Jowita Bydlowska - Guy

My phone rings. It’s probably Jason, dying to report the sort of sights you see as you enter the beach town: the rickety roller coaster and merry-go-round, the minigolf and the go-karts, all of it damaged, in need of a new paint job. Jason is a city boy, and the local folklore would excite him.

But it’s not Jason. It’s $isi. She sounds sleepy. Her voice is childlike, but already getting raw from the bad things she enjoys too much. “Guy. There was a situation.”

“With the video?”

“No. Not with the video.”

“With what then, sweetheart?”

“You’ll see. I’m sorry,” she says. “Some asshole took a photo –”

“What kind of photo?”

“Oh, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. Are your tits showing in the photo? Because if your tits are showing in the photo, that’s not really a bad thing.”

Silence.

“$isi.”

“Don’t say tits , please,” she says. “It wasn’t anything like that. But like I said, it’s not good.”

“You didn’t actually say that.”

“I’m saying it now.”

I want to hang up on her. I want to call Mark, her manager, and find out what kind of photo we’re talking about. But before I do that, I also want to get her reaction to the numbers on YouTube. It would be a good thing to hear her acknowledge the numbers. The biggest problem with $isi is that she’s not motivated enough lately.

“Did you see the numbers?” I ask. I hate it that she won’t say it first because asking her makes me look like I’m begging, like I’m begging for some kind of approval.

“Yeah. We killed.”

“Yeah. Good girl.”

“Don’t say that. Don’t call me that. That’s what you call me when you fuck me.”

“I don’t fuck you,” I say, and she slams the phone.

I call Mark. The photo turns out to be of $isi smoking a joint. As far as drugs go, this isn’t the worst, nothing like Amy Winehouse and her crack pipe, but fuck.

“She’s been dealing with a lot of things lately,” Mark says. His voice is wavering. I wonder if Mark is still mad about me being one of those things. I want to remind him that, thanks to me, $isi will probably become the biggest up-and-coming star of some month in the future – or if we’re lucky, a whole season. The new Britney. Now might be the perfect time to talk about a Thing we need for $isi – a signature scandal. Like a sex tape, or kissing Tila Tequila, or nipple tassels shooting confetti. A joint is not it.

“No, a joint is not it,” Mark sighs.

“Her estranged mother?”

“God.”

“Something else then. A stalker? A feud. With Rihanna?”

“Nobody fights with Rihanna. She’s too cool.”

“A shotgun wedding.”

“We don’t have anyone lined up,” Mark says.

“Let’s call Piglet.”

“Who?”

“Jennifer,” I say.

Jennifer lives in Los Angeles. She is one of $isi’s publicists who specializes in making up believable shit for the media whenever one of her many clients flashes her drunken pussy or holds a funny-looking vial, or a funny-looking cigarette, or falls into cactuses outside of Le Chateau Shitface. She also comes up with Things , and she’s a clean-scandal pro, more Almost-See-Through Dress than Sucking Off Famous Athlete.

I have never met Jennifer in person. We kept missing each other. The only reason I don’t freak out over never having met her is because she’s supposed to be the best. But I hate not knowing what she looks like – me not knowing what she looks like gives her an advantage.

I google images of “Jennifer Jones Evan Public Relations.” The only image that Google comes up with is the same picture of a laughing piglet that she keeps on the website bio.

“Why Piglet ? Never mind. Oh, yeah, did you end up getting tested?” Mark says. My body goes numb. For a second, I even feel like crying. I don’t know what’s worse, feeling like crying or Mark knowing, but then I picture Dr. Babe, which is not her actual name but what Jason called her once and it stuck.

I got tested only a month ago. Dr. Babe peeled the top plastic off of the swab package. She was wearing a long skirt, a lavender blouse that billowed around her thin arms; her hair was straightened. No eye makeup. In my mind, I lifted her up and spread her legs, feet in the stirrups. I hiked up her skirt. I ripped a side of her panties with forceps. I stuffed the panties in her mouth. I kneeled and buried my nose in her dark little cunt. Her moans were muffled by the panties; she clutched my hair with her tiny hands. Good girl , I said, and she writhed. They love it when I call them that: Good girl .

The swab pinched inside the tip of my dick; it hurt as if a needle shot through my entire body, exploding in my brain before disappearing, along with my fantasy of Dr. Babe in the stirrups.

“Almost done,” Dr. Babe said sweetly.

After I got dressed, we talked about where she was going to go on vacation. To the UK for her sister’s wedding. I imagined her sister in this office, watching us: Dr. Babe’s legs in stirrups as I ate her out.

The tests came back negative; I didn’t have a single STI. I don’t know why I panicked about that tiny rash, and I have no idea why I told Mark about it.

“I’m okay. At least you never have to worry about that stuff,” I say to Mark, who is perpetually single.

“Very funny.”

“Goodbye, Mark.”

The doorbell rings. My friends look crumpled, Jason especially in his pink linen shirt and white pants. “The longest fucking ride in my life,” he says.

“You look lovely,” I say to Gloria. This is true. She’s my showpiece, almost as tall as me, and in heels, a bit taller. She wears heels even here; she somehow managed to find a pair of strappy sandals that look sexy but also safe enough to carry her through sand. But I doubt Gloria will cross the street to go to the beach. Even if she did, she would probably not get in the water unless it was for some higher purpose. There’s no such thing as swimming in anything other than a pool when you’re her age. When you’re in your early forties, you’re in the water because it’s supposed to do something for you, whether it’s burning calories or healing some ailment – a skin condition, imagined or not – or giving you a spiritual experience. An older woman almost never swims because it’s fun. In contrast, a young girl swims because she swims – precisely because it’s fun.

Yet Gloria looks as if she lives on the beach. Her hair is highlighted in perfect streaks of golden- and white-blond.

Perhaps because she’s older than me, Gloria has never demanded anything of me. I’m grateful for this and reward her accordingly: an occasional sext to show her my commitment – I can’t stop thinking about biting the inside of your thighs – and dinners and flowers; nothing too explicit, no jewellery. As I said, I enjoy taking her out in public – with her ex-model looks and tiny wrinkles, she seems not only attractive but also full of essence. Though most of it is vodka and bullshit.

“I made lunch,” I say to Jason.

“Faggot lunch,” Jason says, and shakes his head and gulps his beer as if he’s forgotten he now reads magazines that tell him to eat faggot lunches and buy pink shirts. He’s still a pig, the same pig I used to share a room with in school.

I serve Gloria vodka and soda. She doesn’t eat lunches.

“Oh, you’re just the nicest,” she beams. In her early thirties, Gloria dated a Polish count who turned her onto vodka. The count was the only man she ever regretted not marrying. She wanted the title – she wanted the title so badly that when I first met her, she actually claimed to be a countess. Eventually she confessed: the fake titles and the fake orgasms, which, especially the latter, only improved our sex lives.