We Thought You Would Be Prettier Read online

  Apparently, the roaring in my mother’s ear was getting louder, almost unbearable, and after some coaching and the promise that she could buy anything she saw on QVC the next day, my dad finally got her to the hospital, checked her into the emergency room, and then waited for someone to help them.

  And I’m using the word “help” as a general term here.

  Perhaps she was just making compelling medical conversation, perhaps she was just passing on odd and chilling trivia relating to people who have a feeling they have multilegged creatures taking a stroll in an orifice, but as the nurse was pouring alcohol into my mother’s ear, the idiot mentioned that it was quite common for insects, particularly roaches, to crawl into people’s body cavities while they slept.

  Now, I firmly believe that it should be against the law for any medical professional to say that to anyone, let alone a woman who would put a house up for sale and move to an entirely different zip code if she so much as spotted a boll weevil husk in a cabinet. Suggesting that my mother might have had a roach crawling around in her house, let alone in her head, was equivalent to saying that she went to church six times a week for the free wafers and wine.

  “Stop right there,” my mother immediately said to the nurse, and then called out to my father. “It’s time to bring in the Death Outfit Bag. This one says it could be a roach, and if that’s a roach walking around in my brain, I command you to shoot me dead. I mean it, I want to die. I can’t live a moment longer knowing there was a dirty, vermin-covered, shit-eating roach in my body. My house is not filthy, I will have you know, my house is NOT FILTHY! I clean, and I also have a girl who comes every other week! She breaks things and doesn’t understand English, but that is the price I am willing to pay for a clean house! She vacuumed Styrofoam peanuts and blew the whole thing up, but that’s how far I am willing to go to make my home roach-free!”

  My dad tried to calm her down as the doctor took over for the big-mouthed nurse and came at my mother’s head with a very long pair of tweezers. According to my mother, the whole emergency room became very quiet as the doctor went fishing in her ear and began pulling the invader out, bit by bit.

  In the first search mission, he found a leg; the second time in, he brought up a body section; and then, finally, on the third attempt, he was rewarded with a wing. A wing. In the emergency room, a cheer burst into the air, largely due to my father.

  “It’s a wasp!” he exclaimed as my mother broke down into tears of joy. “It’s a wasp!”

  “Wow, Mom,” I said as she unfolded the napkin, “you’re a living urban legend! I bet if you went home and forwarded a bunch of Microsoft e-mail to test their new tracking system, Bill Gates really would pay you five dollars a pop!”

  “Look,” she said, holding up the napkin with pieces of the wasp scattered on it. “If you put him back together again, it’s over an inch long! Wasps are very attracted to nice-smelling things, so it all makes sense. I had just gotten my new Joan Rivers Now and Forever Fragrance Set from QVC that day and it must have been just a magnet to that wasp.”

  “I can’t wait to tell everyone that a wasp tried to nest in my mom’s head!!” I yelled. “God! This is so exciting!”

  “If you think that’s exciting,” my mom said with a smile, “I just bought a case of earplugs from QVC! I’m never going to so much as close my eyes without plugging my ears up like a leaky ship.”

  I nodded and laughed, daring to remind her that unless she slept with a snorkel attached, her open, snoring mouth was just another unexplored, mysterious cave to the unholy.

  An Open Letter to Todd at Cox Cable

  Dear Todd:

  First off, I want to say that I’m sorry for yesterday. I didn’t mean it. I really didn’t. I was on hold for seven minutes when you finally answered, and to tell you the truth, I just never expected it. Who would? When you clicked on the line and the first thing you said was “It’s a great day at Cox Cable! This is Todd, how may I assist you?” I didn’t laugh at you on purpose. I never meant for you to take it personally. It’s just a knee-jerk reaction, like when you see someone trip over a step, or when the wind blows someone’s skirt up. You know, life’s little bonuses, a golden nugget from God’s Comedy Store. You just point and laugh heartily, because that’s the silver lining of someone else’s misfortune.

