As Advertised

As Advertised By J.T. Marie My cellphone rings just as The Simpsons is going off. I’m comfortably nestled in my stitching corner of the couch, my cat Machu Picchu cozied up alongside my leg as I work on finishing off an afghan for a coworker whose baby shower is next week. My iPhone is beside me on the arm of the couch or I’d let the call go to voicemail. But I see Kev on the display, and if I don’t answer it, he’ll hang up and ring back until I do. Or, worse, call our mother to see where I might be, which will only worry her. Then she’ll call me, too, and my quiet Sunday spent crocheting in front of the TV will turn into a harried evening of explanations and apologies. As much as I don’t want to be bothered, sometimes it’s easier to answer the damn phone. Pausing in mid-stitch, I swipe across the screen and press the speaker button. “Hey, Kevin,” I say. “What’s up?” “Nicole,” my older brother says. “There you are.” It’s nine o’clock on a Sunday night. Where else would I be? Though Kevin turns forty later this year, he still sounds like the same little boy I grew up with so long ago. It’s hard to believe sometimes that we’re both adults now. Well, hard for me to believe; he has three kids, one of whom is in high school already, and he started losing his hair when we were in college. I’m sure some mornings he wakes up and feels every single day he’s been alive so far weighing down on him. But me? I live alone with a cat in an apartment I decorated cheaply at Goodwill when I first moved out on my own. I work as a customer service rep for a cable company and hate my job. All my wild oats are sown, and nowadays I’d much rather crochet or read than do anything else. Unfortunately, I can’t pay bills by selling handicrafts alone—I know, I’ve looked into it. Some days the only reason I get out of bed is because Mr. Machu needs to be fed, and from the moment I wake up, the only thing on my mind is where I’ll pick up dinner at on my way home from work. Because—newsflash—I don’t cook. My driver’s license may say I’m thirty-eight but most of the time I feel like I’m stuck at nineteen, still spinning my wheels waiting for my life to kick into overdrive as everyone else passes me by. As I fumble for the TV remote, Kevin asks, “What’s all that noise?” He’s one to talk—usually I can’t hear him over the ruckus his kids make in the background. I hit the mute button and tell him, “I got the TV on, sorry about that. What’s up?” “Oh, nothing.” Bullcrap. My brother doesn’t ever me call out of the blue to chat. He’s the HR manager at an advertising firm downtown, and is usually goes to bed shortly after his kids do because he has to get up so early in the morning. We used to be close when we were younger—we even went to the same college, which I have to admit was nice, since being away from home was a little scary at first, and having someone there I already knew helped make the transition easier. But since he got married, we’ve drifted apart. He has his life, full of work and church and family, and I have mine. We live in the same city, but life keeps us too busy to keep up with each other often. And, I have to admit, I’m not overly fond of children. Not even those related to me. I’ll visit on their birthdays, give them cards with a few dollars inside, eat the obligatory cake and ice cream, but that’s about it. I’m definitely not a “hands on” type of aunt, which seems to suit my brother. I’ve always thought he was a little relieved I wasn’t more involved, actually. Then he never had to explain to his children why their Aunt Nikki isn’t into guys. It isn’t that Kevin’s embarrassed I’m a lesbian. In fact, when I came out at college, he thought it was pretty cool, me being gay. But I get it—he’s a family man now, married with kids, an upstanding member of his church. It isn’t quite so cool to tell people you have a gay sister when you’re signing up to usher at Sunday mass or volunteering for your children’s afterschool carpool. Which is why I’m suspicious about his reason for calling on a Sunday night. No one’s birthday is coming up, there’s no holiday anytime soon, and we no longer chat or hang out anymore. And I can’t shake the feeling he wants something from me. “So…” I drawl, hoping he’ll take the hint. When he doesn’t, I have to ask, “Why’d you call?” He clears his throat, as if the reason embarrasses him. “Oh well, you know. To see how you’re doing.” “Uh-huh.” I’m not buying that for a minute. “Fine. You?” “Fine.” And with that, the small talk fizzles out. It’s a little sad, after our shared history, this is all we have to say to each other. Grasping at straws, I ask, “How’s everyone doing?” “Fine, fine,” Kevin assures me. “Hey, listen, I can’t talk too long ‘cause I have an early day tomorrow…” Thank God. I hate to think we’d sit on the phone all evening saying everything’s fine. Still, I try to sound disappointed. “Oh, okay. Well, thanks for checking in.” “No, wait.” Kevin pauses long enough to make me wonder if he really has anything else to say, or if he wants to use me as an excuse to avoid talking to his wife. Finally he sighs. “I’ve been meaning to call you for a while now but I’ve been busy.” “It’s okay,” I tell him, and it is. Life has a habit of getting in the way. “Maybe we can get together for dinner one night. You could grill out or something. It’s starting to warm up outside—” Kevin laughs. “Actually, that’s the real reason I called. Well, part of the reason. See, I’m having some friends over next weekend and wanted to know if you could join us.” Something in the too-casual way he says this makes me suspicious. “Why?” “It’ll be fun,” he says, as if that’s incentive enough. It isn’t. “I don’t know…” I’m not exactly a social butterfly. My idea of a busy weekend is staying at home, watching TV with Machu while I crochet. I’m getting old before my time, and I know it, but I tell myself it’s okay because at least I own it, right? I mean, I like crochet. I learned to stitch back in college, when I would hang out in the commons area of my dormitory with a bunch of other girls on my floor. We’d gossip and laugh and call ourselves the Stitchin’ Bitches. We