Has Anyone Seen My Pants? Page 4

  Downtown Cabo is kind of what you’d expect: a bit of a mess with lots of techno clubs, a few good restaurants, plenty of bars, and a lot of drunk people. I noticed a lot of them looked like they were in college. Then when one group of super-intoxicated girls threw back a round of shots and yelled, “Spring break, wooooooo!” it dawned on me why.

  “Oh my God, we are in Mexico during spring break,” I told Jackie, kind of horrified.

  “Well, the good news is, you probably aren’t the only person in here who is going to develop a rash this weekend,” she responded. Then she looked around, ordered us two shots of tequila, raised them up, and yelled, “Spring break, wooooooo!”

  We spent the next couple of hours barhopping, yelling, “Spring break, woooooo!” It got funnier every time we did it, and we did it a lot. There were definitely tons of spring breakers around, but two guys our age zeroed in on us and offered us some seats at their table. One of them was really cute and the other one seemed to have a nice personality. If they had been girls, he would have been considered the “fat friend.” He wasn’t fat at all, but you know what I mean.

  The cute one was flirting with Jackie, but she made it clear she was happily engaged. He seemed kind of disappointed but continued to train his attention on her. Why am I stuck with the fat friend? I thought. Did the cute one notice the rash?

  We spent the rest of the night hanging out with cute guy and fat friend, the four of us getting pretty drunk. When the bar started to close Jackie suggested they come back to our hotel and drink. “We have an infinity pool, it’s awesome!” she told them.

  I grabbed Jackie by the arm and excused us to the bathroom. “You aren’t doing anything bad, right?” I asked her when we were safely out of earshot.

  “Fuck no! I just thought they were fun and maybe you can get some action. I’d never cheat on Brandon!”

  “I know! I was just making sure because we’re drunk. But I’m not getting any action; the cute one likes you and I’m not going to hook up with him just because he can’t hook up with you. That’s sad . . . for me.”

  “Well, what about the other guy?”

  I realized then that neither of us had called them by name, because we had no idea what their names were.

  “It’s too late to ask,” Jackie said. “So what about the other guy? You can hook up with him. He’s totally into you.”

  “The fat friend?”

  “He’s not fat,” Jackie laughed.

  “I know, but he’s technically the fat friend.”

  “Okay, fine, are you going to hook up with the fat friend?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, pulling up my dress and looking in the bathroom mirror to see if my rash had spread. It had. “Oh my God, look! There are more bumps. That Mexican Cortaid made it worse!”

  “Just give it time, it’ll go away. Seriously, I think you should hook up with that guy, he’s really nice.”

  “Lots of people are really nice; it doesn’t mean I should hook up with them.”

  “You haven’t had sex in almost a year,” she reminded me.

  “Good point. I’ll hook up with him. No sex, but he can finger me. And I have to keep the lights off because of the rash.”

  “Done,” Jackie agreed.

  When the four of us got back to the hotel, Jackie immediately cracked open the minibar and started pouring drinks. I put my iPod on and started blaring country music. The cute one asked if I had any other music, which I did.

  “Nope,” I replied. “If you don’t like country music you can leave.” I said it with a tone that made him think I was being hilarious, but in reality I was being mad because he didn’t like me. Then I put Luke Bryan on shuffle and turned the volume up as loud as I could.

  “Is that going to piss off your neighbors?” Fat Friend asked.

  “We don’t have neighbors!” I yelled, excited about the fact that the room next to us was vacant.

  “If we did they’d have to learn to love Luke Bryan,” Jackie threw in. “It’s not really an option not to when Sarah is around.”

  “True that,” I said as I attempted to high-five her but stumbled and ended up slapping her in the face.

  We both laughed hysterically and I began to croon “Buzzkill” while Cute Guy and Fat Friend looked on in horror.

  I kept drinking while periodically disappearing into the bathroom to check on the progression of my rash. It wasn’t getting better, but it wasn’t getting worse. I tried to let that stasis put my mind at ease.

  Since we only had one room, letting Fat Friend finger me was going to be tricky. I turned up “Country Girl” extra loud and pulled Jackie aside.

  “Okay, how is this going to work?” I asked.

  “Easy! Cute Guy and I will go in the infinity pool and I’ll close the doors to the patio so Fat Friend can fiddle your vagina.”

  “You’re going into the infinity pool with Cute Guy?” I asked, half-jealous.

  “Yes, it’s fine. All I’ve been doing is talking about Brandon, and I got him to talk about his ex-girlfriend so now he’s just Sad Friend.”

  “Okay, perfect.”

  Jackie and Cute/Sad Guy splashed around in the infinity pool while Fat Friend awkwardly tried to dance with me to Luke Bryan’s “Do I.”

  “We don’t need to dance,” I told him. I actually kind of wanted to, but he kept stepping on my feet and I had just gotten a pedicure.

  He took my dance refusal as an invitation to do other things and went in for a kiss. It was a pretty decent kiss, so it turned into a full-on make-out session, with us tumbling onto the bed and me awkwardly trying to guide his hands around my rash.

