Emily
“STOP THAT,” DAVID GRUNTED.
“Stop what? I’m not doing anything.” She lay next to him in bed, wearing loose white pajama shorts and a tank top. It was so hot that she would have preferred to be naked, but she didn’t want to risk running into Matt in the shared bathroom.
“You’re putting too much weight on your side of the bed and it’s hurting my tailbone. I can’t be on an angle.”
“Too much weight? Really?”
“I’m not calling you fat, if that’s what you’re insinuating. You’re just moving around too much. I need to be completely still, and I can’t have any friction on my tailbone.”
She lay on her back and crossed her arms like a mummy. There was no way she would be able to fall asleep like this. Already he had nixed the idea of actually sleeping underneath the covers because apparently he needed all the sheets and blankets under him to cushion his tailbone as well as a pillow under his butt and two under his head. She had gladly sacrificed her pillow to make him comfortable, but his grumbling hadn’t stopped.
“You know, you could just let me take more Vicodin,” he said.
“I texted Mark and he told me you can take more tomorrow. You’ve had enough today, and people overdose on it by accident all the time. The last thing I need is for you to die on our wedding week. It’s like a story right out of the Daily Mail.”
“Fine. Well, if you’re not going to let me take it, then don’t roll around in bed.”
“What about putting the doughnut underneath you?”
“It doesn’t work so well when I’m lying down. It keeps sliding around.”
“What if I...” She started sitting up. He winced as the weight on the bed shifted. “...made this...very special for you?” She began to trace her fingers along his inner thighs. “Nature’s Vicodin.”
“Unless you’re offering me actual Vicodin, stop. I don’t want a blow job.”
“Get out. You’ve never turned me down before.”
“Well, I didn’t have a bruised ass before.”
Emily’s heart raced. She thought about all the articles she had read that cited “less sex” as the first sign of a failing relationship. What man turned down a blow job? Obviously one who was no longer in love. Or perhaps not even attracted! She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Please tell me this isn’t your way of getting out of the wedding. Oh my gosh, I should have seen this coming. If you’re having second thoughts, just tell me.”
David rolled his eyes. “I’m not having second thoughts. I’m just in a lot of pain. Stop making everything about you.”
She wondered for a moment if he had not actually injured his tailbone. The only people who had corroborated his story were Mark and Kevin—his two best friends, who would gladly help him invent a ridiculous fiction to get out of something. Maybe it went beyond second thoughts. It was a full-on runaway groom ruse.
“I’m going to ask you something that may sound silly,” she said. “Just bear with me.”
“Seriously, not now.”
“I can’t even ask you something?”
“Usually I’m happy to reassure you and comfort you, but right now, I’m the one who needs to be comforted. I need to know that you can go thirty seconds without worrying about something because you’re not making me feel any better.”
“I tried comforting you and you got annoyed because I was moving too much!”
“I just need quiet right now. Don’t take it personally.”
“Would you feel better if I left you alone for a while?”
“Yeah, that would actually help. I just need to be able to fall asleep. Thanks, babe.”
She hadn’t anticipated him actually accepting her offer to leave him alone. Now she was stuck: she couldn’t sleep in bed with him where she actually wanted to be, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep anywhere else. She heard the television buzzing from downstairs. She got out of bed and walked downstairs. She just prayed that whatever was on television wasn’t an episode of Two and a Half Men.
Lauren
“How late are you going to be working?” Lauren had her Cunt Magazine blog open while Matt lay beside her in bed.
“I don’t know. Late.”
“I’m probably going to sleep pretty soon.”
“Just let me just finish this post, and then I’ll go to bed.”
He perched his bony chin on her shoulder to read her blog. She shrugged him off. “That hurts.”
“Yikes, sorry.”
Lauren typed furiously, trying not to think about the fact that he was looking at every letter on her screen. His face wasn’t pressed against her anymore, but she could still feel his limp yet overbearing presence behind her.
“How about we cuddle after you’re done?” he asked.
