It's Saturday night and I'm sitting at my computer in my dingy gray robe, hair in a ponytail. A very teensy-tiny ponytail because I have short hair, but I'm growing it out so it's a ponytail and it makes me happy. My hair is dirty because I haven't bathed all day and I'm sitting there not writing, like I should be, but reading a book. A very funny book that makes me think my life as a single woman isn't really so bad in comparison to other women on the "ledge, edge, verge."
My feet are propped up on the desk and at one point I throw my dirty-haired, tiny-ponytailed head back to laugh out loud at something the writer has said when I notice my feet. My toes especially. Blue. Really, what was I trying to prove? The little Vietnamese man at the shop thought it was a brilliant choice, but then he started talking in his native tongue and for all I know he was telling the other people in the shop that I must be a prostitute. Now the polish is chipped and the bedazzling jewels I had glued in the shape of a daisy are all but lost in my runner's shoes, I suppose. My toes make me sad. They are very long and as I look at them next to the keyboard at my PC I wonder if I could actually type my next column with them. I try. I can't. I find comfort in that somehow.
It's funny. I was recently voted "Sexiest Las Vegan" by the Las Vegas Weekly Reader's Choice Poll (tied with Kerry Simon of Simon's restaurant in the Hard Rock) and as I look into the mirror across the room, I can't help but think, if anyone could see me now, they'd surely strip me of my title. Like Vanessa Williams was after the pictures of her in some girly magazine came out and she had her nose in some other woman's cookie. Then I think, does Kerry Simon have nice feet? He probably does. That's why he's so cool and aloof. He doesn't have to try. Secretly, I think his sex appeal must come from the fact that not only can he cook and has really good hair, hair that would be much nicer in a ponytail than mine, but he also probably has nice feet. With shorter toes and an arch.
As I'm sitting there, feeling so very un-sexy, I'm remembering when I met with my plastic surgeon for the first time. I told him that I hated my feet. That they were really ugly and I couldn't stand looking at them for even one more second. "So, you want me to fix your feet?" he asked.
"No. Just make my boobs so big that when I look down I can't see them." He did.
Suddenly, my phone rings. I contemplate not answering it because the caller might question just how sexy I am if I'm home, alone, staring at my feet on a Saturday night. But then again, maybe it's something important like Quality Home Foods wondering how much I spend on groceries each month, so I answer.
"Lo?" I say, really coolly like someone with nice feet might.
"I saved all the messages," said a voice. Not just any voice mind you, but a voice that used to curl my ugly toes and fill my stomach with butterflies. A voice with just the slightest hint of a Southern accent. A Kentucky accent.
"What messages?" I ask, totally unaffected in an effort to make him want me.
"All the messages from my friends telling me what an idiot I am for letting you get away. All the messages asking for your phone number if I wasn't going to use it anymore," he answers.
And just like a $2 crack ho, one with chipped blue toenail polish, I want to ask him to come over and give me a fix. Just to talk. Just to hold me. Just to make mad, passionate, normal love to me. My sweet, adorable Kentucky Todd. So boyish, so inexperienced, so real. So not gay, so never wanting to wear my underpants, so never asking me to spank him, so normal and safe. Wouldn't it be so nice to see his face, to hold his strong muscular body against mine, to kiss his full lips and look into his sparkling blue eyes and just feel close again?
"Kentucky Wildcats lost," he said in perfect Todd style. Say something sweet, then follow up with something ridiculous to take the focus off of the good stuff. The stuff that puts him on the spot.
"I know, what an upset. But, UAB had size on their side. UK lost their legs before the half," I replied. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Now he's got the upper hand. Now he knows that I'd been following the University of Kentucky in the Sweet Sixteen in some sick attempt to put it in the universe that I missed him, that somehow he'd pick up on my vibe and miss me too. It must have worked.
"Can I come over?" he asked. OK, that was so unlike him. He wasn't a closer. Now he was going for the kill right off the bat, must have been my keen basketball knowledge that hooked him. Of course, it could have been the topless picture of me in the Weekly, I wasn't sure.
Say yes. Just say yes. Forget that he couldn't commit and that he couldn't love me back and that he broke my heart. Forget that he said that I was moving too fast and that he just didn't want to be with me anymore. Forget that he took me all the way to Albany, Kentucky, to meet his family who I loved instantly only to break up with me when we were back on Vegas soil. Say yes.
Oh. My. God. What should I do? What would Kerry Simon do?
Then suddenly, I looked back at my feet. I had a vision of Todd hovering above me, panting, sweating, my legs in the air, resting on his shoulders, chipped blue toe-nail polish staring me in the face and I could hear the Vietnamese nail technician saying, "Only prostitute wear blue polish. How much you charge for half and half? You say no now, save heartbreak. Todd no love you long time!"
"I can't. I have plans tonight," I answered. I did, actually. I was going to Simon's inside the Hard Rock Hotel to ask Kerry Simon to show me his feet.