  “Am I doing something wrong?” he asked after the forty-seventh time I shoved his hand off of my stomach.

  “No! Not at all!” I said, trying to reassure him. I was actually kind of enjoying the make-out session; it had been a long time since my last one and I didn’t want to ruin it. “I’m sorry, I have a rash.”

  “Huh?” he responded, as expected.

  “I don’t know. I went to the beach today and I came back with a rash. I don’t know what it is and it’s really gross and I’m sorry—if you want to leave it’s totally fine.”

  “A rash? It’s Mexico. Of course you got a rash. Can I see it?”

  “No!” I yelled, and slapped his hand away.

  “Just let me see it. I’m not going anywhere.” Fat Friend slowly pulled up my dress as I covered my eyes in shame.

  “Those are bites. Maybe sand fleas, or what my mom used to call ‘no-see-’ems,’ because . . . because, you know, you can’t see ’em.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve had them. I come here all the time. Trust me, they’re no big deal.”

  “Well, Jackie didn’t get them and we were at the same place all day.”

  “Her skin probably doesn’t smell as sweet as yours . . .”

  Fat Friend had game. I quickly forgot about my “no-see-’em” bites and let Fat Friend finger me as planned. I didn’t even touch his penis, so it was a perfect night . . . for me.

  The next morning, Jackie and I ordered an uncomfortable amount of room service and immediately began drinking again. Cute Guy and Fat Friend were long since headed to the airport to go home, wherever that was—in addition to never having learned their names, we also never learned where they lived or what they did for a living.

  “Pool time?” Jackie asked as she poured us both a Bloody Mary.

  “Yes!”

  I changed into my bikini, noting that the bumps had not gotten any better.

  “Fuck!” I complained.

  “They haven’t gotten any worse either,” Jackie said encouragingly. “Glass half full!”

  “My glass actually is half-full. Can you fill it before we head down to the pool?”

  We spent the next couple of
days doing exactly what we’d planned to do: drinking, tanning, reading, drinking, and posting pictures on Instagram to make our friends jealous. Something also attacked Jackie, but it appeared to be mosquitoes and they were only interested in her hands. So in every photo we had to make sure nobody could see my rash or her swollen knuckles. We were a real mess.

  Time flew by and before we knew it, we were having our last night of dinner at The Office, a local restaurant with pretty good food and really great people-watching. A guy in a sombrero approached our table, shot glasses in hand and a whistle around his neck.

  “We’re good, we’re in our thirties,” I told him.

  “Ignore her,” Jackie interrupted. “Spring break, woooo!”

  I giggled and we both did like four tequila shots, the waiter blowing a whistle and clapping after each one.

  “Oh, Fat Friend just texted me,” I called out to Jackie as I checked my phone. “I didn’t even realize I gave him my phone number.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That he had a great time and to stay in touch.”

  “Are you going to stay in touch?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You guys seemed to get along,” she countered.

  “We got along fine, sure. But that was mostly because I wanted to get fingered and he had a finger.”

  “Well, why not just see him again?”

  “He was really nice, and it was a fun night, but it’s not like there were real sparks or anything. Plus, he lives far away.”

  “Where?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Jackie laughed. “Have you ever thought that maybe you stop relationships before they can start?”

  “Are you trying to ruin my buzz?”

  “I’m serious! You say you want to date someone, but then when you meet—”

  “You’re a buzzkill every time you come around, those beers might as well have been poured out . . .” I drunkenly sang my favorite Luke Bryan—who else?—song to her.

  “Okay, fine. We don’t have to talk about it . . . tonight. By the way, I really like that song and I think Brandon might break up with me over it.”

  “Fat Friend didn’t know the words, and that’s how I know we aren’t meant to be.”

  As we packed for the airport the next day, we decided to go have one last morning margarita before heading out. We got our favorite seats by the pool and the waiter brought us drinks that we didn’t even have to order.

  “I love this place,” I told Jackie as I dipped my toes in the pool.

  “Me too,” she agreed.

  “Thanks for coming with me. I know you have a boyfriend who you could go on vaca—”

  “Shut up,” Jackie interrupted. “I had a blast and just because I have a boyfriend doesn’t mean I don’t want to spend time away with you.”

  “I know; I just hope you didn’t come because you feel sorry for me. Like you know I don’t have a guy to go with so you told Brandon you had to come with me so I don’t kill myself or something.”

  Jackie laughed. “I already told you, you could ‘have a guy’ if you want one. You’re just not looking. I know you say you are, but you’re not. I’m also not worried about it. You’re going to be fine; you always are. You put a lot of work into having the career you’ve always wanted, and when you’re ready you’ll put the same amount of work into your personal life. Plus I think being single for a while is a good thing.”

  “Wow. You really think that?”

  “I really think that.”

  “Thanks, Jackie. That means a lot. I actually think being single is really good right now, too. I just sometimes wonder if I like being single too much . . .” I started to tear up.

  “There’s no crying in Cabo,” Jackie said.

  I laughed. “True. But there is fingering!”

  “Spring break, woooo!” Jackie chimed in.

  As we got ready to leave, I got a text alert that my flight was delayed two hours. Jackie was on a different flight and hers was on time.

