Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 16

"Skeeky, skeezy," Alice, said, riffing on the variations of the sounds.

"Oh, I got one, I got one, uh. The pink velvet sausage wallet," Shane said. "That's attractive."

"Nonny?" Carmen offered. She didn't want to explain it was a contraction of a corruption, poonani, of an African word, punani, from Botswana, that had crept into American slang, and which may also have crept into Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, wherein "Hey, nonny-nonny" may have been one of the Bard's dirty jokes. In any case it still meant pussy. Carmen knew how to say "cunt" in a dozen languages, dialects and slang, but was too modest to flaunt her Trivial Pursuit skills.

"Ham wallet?" Alice asked.

"Coochie!" Tina suddenly remembered.

"Sweet spot," Bette said.

"Power slot?" Shane asked.

"Fu-fu valve," Kit giggled at her own silliness. "I know, fu-fu valve, who would say 'fu-fu valve?'"

"Pork shutters," Bette said.

"Bermuda triangle," Kit said.

Tina laughed and offered, "Grab hole."

"Squeegee?" Alice was still trapped in the same phonics neighborhood.

"Vertical smile," said Carmen, who could make a pussy do that.

"The vessel tube?" Shane put out, lamely.

Carmen: "Monkey's chin."

"Chewbacca!" Alice exulted as everyone laughed.

"What about panty hamster?" Shane asked.

"Roast beef sandwich," Bette said.

"Uh, camel toe," Kit volunteered. "Oh, that's so generic. Okay, gang, this has been fun, but I got to get back to the kitchen."

"We've got to get going, too," Tina said, starting to get Angelica ready to go.

""We've got to go to the supermarket," Carmen said to Bette and Tina. "Do you guys need anything while we're there?"

"Could you pick up some juice boxes for Angelica?" Bette asked.

"For our god-daughter, anything," Shane said, bending over to kiss Angelica.

***

As she and Carmen stood in line with their shopping cart, Shane watched the customer in front of them. It was a young woman with a small child seated facing her in the shopping cart's child seat. The little girl was hugging a stuffed animal, a brown fuzzy rabbit with big, floppy ears.

Shane started laughing quietly to herself.

"What?" Carmen asked.

Shane giggled. "Uh. Nothing." She shook her head no, but still smiled at something.

"Shane, what?" Carmen repeated.

"I'm sorry. It was something your mom told me. When you were little, you had this teddy bear that you would, ah--"

"Oh, God!" Carmen muttered looking up at the ceiling for divine guidance. She knew what was coming.

"--rub its tummy and then take a piss on it." Shane couldn't help giggling and chuckling. She thought it was the funniest thing.

Carmen's arms were folded in body language that said, "I am not amused."

"Really, really cute, Shane," Carmen murmured. "My mother is now sharing my personal stories with you. That's great."

Shane just laughed, and began making funny faces at the little girl in the cart in front of them, making her laugh, too. Carmen hoped that this would be the end of the discussion, but it was not to be. It wasn't Shane who kept it up; it turned out to be Alice.

That afternoon they made plans to go see the new Piper Perabo flick, Imagine Me & You, at the Grove Stadium 14. Kit had agreed to babysit Angelica so both Tina and Bette could go, and of course Alice was dying to see it. And because The Planet closed early (most of the regular customers tended to stay home on Sunday nights to watch a popular lesbian drama on cable TV), and because they didn't want to spend much more time away from Angelica, Bette and Tina invited everyone back to their house for coffee and movie critique.

There had been very little buzz about the movie in the general Hollywood media since it was a small indie film made in England, but in the lesbian world of West Hollywood, any new dykodrama or lez rom-com was greeted with hopeful anticipation and dismissed afterward with characteristic bitchiness and cattiness. The truth was, it was impossible to do a movie or TV show about lesbians or that merely included a lesbian or two without pissing off some major segment of the lesbian community. Too glam, not glam enough. Too butch, not butch enough. Too sympathetic to bi gals; too harsh to bi gals. Why was the dyke always the murderer? What, no trannies? Where were the transgenders? Not every tranny wants to cut off her girl parts. It's pandering to us. It's not paying us enough attention. Does this flannel shirt make me look fat?

The truth was, there was no way a lesbian movie would get approval, because lesbian movies were Rorschach tests in which reviewers projected their own neuroses, kinks, quirks, obsessions, prejudices, biases, peccadilloes and innermost desires and fears on what were usually mildly pleasant, mildly racy boy-meets-girl chick flicks where both the boy and the girl were played by girls. So it was with the Friends and Imagine Me & You. Bette thought the film was derivative and simplistic, the plot unbelievable, the clothes pedestrian and predictable. Tina thought it was well produced and wondered what it grossed on its opening week. Alice wanted to know which actresses were really straight and which bi or lesbian; she had heard rumors about both Perabo and Lena Headley. Carmen thought the movie was cute and romantic and fun, and had good production values and soundtrack, and she adored Piper, but insisted her earlier lesbian movie, Lost and Delirious was better, and very much underrated. Shane wanted to trib Lena Headley.

