Dear Girls Above Me: Inspired by a True Story (10 page)

Pat’s bedroom: Unknown. He and I have boundaries.

Bathroom: Bad. Luckily for both parties, the bathroom remains private.

Breakfast nook: Promising. Once I get screens for the windows, this spot holds a lot of potential.

Kitchen: Good.

Kitchen sink: Best. This was the sweet spot.

I sat in the kitchen sink with my legs dangling. I attributed the optimized acoustics here to some quirk of our shared vent system. It was like a portal connecting our two very different worlds. “Hello?” I halfheartedly called out. I was curious about whether they were able
to hear me through this particular vent, but at the same time, I didn’t want to get caught. No response. I tried again, this time a tad louder. Still nothing. So, I just listened.

After a while I decided that I would write them another “letter.” When I logged on to my Twitter account this time, I learned that I now had nine followers! Who were these mysterious people? I clicked on one of them. Dahlia Stone. I had never seen her in my life. Her profile picture was of an angry-looking teenage girl. Dark eye shadow, jet-black hair, and a T-shirt that read
DON’T LOOK AT ME
. As I scrolled down her timeline, I noticed she had written to me:

“I loathe girls who obsess over text messages. Post another letter or I’ll kill you … kidding, but still do it.”

I’ve always planned on dying of natural causes; not at the hands of an emo teenager who will most likely grow up to become a banker. So I posted my next letter for Dahlia and my other followers:

Dear Girls Above Me,

Talking about how it’s raining for 37 minutes can be simplified to “Hey, it’s raining outside.”

And another.

Dear Girls Above Me,

Just because a guy looked at you funny on the street doesn’t mean you’re living in
The Truman Show
.

And another.

Dear Girls Above Me,

I’m sorry that you just came to realize there are no spring breaks in “real life.”

Why not quote them one more time?

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Did someone break in?! We didn’t leave the TV on CNN, right?” I’ve heard of these intelligent news-watching burglars. Be careful.

By the time I was done posting my flurry of letters, I had gained six new followers. I was now up to fifteen people. More of them wrote to me:

“These girls are such morons! Hilarious.”

“Your letters are seriously making my day!”

“How are you not chasing your brain out the door? I’d have gone upstairs and brutally murdered those girls by now.”

I was a little creeped out by that last guy, but everyone else had given me a taste of what it must feel like to be a rock star. And I wanted more. I had heard Ashton Kutcher was considered the king of Twitter, so I looked up his profile to compare the number of followers we each had. I figured he couldn’t possibly have many more than me. Maybe just a few … 
million
! Holy crap, I had a lot of letter writing to do.

The next morning I awoke to Bon Jovi’s “Shot Through the Heart.” I eliminated Pat as the cause of this racket, knowing that he was at Disneyland, and also because the song didn’t have a “sassy”
techno beat behind it. And as if I had cued the girls above me myself, they started singing along perfectly off-key. I tried burying my head in the pillows, but no amount of feathers could block their serenading. Half-asleep, I opened my computer and typed,

Dear Girls Above Me,

“Shot Through the Heart” at 7:25
A.M.
is not allowed.

At this point, there was no hope of my sleeping any longer. The girls were excited for their party, which meant I was forced to be excited for their party, which made me even less excited for their party. On top of that, I needed to find a pastel-colored shirt to wear.

I opened up my closet to an underwhelming amount of pigment. I turned on a light to illuminate the shadows but discovered that the shadows were actually my colorless clothes. Blacks, grays, browns, dark greens; this was my wardrobe. The only item that stood out was a pair of orange Crocs I bought one day when I was feeling particularly jaunty. I had a special distaste for these shoes, because I was 76 percent sure that I was dumped as a result of once wearing them. I had never noticed how somber my clothes were until I imagined them next to a soft-hued color, much like the one I would be forced to wear later that night. If my closet were in an animated movie, this is where the wisecracking bat voiced by Chris Rock would live and admonish me: “Ya gotta get out and live ya life, but before ya do, how ’bout stopping at Macy’s … JCPenney … the Gap.… Hell, I’ll even settle for a stroll through the Salvation Army. That way you can at least tell a bitch you’re wearing vintage; just please, I beg ya, buy some new shiiiiit.” (Sorry for that digression. In retrospect, perhaps
my Chris Rock impression doesn’t translate to the written word, but vocalized it’s
really
good. Trust me.) Anyway, I sure as hell wasn’t going to find my costume in there.

So I headed over to Urban Outfitters in search of a color I had never worn before. As I walked into the store, I was overwhelmingly soothed by an entire section of SweeTart-colored shirts. I had no idea they were so “hip.” I felt very bleak approaching such cheery colors, but I persevered. Even the names of these colors were cooler than I am.
POWDER PINK, SEA FOAM, WEDGWOOD BLUE, MARIGOLD, CREAMSICLE ORANGE—

“Sir, can I help you?” asked a skinny hipster whose dirty blond hair looked as if it were slapped across his forehead. His name tag read
SUNSHINE
.

“Umm, yes. Are these all of your pastel shirts or do you have more in another section?” In the moment, I felt this would make me sound more discerning and trendy. “Sure,” he would undoubtedly respond as he ushered me into the special secret section of extra-super-cool pastels. “We like to keep this section closed off to all but our most discerning and trendy customers.” Unfortunately, I read that wrong.

“No, I’m sorry, this is all we have in stock at the moment.”

“Oh, bummer, well I guess I can make do with what’s here.” Sunshine looked at me like I was crazy.

“Is there a particular color you’re interested in?”

