My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands | Page 7

missing a few hairs too. The ones on his head. As

they were rolling around on her bed, his toupee came flying off and landed on the curling iron

that was left on for what could very well have been the entire summer. Ivory liked older men,

but not old enough to have no hair. Apparently, this guy really got the short end of the stick in

the looks department. How he did in the other stick departments, we would never know.

Later on that summer, I started fooling around with a guy named Turtle. This was to be-

come a common theme of mine—dating men nicknamed after animals. Later on there was

Chicken, and for a brief two-week absence of mind, there was a boy named Rooster. Chicken

got his name because he could outrun anyone, and Rooster got his because he got up every

morning at the crack of dawn. Needless to say, my relationship with Rooster didn't make it

past our first sleepover. Chicken and Rooster were not related.

I liked Turtle. I had met him when I stopped at the gas station where he worked. There

was only one bathroom, and as I was leaning down to cover the seat with toilet paper, with

my pants around my ankles, the door flew open.

“Whoah! Sorry about that,” he apologized hastily as he shut the door.

When I walked out he was waiting next to the door with an embarrassed look on his face.

“That's not really my best angle,” I told him.

Both our faces were red with embarrassment and we started laughing uncontrollably. To

the point where I had to use the bathroom again.

“Did you leave me any toilet paper?” he asked as I came out of the bathroom the second

time.

“Yeah, there's a little left on the seat.”

Turtle and I got along great. He was the type of blue-collar alcoholic that you could have a

really solid fling with. Turtle was more laid-back than the Dalai Lama. He was the perfect pro-

totype for a summer fling; a cute, flirty island boy, but not the type you'd miss in the fall. He

fixed bikes at the gas station for the summer, and he definitely didn't go to college. He had a

vocabulary that could battle my six-year-old nephew's.

Turtle had an uncle named Marty whom Ivory immediately took a shine to. He owned his

very own gas station, and Ivory loved the smell of gas.

So there we were, two middle-class Jewish girls from Jersey hangin' tough at the gas sta-

tion where our paramours worked. Our parents would have been so proud. We'd go by there

from the beach for about a month straight, refill Ivory's water wings at the air pump, and watch

our men fix cars. Joey Buttafucco—style. We'd sit around sipping our Mike's Hard Lemonade

waiting for the boys to finish working so we could head out to some dive bar that accepted

fake IDs. We each had our favorite pair of cutoff Levi's that we wore low on our hips and

ripped up the sides. Sometimes we wore a shirt, but if we skipped eating that day, we'd also

skip wearing shirts and just sport our bikini tops.

“This is like the prime of our life,” Ivory said to me one day as we watched our men work

and I had just finished pumping a customer's gas.

“Yeah.” I smiled as I lit up a Marlboro Red. “It really doesn't get any better than this.”

Marty and Ivory got into a big fight one night at a bar that had a lot of wood chips on the

floor. He made a comment to her about not drinking anymore and she started screaming,

“Oh, so now I'm an alcoholic, is that it?” Marty was mostly soft-spoken, but I think he and his

liver had just had enough. The four of us had been hanging out for a month straight, every

night.

Being the supportive friend I was, I decided to storm out with her. Unfortunately, I lost my

footing, ended up sliding out the door, and got a splinter right below my right butt cheek. I fall

a lot, but other than that I can pretty much control my liquor. Ivory's the kind of girl who gets

drunk and immediately starts slurring. I have a lot of friends like that, and I think it's because it

makes me look “more together.”

The next morning Ivory told me she wanted to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Great, I thought. Just what I needed. The summer was going so well. I had to sit down and

explain to her that AA was for quitters, and that “alcoholic” was one ugly word. You spend one

night in women's prison, and all of a sudden people want to label you! I told her I didn't think

she had a drinking problem, and besides, they don't have AA in Martha's Vineyard. After all, it

was an island. Any normal person wouldn't have believed me, but Ivory loved hearing me lie,

especially when it meant she didn't have