The Beautiful Anthology (11 page)

Reprinted with permission from the short story collection
Slut Lullabies
, by Gina Frangello (Emergency Press, 2010).

An Intelligent Woman and a Beautiful Woman go on vacation together with their Husbands. They go on a cruise, to Greece. The Intelligent Woman worries that her husband will like the Beautiful Woman’s breasts when they take off their bathing suit tops on the beach. Yet to refuse to remove her own top in hopes of forcing the Beautiful Woman to remain clothed in solidarity, the Intelligent Woman would have to be willing to portray herself as Conservative, Modest, and Unworldly. Someone who does not understand that in Greece breasts are No Big Deal. She is uncertain what to do.

But wait. Is it important to know that the Intelligent Woman’s Husband is more attractive (and also more successful) than the Beautiful Woman’s Husband? I think it is. You see, without that knowledge you might assume (rightly, you’d think) that the Intelligent Woman has grounds to be threatened by the Beautiful Woman. You might reckon that Beautiful People have better lives. Don’t they? Well, sometimes they do. But in this case, the Intelligent Woman has the Husband that all the Friends she and the Beautiful Woman share agree is the better of the two Husbands. Incidentally, all the Friends prefer the Intelligent Woman to the Beautiful Woman, too. Maybe they are jealous of the Beautiful Woman. But, to the Intelligent Woman, each other, and themselves, they simply claim to find the Beautiful Woman “nice but boring.”

The Intelligent Woman and the Beautiful Woman have been on vacation together before. They have been Friends for a long time (they are now thirty-one), and when they were eighteen, they went together to Ft. Lauderdale on spring break. Afterward, they did not speak for nearly a year. Then the Beautiful Woman’s Boyfriend broke up with her, and the Beautiful Woman was rumored to be suicidal. She had been witnessed causing a scene at the top of Bascom Hill on the way to class. The Beautiful Woman ripped the Boyfriend’s shirt while screaming. What she screamed had something to do with the Boyfriend thinking the Models in
Vogue
were prettier than the Beautiful Woman. The Intelligent Woman did not particularly desire to renew her friendship with the Beautiful Woman (they had never been
that
close), but to refuse would have seemed heartless, given what the Beautiful Woman was going through, and as the Beautiful Woman was now considered Unstable. So the friendship was renewed.

The Intelligent Woman’s Husband is, of course, an Intelligent Man. They are, in fact, Academics, which verifies their intelligence to the world, along with raising all kinds of assumptions about their sex life, some of which are true and some of which are not. One might assume, for example, that they have very cerebral sex, which is not the case. One might assume their lovemaking to be on the prudish side – also untrue. In the ten years they’ve been together, their sex has consisted prominently of the Intelligent Man tying up and spanking the Intelligent Woman, and the Intelligent Woman giving her Husband head. For variation, anal penetration occurs and there are escapades outdoors, in cars, and in the bathrooms of parties. Once, when abstaining from intercourse for a month before their wedding, the Intelligent Woman and the Intelligent Man hurled pornographic threats at one another for an hour while masturbating each other on the Best Man’s sofa. The year following the wedding, they fucked a minimum of five times a week.

The Beautiful Woman’s Husband is a Macho Man. The cruise was his idea. For all the reasons you might assume – yes, you would be right about all of that.

In Ft. Lauderdale, the Intelligent Woman and the Beautiful Woman had another traveling companion, the Aggressive Woman. On their very first night at the neon-signed bars, which the Intelligent Woman found embarrassingly contrary to the Bohemian image she wanted to project (though there was, as of yet, nobody to appreciate this projection, so the minimal lure of cheesy bars won out), the Aggressive Woman met a man. A boy, really, they were all only eighteen. He and the Aggressive Woman made out on the dance floor to a song that went:
Boom Boom Boom, Let’s Go Back to My Room
. Afterward, he walked the Aggressive Woman to the hotel, where she did not invite him to her room because she, the Beautiful Woman, and the Intelligent Woman were sharing quarters. That, and because she was a Virgin, though this was as embarrassing to her as attendance at cheesy bars was to the Intelligent Woman, and so she used her roommates (really straight girls who need their sleep), not virginity, as an excuse.

The Aggressive Woman may also be referred to as: the Smoking Woman, the Skinny Woman, the Foul-Mouthed Skank, the Special- Education Teacher, the Adopted Daughter, the World Traveler, and the Survivor of Childhood Hodgkin’s Disease.