  And I really wasn’t poking fun at you when I asked if you got a raise, saw some action last night, or discovered via a hand mirror that the Rogaine is starting to work. I really wanted to know what makes a great day at Cox Cable. Is there a list of criteria that must happen before the day receives the title of “great”? I mean, what distinguishes “a great day at Cox Cable” from “a day at Cox Cable”? Like I said, maybe there’s something good to eat in the cafeteria, or no one brought a gun to work, or someone complimented you on your jaunty hat. See, Todd, you just can’t toss “It’s a great day at Cox Cable” out there and not expect us to develop a curiosity. That’s human nature, man! We want to know!

  I noticed you became withdrawn from the conversation at that point, and I knew that somehow I had hurt you. You were so distant, so formal, so . . . cold. There, I’ve said it! You were cold, Todd, cold! I could hear it in your voice, the sudden chill, and I felt you backing away from me. And then, in an instant, you were gone. I had lost you. Maybe forever.

  In fact, you wouldn’t even answer me when I asked you if taking IFC off of basic cable was an evil ploy to get people to buy into digital, or if there really is a truck equipped with special radar that drives through neighborhoods to catch people stealing cable TV. And what happened to the lady on the commercial who was caught? Was she found guilty? Did she go to prison? Did she get the death penalty? Is she being tortured to give up names of other cable thieves? Was she the kingpin of the whole operation?

  But Todd, you said nothing. It was clearly over between us. You wanted to push me away, get some distance, forget that I was ever a part of your life. You did that, Todd, you did that. So I ask you, is it still a great day at Cox Cable, Todd? IS IT? Because I have to tell you, the sun isn’t so shiny over here. It’s not a great day at my house, Todd, because there’s something else that you need to know, but you didn’t want to hear it. No, no, you just brushed me away, but I’m going to say it anyway, before God and everybody RIGHT NOW: I want HBO with my digital cable, Todd!

  I want HBO!!

  Until next time,

  Laurie

  I’m Gonna Kick Your Ass

  It was not the firm, shiny loop that initially caught my attention.

  It was not.

  It was the long, sinewy, arms, thin and stringy and so pale they were nearly light green, lifting up the twenty-pound bag of Sensitive Stomach dog food from the counter into the cart. As he lifted the bag, the owner of those arms grunted—no, no, no, forgive me, “grunted” is too strong a word, too gracious a word, too complimentary; mewled or whimpered is actually more accurate, much more precise a description—causing me to wonder what kind of nancy was wrestling with the bag, since I was the one who placed it on the counter to begin with and I can barely lift a jug of water with two hands.

  And that is when, that is precisely when, I turned and saw it.

  The Flippy Hair.

  Flippy hair that was so extraordinarily flippy that any girl in the graduating class of 1978 would have eagerly traded her Sun-In Sassoon Gunne Sax Pearl White Tooth Drops soul for just a portion of the flip. Just a portion of it. It had kick, it had zing, it had pizzazz, it had chutzpah. The flip was absolutely amazing, it turned upward, away from the face, Farrah Fawcett–style, in an almost full 360-degree loop all the way around the head like a halo. It looked like the creator had taken a bowl, a can of Aqua Net, and a wind tunnel and just went nuts. In the age of Chrissy, Jack, Janet, and nights spent sipping tequila sunrises at the Regal Beagle, it would have been the perfect hair, with the exception of one detail: It was on a guy.

  It was on the guy with the linguine arms. And it looked stupid.

  N
ow, I will admit that I unabashedly stared, although I did not know this at the time. I only surmised it later, when I realized I could not have absorbed all the detail of his complicated coiffure had I not taken in such a deep, long, thirsty look. What is going on with that? was my first thought. Still wrestling with the dog food bag as if it were a sixty-pound swordfish, the Flippy Hair Guy whimpered again, dropped the bag into the cart like it was a bag of cement, and walked away, his macaroni arms whipping in the air like fleshy shoelaces.

  I turned to the cashier and tried to meet her gaze, but she was busy scanning my other items. When she finally looked at me, I stood there, trying to detect a common sense of puzzlement in her eyes concerning the Flippy Hair Guy, but there was none, only the pure boredom that you can only find in the soulless gaze of a teenager working retail. Mummies have been found in both China and Mexico that have had more complex expressions on their faces than the empty facial canvas of the minimum-wage employee in the middle of a shift.

