Fiction Ruined My Family - Jeanne Darst [45]
I HAD NEVER SEEN this kind of workaday theatricality. My mother’s drama was a pity-pot, little-rich-girl version. Carmen was Hispanic and loud and ghetto and funny. In Westchester, and in whitey culture in general, there’s a premium placed on manners, civility, pleasantries, particularly among women. Carmen didn’t operate comme ça. I was impressed. She was not as taken with me. Someone down the hall had done my hair in cornrows the night before. I wasn’t trying to be black or Bo, I was just stoned. Carmen took one look at me as she packed up her work things for good and said, “Who did your hair?”
“Karen, this girl down the hall.”
“Umm hmm. Where you live?”
“My mom lives on Eighty-seventh and York.”
“Umm hmm.”
“What about you?”
“Ninety-seventh and Amsterdam. The West Side, honey,” she said, and shot me a threatening look.
I thought that was probably it. There would be no halfway point where we’d meet between our two houses. After that day we’d never see each other again. But shortly after she was canned from the gym, I ran into her at the library where she was now working, and she needed a roommate desperately. I saw an opportunity to get away from the littlest Believer and I took it. A few weeks after living together I convinced Carmen to write a show of skits and stand-up comedy and improvisation.
Carmen was mad at me all the time. This was our schtick: passionate Latina and bumbling white lady, and like a lot of schticks it was our real life, too. She was mad at me because I drank too much, was impossibly white and suburban and rich (which I was, relative to her), fancy and carefree, which she saw as inane. I was messy, didn’t clean a whole lot, prompting lots of “Just ’cause I’m dark don’t mean I’m gonna scrub the bathroom!” routines. She didn’t understand extreme drunkenness and blacking out. I tried to explain that this is what civilized people do, but she couldn’t make the cultural leap. What I ate drove her crazy. “You just put a little tomato and mayonnaise and salt and pepper on a couple pieces of bread—it’s delicious.”
“No. No, you can’t! That’s insane! You need some meat on there or it’s not a sandwich!”
“Yes it is. It’s called a tomato sandwich. I’m going to make you one.”
“I’m not gonna eat it.”
One night I got drunk and she was a little drunk and I suggested we go down on each other. She went berserk and told me to fuck off, but I kept pestering her. “It’ll be fun! Come on! Let’s just try it.” A “Take one big bite” kind of argument, like you’d have with a three-year-old about spinach.
Finally she got on board and we went in the bedroom. She went first, and I thought she did a good job, it wasn’t really my thing but it was an experience. For someone who had to be convinced she certainly gave it a thorough go. Then it was my turn to do her. Well, the booze was starting to wear off and frankly the idea was losing its luster. Then I was confronted with the actual female anatomy, and man, I was not feeling good about this. I did my best and came up with some creative ways to get through it, when Carmen stopped me and said, “What are you doing?”
“I’m, um, you know, eating you out.”
“No you’re not. What is that, is that the blanket? Are you using the blanket on my pussy instead of your mouth?”
“No! No. I just had to—”
“You’re not even doing it. You’re pretending. You’re pretending to eat me out. I did you! I swear to God, Jeanne!”
“I’m sorry. It’s just, it’s really gross and I can’t do it. I was doing it, though. I was.”
Carmen threw me out of our room for the next few nights. I guess it was a classic case of unrequited cunnilingus, and we never talked about it again.