On the cruise, the Beautiful Woman doubles her dose of Levsinex. The motion of the boat and all the exotic food is certain to make her Irritable Bowel Syndrome act up, which will annoy the Macho Man, who believes her illness is all in her mind and takes the opportunity of her diarrhea exoduses to mock her to any friends remaining around the dinner table, revealing her various unfounded anxieties while imitating her excitable voice until everyone howls even louder than she does when home sick on the toilet alone.

On the cruise, the Intelligent Woman brings with her Vicodin, Flexiril, and Valium. The Vicodin and Flexiril are for her bladder, which has an ulcer or something like an ulcer that is called Interstitial Cystitis and means her immune system is flawed but nobody knows how. There is no cure. The disease is neither progressive nor terminal. Men rarely get it. Doctors say the condition can be managed through rigorous avoidance of alcohol, all tomato and other citrus products, fermented foods (soy sauce, cheese), and molds (mushrooms, cheese again – she has to avoid cheese twice, though even with her limited math, 2 × 0 still equals zero). The Intelligent Woman adheres to these rules like a nun, yet her symptoms include urinating as frequently as the pregnant and a burning mock-bladder- infection twenty-four hours a day every day with no end in sight.

You might assume that the Valium is self-explanatory given the Intelligent Woman’s predicament. It’s not: She is afraid of planes.

The Boyfriend of the Beautiful Woman, unaware that he would break up with her in less than a year, sent her roses every day she was in Ft. Lauderdale. At the time, he thought her more beautiful than any of the Models in
Vogue
. At the time, he was terrified of nothing more than that, no matter where she went, every man would want her, and the burden of being so desired would prove too much, just as it had when the Boyfriend had relentlessly pursued and stolen her from Boyfriend Number One who had preceded him. So, every day, he sent roses to the hotel room the Beautiful Woman shared with her two Boyfriend-less Friends. But in his own cheater’s heart, he knew that she would stray.

On the cruise, the Intelligent Man and the Macho Man play chess all day. The Intelligent Man wins every game.

The Intelligent Woman was once a Neighborhood Girl. She wore a jacket with her Italian surname printed on the back and encircled with red and green stars. She smoked Newport cigarettes and piled purple eye shadow up to her dark, heavy brows. Still, none of the Neighborhood Boys wanted to fuck her, because she read too much and said things that made them feel stupid, plus she sounded like an abc Afterschool Special, going off on preachy riffs about how doing drugs instead of going to school was wrong. She even made fun of the cool words they made up (to the tone of the Pledge of Allegiance) swearing loyalty to the Neighborhood Street Gang.

The Girls on the Corner counseled the Intelligent Neighborhood Girl that she never got a guy because she was fat, so when she was thirteen she became Anorexic and lost thirty pounds quick as that, and – though her hungry breasts immediately and forever ceased all development, remaining forever pubescent – all the Neighborhood Fat Ladies said how much better she looked and how envious they were (they were Uneducated People who did not know what Anorexia was). But the Neighborhood Boys still hated her.

Then they gang-raped another Neighborhood Fat Girl, which went to show that not wanting to fuck the Intelligent Neighborhood Girl had never had anything to do with the width of her ass in the first place.

Imagine that.

On the cruise the Intelligent Woman wanders the ship library and complains that the novels are too mainstream, and then finds one she can tolerate and reads.

The Beautiful Woman does not read. Somehow she made straight As through high school and college, a feat that required copious amounts of reading. But ow that there is nothing she is required to memorize for a test she does not read anymore, and she never will, but you already knew that.

When the Aggressive Woman’s Ft. Lauderdale Fling told the Beautiful Woman he had fallen in love with her (in the span of three days), the Beautiful Woman let him kiss her even though he was short and stocky and a Guido who spoke with a New Jersey accent she would recall a decade later when watching
The Sopranos
on hbo. Nobody could fathom why a Beautiful Woman with a Boyfriend who sent roses every day would possibly kiss such a little toad, especially when her Best Friend, the Aggressive Woman, was so smitten with him, seeing as she preferred Guidos, for reasons of her own.

The Intelligent Woman and her Friends think, in retrospect, that they understand the Beautiful Woman’s motives now. But probably they are wrong. Probably they still don’t.