  “Go ahead, I’m gonna stay here for a little bit longer,” I told her. “I don’t want to sit at that terrible airport that long by myself.”

  Jackie and I hugged and had a stranger take one more Instagram photo of us, and then she took off.

  I decided I was hungry, so I walked up to the restaurant to grab some lunch while I awaited further notice on my flight.

  “How many?” the waiter asked me as he looked behind me, expecting to see someone else.

  “Uno,” I replied.

  “Only uno?”

  “Yes, only uno,” I said proudly, and he walked me to my table without saying another word.

  What Ails Me?

  I find that the older I get, the more time I spend on WebMD researching a variety of possible ailments, real or imagined, and diagnosing myself. Recently, I convinced myself that I was suffering from early-onset menopause. I was just shy of turning thirty-nine at the time, so I knew that it would be super-early-onset menopause, but I found myself sweating profusely at night, and the only possible explanation for waking up in a pool of sweat that made sense based on my Internet search was “the change of life.” I sat in my gynecologist’s office and explained to my doctor, whom I have been going to for about fifteen years, that even though I was only thirty-eight years and three hundred forty-seven days old, I was experiencing the inevitable end of my menstrual cycle and thus, my youth.

  “Well, if that’s the case, you’re experiencing it very, very early . . . but it can happen.”

  “I knew it,” I said, satisfied with my keen self-diagnosis.

  “I didn’t say it was happening to you, I just said it can happen. But it isn’t that common. What exactly are your symptoms?”

  “I wake up in pools of sweat. Like I-need-to-change-the-sheets-the-next-day kind of sweat. I mean, I don’t actually change them but I should.”

  “Okay, what else?” she asked.

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Isn’t that enough? Who sweats when they sleep? It’s not like it’s hard work.”

  “Well, have you tried turning on your air conditioner?” she said jokingly.

  “Ha ha, very funny. Seriously, it’s obviously menopause. Can you give me something to slow it down? Or maybe even speed it up? I don’t really need to have my period, it just gets in the way.”

  “I really don’t think you’re experiencing menopause. But it might be something hormonal . . .”

  “Yeah, something hormonal would be menopause!” I told her as if I was the one with the medical degree.

  “All right,” she said, trying to politely get more information out of me, “we can do some hormone testing.”

  “Great. Oh! And I’m also coughing a lot at night. Like I wake myself up coughing this dry, awful cough.”

  “Huh. Really? Are you also coughing during the day?” she asked in what sounded like the tone of someone who’s taking notes, yet she wasn’t holding a clipboard or even a pen.

  “A little, but it’s worse at night.”

  “Sarah, I think you have the flu.”

  “Is that also a sign of early menopause?”

  “No, it’s a sign of the flu.”

  “I don’t think that’s what I have.”

  “Are you also a little more tired than usual?” she asked, still seemingly making check marks on her mental notepad.

  “Well, yes, but that’s because I’m not getting a lot of sleep since I keep waking up sweating and coughing because of the me-no-pause,” I explained slowly.

  “Or it’s because you have the flu. There’s a nasty strain going around right now. I’ll prescribe you something that will help ease the symptoms, and if that plus a couple days of rest doesn’t take care of it, you can come back and tell me more about your meno
pause.”

  “I guess we can give that a try for now, but I’ll probably be back soon for those tests,” I replied, eyeing her skeptically.

  “Can’t wait.” She smiled and handed me a prescription.

  About five days later, I received a call from her office, checking in to see how I was feeling.

  “I’m okay,” I said to the receptionist, not wanting to fully admit that my menopause symptoms had completely cleared up since they had been treated with a flu remedy and some rest. “For now, anyway . . .”

  “Okay, I will let the doctor know your flu is gone,” he said.

  “That’s not what I—”

  “See you for your next annual checkup, Sarah!” he said cheerily, and hung up.

  Ugh, the whole office was so smug with the whole “flu” diagnosis. I sort of wished there was a way to catch menopause just so I could go back and tell her that her medical degree was no match for my superior Internet research skills.

  If you think I learned to stop self-diagnosing after this incident, you are mistaken.

  A couple of months later, I was feeling like I was being extra bitchy to people, so I decided to go to the doctor to find out what was behind it. I opted not to go to my gynecologist this time, fearing she might say something practical, like “Just stop being so bitchy,” so I asked around and located a doctor who specialized in hormone testing. I figured this way, when someone accused me of being a bitch, I could blame it on a condition that was out of my hands, and in turn make them feel bad for picking on me while I was sick and possibly dying.

  The doctor’s office was located in Beverly Hills on the tenth floor of a ten-floor building, so I assumed this doctor was no shit. I mean, that’s like the equivalent of living in the penthouse, you know? However, when I arrived I was slightly disappointed to see that it was a tiny office and there were boxes piled up everywhere, leaving little room for seating.

  “Are you guys moving?” I asked the receptionist.

  “No,” she said flatly, not acknowledging the large box overflowing with papers on top of her desk. “Just bring this back to me when you’re finished filling it out,” she continued as she handed me a clipboard full of forms.