Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea Read online

  “We’ve only dry humped,” Sarah told us.

  By the way Ivory reacted to this information, you would have thought Sarah had told her that she had become romantically involved with Flavor Flav.

  “Dry humping is disgusting,” Ivory declared, throwing her fork down onto the table. “It’s for junior high–schoolers. What is the point of a guy lying on top of you fully clothed, and then coming in his pants? What does that even mean?”

  “It obviously means that the two people involved are at the beginning of a very meaningful relationship,” I answered. “What do you think they did in the seventeenth century when there were layers and layers of petticoats and knickers?” I redirected my attention to Sarah. “I have no problem with the dry hump. I think it can be very magical, especially if you’ve got one of David Hasselhoff’s records playing in the background. What’s his name again?” I asked, knowing full well what his name was but wanting Sarah to say it aloud.

  “Coolio,” Sarah said in the lowest voice possible.

  “And he’s white,” I added.

  “That’s not so bad,” Lydia said unconvincingly. “There are a lot of worse names than Coolio.”

  “Like what?” Ivory asked. “Rumplestiltskin?

  “No, like…Eminem.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but Eminem is a rapper. At least he has some tie to the African-American community. Coolio is Hungarian.”

  “Does Coolio rap?” Ivory asked Sarah.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “I think you’d know if he rapped,” I told her. “That’s not exactly something you just do on the side.”

  “That can’t be his real name,” Ivory said.

  “It’s not,” Sarah said. “He told me the other day that it was time for me to start calling him by his first name, but I have no idea what it is. Everyone calls him Coolio.”

  “I’m sorry, but that is a really ridiculous nickname. That’s worse than Sugar Tits,” I said, remembering what was written under my high school yearbook picture.

  “Chelsea,” Lydia jumped in. “I don’t think you have any room to make fun of Sarah’s fat, smelly boyfriend. You dated Big Red and then got dumped by him.”

  “This is true,” I said. “But Big Red was cute in a…different kind of…way.”

  “No he wasn’t,” all three of them said in unison.

  “The point is,” Lydia announced, “that you like him and he likes you, and after everything that’s happened to you in the past year, you deserve it.” Lydia was of course referring to Sarah being broken up with by her fiancé two weeks before their wedding.

  “Do you have a thing for foreigners?” Ivory asked Sarah, realizing a pattern.

  “I think it’s wonderful,” Lydia declared.

  “Wonderful is a word that should really only be used by gay men,” I said to Lydia.

  “It really is,” Ivory agreed.

  “Shut up,” Lydia said to both of us. “Just shut up.”

  Lydia was experimenting with her newfound positivity and it was hard to get used to such a drastic change. A month earlier, after popping two Vicodin on a plane from L.A. to New York, Lydia had cheated on her boyfriend of three years with the Navy SEAL sitting next to her. They were in a full make-out session until the flight attendant approached her and said there had been several complaints from other passengers about “groans” they had heard coming from her aisle. Based on her therapist’s advice, Lydia joined the Landmark Forum, one of those life-enhancement seminars, and she already had a completely new lease on life. She had become increasingly sympathetic and supportive, and it was becoming almost intolerable.

  “I want a massage,” I announced.

  “Me too,” Sarah said. “I’m dying for one.”

  “You’re not going to get in anywhere on a Saturday,” Ivory told us.

  I turned and looked at Ivory. “Hey, Debbie Downer, what exactly is your problem today?”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I had a rough night.”

  “Why?”

  “I went to Air Conditioning.” Air Conditioning was a new bar that had opened up down the street from Ivory’s apartment. She had been there every night since its opening two weeks earlier.

  “With who?” I asked her.

  “Myself,” she said. “I went by myself.”

  The three of us looked at her pitifully. “You’re a real hot mess,” I told her.

  “Believe me, I know. You know you’re a hot mess when the only person buying you drinks all night is yourself,” she told us.

  “Isn’t Air Conditioning a dance club?” asked Lydia.

  “Yes,” I said to Lydia, and turned to Ivory. “Who were you dancing with?”

  “Myself.” Ivory had been unemployed for the past nine months and it had clearly started taking its toll. “You know how you know you’re really a hot mess?” she asked us all. “When you make friends with a group of people at a bar, and as you’re walking away at the end of the night, you turn around to wave good-bye, and none of them are even looking in your direction.”

  I turned to Sarah to avoid looking at Ivory any longer. “There’s a bunch of those little shitholes on Pico where you can get a massage and you don’t need an appointment. You can just walk in. But they’re kind of gross,” I told Sarah. “To be honest, I really don’t care; I need a massage.”

  “Me too,” Sarah said. “Let’s go.”

  We paid our check and jumped in Sarah’s car since I was on my moped. After walking into three different places on Pico that had no availability, we found a spot that had a screen door with Japanese writing above it.

  Inside, the carpeting was gray with a large dark stain right in front of a tall white counter. Behind the counter there were three Japanese women, all wearing alarmingly bright lipstick. On the wall behind them, an enormous print of a red rose hung with a black Formica frame holding it in place. It was by far the dirtiest place I had ever voluntarily walked into, and that’s including a barn I had once passed out in after a pie-eating contest.

  “Hi,” Sarah said in her sweet, high voice. “Do you have any massages available?”

  The three women looked at each other, and then the head Asian said, “Wicense, please.”

  “I’m sorry?” Sarah asked.

  “We need wicense before massage.” Sarah looked at me to see if I knew what the woman was saying—since I’ve been known to have an ear for different dialects.

  “License?” I asked.

  “Yeah, wicense,” she said again.

  “Oh my God,” Sarah said under her breath, digging through her purse to find her license.

  “Why the hell do they need our license?” I asked her. “Are we getting pulled over?”

  “Must pay fuhst.”

  “Before the massage?” I asked the head Asian.

  “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Before.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Sarah said again.

  “I know, but my back is killing me. I need someone to get these knots out.”

  “This is obviously a whore house,” she said under her breath.

  I handed the woman my license.

  “What are you doing?” Sarah asked me.

  “Well, I don’t care if it is a whore house, I’m sure they know how to give massages too,” I told her. Then I looked back at the head mistress, Dim Sum. “Do you give massages or just happy endings?”

  “No happy ending here!” she screamed.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Sarah groaned.

  “You pay fuhst,” Dim Sum barked. “One hundred dollah.”

  “A hundred bucks?”

  “You pay fuhst,” she said. “Cash only.”

  “That seems pretty steep for a place that doesn’t even go down on us,” I mumbled to Sarah as I got money out of my bra.

  “You go in back and lay down!” Dim Sum was looking at me, and one of the younger girls standing behind her nodded her head and smiled at me. I looked at Sarah, who was watching Dim Sum put the money I had handed