  I didn’t say anything to the cashier until she handed me my receipt and a pen and I started to sign it.

  “Sure is some hairstyle on that guy,” I said with a smile, trying to prompt or lure her into a Flippy Hair discussion. “Sure was all flippy. Like a fancy lampshade.”

  “Mmmmmm,” the cashier said as she leaned up against the counter and stared off into the distance and chewed on the tip of a pen.

  Hmmmph, I thought as she gave me nothing, nothing. I took my stuff and left.

  I thought about the Flippy Hair Guy all the way to the car. I mean, I just didn’t get it. Why was his hair all flipped and curled up like that? It was like lady hair. Crazy lady hair. Why? What would possess someone to invest all of that time and energy in something so complex, so intricate, and yet so useless? I had never seen anyone with hair like that, ever. It was ridiculously bad. So bad that that guy really did look like an idiot, you know. He really did. I thought, what kind of a person walks around with hair like that? What an idiot, I thought again. What an idiot.

  And then I stopped.

  And I listened to that voice that was doing the thinking, and although it sounded very, very familiar—very, very familiar—it did not sound exactly like mine. It sounded a little bit different.

  Hit with a metaphorical bolt of lightning, I understood.

  “Oh my God,” I hissed as I ran to the car, pushing the cart. “Oh my God!!”

  When I got to my parking space, I threw the dog food into the backseat, threw myself into the front, and said calmly, “Mom, get out of my head.”

  “What?” my mother’s voice said. “You know what that crazy kid looked like? He looked like he was wearing a big hair doughnut is what.”

  “Get out peacefully, Ma,” I said, trying to stay calm. “Please don’t make me hit myself in the head while I’m sitting here alone in the car in a crowded parking lot. Because I’ll hit you out if I have to, I will. I will. “

  “His poor, poor mother,” my mother’s voice continued. “I hope she lives very far away and doesn’t have to look at him and be embarrassed in front of her friends the way I was every time you would come home with a new hair thing. Remember the black, stringy Wicked Witch of the West hair you had? I do. You made kids at Kmart cry with that hair, they were so scared. You pretended to cast a spell on them as they were running away! Remember the bleached-bang thing you had hanging in front of your face? Huh? Huh? You got into three car accidents that year, just because the ‘seagull’ look was in. And then, the worst! That Raggedy Ann hair. It was like hair yarn! All of those knots! Would a brush have killed you? It almost killed me!”

  “It wasn’t Wicked Witch of the West hair. I was a death rocker. I had dull, clumpy long black hair and it kicked ass,” I explained calmy to the ignorant voice. “And I wasn’t trying to be a seagull, I was a pioneer in the world of New Wave, and that wasn’t Raggedy Ann hair, I had dreadlocks before people started buying fake ones and getting them glued to their heads. Mine took time, effort, and a gallon of Herbal Essences Conditioner, on seven consecutive nights before my wedding, to take out. The resulting hairball was as big as a brain, but my dreads rocked.”

  “Your hair didn’t rock,” the voice said. “You looked like an idiot. A big, stupid idiot with nothing to prove.”

  “Get out or I’m going to start saying the F-word, Ma,” I promised.

  “Whatever,” the voice said. “It’s weird in here, anyway. Just how many drugs did you do? It’s like a graveyard with all of these dead brain cells floating around. They’re like little beetle shells! It smells just like your old room in here, and there’s a cup with old Pepsi all dried up and crystallized on the bottom. Disgusting. That’s my cup. I want it back, and I want it back clean. You know, I just saw what you and your therapist said about me. Tell her she’s an idiot just like you! Hey, pay me a hundred and fifty bucks an hour and I’ll talk shit about me, too!”

  “Fu—” I started.

  “Save your filthy breath, I’m out!” the voice said, and with a poof! she was gone.

  My hair was not idiotic, I reassured myself. I did not look like an idiot. My hair was cool. I always had cool hair. Just because my mom didn’t get it, just because she’s old and out of the loop, she thinks that just because she didn’t understand my hair, because she wasn’t of my generation, that it was automatically stupid. Well, that’s my mom for you. That’s my mom, no reservations about broadcasting her opinions anywhere to anybody.