On the cruise, the Intelligent Man and the Macho Man play another round of chess. They speak about their Careers, though their work is not similar and they do not understand what the other does.

The Intelligent Man is an almost-renowned Scientist. The Macho Man is Regional Manager for a Best Buy and has a Company Car. But he is a good sport about losing at chess. And, being a Manager, he is a good listener, or good at pretending he is.

The Intelligent Woman failed both physics and trigonometry in high school because she was busy reading Anaïs Nin and scribbling secret poetry that did not turn out to be Any Good. She does not play chess. When her Husband discusses work too often, she cites his Presbyterian upbringing as though this is self-explanatory and necessarily a flaw.

Whenever the Beautiful Woman takes off her shirt at home, her Husband shouts, Boobies! No matter what else he is doing.

The Beautiful Woman grew up in the suburbs.

Duh!

The suburb in question is in Minnesota, and mostly Angloblond. The Beautiful Woman is Jewish and olive-skinned. In high school, she was not considered a Beautiful Woman. She was considered a Stingy Jew. Or a Puerto Rican, because she was so dark. That is what Boyfriend Number One was: Puerto Rican. When they were together, Minnesotans said, Look at the two Wetbacks. The Beautiful Woman loved Boyfriend Number One so fiercely, she wept every time they made love and kept his photo in her bathroom no matter how hysterical it drove her mother. He was the only one who understood.

When she got to college, she dumped him immediately for the first persistent Jew.

The Beautiful Woman told the Aggressive Woman that the kiss didn’t mean anything; she was only being polite. She said the Ft. Lauderdale Fling was ugly and the Aggressive Woman could have him, although of course he didn’t want her. The Aggressive Woman said, Your beak-nosed Boyfriend is ugly, too! The Beautiful Woman said, Well, I don’t see anybody sending you roses, so you really have no right to judge.

The Intelligent Woman thought all the men in question were so undesirable it was literally amazing, ut she didn’t open her mouth because not only was she receiving no roses, she didn’t even have a Fling to lose to another woman to begin with. So she kept quiet and flicked ants off the bed in their cheap room.

The Beautiful Woman daydreams about a man who looks deep into her eyes and says her name tenderly while making love. She likes kisses that are not too wet and sloppy. Whenever a man tells her she is pretty, she melts.

The Intelligent Woman has recurrent nightmares of damp, flabby sex with her mother.

Both of the Husbands, asleep and awake, dream about head.

On the cruise, which lasts for five nights, both Couples make love exactly twice, on the same days, at the same times. These are the only times they are not all together.

Afterward, the women tell each other about it in the bathroom and marvel at the coincidence.

Whenever her mouth is not otherwise engaged, the Macho Man likes the Beautiful Woman to talk dirty to him and tell him her fantasies. Though the Macho Man may not think she is smart, she is smart enough to know that he doesn’t want to hear: You look into my eyes and tell me how pretty I am and how special and how much you love me and only me and would die without me in your arms. So she says other things, but often he tells her she is repetitive and unimaginative and unconvincing.

And if you think that only fuels the fire of her
actual
fantasy and makes her want to run like hell but instead she goes into the bathroom to shit with bowel-churning anxiety because she knows she never will, well. You would be right.

Both women have TMJ and dentists who pretend not to understand why their jaws never improve. And that is enough of that.

On the beach in Rhodes, the first beach they’ve been on, about two-thirds of the women actually have on bikini tops, or even onepiece suits. The Intelligent Woman becomes flummoxed. Life is always exceedingly more difficult when choice is involved.

That Fat Neighborhood Girl who was once raped by the Gang Boys (who are now in prison, junkies, piddly runners for the mob, or else ordinary Family Men living in the Old Neighborhood or cheap Chicago suburbs) is now a Fat Counselor. After the rape, during which she was also beaten with a coat hanger and thrown down a flight of stairs, many ladies in the neighborhood came forward to offer alibis for the Gang Rapists. One of the Rapists was the Fat Neighborhood Girl’s Boyfriend, and one was a thirty-two-year-old small-time Mafioso who was president of the local school board. The Fat Neighborhood Girl and her Single Mother moved out of the Old Neighborhood down to the South Side, where other Italian people lived but where nobody knew them enough to know they were both Sluts. After they were gone, the Fat Neighborhood Ladies said, She’s always been a whore, that mother, and now the daughter is, too, see what you get?