She flinched. “Could you please? I’m trying to work.”
“Fine, I just thought it would be nice to cuddle.”
“We’ll cuddle later. This article is really important.”
“What’s it about?”
“Misogyny in SpongeBob Squarepants.”
“Huh,” he said, scratching his chin. “You mean the show about the yellow sponge with the annoying laugh?”
“Yes, the one I won’t let Ariel watch.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you had a problem with it. I’ve let him watch it before.”
“Every time with you, Matt,” she sighed. “Anyway, if you must know, this article is going to examine how SpongeBob Squarepants features no good female role models for girls and nonbinary femme children, while it contributes to problematic stereotypes. Sandy the squirrel? Classism. Pearl the whale? Fatphobia, that one is obvious. Mrs. Puff? More fatphobia, plus she’s a woman who teaches at a driving school and constantly gets into car accidents. There’s the episode where Mr. Krabs practically offers her money for sex. And there are no characters of color, by the way.”
“Aren’t they just fish? Can they be of any race?”
“Okay, maybe I won’t write that part, but the rest stands.”
“Plus SpongeBob is yellow.”
“Could you please?”
“I don’t understand why you’re so upset about it, is all. It’s just a cartoon show.”
“Everything is just something else. Marital rape used to be just sex.”
“Sweetheart, you can’t compare marital rape to SpongeBob.”
“Oh, I don’t have your permission? You’re telling me what I can compare SpongeBob to? I’m on my last nerve, Matt, seriously.” She was somehow yelling and whispering at the same time.
“Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.” He headed for the nursery. Moments later, Lauren heard Ariel squealing, Mia growling and Matt imitating a dinosaur.
She heard her phone’s cat-meow ringtone. It was Kayla, the cofounder of Cunt.
“Hey,” she said when Lauren answered. “How’s the wedding week going?”
“My sister is a needy mess, my brother is a raving misogynist, my mother is a fatphobic piece of shit and weddings are obsolete structures of white colonization. But what else is new?” She waited for the inevitable laugh or some validation of her cutting wit, but Kayla’s tone was cold.
“I was actually calling you about your blog.”
“Sorry I’m late with the SpongeBob post. I’m totally ripping apart that show.” Lauren fondly remembered the late nights in Kayla’s Bushwick apartment when they were in their midtwenties, smoking pot and drinking cheap wine, coming up with the brilliant ideas that started Cunt Magazine, like their debut post “My Clitoris Is Better Than Your Penis, George Bush.”
“You may want to put that on pause. We need to talk about that hashtag you created a couple weeks back.”
“Which one?”
“#freeyourvaginasgirls.”
“What about it?”
“Well, it looks like we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a PR debacle. A bunch of hebephile rights’ activists have co-opted the hashtag to get thirteen-year-old girls to post vagina shots on Twitter. And now we’re being blamed for it.”
“Hebephiles?”
“They’re pedophiles who prefer preteens and teenagers to children. They’ve been doing a lot of their so-called activism on Twitter, and now they’re using your hashtag.”
“Fuck that. Anyone in their right mind would know that I meant #freeyourvaginasgirls as a protest against feminine hygiene products that shame women for their natural aromas.”
“I know what your intention was. But to make matters worse, there’s a well-known transgender blogger who isn’t particularly happy with your use of the word feminine hygiene or your association of vaginas with girls. You know better than anyone that not all women have vaginas, and not all vaginas belong to women.”
“Kayla, are you mad at me?”
Kayla paused. “Mad? No, I’m—well, if anything, I’m a little disappointed. I mean, coming from you. Where is the nonbinary and trans representation?”
“I’m sorry, but... I wrote that article from the heart. It represented something that I’ve struggled with my entire life—being ostracized for how my vulva tastes, smells, looks...”
“Oh, please don’t say vulva—it grosses me out.”
