beer. Let it be known that when I was a kid, the shopping center where The Highball and the hipster burger-and-a-beer-with-your-movie Alamo Drafthouse Cinema are located was nothing but a near-empty strip mall housing a cruddy grocery store and a low-budget weight-lifting gym. While I am often resistant to change and growth in this city I love, even I had to admit that The Highball and the Alamo Drafthouse were improvements. While once I would not have deigned to frequent said shopping center, I now adore going to The Highball for ironic karaoke or bowling, or just a cocktail in a Rat Pack–like setting. And the Alamo Drafthouse is the best movie theater in the world. (I mean, who DOESN’T like to get drunk at a “Grease” sing-along?) But growth and change should have limits and decency.
When I drove up to where The Highball and the Alamo Drafthouse were just last week, I found a giant hole in the ground with a crane towering over it! I pulled over and texted Annie and Artemis, who agreed to meet me down the block at Maudie’s Tex-Mex for margaritas. I grilled the bartender there who said that the new construction will involve high-rise condos, chain restaurants and shops, and a parking garage. “But don’t worry,” she said. “They’ll put The Highball and the Alamo Drafthouse back in there too.”
“They will be buried under a looming tower of new-build tackiness, and inaccessible due to gridlocked traffic!” I shouted.
Annie and Artemis had arrived by then and maneuvered the subject away from the horrors of corporatization, allowing the bartender to gratefully slink away. The new topic was what the hell we were going to do about said corporatization. Annie whipped out a notebook and helped me outline a plan of action for the Lululemon protest that involves social media marketing, a sign-painting schedule, and drafting of chants. It was quite invigorating.
Artemis confessed that while she’s excited about the protest, she’s growing to love her role at Lululemon as a guerrilla body-image counselor. “Today this twenty-two-year-old hard body in a size four was in the dressing room sobbing. When I asked what was wrong she said, ‘I feel fat.’ I said, ‘Good thing feelings aren’t facts. You need to wake up to what is a fact: you are young, hot as hell, and wasting it crying in a dressing room.’ ”
“So what happened?” Annie asked.
“She bought the tights and a top to match and strutted out of the store happy as a clam. If it weren’t for the other fact that I’m helping plot the overthrow of the store via peaceful protest, I’d say I deserve a raise.”
Then, with absolutely no transition, Artemis said her toilet had gotten stopped up with a tampon she’d accidentally flushed the day before. After extracting it, the plumber told her to stop flushing “bloody white mice.”
“EW!” I laughed in horror. “What a creep.”
It’s not that I don’t love hearing about Artemis’s plumbing, but as soon as there was a natural lull in conversation, I brought up Patrick. After hearing another tale of his laziness in bed, even Artemis wanted me to chill out on pursuing him further. (“He probably doesn’t even know that only eighteen percent of women can orgasm through vaginal penetration only,” she yelled. “Jesus, this is why ‘Cosmo’ should be required reading for guys.”) She and Annie seemed to have eerily mind-melded and they gave me the exact same advice: “Do not reach out to Patrick.”
Annie said: “I am about to drop some heteronormative, sexist-as-shit nonsense on you. And you need to listen to it. WOMEN