I Came Out for This? by Lisa Gitlin

out with that one woman who, she said, had breath that smelled “vaguely radioactive” and she never fucked her.
    I have to stop writing. I have to throw up. It’s because of that leftover samosa I ate after I talked to Terri. I should never eat samosas when I’m upset, especially from greasy-spoon Pakistani carry-outs. Very smart, Joanna.

    Terri called today and invited me to dinner, and I drove over there with my bottle of wine, all frisky and full of hope. It’s been a week since that creepy phone conversation, and I figured she’d probably gotten bored with what’s-her-name and had decided that being with me was a lot more fun. I wore my black jeans, a green silk shirt, and some short leather boots, and Terri answered the door in baggy jeans, an old tee shirt that said “Caribbean cool,” and slippers. But she somewhat compensated for her attire by serving a fantastic meal of grilled salmon, mixed vegetables, and wild rice from scratch. She even made the dessert, two little coconut tarts, and she opened a nice bottle of French wine. She’s a fabulous cook. During dinner, we steered clear of sensitive subjects and talked about Willi, our mutual friend from Cleveland who had introduced us to each other, and then Terri told me about her landscaping plans for her backyard.
    After we polished off the wine, I thought it would be nice to cozy up on the couch, but instead Terri ushered me into her office and fired up her computer and startedtelling me about all the women she was meeting in this chat room called the “pink palace.” At first, I thought, “Well, she must not be all that excited about the publicity agent if she’s going online to meet women,” but then she started showing me photographs of these women she was meeting and I started getting depressed. I tried to be polite about the photos and said, “Oh, she’s cute” about the first one and “Pretty hot” about the second one, but when she showed me a third one of some redhead I snapped, “She is dreadful. I don’t know how you can even look at her.” The woman really wasn’t that bad, but I was so furious that it just slipped out. Terri got rid of her, but then, not taking the hint that I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life, she started telling me about this Montana housewife named “Darla” that she was having cyber sex with. For God’s sake. But did I have the good sense to say, “You know what? I really don’t want to do this.” No! I just stood there and pretended to be interested. (When I went home, I called Karen in Cleveland and she said, “You should have just gone home at that point.” Duh.)
    It gets worse. Terri sat me down in her chair and logged onto this other chat room and instructed me to join the conversation. I hate chat rooms and had no interest in doing this, especially since I was with her , but I went along with it. I wrote in “Werm” as an alias, which is Tommy’s nickname for me, and Terri said “Knadel, do you really want ‘Werm’ to be the name you use to meet girls?” I didn’t want to use Knadel, so I settled for “Peeps,” my younger sister’s name for me. Terri told me how to jump into a conversation, and I inserted myselfinto some puerile conversation about toenail polish (they must all have been femmes), and I started getting bored, having nothing to say about toenail polish, but then Terri said, “If you want to talk to any of them individually, you can arrange a private conversation,” so I selected a woman called BonBon, who was the only one of the group who said she didn’t wear toenail polish, and asked her if she wanted to talk privately. She said okay, and we went into the private room and I tried to flirt with her, but my flirting went over like a lead balloon, and after about one minute she wrote, “Uh, Peeps? I’m really not