Milkrun

2. Hair. I need to do some careful research before attempting this step. Nothing is worse than number two ending with tears and me having to wear that Red Sox baseball hat Jeremy bought me so that I would look like a native.

3. Friend phone call. Check. Well, kind of check. Considering Jeremy and I have broken up five times in three years, I have already lost all my mediocre friends, and I refuse to take chances with the ones I have left.

4. Male friend phone call. This one is a bit of a problem due to my lack of maintaining or acquiring male friends since Jeremy and I started dating.

4.a. Make male friends.

4.b. Call male friends.

5. Chocolate. Check. Having emergency cookie dough in your freezer is as crucial as having an emergency twenty in your wallet. Not that I can ever save the twenty in my wallet. I have recently modified Step 5. Eat chocolates while watching Sex and the City or Ally McBeal to remind me that there are other attractive, successful single women out there, and that they, unlike me, are over thirty.

Steps one through five should be repeated freely until girl is over breakup. Steps one and two should be slightly altered with each revisit, by the use of sexy sandals, leather pants, a backless tanktop, highlights, perm, layers…You get the idea.

Tonight, however, there is no time for cookie dough.

I shower, in hot water for a change (I even use the yummy-smelling soap sample I was saving for Jer’s return. See? I’m practically over him already), blow-dry my hair straight (it takes forever and I keep burning my fingers, but I don’t care because it makes me look very chic), put on my black knee-length skirt that has a slutty slit right up the thigh, a relatively new slinky red tank top and my new boots that right now feel so worth the 150 I can’t afford.

Yup. I’m pretty hot.

I find the smoky eye shadow page in Cosmo and try to follow the directions without poking my pupil. I will dazzle men with my hazel eyes, I will use lip liner to show off my smile, and I will smile to show off my dimples.

I am even wearing a thong for good luck.

I’m tired of waiting for things to happen to me. Time to get out there and grab life by the…well, you know. I am twenty-four, I am young, I refuse to sit around watching my butt get bigger while Jeremy runs around enjoying himself. Women are always waiting for men to come over to them, for men to ask them out, for men to kiss them.

Wait, wait, wait! The first time I waited for a kiss was when I was in middle school. It seemed as if everyone else in the world had already been French kissed (I imagined French women all walking around licking everyone), including Wendy, who had played spin-the-bottle at her cousin’s birthday party. Ted and I had already been going out for two days, and we were sitting at a picnic table outside at a school dance, talking about nothing (warm out, isn’t it?), experiencing that sweaty-palmed, irregularly palpitating-heart, what-happens-if-I-pass-out-I-think-we’re-about-to-kiss feeling. Finally, his face just kind of fell on top of mine, and there we were, kissing. Well, not exactly kissing, since our mouths were closed and our lips just kind of bumping as if we were two people in a crowded subway who just happen to be sharing the same pole. Then suddenly we were kissing. Wendy’s instructions surfaced in my mind: just keep your mouth open and move your tongue around. His tongue was mushy and I could taste Clorets at the back of his mouth.

Waiting never gets easier. After the first kiss, girls have to wait for their first love, and then they have to wait to lose their virginity. Or, if you’re tired of searching for your endless love, you can sleep with Rick the Deadhead, who called (and probably still calls) everyone “dude” and wore (and probably still wears) tie-dye. Yup, you can screw waiting, like I did.

You know what I hate about TV and movies? People never just fool around. They either kiss or they have sex. A guy starts unbuttoning a girl’s jeans and the girl says, “I’m not ready to have sex with you,” and the guy says okay, and her pants stay on, and it just ends there. You never hear about any of the bases that everyone I knew went through before the idea of actually doing it even occurred to them. Well, I’m sure it occurred to them.

I didn’t sleep with Rick right away. We went around all the bases, around and around and around, until the end of my first year at college when I finally got tired of the idea just occurring to me and decided that I wanted to do it already.

Our first time was on a Sunday night, on his cramped dorm bed, with Skeletons from the Closet playing on the stereo. By the time we got to “Truckin’,” the second track, it was all over. My body felt as if it had been clawed open, as we sat on his bed smoking cigarettes. My hands smelled like rubber elastic and I remember thinking, That’s it?

With Jeremy everything was suddenly…different. He would run his hand along my lower back and I would lose all ability to focus on anything but his fingers. He had perfect guy hands. About twice the size of mine, they never got sweaty and they smelled like burning leaves. In a good way. He wasn’t into holding hands, but he always had his arm around my shoulder, or on my back, or on my knee.

Enough of that. Change the channel in my head.

JulieAndrewsJulieAndrewsJulieAndrews.

Chocolate Easter bunnies.

Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee.

Well, not quite Sandra Dee. I’m waiting in full slut-attire for Natalie, when I hear Sam and Marc approaching the front door. Giggling. They’re always giggling. They’re also one of those couples who are always touching each other, making everyone around them uncomfortable.

I didn’t realize when I signed the lease that I would have two roommates instead of one.

Okay fine, the truth is that I hardly ever see Marc. Sam has a TV and a bathroom in her room, and they hardly ever come out. They just have sex. A lot. And they watch Law and Order, which for some reason seems to be on about six times a day.

What really bugs me about Sam is her why-can’t-you-cleanup-cuz-your-mess-is-really-annoying look. Like when she finds my socks on the coffee table. Or when she asks why I always leave the remnants of things in the fridge, like a milk container, a pizza box of only crusts, the pitcher of iced tea that has a rim of brown gel on the bottom but no tea. Once, she told me as she tossed my moldy half-leftover cheese sandwich in the trash can, that next time I didn’t have to save her any. No, no sarcasm there.

Here’s the thing: finishing something usually involves cleaning up or throwing something out, which probably also involves replacing an already full garbage bag with an empty one and then having to bring the filled one to the garbage chute—which all together spells too much work.

I have the same issues with filtered water. I never finish the pitcher. I hate having to fill it up.

I guess I haven’t as yet discovered the joys of closure.

Sam gets annoyed that I make everything her responsibility. Like collecting the rent, paying the bills, watering the plants, feeding the cat…I always assume she’ll take care of it because I take care of the other stuff, right? Don’t ask me to define the other stuff; right now, I’m into the intangible (Jer, Jer, Jer). Luckily, Sam always ends up doing everything, because otherwise we’d have an eviction notice, brown plants, and a dead kitty.

I’m kidding about the cat. I’d remember to feed a cat. We don’t even have a cat, I swear.

Sam opens the door. She and her attachment are each holding a bag of groceries.

“Look at you! Sexy stuff! What are you up to tonight?”

“I’m going to Orgasm.”

Marc laughs. “Lucky you.”

Sam giggles again, drops her bag of groceries, and grabs Marc around the waist. “The bar Orgasm, silly.”

“I know. I was just teasing, Sessy Bear.”

Marc calls Sam “Sessy Bear.” I don’t know why. I don’t even know what it means.

“I know, Biggy Bear.”

Sam calls Marc “Biggy Bear.” I don’t know why. I don’t want to know why.

“Who are you going with?” Sam asks.

“Nat. We’re going to get very drunk and meet men. You two wanna come?” Please say no.

“Sounds like fun,” Marc says. “But we’re going to watch ‘L and O.’”

Thank God.

Sam giggles. “Is that the new name? Like SNL and KFC?”

“It’s all about acronyms now, you know,” Marc says. “If you’re nice, Sessy Bear, maybe afterwards we’ll get an ice cream from DQ.”

“Is it normal that someone could be such a geek?” Sam asks me, playfully patting Biggy Bear on his behind.

“You’re the geek,” says her attachment.

For the second time today, I think I’m going to throw up.