Hyde and Seek

“Bye– Wait.”

My finger hangs above the END CALL button.

“Can you wear something kind of normal for the cocktail party?” asks The Boy.

“You mean a Beyonce-grade, sequined flapper frock cut up to my crotch, with leopard platforms?”

“The guests will be 80 years old. You’ll send them to their death if you come in your Betty Boop shit.”

“Have faith, friend. I’ll look lovely. I have to go now and put on my face.”

“All that eye shadow?”

“Tah, tah.” I hang up on The Boy, and carefully create my face: I pat on porcelain powder, I super-size my eyes with charcoal shadow, I smudge beams of bright on the bone of my cheeks. Then I blend all my makeup together so my paint-by-features face softens into play of light and shadow. I smooth down my bobbed hair, I spritz on a shower of Juicy Couture perfume, I–

Am amazed I can do this in less than an hour. Finally I step into wedding-white mary janes, I slip on a cotton and crinkled chiffon frock that’s a cloud of vanilla, the flavor of the lives of guests at the party The Boy invited me to.

It was his dressy-casual, SoCal social scene debut in expensive suburbia on the coast, a mini village of McMansions owned by the retired or near retired, and The Boy’s inviting me to his new neighborhood mixer came with his request I lighten my use of mascara and the word “fuck.” “Hmm. I can do social scripting,” I reassured The Boy. “I’m rusty on that ‘And how do you do’ bull shit, but I can handle it. You mostly see my Hyde, but I can play Dr. Jekyll, too. All Prozac pretty smiles and cliche conversation.”

“Perfect,” he said.

I think of The Boy’s polite desire to please his neighbors as I park in front of his home of walk-in closets and bathrooms bigger than the shoe box I live in, his palace purchased with a career of “Fuck you”s and fearlessness in the financial world.

“You look beautiful!” The Boy’s compliment floats on a sigh of relief, as he climbs the marble steps to his home’s entry gate. He purses his lips through the twisted iron bars. “Kiss me, like we’re in prison.”

“I told you I could look like a lady, motherfucker.” And then my lips go PG with a perky peck on his pout, and he swings through the gate and takes my hand as we walk to the party.

Every introduction is an echo of itself: “This is my girlfriend, Kristopher.”

“Oh, so nice to meet you,” gasps someone two, three times older than me. “I didn’t quite catch your name.”

“Kristopher,” I repeat again, smiling. “Kristopher. No, not Christina. Kristopher.” Finally a dino dude demands explanation. “My dad says he named me after an actress he saw in an art flick, and my older brother, four years old when my mom was pregnant, says he insisted I was named Christopher after his chubby BFF in preschool. Who knows which story is true.”

“Oh, yes, I see,” says the guest.

“My dad’s a musician.” I shrug.

“Ohhh.”

We move on to the meal, migrating from a patio open to a postcard view of the Pacific ocean to a circular table in which nice stories wind ’round. “So I call the police when I realize my Porsche’s been stolen, and the woman says, ‘Let me tell you. There are three types of Porsches.’ So I’m thinking this woman is a real Porsche aficionado, she’s going to tell me the history of the 911, the 944…” The Boy smiles a pause. “And she says, ‘There’s a Porsche that’s been stolen, there’s a Porsche that’s gonna be stolen, and there’s a Porsche that’s getting stolen right now while we’re talking!’”

The table laughs on cue, perfectly pitched at polite party level. “You know, it is so true,” says a little 60-something-year-old girl. “My friend had a Porsche and every time he bought one it was stolen!” She says “Porsche” like the hundred-grand car was a 100 Grand candy bar.

Minutes melt into the creamy dessert that’s served, and as I barely taste my beige cake, in the reflection of the smooth English tea I’ve traded for my usual bitter espresso I see a lifetime half-lived, fueled by fear of offending people. But I’m all gracious giggles and serious silence and–

Boredom, that’s apparently matched by The Boy’s. “I can’t take this any more,” he leans over and whispers, while our table’s distracted welcoming a late comer. He looks up. “That’s the dick that never returned my call.” The Boy becomes as loud as the new guest’s yellow and red sweater that clashes against his gray hair: “So good to see you, Trevor. Thanks for not returning my call. Though apparently it made me miss out on a summer of thirteen-year-old boy fashion. That shrunken sweater and long T-shirt combo–very hip.”

I laugh at Trevor’s blank face, his domestic deadpan, my first serious giggle of the the evening, and whisper to The Boy, “Your Hyde is coming out.”

He whispers back. “I can only do the polite thing for so long before I’m so bored I can’t give a fuck anymore.”

“Life is short,” I reply, and I tug down the waist of my dress, so the neckline is no longer a suffocating, Sunday’s best high. “Ready to go?”

The Boy gets up in answer, and we move around the room, shaking hands, exchanging “Nice to meet you”s, till we make it to the hosts, a matured, Middle Eastern couple.

“The party was wonderful,” says The Boy. “Thanks for having us. You’ll have to come over for dinner next week.”

“We’d love to, but we’re vacationing,” she says, her wrinkles a little darker with the thought. “After that?”

“Sure, but while you’re gone I’m going to bulldoze your house so I’ll have a better view of the beach.”

They laugh, nervous. “Well, have a safe drive home,” says the hostess, dry hand brushing my shoulder.

“You think I’m not having her spend the night?” The Boy looks at them like they’re crazy.

“Did you think we were married or something?” I chime in, and my image as a darling doll is cracked. The Boy takes my hand and we exit.

“So did I behave too bad?” asks The Boy, as we walk back to his home.

“I think you don’t give a fuck, Mr. Hyde.”

As reply, he pulls me against him and tongues me deep as we stand in the middle of the street.

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