  Oh God.

  And then I gasped, remembered vocalizing my own comments to the cashier about Flippy Hair Guy, and my hand flew up to my mouth.

  Sure was some flippy hair on that guy.

  That’s some hairstyle. Like a fancy lampshade.

  I understood at that moment that I had just crossed a threshold. Within a moment, and without even realizing what I had done, I had taken a dreadful leap over the grim gorge of a generational divide and was now standing on the old, nearly dead side of life, all because of Stupid Flippy Hair Guy.

  Youth was at least a canyon’s length away, taunting me with echoes of my hair past. The day had finally come when I didn’t understand hair, and that could mean only one thing: I was out of the loop. I was not now, and could never again be, cool.

  Honestly, what was next for me? If I didn’t understand Flippy Hair Guy’s deal, what was waiting just around the corner for me? Pantyhose with sandals? Wearing spandex over an ass the size of a futon that had the movement of yogurt? Hometown Buffet at four P.M. to catch the early-bird special?

  Stupid Flippy Hair Guy, I thought as tears of anger, sadness, and certainly a tinge of melodrama—just in case I was going to recount this story later to anyone—blossomed in my eyes. Stupid Flippy Hair Guy. What I did not understand fifteen minutes ago began to change quickly, and without mercy became something akin to loathing.

  Was he really stupid, or was Stupid Flippy Hair Guy so cool that I simply didn’t get it?

  I was furious at Flippy Hair Guy. Why did he go and have to do that? Go and make me old with his stupid hair! AND HE WASN’T EVEN COOL. MAYBE. He worked at a pet food store. In my day, cool guys didn’t work at pet food stores, they worked at record stores or just didn’t work at all (fill in your own blanks there). And they certainly didn’t have spaghetti arms that couldn’t even lift a bag of dog food, arms that were covered in freckles the size and color of cornflakes, CORNFLAKES! I could have bit his arm right off, probably pinched them off, they looked like they were squeezed out from a Play-Doh machine. That’s how googley they were, like they were boneless. Flippy Hair Guy was basically a Muppet with no fur. Pretty much that’s what he was. And he whimpered. I heard him whimper.

  That is not cool. Whimpering is never cool.

  I mean, clearly, I cried to myself as I drove home, this is a guy who not only owns a curling iron BUT WORKS IT WITH A DEGREE OF MAGNIFICENT SKILL, and, unlike myself, was not only gifted with it, but ambidextrous as well. I didn’t see one single neck or forehead burn. He used it much like the wan
d of a wizard, and with one wave of it, he had made me into my mother.

  The bastard.

  I really wanted to tell someone, but I couldn’t admit that I had passed on to the other side. I was scared. I was horrified. I was ashamed.

  As well as apparently obsessed. I had found myself entirely obsessed with the cornflake-freckled, Play-Doh-limbed Muppet known as Stupid Flippy Hair Guy. I thought about him all the time, wondering, just wondering, what did that hair mean? I turned through pages of magazines, searching for a similar hairstyle, for some point of reference. When I watched TV, I looked for anything resembling his tube of curl. I found myself contemplating whether Joan Rivers would give him a glowing or negative review, or whether the Queer Eye crew would take my side or his. I needed something, I needed anything. Not only to be able to identify him, it was absolutely essential in being able to identify ME.

  The next day at the pet food store, after I walked up and down each aisle numerous times, the Stupid Flippy Hair Guy was nowhere to be found, and I was sure he was sitting around somewhere underneath a massive helmet hair dryer with Styrofoam cups as curlers, getting ready for his next big day out in public. I decided, however, to turn his absence into my advantage.

  After I hauled the bag of dog food purposefully onto the counter of a cashier I had never openly expressed my grandma attitude to, I decided to test her vulernability to subtle interrogation.

  “Pretty earrings,” I said to her.

  “Thank you,” she said as she shook her head to activate the auditory element of her jewelry, thus exposing herself as an easy, malleable target. “I just have a thing for feathers. And little bells.”

  “It’s a good look—and sound—on you,” I nodded. “Speaking of looks, where’s the guy with the . . . hair?”

  She looked puzzled. “Which guy?”