"Okay, guys, enough chit-chat," Alice said as they all settled in the living room with their coffees, teas, beers, wines and smoothies. "This editor I know called me Friday afternoon with a freelance assignment. They're doing this multi-part series on women's sexuality and stuff, and she assigned me one of the pieces, so I need to poll everybody I know on a couple of questions." She pulled a notebook and a sheaf of papers from her purse.

There were a couple of audible groans around the room, because they'd all been through this before with Alice and her insta-polls.

"What's this one about?" Tina asked, submitting to the inevitable with a deep sigh.

"A couple things, but what they all have in common is ... uh ... showers and water sports."

"Oh, Lord help us," Bette murmured. Carmen just closed her eyes and waited. Shane glanced at Carmen, then looked out a window.

"Now, now, play nice, please," Alice begged. "I gotta do this. It's for my job. It's how I pay my rent. C'mon, guys."

Shane held her Dos Equis to her forehead, feeling the cold and rolling the bottle sidewise across her brow. "What's the first question?"

"The first one's not too bad," Alice said. "'Do you pee in the shower? Answers are Very Often, Sometimes, Rarely, or Never, and then I'll need some quotes and commentary. Anybody want to go first?"

Nobody said anything.

"Guys?" Alice urged them.

"Oh, fuck," Carmen said. "All right. Let's get this over with. I'll go first. Very often. All the time, in fact."

"No shit?" Alice asked. She turned quickly to Shane. "Does she really?"

"West Hollywood celebrity hairdresser Shane McCutcheon declined to answer on the advice of her attorney," Shane said.

"Way to go, Carmen!" Kit said. "You go, girl!"

"I do!" Carmen said, and everyone laughed.

"C'mon, let's get serious," Alice pleaded again. "Would you elaborate?"

Carmen took a sip of her white wine and shrugged. "I like doing it in the shower. It feels good, and it's fast and efficient, since I'm in the shower anyway. It saves water, it's good for the environment, especially in Southern California, where there's such a water shortage. I think everyone ought to pee in the shower. It'd save millions of gallons of water. 'Save a flush a day,' that's my motto."

"Very green, Carmen. Thank you. Shane, how about you? Do you pee in the shower, too?"

"Alice, you don't want to know all the places I've peed," Shane said with a straight face, and everyone laughed.

" Quote. 'You don't want to know all the places I've peed,' unquote, said Hollywood celebrity hairdresser Shane McCutcheon," Alice mouthed as she actually wrote down the quote. "C'mon, Shane, I need more. Did your relationship with Carmen cause you to increase your shower-pissing behavior, or is that something you always did? Also, please elaborate on other places you've peed."

"Alice, for Christ's sake, don't put in there that Shane and I have a relationship," Carmen said. "My mother would freak if she ever saw it. I don't mind you quoting me, but don't 'out' me."

"Okay, got it, noted," Alice said. "Sorry. Shane, where have you peed that our reading audience would be interested in learning about?"

Shane laughed and blushed, but played the game. "Okay, let's see. Alleys. Back yards. On a few occasions, the front yard. Not my front yard, other peoples, where there's trees and bushes and cover. Hiking trails. The beach, behind a sand dune. In the ocean, of course, everyone does that. Um ... in cars, into a bottle. Probably, oh, fifteen or twenty men's rooms, men's locker rooms. No, I'm not gonna tell you what I was doing there. Jail, again no explanation. Uh, I once pissed into a trash can in an unoccupied office where I was waiting for hours and the regular bathroom was out of order."

"I'll word this one carefully. Have you ever peed recreationally on another person?"

"Yes."

"Often?"

"Just a few times."

"Was it fun?"

"Yes, actually, it was."

Relentlessly and methodically, Alice managed to pull publishable comments from the group on an assortment of allied subjects: Do you pee in the shower standing or squatting? Can you/have you ever peed standing up and outdoors? (Not surprisingly, Carmen was once again the champ, and she volunteered that she had taught Jenny how to pee that way, too.)

As they were leaving, Tina leaned into Alice to whisper in her ear. "I'm telling you again, Carmen is the most perfect lesbian there ever was. She's monogamous, she squirts, and even when she tinkles on her lovers, she's doing it to save the environment."

"She can squirt and tinkle on my environment any time she wants," Alice murmured back.