All the Girls in Town

JUST-DESERTS.COM

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he bonfire was roaring before we arrived, late as usual. Steve had decided some new girl singer’s band rehearsal was more important. My new friends, Iris and Shaun, two Brits I’d met at our local co-op, had extended an overnight beach camping invitation. I was so excited and had been planning and talking about it all week with him.

“This was my thing,” I said. My voice was hard, fired up in anger. “Remember when you used to care about the things that mattered to me?”

“I still do, babe.” Steve’s hands gripped the wheel, knuckles white. “I lost track of time.”

Ryan Adams twanged melancholy about loves lost in the background as we drove winding Kanan Dune through the tunnels and back down to PCH, watching the last of the sun set brilliant pink and disappear into the Pacific. I could feel I’d reached the hard edge of his patience, but continued, “If this had been an event with your musician friends, we wouldn’t be late. But no, I’m excited for one thing, camping overnight with my new friends. Friends who could be our friends. And we’re an hour late.”

“I know we’re late. You keep reminding me. I can’t make it better.” His tone sounded exasperated like he was dealing with a small child and not his wife.

“What’s going on with us?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. I love you.”

This was his answer for everything when he was avoiding a real conversation.

Steve drove in silence while I wiped away tears to keep my face from turning puffy and red in front of Iris and Shaun. I didn’t want to look like a basket case. They were hip, lean, did groovy things like the co-op, volunteering at a soup kitchen, hiking the Andes. They had a real marriage. I leaned over and changed the station on the satellite radio. “I’m sick of Ryan Adams.” Lucinda Williams, raw and pure edge, came to life, growling, “I’m learning how to live without you in my life.”

We pulled into the parking lot, watching pit fires flare orange up and down the strand.

Steve parked, turned off the car, and looked to me. “I love you.”

Before he could utter another lame f*****g excuse, I snapped, “You bring the tent. I’ll grab the rest,” and climbed out the passenger door. “And try not to hit on my new friends.”

Adorable Iris and Shaun were snuggled in a chair in front of the fire, drinking wine, and grilling soy burgers when I stomped to the site.

“Hey,” they said in unison, smiling but not bothering to get up from their comfortable seat. They were not people pleasers, like me. They knew what they brought to the friendship table. Their accents, their scrubbed, fresh faces, cheeks rouge from wine and sun and love.

“Hey!” I waved wildly. “Steve is just getting the tent. Sorry we’re late. Musicians.” I rolled my eyes.

“No worries, mate.” Shaun stood. “Beer or wine?”

The Brits were big drinkers. Steve brought the pot. And Woody, of course. Couldn’t go one night without being in the spotlight. I drank a lot of wine, more than my usual glass. In my defense, I hadn’t realized how beautiful Iris was until I saw Steve see her for the first time. His eyes devoured her lanky legs poking out from her short shorts, her underpants almost visible, with her small round behind, her flat waist to a halter top that revealed an almost flat chest, and her thin, toned arms. All night long he watched Iris playing frisbee, laughing, drinking wine. Iris with her soft blonde bob, big blue eyes, and a wide smile with a slightly crooked eye tooth that only made her sexier somehow. She didn’t do anything to encourage it, except maybe flirted a little and maybe sat on his lap at one point after too many beers when they’d started tequila shots. Shaun hadn’t seemed to mind. Teasing Steve at one point, “Please, she’s a lot. Take her off my hands for the night?”

My heart sank when Steve turned to Iris and strummed the first chord of the song I’d written for him. With his sultry voice, those intense eyes, Steve sang only to her, bewitching Iris with his black magic. I remembered what it felt like to be the only girl in the room and realized that I had been forgotten. Shaun quickly grabbed Iris, taking her into their tent. No one asked where I wanted to sleep, or with whom. I was dressed in old baggy jeans with a big t-shirt, thinking camping, not modeling, my hair frizzy on my head. It was cold. I drank. And drank. I ate a bag of potato chips because I was still hungry, and soy makes me bloated.

Later, inside our tent, as the canvas swayed, and my head spun, feeling slightly nauseated, I forced myself to focus on my husband above me, dry humping, pounding in and out, silently, without looking at my face. My mouth, my eyes, my v****a were dry, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Babe. Oh, God. Yeah,” he moaned, his voice deepening. “f**k me.”

“I am.” I climbed on top of him swallowing back the vomit. Pretending that I was into it, I circled my hips for emphasis.

“Feel how hard and deep I am. Can you feel it?”

I’d never liked talking during s*x. “Oh, baby.”

And then, in the most horrible, racist accent Steve could muster, my husband said, “Babe, say, ‘Me love you long time.’”

My hips stopped moving, but the tent kept swaying. “What?”

“Say, ‘Me love you long time.’”

I pushed his chest away, crawling off of him. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Jesus.” He didn’t sit up. He lay there, his hard c**k staring between us. “It’s s*x talk.”

“From some Asian hooker porn site for racists?” I screamed. “You are disgusting, disgusting.”

He sighed. “Asian women are everyone’s ideal.”

My stomach lurched as if I’d just been punched. “Why did you even marry me?”

I scrambled on my hands and knees out the tent flap, racing barefoot across the sand toward the public bathrooms. Too late to open the door, I projectile vomited against the concrete wall.

When I crawled back inside the tent with the lit kerosene lantern, Steve was snoring, fast asleep, p***s still erect. In the morning, he wouldn’t remember what he’d said to me, the woman who worked two jobs to support his fledgling musical career. Even if Steve recalled the unkind words he’d drilled into my heart because he’d been too high, too drunk, and wished he could f**k anyone other than his wife, he wouldn’t care. I was tired of feeling like a piece of s**t.

The lantern accidentally tipped, lighting a patch of canvas. As the tent went up in flames, onlookers down the beach said the orange glare was like a harvest moon. “The deceased’s wife was in the bathroom at the time the fire started,” read his obit in the LA Times. Camping accidents, warned the paper, happened all the time.