What Kind Of Girls Do You Like?

by Esther C. Werdiger

It’s November. Nice Girl has flown out to L.A. to visit her cousin, who’s just had a new baby. They’re walking along Santa Monica pier when her cousin — who, as it happens, is also named Monica — says, “Oh, you look so beautiful in this light. Let me take a photo?” Nice Girl beams and faces her cousin, her body slightly turned to the side, revealing the gentle curve of her breast. “What are you doing?” says Monica, lowering her Samsung Galaxy. “Oh!” exclaims Nice Girl, as she quickly repositions herself, turning around to look at the camera from over her shoulder. Her smile is wide, her white teeth show, but if you view the photo in full screen on Facebook, you can see a shard of glimmering panic in her brown eyes.

***

It’s Naughty Girl’s 92nd birthday, and the home is making a big deal about it. Happy Birthday Naughty Girl You’ve Still Got It, reads the bakery-ordered cake. She’s wearing a shimmery lip gloss that Eugenie helped her put on before wheeling her out to the Activities Room. Eugenie, and Trisha, another nurse, help her to blow out her candles. Everyone sings and Naughty Girl closes her eyes, navigating the abruptly visiting memory of one particular birthday. 32? 34? The cool bathroom floor, the exhausted relief of being post-puke, moments after wholeheartedly wishing she was dead. The feeling of complete aloneness. The calmly accepted fact that she would be, forever, because she was just that sort of girl. But two birthdays later, she becomes a mother to Justine. Justine’s father is Naughty Girl’s boss, and he is also married to a sad woman named Lynne. 18 months later, gives birth again, to Lucy. By this time, Naughty Girl is married to the father of her girls, and Lynne is dead, having driven off a bridge upon being informed of the second pregnancy. She opens her eyes and the candles are out. Smiling, Eugenie hands her a stack of 3 magazines, tied with a red ribbon. At the top is a Cosmo. She wonders if Justine, now a busy and difficult woman, will manage to visit today. Lucy was a Nice Girl, but she was gone — killed in an electrical fire at a soup kitchen, one terrible day in Seattle. There are also two stepchildren, but they hate her.

***

It’s early on a Friday evening and Nice Girl is in the ladies’ room at her work, with her colleague Mandy, who works in the next cubicle. They like to IM each other funny fail videos and Downton Abbey GIFs when they’re not busy working. They’re putting on some makeup before meeting a few friends downtown for dinner and drinks. Mandy stands with her face right at the mirror, adding a second layer of mascara, as Nice Girl adds a smudge of black eyeliner to her lids. “Hey, check this out,” she says, quickly lining the entire inner rim of her eyes with the black pencil. She looks at Mandy, her mouth closed and slightly puckered. “Shit,” says Mandy.

***

“Oh, I loved this record,” muses Naughty Girl, in her husky voice, flipping through old compact discs at the used record store. It’s Blur, the Blur record. “Ha, wow,” says Nice Girl, who is standing nearby, already holding her purchase of the day, Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory? “Blast from the past.” She’s suddenly visited by a vivid memory; baking muffins with her best friend, “Song 2” playing loudly as they danced around the kitchen, singing woo hoo into wooden spoons. She reaches for the record in Naughty Girl’s hand, her wet eyes full of silent apology. At exactly the same time, Naughty Girl is visited by an equally vivid memory; watching music videos alone at her boyfriend’s rich stepfather’s house, and Oasis on the television. The memory of Noel Gallagher’s heavy, bored gaze slaps her in the face. She gasps, and her hand reaches out. Nothing makes sense, and an actual alarm sounds.

***

It’s 7 p.m. on a work night and Nice Girl is at the drug store picking up some basics. She strolls down Aisle 6, heading towards her preferred brand of sanitary napkins. But something sitting a few shelves away catches her eye. A small box of tampons, printed in a hot pink and black leopard pattern. With a hand on her hip, the Nice Girl cocks her head to the side and reaches for the box. As she holds it gingerly and scans the text, a young man with spiky hair walks past. She catches his narrowed eye, and he gives her a lusty look. “No!” she cries, shaking her head. “No! I’m… I’m a Nice Girl! I’m a… ” but it’s too late. He’s already reached the end of the aisle, and now he’s out of sight. Her small, Twin Peaks Police Department Receptionist voice trails off. She puts the box back and locates her usual pads, then some Pepsi Max, before heading to the checkout. While she waits in line, she checks the time in Seoul, where her boyfriend Jeff teaches English. She can call him at 8, when he has recess for 15 minutes.

***

For no good reason, Naughty Girl decides to ditch school one day. She hitches a ride home on the back of some man’s motorbike. She lets herself into her family’s quiet house, goes upstairs to her room, and finds a pile of folded laundry at the edge of her bed. Atop the pile is a white tank top, screenprinted with a faded floral design. She holds it tightly, and inhales deeply through her nose. “THIS,” she starts, clenching her first, “IS NOT,” she continues, raising her arm over her head, “MIIIINE!” she screams, hurling the tank top out her bedroom door, across the hallway, into the clean and breezy room of her younger sister, Nice Girl. Infuriatingly, it lands without a sound, at the foot of a large, framed Breakfast At Tiffany’s poster, like an offering. Like a lot of people, Nice Girl easily forgets that Holly Golightly was a prostitute. And that Breakfast At Tiffany’s was a terrible film. Although this final detail is only relevant to Alternative Girl, who prefers the Diva Cup, and whose room is further down the hall.

