Written by:
Kristin Egener
Photographer:
Laimah Osman
I am so angry, I can barely type. I don't deserve to be treated like a disposable diaper, and that's exactly how Jude is starting to treat me. Can't believe how callous she can be.
OK I'm taking a deep breath.
We'd snuck into a club that Jude knows, in what my mom would call the "red-light district," where half the streetlights are out. After the bouncer smirked at our fake IDs and let us in anyway, we had to pass through a gauntlet of women who were all seated at the tables closest to the entrance.
I felt myself glued to Jude's back and deliberately made myself take a step back. I didn't want to look like a clinging girlfriend, so I found the perfect distance — close enough to signify more than friendship, far enough to suggest independence. I really hate new places where I don't know anyone.
Jude, of course, knew people. She introduced me quickly, and I didn't really catch anyone's name — the tall one with the peroxide-blond crew cut that looked like duck feathers was Chrissy? Clarissa? The heavy-lidded one with the fertility goddess figure and too much Burnt Rose lipstick (I'm good with lipstick colors, have I mentioned that?) pried her lips apart from her cigarette long enough to mumble something like Delila? Deliah?
If we'd been playing the Name Game, I would've failed horribly. I stood there dumbly as Jude caught up on the latest goings-on from a shortish Keebler-elf-looking girl named T-blah-blah. (Who had dumped who, who had moved in with who, whose ex had keyed whose car.)
Finally Jude saw that I was miserable and took pity on me. Hit up the bartender for change and we started playing pool. We kept knocking the balls off the table, which gave us an excuse to crawl under tables amid kicking legs and look up skirts. (Let's just say some people should get more into underwear fashion — and I didn't know they made Strawberry Shortcake and Pooh Bear undies in adult sizes.)
Anyway, I was just starting to have fun when a girl came up to Jude and started talking to her, leaning against the pool table and blocking Jude from our game. She had curly, maroon-dyed hair and a pixie face smeared with too much glittery makeup. (Which, by the way, is so out of date.) Her silly pleather pants shimmered too, as did her halter top, made of that awful silvery stretchy fabric. Guess she was attractive, if you like that generic sort of attractive. (And I was sure Jude did not.) Anyway she started whispering something to Jude, and it was really rude because I couldn’t hear at all.
Jude looked over at me, then back at Glitz Girl, then back at me. Then she said, "Hey, I'm going to go to Melanie's party, is that all right?" I couldn’t believe it. I looked at Glitz Girl/Melanie, to give her a chance to be polite and invite me too. When she didn't, I said, "Well, I can come, too, right?"
Jude and that girl exchanged a look that told me a lot more than I wanted to know. When Jude turned back to me, she was almost patronizing. "I don't think that would be a very good idea, OK? Why don't you get a ride with Deliah, she lives near you." Then she turned away and left, just like that, with Melanie following right behind her just like I had just an hour earlier — not too close, not too far away.
I stood there, about to cry. After all we'd put up with at school, together, she could just dump me in a bar where I didn't know anyone and walk off to some party where I wasn't welcome? I turned around to go to the ladies’ room — and ran right smack into a pair of boobs.
I looked up from the boobs, which were supported by a bit of a potbelly and harnessed within a flowery, silky dress with a plunging scoop-neck, and saw that I’d run into a — a transsexual, I guess you'd say, though I wasn't sure how she would have described herself. I'd seen her earlier, when I first walked into the bar. She smiled at me, and I tried to smile back.
"Hey, honey," she said real quiet-like, I guess so no one else would hear. "I heard all that, and that wasn't very nice, was it? You want to come talk to me about it? Name's Tanya, and you got my shoulder if you want it." I nodded.
My life has changed sooo much in the past few months.
*smooches*
Regina
Regina Babydyke's Cyber Diary is a Curvemag.com Web exclusive.You won't find it anywhere but here. We'll be posting new episodes in the coming weeks, so check back soon for more!
|
