I Like You Just the Way I Am Read online

Finger dick.

  “So, I think I want to get Botox,” she said in an even tone that suggested she’d already made up her mind.

  A warm soothing wave of validation washed over me. Candice, the most secure woman I knew, had things she wanted to change about herself. She looked great, but she wanted to look amazing—just like I did.

  “What were you thinking you needed?” I asked, containing my excitement, as if she’d just said, “Let’s take a bath in a tub of Nutella.”

  “I wanted to fill in these smile lines and maybe tweak this dent between my eyebrows.” She seemed bashful but unflinching in her conviction.

  I wasn’t sure what changed Candice’s stance on face work. Maybe her husband said the wrong thing, maybe she accidentally looked at herself in an airplane lavatory, or maybe she just started to appreciate the difference in the people around her. The catalyst was unclear, but I imagine it probably had to do with me looking amazing. So I offered to take her to my guy.

  “I have the best guy! He looks a little waxy because he’s done a few too many peels and I think he might have silicone implants in his lips, but other than that, he’s the greatest.”

  “Cool,” she said.

  I reached across the table and started playing with her face like I was the doctor I’d just described.

  “Okay, so first of all, your marionettes are going to need filler, not Botox.”

  “What are my marionettes?”

  “You know, the lines around your mouth that make you look like a puppet.” I grabbed her cheeks and pulled them back to give her a sense of what I was talking about.

  “I look like a puppet?” Candice stared at me hard.

  “No. Of course not!” I backpedaled. “Not like a real puppet. More like a person playing a puppet in a community theater production of Pinocchio. You know—like super creepy at first, but then you get used to it and sort of start to find it adorable.”

  Candice’s smile lines slowly melted into even fiercer frown lines.

  My explanation wasn’t helping.

  “They really aren’t even that noticeable! Regardless, it’s all going to go away as soon as we inject the filler.”

  “Filler? I just want a few drops of Botox. I don’t want to get into all that fancy stuff.” Candice grew more self-conscious by the moment.

  It suddenly occurred to me that certain people, the ones who were loved unconditionally by their parents, can’t always handle being picked apart physically. I needed to remember to be gentle with Candice and her glaringly obvious marionette lines.

  “When do you want to go?” I pulled out my phone and started dialing.

  “This week?” she suggested, rubbing her face.

  Candice is a small-town girl from Iowa. Growing up, she was sheltered from the ways of the city and in many ways raised to be someone who’d never talk to me. When she first got to Los Angeles, simple things like hair extensions, teeth bleaching, and Brazilian waxes were foreign concepts to her. With time she became savvier but still refused to participate in the madness. Candice always got a kick out of hearing me go on about whatever latest craze I’d gotten myself mixed up in. And my ability to amuse her is most likely why she stuck around. Our Botox adventure was going to be the first time Candice wasn’t just a passive listener on the other end of the phone. This time, she was going to be the one doing something she deemed outrageous, and there was no way I was going to miss it.

  * * *

  Taking Candice to her Botox appointment was what I picture taking a child to Disneyland must feel like for parents. I wanted to be there to help her feel better about herself, but also to vicariously experience the wonder that comes from seeing a couple cc’s of Restylane shot under your skin for the first time.

  I was able to get Candice an appointment with the famed Dr. Sorenson of Beverly Hills Dermatology three days later. When I picked Candice up from work, her palms were already sweating.

  “Do you really think this is the right thing to do?” She pulled down the passenger-side mirror and furiously moved her eyebrows up and down.

  “Candice, you are really overreacting. Nothing is going to happen.” I drove down Beverly Drive, looking for the cheapest parking structure.

  “Because my husband can never know I did this. Like, nobody can know I did this.”

  I pulled into the next lot and pulled a ticket out of the machine. “Your forehead isn’t going to all of a sudden be smooth. The Botox won’t set in for at least six or seven days.”

  “What about the filler?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s immediate.”

