Sweet Talk by Cara Bastone
Chapter Seventeen
“Hey, JD.”
“Hey . . . what’s wrong?”
“Oh. Nothing. I’m just kind of embarrassed about my freak-out last night.”
“What? Why?”
“Okay, I think it’s time I came clean about some stuff.”
“. . . Okay.”
“You know how you wanted to make sure that I wasn’t thinking of you as Zaza Habib?”
“Gigi Hadid, but sure.”
“Right. Well, you know I’m not, like, The Rock. Right?”
“. . . You mean Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson?”
“Yeah.”
“Yes, Eliot. I’m aware that you are not pro-wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. You forget that I’ve met you.”
“I know. I know. But I just want to make sure that secretly, in your heart, you’re not hoping I’m some sort of he-man.”
“Not a he-man. Got it.”
“Let’s see . . . what else? Oh! I’m ridiculously annoying about recycling. And composting. Like, it irritates everyone. If I ever came over to your house, there’s a good chance I’d sort your trash while you were in the bathroom.”
“I recycle as well, so that wouldn’t be a problem.”
“Okay. I can drive a stick. Which is cool. But I can’t change a tire. Which is not cool. I’ve tried. And failed.”
“You should really learn! That’s just negligent if you regularly drive a car.”
“See? I’m sure you know how to change a tire. You can probably put together Ikea furniture without the instructions, can’t you?”
“No one can do that. Eliot, what’s going on right now? What’s with this list you’re giving me?”
“I’m making sure you know everything before I explain one more thing to you.”
“You’re making sure I know everything . . .?”
“Yeah. Okay. I thought of another one. And this one’s a doozy. I do this one thing that would be really, really creepy if anyone ever found out about it in the wrong context.”
“What is it? It’s something gross, isn’t it. I knew you were a closet perv.”
“No! What? What do you mean you knew I was a closet perv?”
“It’s always the nice ones.”
“I’m . . . not even going to validate that with a response.”
“Tell me what it is!”
“No way. You called me a perv so now I’m not going to tell you.”
“Tell me or I take away fifty points.”
“Fifty?! God, you don’t play fair. Fine. I’ll tell you . . . I draw people I know.”
“Drawing people? That’s the thing you think would be creepy if people found out? God, you really are a pure soul, Eliot. You need to get out more. Or stay in more. Have you ever even been on the internet before? There’s a lot for you to learn.”
“Let me explain how it could be considered weird.”
“Okay.”
“I draw people I know from memory.”
“I’m failing to see how this is creepy. Are you saying you do it like over and over again and tack their faces up on your wall like a serial killer?”
“No. But I draw them doing . . . stuff.”
“Sex stuff? You really are a perv, you perv!”
“No! Oh, my God. You’re the perv, since yours is the mind that went there.”
“Well, why did you pause so long before saying ‘stuff’? What was I supposed to think?”
“I draw them doing things that are comforting. Everyday things. Things to humanize them. But it’s never things I’ve actually seen them doing before, which is why it would be creepy if someone found the notebook.”
“Examples, please.”
“Okay. For instance, my old boss at work. He’s—for lack of a better word—fratty. And he and I never saw eye to eye. But I realized that I was kind of stereotyping him in my head so I did a few portraits of him putting on eye makeup and lipstick in the mirror.”
“. . .”
“You still there?”
“Yes, just absorbing. So, you drew him putting on makeup and it made you get along with him better?”
“Yeah. I have no idea if he puts on makeup in his private life or not, but that’s not the point. The point was reminding myself that I only see one small sliver of who this man is. His work self. And he has a million other facets that I’ll likely never see. And by assuming I knew who he was . . . well, it was making me judge him and get frustrated with him. Drawing him like that was actually really cathartic. But if he’d ever found the portraits . . .”
“You’d have gotten fired.”
“Most likely.”
“That is freaking awesome. This is, like, the most healthy way of processing emotions I’ve ever heard. Give me more examples.”
“Okay . . . when I was in the process of applying for a small business loan to get the design equipment I needed, I drew a series of pictures of the loan officer dog-paddling in a pool with, like, little swimmies on.”
“Amazing. More.”
“A couple days ago I just finished one of my super.”
“. . . Oh?”
“Yeah. She’s the strong, silent type, and I’m always the biggest idiot whenever I’m around her. Like, honestly. She literally had to screw in a light bulb for me the other day.”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s got tats and piercings and stuff and a really . . . fierce face, so I did some portraits of her doing really . . . disarming stuff.”
“What kind of disarming stuff?”
“In one she’s trying to climb out of a ball pit.”
“A ball pit?”
“Yeah, like at Chuck E. Cheese? No one can look cool while trying to extricate themselves from one of those.”
“That is so freaking weird, Eliot.”
“I told you I was weird!”
“Can you speak up a little? I’m trying to hear you over this siren. And I still don’t understand why you’re telling me all this stuff.”
“Is that siren on your end or my end? And I guess I just want you to know about all the little weird or annoying things about me. Because I’ve tried to be interesting and fun on these phone calls, but I want you to have the whole picture. Because I’m about to tell you something that might make you think less of me. So I wanted to pad it with some other information about me that will make you see me as a regular guy. Not some inflated, imaginary version of myself.”
“Okay. Check. I already don’t do that anyhow. But now you’ve officially prepared me for the fact that you are a regular human man. Sorry I’m yelling! I can barely hear myself think!”
“Great. Now I want to explain why I was freaking out so much last night.”
“Eliot. You don’t actually have to explain.”
“No, I want to.”
“Okay, but just wait until the siren—oof! Oh, shit. Sorry! I . . .”
“Oh, my God.”