Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [21]
(I know. I’m forgoing the Four Abodes. Dissing the dharma. Deepening my dukkha. For someone who doesn’t claim to be a Buddhist, you’re damn good at dokusan. But come on, if I can’t hate on ridiculous hipsters, who can I hate on? Now, that’s a Zen koan worth riddling.)
Manda’s and Shea’s jobs require them to lead a nocturnal lifestyle. They spend most of their daylight hours in bed, but not always sleeping, if you get my horrified drift. This is why I rarely work from the apartment even though working in one’s pajamas is supposed to be one of the greatest benefits of being a freelance editor. (Though I’d trade that in for medical benefits because on January 19, 2007, I turn twenty-three and will be officially removed from my parents’ health plan. Without that protective coverage, I am destined to contract a hanta virus on January 20.) Manda also works some afternoons at Planned Parenthood while Shea works similar hours at a video store. If I do my editorial work for Think from Ozzie’s coffee shop all morning, then go straight to Bethany’s to babysit Marin in the afternoon, I can time it so Manda and Shea are heading out the door for work just as I’m coming home. I’ve arranged my schedule so I hardly ever see them, which is the only reason our roommate situation works. As for how they spend the rest of their nonsleeping daylight hours while I’m out of the apartment, I don’t really want to know. It apparently requires a lot of lubrication, as indicated by the Post-it reminder stuck on our bathroom mirror: BUY K-Y.
The one thing I will say about Manda is this: She’s always been an unrepentant sex maniac.
sixteen
Shea sullenly dragged herself in behind Manda and greeted me with a dip of her baseball cap.
“’Sup.”
To which I replied, “Hey, Shea.”
And she said nothing else as she headed to the kitchen table and huddled over the Automobiles section of the Times. Even in her hooded sweatshirt, calf-skimming cargo shorts, and dingy white Vans slip-ons, Shea isn’t exactly butch. No, I’ve come to the conclusion that her gender-blending aesthetics and attitude are modeled after those of a sixteen-year-old boy. She looks no different from the dozens of teenage skaters grinding all over Prospect Park, fueled by ADHD and megadoses of caffeine and testosterone. She even smells like a high school boy, a ripe combination of a fermented hamper and AXE deodorant body spray. So it’s no surprise she acted just like a surly adolescent when Manda took off her baseball cap and playfully nuzzled the charred-black buzz cut beneath.
“Daaaaaaamn.” Shea has a talent for stretching four-letter words into four syllables. “Dinja gettanuff lasniiite?” Her tone could only by the very loosest definition be considered affectionate.
“Mmmmm…Never…,” Manda cooed.
“Daaaaaaamn. Why you gotta be such a pain-in-the-asshole rapeface?”
Shea also has a talent for such wonderfully scatological outbursts. (Though I can hardly blame you for not embracing cumchugger, though I swear she meant it as a term of weird endearment.) I’m not at all freaked out by Manda’s Sapphic tendencies, but I do think it’s peculiar how her pangender partnership with Shea exemplifies the kind of cruel misogyny this self-described “fourth-wave feminist” has so aggressively fought against since high school. Manda would have never dated a guy this offensive back then, and is only dating one now because she’s really a girl. Let me put out an apology to the entire GLBT community, but I just don’t get it.
And yet I kind of can’t blame Shea for being so…pissed off. I mean, all but the most genetically blessed go through periods of squirmy discomfort in our own skin. But there’s a big difference between my kind of discomfort (“Boo-hoo! I don’t have any boobs!”) and Shea’s (“Boo-hoo! I have boobs! And where the hell is my penis?”).
“Where’s Hope at?