THE COOKIE MONSTER
I USED TO live with a twenty-eight-year old virgin. That's right. Not a Mormon, not a religious thing, just plain stupid. You would've thought someone had sewn her vagina shut. Who in her right mind would willingly abstain from something that could give so much pleasure and pain at the same time? I asked myself again and again. I just wasn't getting it. And neither was she.
Dumb Dumb and I were like the odd couple. Dumb Dumb was tall with tight curly red hair and looked like a full-grown Annie. I would sashay around the living room in my brand-new thong and bra combo, while she'd lie on the sofa in a pair of her favorite Winnie-the-Pooh jammies buttoned to the top, slurping down a pint of Ben & Jerry's. She would bake cookies, watch nothing but reality TV, and talk on the phone for hours with her parents in New Jersey. I would come home sloshed three or four nights a week, and the others I wouldn't come home at all. Since I was also two years her junior, Dumb Dumb took this to mean that she was in charge. If we ever went anywhere together, she would drive, and every apartment bill was put in her name so she could oversee all payments. She also had a severe case of? CD, so after I went to bed she would come out of her room, make sure all the appliances were turned off, and rewash any dishes I had washed. You would have thought I was living with Rain Man.
I'm convinced that Dumb Dumb's parents were the reason for her social ineptitude. She relied on her father for guidance on everything from what deodorant to use to what brands of electronics to buy. Not only did she not have any sexual contact in the two years we lived together, she rarely went out at night. She preferred to stay in and watch The Bachelor on the seventy-two-inch television her father bought her for our two-bedroom apartment. The resolution was so intense you couldn't even make out what was on the screen while sitting on the sofa in front of it. We'd have to stand in the dining room close to the front door to get a clear image. More important, she didn't like alcohol. There are two kinds of people I don't trust: people who don't drink and people who collect stickers.
I always dreamed of Dumb Dumb going on Howard Stern and playing stripper Jeopardy. She thought the Senate was a type of cookie. I asked her once during an election if she could name the two presidential candidates. She said, "Duh, Gore and Bush."
I said, "Okay, and who's Gore's vice president?"
She said, "I'm not that stupid… Bush."
Her room was covered in roses and 'N Sync posters. You would've thought she hadn't gotten her period yet. She took a bath every night and never took showers. She cried the first time she was pulled over by a cop. I explained to her that there is no reason to cry when getting pulled over-unless you're coming directly from a crime scene.
We were living together on 9/11 and she was convinced it wasn't a big deal because her father had told her everything would be all right.
"My dad said it's gonna be okay, and they may have already caught the guys who did it."
It was as if the whole event had been an episode of Charlie's Angels.
About a week later I was driving her to the dealership where she had just bought a new car. The country had been on many different levels of "high alert" and no one knew when we would be invading Afghanistan. I was saying how it was so scary to know that at any minute we could go to war.
She panicked and said, "Oh, my God, is that today?"
Dumb Dumb worked at a flower shop, which was the perfect job for her. She supported her insanity by placing herself in an environment where everything really was coming up roses. It was the ideal environment, allowing her to be completely and happily oblivious of the world around her. Every Monday through Friday she would wake up at the crack of dawn to sell flowers. I never quite understood why people needed to get flowers at seven A.M. on a Tuesday and found it curious that somebody could get excited by anything other than a pancake that early in the morning.
Dumb Dumb had a major crush on some reality television show host who used to eat breakfast next door to the flower shop every morning. She spent most of her time standing in front of the flower shop in order to see when he sat down at the cafe. Then she would act surprised when he appeared and go over to say a "casual" hello. There are many forms of stalking and, combined with driving by his house several nights a week, this was one of them. I urged her to stop wasting expensive petroleum on trips to his house and instead put that effort into breaking his cell phone code and checking his messages.
Every afternoon she would come home and go on and on about this guy. How today he told her she looked pretty and smiled before ordering his eggs. She would ask me if I thought it was a sign that they both loved hard-boiled eggs. "Only if you're on an Easter egg hunt," I told her. Then she would get on the phone with her parents and replay every minute of their conversation. What a disaster. If I ever called up my father talking about a guy, he'd pretend he wasn't getting any reception. On a landline.
Despite the fact that all they'd done was talk about eggs and their deep respect for the Easter bunny, Dumb Dumb was convinced that this guy was going to come bursting out of her television screen and propose to her. She had the emotional maturity of a seven-year-old. Put us together, and we were fifteen.
Her crush had been raging for close to a year, and finally I couldn't bear it anymore. If she wasn't gonna stop talking about it, I was going to help her get him. First, though, she needed to get penetrated.
It was time to hire a male prostitute. I had used him once before, to "rough up" my friend Lily right after a breakup. She was pleased with him, a little too pleased. She got attached to him, and he had to start pseudo dating her, which cost me a fortune. He finally had to let her down easy because my unemployment ran out. But at least she got over her ex.
Ed was great. Hot face, hot body. He was sweet natured, which kind of got on my nerves, but I knew Dumb Dumb would love it. And while I wouldn't call him stupid, he definitely wasn't home separating ions in his spare time. I had met him at a bachelorette party, thrilled to encounter my first male hooker. I had strolled the Hollywood strip many a weekend night looking for a soul mate but never found anyone who actually resembled a man.
Ed felt bad after what happened with Lily, so when I called him about Dumb Dumb, he told me he'd throw in a little extra. I didn't quite know what that implied but hoped it meant anal.
To set up the rendezvous, I took Dumb Dumb to a Backstreet Boys concert-the only way that I could get her out of the house. There have been a couple of times in my life where I have considered killing myself, and this was one of them. Watching these five guys prance around onstage made me question so many things about our culture. One, where were their instruments? Two, were there actually women out there who were turned on by this? Unfortunately, I was chaperoning one who was. Dumb Dumb was just about climaxing. Not like she would have known what had happened if she had.
I had Ed meet us there and we would "accidentally" bump into him. Then he would introduce himself as the Backstreet Boys' manager and allude to the idea of going backstage. He looked really good that night, and Dumb Dumb actually spotted him before I did, pointing him out as the cutie standing by the bar.
"Oh, my God, I know that guy! That's Ed. I've met him a bunch of times!" I said. "What on earth is he doing here?"
The look of excitement on her face was enough for me to call it a night. This plan was going to work.
We went over to him, and I made the introductions. "Dumb Dumb, this is Ed. Ed, this is my roommate, Dumb Dumb."
Ed gave her his newly bleached smile and said, "Well, Dumb Dumb, Chelsea never told me she had a roommate who was cuter than her." This guy was good.