“What I’m saying is that girls...or anyone who has a vagina...should free themselves from these oppressive and unsafe products. I mean, come on, you were the one who performed ‘My Vagina Tastes Like Indignity, Bill Clinton’ at the Vassar spoken word contest.”
“Oh shit. Don’t remind me.”
“Remind you of what? The best damn poem you’ve ever written?”
“I think we’re getting off track here. I know you want Cunt to change the world, and that’s great, but in the meantime we need to make sure we stay afloat. I know you didn’t mean to offend transgender people, but that’s what’s happening, and now we have to deal with the hebephiles. And this is happening only weeks after, well, you know—”
“Oh, that’s completely unfair to—”
“It’s pertinent, Lauren. It was another hashtag.”
“I know it pissed people off, but I still don’t see what was wrong with the hashtag #killwhitey.”
Kayla sighed. “As a white person, it’s cultural appropriation for you to try to kill whitey, even just in word form. That’s not your struggle.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do about the SpongeBob article?”
“Look. You know I love your writing. You’re a rock star. But I’m going to have to put you on leave. I have to think about Cunt.”
Emily
“This Janice chick is so fucking hot,” Jason said. “Just look at her.”
He and Emily were sitting at the kitchen counter, watching Home Shopping Network on the mini TV. Jason had a bottle of red wine open and was refilling his glass. On TV a middle-aged blonde woman was modeling a rainbow-colored poncho. “I’d really like to rip that cape thing right off her and—”
Emily turned off the TV.
“Hey!” he said. “What did you do that for?”
“It seemed like the right thing to do.”
Lauren came in and plopped down on a stool. “I seriously need a drink.”
“You got it.” Jason pulled down a wineglass from the cabinet and filled it. Lauren knocked it back. “Damn, this is good. Where did you get it?”
“I found it in the back of Mom and Dad’s liquor cabinet. They’ve been holding out on us. Want some, Em?”
“Oh, no thanks.” She instinctively put her hand over her belly, then slipped it away behind her back. Hopefully Jason was too drunk to notice.
“Why not?”
“I’m on a diet.”
“You were drinking two days ago. Now you’re on a diet?” He pointed at her with his glass.
“I gained weight since then.”
“Since two days ago?”
“Yeah.”
He turned to Lauren. “No eating disorder comments from you? That’s weird.”
“I’m tired.” She shrugged.
Jason refilled Lauren’s wine. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m in trouble with Cunt.”
“Story of my life,” he said, a giddy glint in his eye. She didn’t look amused. “In all seriousness, what could you have possibly done? As much as I find you annoying as shit sometimes, I can at least credit you with being the least racist, most feminist person I know.”
Lauren exhaled deeply and took a sip of wine. “Basically, Kayla doesn’t care if we change the world. She just wants to make sure we stay in business. Who cares about business? Who cares about reputation? I shouldn’t have to apologize for something just because other people took it the wrong way.”
“Didn’t you force your professor at Vassar to publicly apologize for his use of the word overweight?” Emily asked.
“Yes, because the correct term is people of size if said by someone who isn’t a person of size themselves. I can say fat because I am fat. This particular professor was thin, so he had to use the correct term.”
“I don’t see why it mattered since he was just describing Henry VIII,” Emily said.
Jason turned to Emily. “Why are you in such a shitty mood?”
“I know you guys are both going to laugh at me for this, but I can’t help feeling like David’s faking a bruised tailbone to shut down the wedding.”
“Has he said anything to make you believe that?” Lauren asked.
“No, but... I don’t know, it’s just the kind of thing that would happen to me.”
“Nothing like that ever happens to you.”
Steven and Marla came in, back from their dinner and late-night movie date. Steven was wearing pressed khakis and a powder-blue Oxford shirt. Marla was swathed in an elaborate arrangement of paisley scarves and beaded necklaces that obscured whatever outfit she was wearing underneath.
“Hello, hello,” she said, ever-so-slightly tipsy.