  A dermatology office is like Planned Parenthood for the middle-aged. Nobody makes eye contact, nobody talks, and everyone is guilty of more than they are admitting. After several uneasy minutes of Candice making me swear on my dogs’ lives that I would never tell Jason or even my dogs about our visit, a tall blond nurse who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two walked out to greet us.

  “Hi, I’m Kinga. I’m new here.”

  Kinga escorted us back to an exam room in tight black sweater pants that looked like they were made for a doll. The people in Dr. Sorenson’s office were always beautiful, but Kinga was truly a specimen.

  “So you’re a regular?” she asked me.

  I nodded my head yes and tried not to imagine Kinga getting railed by Dr. Sorenson on her lunch break.

  She closed the door to our room and looked over Candice’s chart.

  “So what areas are we working on today?”

  Candice looked at me, then again at the ever-so-slightly plastic twenty-something (who’d clearly already started her own journey down the rabbit hole of facial alterations), and said nothing.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone. I just need to know where to apply the numbing cream.” Kinga pulled an alcohol wipe from the cupboard and started cleaning Candice’s face.

  Once she finished, she left the room to get Dr. Sorenson.

  Dr. Sorenson is a handsome, hyperactive narcissist of unspecified age who, over the course of the last decade, has become Los Angeles’s uncrowned king of injectables.

  “They call me the uncrowned king of injectables,” he announced, strutting into the room like he was on a catwalk and extending his hand. Kinga followed closely behind.

  “How you doing, Jenny? Did you meet Kinga?” He gave me a fist bump, then turned to Kinga for a black marker. She was definitely getting her face fucked off later that day.

  Sorenson didn’t ask Candice a single question. He just drew. After Jackson Pollocking Candice’s face the same way I envisioned him jizzing all over Kinga’s, he held up a mirror.

  “So this is what I would suggest. What did you have in mind?” he asked, only out of obligation.

  “I—uh—,” Candice stuttered as she took in what looked like a giant tribal face tattoo.

  “We were really just thinking just some Restylane in her smile lines and a couple drops of Botox between the brows.” I knew Candice wasn’t ready for the works. She needed to be eased in slowly.

  “Oh, is that what you were thinking?” Sorenson gave me a look that said, I’m the motherfucking uncrowned king of injectibles, not you.

  “That work for you, Candice?” he asked sweetly.

  “Well, um. Do you think I need more?”

  Kinga cleaned the abstract expressionist rendering off Candice’s face as Sorenson prepared his syringe of hope.

  “Do I? Well, yeah. Frankly, I do. Take Kinga here. She’s twenty-four and she is wearing more cc’s of Botox than what you’re requesting, and you look two times her age. You actually need it. She is just doing hers to be preventative.”

  “Preventative?” Candice wasn’t following.

  “Yeah, so she doesn’t hit thirty-five and have the deep lines you do. Open your mouth.” Sorenson positioned several fingers on the inside of her cheek and started injecting. “A girl like you has to act fast. Forty is just around the corner, and right now, you’re not ready for it. Do you want to b
e ready for it?”

  Candice tried to answer, but Sorenson’s hand was in the way.

  “Don’t answer that.” He massaged the gel-like substance through her jowls with his fingers, then started on the opposite side.

  As tears streamed down Candice’s new face, I squeezed her hand tightly and assured her it was almost over.

  Sorenson reached past Kinga, grabbed a separate syringe filled with Botox, and started injecting again. “I have a bit extra, so I’m just gonna put it in your crow’s-feet. That okay with you, Jenny?”

  “It’s too late at this point,” Candice said. “Just give me the works.” She smiled almost giddily now.

  Seconds later, he handed Candice back the mirror.

  “Wow!” she said, blown away by the drastic effects of the filler.

  “Now does that look like too much?” Sorenson laughed, pleased with his work and with himself in general. Before he left, he rattled off his routine advice.

  “No exercise for the rest of the day, any slight bruising is normal, and if you have an adverse reaction, please call the office immediately.”

  Candice nodded, grateful.

  “Looks like you’re almost due to come back in, Jenny. You should book something before you leave.” He couldn’t resist taking one last jab at me.