Previously in Story Time: Brad And Angie Go To Meet The African Pee Generator Girls

Esther Werdiger moves to New York next week, and usually writes comics at The Hairpin.

“A dozen kung fu nuns from an Asian Buddhist order displayed their martial arts prowess to bemused scientists at CERN this week as their spiritual leader explained how their energy was like that of the cosmos.”

“Available in Ziricote, Macassar ebony, Ceylon satinwood, Amboyna burl, Olive ash burl, Macassar ebony with diamond pattern inlays, hand laid eggshell, goatskin, and stingray skin.” (More LOLs here and here.)

“Continuing a hot trend, October was the fifth warmest across the globe since record keeping began in 1880. And climate scientists say it’s likely, about 90 percent so, that 2012 will become the warmest year on record for the contiguous United States.”

America engaged in a few moments of phony communal nostalgia for the Hostess Twinkie today, as the news got around that the Texas-based snack manufacturer would shut down operations and sell its assets following bankruptcy and a long battle between the brand’s current private equity owners, creditors and the union representing 18,500 bakery and factory workers. The biggest losers, as always, are the employees. With a Kochian sneer, Hostess CEO Gregory F. Rayburn announced that “Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.”

Oh, the Twinkie! How will America recover, etc. First, who cares. Second, Twinkies and all other products made by Hostess are garbage, the closest thing to industrial waste America’s terrible parents ever willingly fed to their children as a “treat.”

But the heavily preserved and artificially flavored bleached wheat spooge-tube made by Hostess did do a little bit of good in the world: It helped make openly gay politicians an accepted part of American public life.

Say goodbye to the Twinkie?!?! Say it ain’t so! Everybody loves mass produced cream filled pastries, they’re gooooooooood! It’s a sad day 🙁

— J.P. Rosenbaum (@JP_Rosenbaum) November 16, 2012

After the homicidal homophobe Dan White assassinated San Francisco County Supervisor Harvey Milk, White’s demonic attorneys came up with the “Twinkie Defense” — the insane idea that White’s killing spree was fueled by his sudden switch to a diet of trash, including Twinkie sponge cakes. Milk was the first openly gay politician ever elected to American public office, and after he and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone fell to Dan White’s gun in 1978, Milk became a martyr. Just three decades later, the entire Republican Party is gay. Ha ha, not completely. But things have changed!

And now, some other second-tier industrial bakery will buy the Hostess assets and continue producing the Ding-Dong, and the Wonder Bread, and other crap nobody wants. Thank God that our First Lady, Michelle Obama, will soon ban all of this stuff and send the people who eat such things to “exercise camps” in the frozen wasteland of socialist Canada.

The best outcome, for America, would be if one of the popular Mexican snack companies bought the equipment and rights to make Twinkies. Hahahah can you imagine the racist outcry from those who still actually eat Twinkies, instead of just bogusly reminiscing about them for a single morning, on Twitter?

“When it comes to winning modern wars, a robust marketing campaign is as important as a military campaign. But while Israel has long been aware of this, the Palestinians have never been quite so PR-savvy.”

“Fears are growing that the most lethal form of the Ebola virus can mutate into an airborne pathogen, making the spread of the terrifying disease more difficult to check. It was previously thought the untreatable virus, which causes massive internal bleeding and multiple organ failure, could only be transmitted through contact with infected blood. But now Canadian researchers have carried out experiments showing how monkeys can catch the deadly disease from infected pigs without coming into direct contact.”

“The Federal Housing Administration, which has played a crucial role in stabilizing the housing market, said it ended September with $16.3 billion in projected losses — a possible prelude to a taxpayer bailout…. The FHA does not lend money, but guarantees loans made by banks in exchange for insurance premiums. The agency’s role has expanded since the crash of the subprime mortgage market, and it now insures about $1.1 trillion in loans.”
 — Well, well, well. Look, we found the one thing no one wants to privatize! And let’s hear it for the free market! “The report blamed the fund’s losses largely on loans in which sellers were allowed to cover the down payment on behalf of the buyer, often by inflating the price of the house.”

“The world faces a future without cures for infection, in which even a minor injury or a routine operation could prove fatal, the Chief Medical Officer has warned. Professor Dame Sally Davies said rapidly evolving resistance to antibiotics among bacteria is one of the greatest threats to modern health. ‘Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness at a rate that is both alarming and irreversible — similar to global warming,’ she said.”

So Josh Foer, Tony Kushner and Mike Daisey go to prison, an endless purgatory of Moby-Dick, Louis CK on Staten Island, Vampire Weekend headlines the St. Ann’s benefit and many other jokes for your weekend.