“We just went to a new Malaysian restaurant, which was about as Malaysian as I am,” Steven said, shaking his head. “What a joke. And as for the movie, I maintain that nothing decent has been made in this country past 1977. Have you ever heard of this woman, Melissa McCarthy? Why is she famous?”
“Join the party,” Jason said, raising the bottle.
“What are you drinking?” Marla said.
“Some wine I found. Hope you don’t mind.”
She examined the bottle, then threw back her head in horror. “Oh my God!”
“What’s wrong?”
“This is the Château Lafite Rothschild!”
“Look, Mom, I’ll buy you another bottle if it’s a big deal.”
“You could never afford this, Jason. It was a gift from my father for our twentieth wedding anniversary.”
“I wonder what wine Aunt Lisa got,” Jason snickered.
“Aunt Lisa and Uncle Larry never made it to twenty years because she’s a clinical narcissist.” Marla put her hands on her hips.
“I was fucking with you, Mom.”
“You really need to cut down your drinking, Jason,” Steven said, releasing his wallet and multiple key rings from his baggy pants pockets, then placing them in a dish on the counter. “You’ve been drunk every single night since you arrived. Do you think WalkShare is ever going to get off the ground if the founder is drinking nonstop?”
“That’s not why it isn’t getting off the ground,” Emily said.
“All the greatest start-up founders drink during the workday,” Jason said. “If I want to have a drink when I’m not even working, I don’t see why you should care.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Jason,” Steven said. “You’re never working!”
“I can’t believe you would fucking go there, Dad. Just because I didn’t wind up becoming a lawyer or a doctor or whatever other bullshit career path you would have preferred doesn’t mean I don’t work. I’m sure everyone said the same thing about Bill Gates.”
“At least Bill Gates got into Harvard,” Marla said, mostly to Steven.
“The only reason anyone goes to Harvard is to be able to tell people they went to Harvard,” Jason said. “Exhibit A—Mom.”
“All right, that’s enough,” Marla said.
“I can’t believe you’re getting so pissed off about a bottle of wine.” Jason got up as if he were going to storm out, but instead lingered by the door leading to the stairs.
“The wine is not the issue. The issue is the three of you.” Marla pointed at each of the three siblings. “Your constant lack of gratitude and pervasive sense of entitlement. Before you opened that bottle, at the very least you could have asked me if it was okay.”
“You’re right, Mom,” Emily said, her voice rising in anger. “You should always ask someone first before doing something that affects them. Like maybe you could have asked me before you invited my childhood psychiatrist to my wedding.”
“What?” Marla said, taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
“Why did you invite him, Mom?”
“That—that has nothing to do with this.”
Steven abruptly turned to Marla. “You fucking invited him?”
“We can talk about this later.”
“Seriously, Mom,” Emily said. “Why would you do that? I haven’t seen the guy in years, first of all, and second of all, he knows some extremely personal things that I told him when I was in therapy with him.”
Marla waved her hand around. “Oh, come on, I don’t think Dr. Leibowitz is going to go around at your wedding telling everyone about how you used to only be able to climax if you rubbed yourself through your clothes and thought about Jimmy from Degrassi.”
“Mom, what the fuck? How did you know that?” Her stomach flipped and she thought she might throw up again. What else had Dr. Leibowitz told Marla? It had all been so long ago. By the time she was in high school, she had developed more discretion about her masturbatory habits, but there were all the times she had said things along the lines of “I hate my parents” in fits of teenage rage. How much of this did he dutifully disclose to his BFF Marla?
Marla paused. “You told me that, sweetheart.”
“I really didn’t.”
Steven was still glaring at Marla. “Why would you invite him?”
“He’s a friend.” Her voice went high at the end of her sentence.
“He’s your friend. Not mine.”
“When will you just let that go, Steven?”
“Why the hell should I?”
“Because it happened years ago!”
The room was silent. Marla felt the eyes of all three kids on her.
“This is idiotic,” she said. “I’m going to bed.”
Steven did not follow her. He headed for the front door. The wine in the glasses shook as the door slammed.