  Kinga walked us to the front desk, where Candice paid her bill in cash and reiterated that she didn’t want anyone knowing she was there.

  We drove back to Candice’s work and I dropped her off. One part paranoid and one part elated, she hugged me hard and thanked me for being such a bad influence before getting out of the car. Though she clearly did look better and seemed as happy as could be, I couldn’t help but feel like a drug dealer who’d just hooked a third-grader on heroin. “You like to fly kid?” I imagined myself saying. “I’ll teach you to fly.”

  * * *

  That night, as I sat in bed taking iPhone pictures of my forehead so I could compare them with Google Images search results for “Klingon Halloween Masks,” I found myself questioning my enthusiasm for corrupting my innocent friend.

  “Sorenson was just trying to mindfuck me into giving him more money or killing myself,” I grumbled to my dogs, forgetting I’d sworn on their lives I wouldn’t tell them about taking Candice to the dermo.

  When Jason came home, I spoke nothing of the occurrence. He asked about my day, I asked about his, and we fell asleep as best of friends, the kind who tell each other everything.

  The next morning, I woke to a series of cryptic texts from Candice, urging me to call her immediately. Before I could get through all the messages, my home phone was ringing.

  “Hello?”

  Candice was sobbing, making it impossible to understand her.

  “Are you okay? Is someone dead? Do I need Botox too?”

  “My face!” she cried.

  “What’s wrong with your face?”

  “I’m bruised right next to my eye! Nick is going to shoot me! I can’t believe I let you talk me into this!”

  “Hang on, I didn’t talk you into it. You came to me with the idea.”

  “Hoping you would tell me I didn’t need it!” I could hear Candice’s dog yelp as she tripped over him and continued to pace neurotically.

  Scared she might get behind the wheel of a car and try to drive out of state, I told her I’d come over. I threw on some shoes and a bra and drove to her house. When I got there, she was wearing a huge hat with a fishnet veil on it that she’d made for the Kentucky Derby.

  “Come in,” she said, furtively glancing around her driveway, making sure nobody was watching.

  Once we got to her bathroom, she unveiled herself. Her marionettes were completely gone, but just to the right of one eye was a pea-sized bruise. I assured her that it was minor and would last only a week.

  “You just need some good concealer.”

  “Good concealer? I don’t have any concealer!” she panicked.

  Rummaging through my purse, I found a cover-up stick that was at least a shade too dark.

  “You really want to have yellow to cover up blue…,” I said as I mixed in a dash of her husband’s baby powder like a Caribbean witch doctor mixing a homemade tincture in a futile attempt to cure a patient’s malaria.

  I applied my makeshift mixture to the spot, hoping for the best. Unfortunately, it just made the discoloration more obvious.

  Candice looked in the mirror and went back to freaking the fuck out.

  “Now it looks even worse! Besides, Nick is going to be more skeptical if I’m wearing makeup! There has to be another way.”

  “Can you throw yourself down a flight of stairs?” I suggested helpfully. “Walk into an open cupboard while he’s looking at you?” I tried to remember all the various ways I’d explained bruising in the past. Once, I made the mistake of trying collagen in my lips. My lips blew up to the size of inner tubes, so I told Jason I was having an allergic reaction to cantaloupe. The swelling got so bad that I eventually let him stab me in the butt with our emergency epinephrine pen just to avoid further questioning.

  Candice was the type of girl who started breathing hard the minute she even attempted to do something nefarious. Any sort of elaborate lie might give her too much time to accidentally break down and confess. She needed a one- or two-word answer she could spit out while avoiding eye contact, and then change the subject.

  “Let’s think, what could you have done today that might have caused this?”

  “Um, maybe something at the gym?”

  “A needle attacked you at the gym? No way. It’s too small to be a gym accident.” I racked my brain thinking of plausible scenarios, but all I came up with was “misguided insulin shot,” “misguided heroin needle,” or “misguided extra in a remake of Death Becomes Her.” Sadly, Candice wasn’t a diabetic, a heroin junkie, or an actress/waitress. She was a woman nearing forty with crow’s-feet I wouldn’t have even mentioned if Sorenson hadn’t opened his cosmetically enhanced duck lips.