yarn-bombed random parts of campus, sat in the back of our classes and stitched during lectures, and considered ourselves badasses. I was the token lesbian of the group, which made all of the other girls I hung out with think knowing me made them cooler by association. But in retrospect, we were pretty tame. We got good grades and didn’t party hard or do drugs or have crazy s*x orgies, none of the antics some people get into when they go away to school. We got drunk on Mike’s Hard Lemonade a few times, and I kissed one of the girls a time or two—nothing serious, just fooling around. At least, it wasn’t serious to me. She’s probably married now and tells her husband she had a lesbian fling in college, I don’t know. We lost touch after graduation. I certainly didn’t consider her my girlfriend or anything like that at the time. To be honest, I can’t even remember her full name. Meg something. In fact, I can count the number of girls I’ve dated on one hand, and still have fingers left over. It’s been awhile since I’ve gone out with anyone, or and longer since I was really interested in another; being busy is only half of it. The women I work with are married or in relationships, all of them straight, most of them older than me. None of them my type. Which, when I was younger, was pretty specific—long, curly hair; dark, expressive eyes, full lips, curvy body; quick laugh. Now that I’m older, I’ve relaxed my standards quite a lot, and I still can’t find anyone I like. At this point, hell, she doesn’t even have to consider herself a dyke. As long as she likes me, I don’t care if she likes other women or not. She can call herself bisexual, or bi-curious, or asexual, or whatever. Look at me as if I’m the only one in the world who matters, see me and no one else, care about me, like cats, and boom! We have a winner. And really, let’s be honest…don’t all women like cats? My brother isn’t the type to take no for an answer. I wish I could say I have something planned for next weekend, but he knows I don’t. “Come on, Nik,” he cajoles. “I’m going to smoke a pork roast, and we’ll have hot dogs and hamburgers, and Trish is making potato salad and coleslaw. You know you want to.” Damn it, I do. Not so much for the party aspect—I couldn’t be bothered to meet his friends, truth be told—but I can’t turn down free food. Still, I don’t want to give in too easily. “I don’t know…” I hedge. “I won’t know anyone there.” “You’ll know me,” he argues, “and Trish and the girls.” I hold out, stubborn. “But who else is coming?” “Some people from work,” Kevin admits. “A few families we know from church. A couple of the girls’ friends from school—I don’t know anything about that, Trish is handling them. It’s going to be a sort of big cookout to kick off spring.” Something in his forced eagerness makes me think there’s more to it than that. “What is it you’re not telling me?” “What do you mean?” he asks, sounding surprised. Yeah, surprised I can still see through him after all this time. “You’re selling it a little too hard,” I point out. “It sounds like you really want me there.” “Well, I do.” “But why?” Kevin sighs. “Because you’re my sister. Do I need more of an answer than that?” I don’t respond, and my silence my only reply. After a long moment, he sighs again, exasperated this time. “Alright, fine. There’s this new woman at work—” “Kevin!” I cry, stressing both syllables of his name in my frustration. “That’s it. I’m not coming.” “No, listen!” He starts to talk quickly, as if afraid I’ll hang up before he can finally tell me what it was he really called about. “Her name is Lori, you’d really like her, she went to State like us—” “Like thousands of other people, too,” I interject. “I’m not interested.” “Listen,” he says again. “She’s about our age, and she loves to sew, she loves animals, she loves the Harry Potter books like you do, and she’s single—” “Then you date her.” With a shake of my head that he can’t see, I turn back to my afghan, which I’ve neglected enough already. “Kevin, everyone says they love animals. Everyone loves Harry Potter. I’m not going to let you set me up with another woman you think is queer who turns out to have a short haircut, a boyish body, and plays sports.” He laughs, but I don’t—nothing about this is funny. “Okay, that was my bad,” he admits. “I really thought the receptionist at Dr. Brand’s was a lesbian. You have to admit she seemed to like you.” “She liked everyone,” I counter. “She might’ve asked you about me whenever you went to get your teeth cleaned, but only because she knew I was your sister. Whenever I went, she asked me about you. So either she was only being nice, or she wanted to get freaky with us both. Did you ever think of that?” Kevin assures me, “All I’m saying is Lori really is gay. She’s told me herself, straight up. Wait—do gay people still say that? Straight up? Or is that offensive?” With a sigh, I tell him, “Look, it’s getting late. Don’t you have to get to bed, or something?” “Just show up at the cookout,” Kevin says. “I’ll introduce you two, and you can take it from there. I really think you’ll hit it off. I mean, you have so much in common. She constantly reminds me of you, and not because you both like girls.” I can’t imagine my brother has a very updated idea of who I am—if this Lori person reminds him of anyone, it’s probably of the flighty, half-baked chick I was back in college, when Kevin and I hung out more. If that’s the case, then I don’t think I want anything to do with her now. Bitching about any and everything and random yarn-bombing was fun when I was younger, but it’s no longer who I am anymore. And how does he know she likes Harry Potter? Does she go around talking about it at work? Who in their late thirties does that sort of thing in an office setting? God, she probably writes fan fiction, too. If so, I don’t even want to know about it. “We’ll see,” I tell him. “No promises.” As I hang up the phone, Machu stirs beside me. Rubbing behind his ears, I tell him, “Which means no. I don’t want to meet this woman. Who wants to date someone so similar to herself?” Machu yawns and stretches, extending his claws in agreement.