I pictured myself in every single one of those shirts and quickly realized that I was not going to look good in any pastel color. My pale skin and hairy arms were meant to be covered up forever. But I hadn’t come all this way to get another pair of Crocs. I thought back to my Crayola days and summoned the most interesting crayon shade I could think of to let Sunshine know I was not some color philistine.

“Do you have a salmon-colored shirt? Like something Ryan Gosling might wear?” Don’t know why I threw that second part in. Sunshine stared at me through his fake prescription-less glasses.

“I’m not exactly sure of Ryan Gosling’s color scheme, but we do have something similar to what you’re describing, called Peachy.” Well, his proclaimed ignorance of anything Gosling made him a liar, but he totally hooked me up, shirt-wise.

He handed me two of the peachiest shirts I had ever seen. Not even real peaches are this peach. One had a regular collar, the other a V-neck. I was beginning to sorely regret my decision to attend this party. When it comes to fashion, I’m about as clueless as they come, but I was starting to think that this color worked on Ryan Gosling simply because every color works on Ryan Gosling. I pictured myself walking in and hearing people say, “Hey, who let in the giant peach from
James and the Giant Peach
?”

Now I had a big decision ahead of me: Did I buy the regular shirt or did I go for the V-neck? My instinct was telling me to go with the regular shirt, but my newfound hipster friend was sporting a V-neck, and I may go as far as to say that he looked quite dashing in it. Feeling super confident from this successful foray into hipsterdom, I pushed my luck and attempted some knowing banter.

“Why do they call this a V-neck shirt anyway? Does the
V
stand for
vegan
or something?” Sunshine paused long enough for me to hear my words hanging in the air and feel our rapport shatter at my feet.

“I’m pretty sure the
V
stands for the shape that it is making,” he responded, very slowly, for some reason. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

I guess we weren’t going to be best friends. “I’ll just take the …”

He scrunched his forehead, staring me down to see if I was going to say it.

I mouthed the words
vegan-neck
followed by, “… T-shirt. Thank you.” He rang me up in complete silence and I was out in record time with my new Peachy V.

I got home feeling slightly optimistic about my new shirt. I realized I should’ve probably tried it on before buying it, but I have a weird thing about putting on clothes outside the confines of my own bedroom, especially in store dressing rooms. I never really feel like there’s enough room to actually figure out if I look good in what I’m trying on. Like, how would this shirt look if I was trampolining? There’s no way to know. I also rush my dressing room experience because I have this paranoia that people will think I’m stealing clothes. I go as far as to make an exaggerated point of showing them everything I brought in as I’m on the way out. It’s silly, I know, but ever since Winona Ryder got caught shoplifting, I have avoided dressing rooms like the plague.

Having said that, I definitely should’ve tried on the damned shirt. My prominent neck tan line and chest fro did not make for a good look. No wonder hipsters look so “fabulous” in V-neck shirts; they have perfectly spray-tanned skin and “fierce,” hairless pectoral muscles. I hadn’t exposed my chest to the sun since the summer of ’92 and my pecs were about as toned as the queen of England’s thigh muscles (and I’m being generous there). The question now was did I wear the shirt or did I forget about the theme and go up there looking like my usual Johnny Cash self?

Right around the time the party sounded as if it was starting, my good friend Luke showed up. I had specifically invited him knowing that I was more likely to meet a lot of women as a result of his outgoing personality. I’ve never seen anyone work a girl quite like Luke. The man experiences no shame. I rarely ask girls for their phone number, due to a fear of rejection. Just picturing a girl in
the uncomfortable position of wondering how to say no to me is enough motivation for me to be single the rest of my life. And even if I know for sure that they want me to step up to the plate and ask them out, I still can’t do it. The worst of these moments was when I was having a very flirty chat with a premed student I had met at a bar. At the end of the night, she stood there just waiting for me to make a move. But there was still that 0.001 percent chance that her elated smile was just politeness, which left me to say, “Well, hopefully, you’ll be my doctor one day.”

Luke, on the other hand, will strut up to a group of single ladies and blurt out, “Let me get all of your numbers in order of age, please.” The most shocking part about this is they actually do it. His phone is like the Mecca of cellular devices, housing the names of thousands and thousands of girls, most of which he’s only glanced at once.

“What are you wearing?” Luke asked in judging tones.

“What do you mean? It’s a V-neck shirt.”

“You look like the giant peach from
James and the Giant Peach
.” Uh-oh.

“You do know this is a pastel-shirt-themed party, right?” I asked him.

“You do know that no one actually dresses up for themed parties, right?” I had been wondering why he was wearing a gray cardigan.

Luke curiously walked over to a vent hidden behind an old leather chair in my living room. After a few moments of examining, he opened it as if he were Sherlock Holmes at a crime scene. The conversations coming from the growing party upstairs grew louder. He sat back down on the couch cross-legged and slowly closed his eyes in a very Zen manner.

“So should we head on up there?” I asked the question as if I were an untrained Jedi speaking to Master Yoda.

“Not yet. Just listen we will,” he responded without opening his eyes.

Unfortunately, one of my many compulsions is that I absolutely cannot be late for
anything
. It doesn’t matter if I don’t even want to be there; I have to be early. I think this comes from something my mom said to me as a child: “Charlie, always remember never to be late; otherwise people won’t like you.” What’s completely absurd is that every single member of my family is late to everything, but for some reason I can’t shake my mother’s contradictory words of wisdom. Luckily for Luke, he had not listened to his mother growing up.

All I could do was fixate on the clock on my wall. With every tick, my anxiety grew stronger and stronger. Luke remained in a meditative state just listening. To distract myself, I wrote the girls a letter.

Dear Girls Above Me,

“I had the shittiest day, all I wanna do is get wasted.” I remember you saying the same thing last week when having the best day.