  “Jenny! Stop! It looks like a Botox bruise! That’s all it’s ever gonna look like.” Candice sat down on her toilet, resigned. She didn’t have any fight left in her.

  “Not if we make it bigger,” I said without thinking.

  Life shot back into Candice’s eyes. She stood up and grabbed my shoulders hard. “Will you punch me?” A small tear of desperation fell down her now-flawless cheek.

  I thought about the Candice I’d known in my twenties—the strong, seemingly unaffected beauty who could barely be bothered to apply ChapStick. I thought about myself—the recovered anorexic who’d looked into having her anus bleached after catching a weird glimpse of it in a magnifying mirror in tenth grade. Maybe I’d projected too much of my own shit onto Candice. Maybe I should have asked more questions. Unfortunately, it was too late for questions. What was done was done.

  “Please.” She was begging now, closing her eyes slightly and bracing for impact.

  Instantly I was transported back to the previous Christmas, where after an afternoon of sailing and snorkeling, my stepmom, Kristen, came to me with a weave so tangled, there was no choice but to shave it out. Though I didn’t want to be the one to turn her into Helen Slater from The Legend of Billie Jean, I was the only one she trusted to do it. Candice needed me just like Kristen had. She entrusted me with her vanity, her reputation, and her pride. I couldn’t let her down.

  Trying to be the best friend I could be and before she could get out the words “nevermind this is a terrible idea,” I cocked back my fist and slugged Candice in the face.

  Still numb, she darted to the mirror and examined her rapidly swelling eye. Now not only did she look like she was recently Botoxed, but she also looked like she was mugged and possibly raped by a small doctor with no upper body strength.

  “This better bruise!” she said like an MMA fighter hoping for a few vanity wounds.

  Horrified by my behavior and shocked by how the day had already unraveled, the only thing I could say was, “The first
rule of Botox club is, we don’t talk about Botox club.”

  Candice erupted into laughter, then shrieked in pain and ambled to the kitchen for ice. After physically assaulting my good friend, I needed to go home and call my therapist.

  “Wait, I probably shouldn’t use the ice if I want it to stay blue.” Candice held a bag of frozen peas in her hand as I hugged her to leave.

  “Use the peas,” I urged her.

  Later that evening, Jason got a phone call from his good friend Nick, Candice’s husband. I was too nervous to eavesdrop, so I threw the dogs in the shower and busied myself with washing them. After a few minutes, there was a knock at the bathroom door. When Jason walked in, his face was grave.

  “I just got off the phone with Nick.”

  Knowing that the best defense was a good offense, I pretended to be annoyed before he could. “Babe, I can’t hear you with the water and I have wet dogs in here! Can this wait?”

  Jason walked over to the shower and opened the glass door cautiously. “Sorry, honey. I guess Candice’s trainer dropped the bench press bar on her face today at the gym. They’re canceling dinner this weekend because she has a black eye.” He looked at me sweetly, hoping I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Wow! That’s crazy.” I exhaled, relieved.

  “Why don’t you look upset?”

  “No, I am! Baby, that’s just my face,” I reassured him. “I knew I didn’t need any more Botox,” I said to the dogs under my breath, mentally flipping Sorenson the bird.

  Once Jason was fast asleep, I texted Candice to congratulate her on pulling off what I’m sure was the most elaborate hoax of her life and also apologize if I in any way railroaded her into doing something she didn’t want to do. I made sure to say all the things I’d failed to tell her before—that she looked amazing for her age, that her effortlessness made her the envy of all her friends, and that she would always be a natural beauty.

  I sat there for several minutes, moved by my own words, when my phone lit up with her response.

  “What do you think I’d look like with my tits done?”

  13.

  You Were Molested

  Having a sister is like having a best friend who hates you. She shares your parents, shares your clothes, shares your secrets (with her entire circle of friends), and secretly wishes you were twins so that she could have absorbed you in the womb.