“Go fuck your mother!” I whip my 26 inch jet black hair extensions around as I teeter in my platform pink jelly sandals back into my studio apartment. Zara and my father sit on the tufted blue velvet couch, one that Lea hated, looking rather unphased. Zara’s mini Aussie, Luka, is sleeping peacefully atop a fluffy pink pillow. Everything in our Boerum Hill apartment, I had dictated, would be pink and blue. Lea hated this and said it looked like a bad gender reveal party. I thought it was fucking fashion. If this isn’t an indicator that we shouldn’t have been together, maybe the fact that I just told her to fuck her mother was.
“Why don’t you two get together?” my dad asks Zara and I in a thick Brooklyn accent, completely unaware of how utterly creepy that sounds. Kind of like how my mom dedicates literally every song to me, with no regard what the context is. “This is for my Dayna girl!” she’ll raise a glass as “I drove all night,” a song about literally driving all night to creep into someone’s bed, plays at a restaurant.
I pour Zara more rose. The way I’m standing, angling the bottle right by my crotch, as I pour the pretty pale pink liquid in her glass, triggers a weird OCD response like I have a dick and I let out a trickle of pee. Because we are spiritually connected, Zara notices and trolls me about it to this day. I immediately bolt to the bathroom.
We’ve just finished a boozey brunch, a boozey snack, and now we are contemplating where to get a boozey dinner. Zara and I had been on Long Island for a Lana Del Rey concert the night before and slept over my dad’s house. As we squished into my childhood bed, still drunk and seeing stars, I realized I hadn’t texted Lea. It didn’t even cross my mind to invite her to the concert, as I had two tickets so generously donated by my sugar daddy. Zara was always my +1 without hesitation. I’m sure Lea didn’t want to be my +1 either– I was always too loud, too drunk, too crass, too slutty, too — too me. And she once wore cream work pants to a white party.
In typical codependent fashion, my father drove us back to the city even though we are two adults perfectly capable of taking the train. We met Lea for brunch and then somehow the day turned into a rager, an incredibly rare occasion for my dad, who is my favorite drinking buddy even though he only drinks, like, once a year.
We are getting, in short, lit as fuck.
“My mom was a playboy bunny,” Zara begins her famous I’ve-switched-from-wine-to-liquor speech.
“That’s very nice,” my father says sheepishly, again in a thick Italian accent, sipping his Manhattan.
“DAD, tell us about the time you scaled the side of madison square garden!” I chirp, hoping to derail the inevitable.
It’s too late, and Zara is feverishly scrolling through her camera roll, landing smack dab on a full nude of her mother, bush and all. She is the actual hottest woman I have ever seen, and I can see where Zara gets it from.
“Wow, she is a very bee-yoo-tee-ful woman,” my dad says. He is such a gentleman I’m almost sure he is commenting on Zara’s mother’s face and not her perfectly toned naked body.
He pays, as my father would never ever ever let any of my friends pay around him, and at the second bar, Zara and I argue over the check, wildly waving our red acrylic nails and dilapidated credit cards at the bartender. Lea doesn’t fight to pay, which is why I later told her to fuck her mother. Speaking of Lea…
It had been at least 15 minutes after I told her to fuck her mother as she was on the way to throw out the garbage. I peeked into the refuse room on our floor. She wasn’t there. Maybe she had jumped down the trash shoot.
I shrug and trot back to the apartment. I borderline beastiality make out with my mini norgewian forest cat, bad girl riri, and then decide it was time to venture back out into the city streets. My father drops us off from my Brooklyn apartment to Zara’s towering Hudson Yards building, we say our codependent goodbyes and I demand he text me the second he got home, and Zara, Luka the Aussie, and I scitter into the elevator, plotting our next move.
Like any true party girls would do, we immediately change into cheap amazon silk pajamas, order sushi, and turn on Rent.
“Isn’t Rent so TRAGICALLY BEAUTIFUL?” Zara’s pupils dilate like she just popped a Molly.
“Like, a highkey MASTERPIECE,” I vocal fry back. “But, like, how did they just like, not pay rent? Like, are we ever going to address that?” I ask, as if I am presenting the most sophisticated college thesis, begging an existential question that’s never been asked before.
Light My Candle is about to start and we enter a battle royale about who will be Mimi and who will be Roger.
“You ALWAYS make me be the boy! It’s not fair! Just because you’re skinnier doesn’t mean I always have to be the fucking boy! I can sing soprano!” I yell at Zara, tugging on her satin nightgown, almost exposing a boob. I grab it just for good measure.
“Just LET ME HAVE THIS!” Zara bellows, “I’ve always wanted to play Mimi!” she kicks a slender leg in the air.
Zara and I are both definitely more Maureen than any character in Rent, but we still hold on to the desire to be the hot stripper. Lea is calling. I slide my phone open, the screen sticky with wine and makeup. I put her on speaker. Zara’s wife, Meghan, leaps into the living room, taking over Roger’s part, holding a lit candle, singing. “You look familiar,”
“LIKE YOUR DEAD GIRLFRIEND!” Zara and I scream over one another, our veins practically popping out of our necks.
“Dayna? Where the fuck are you? Are you laughing at me? Are you watching Rent?”
“DO YOU GO TO THE CAT SCRATCH CLUB? THAT’S WHERE I WORK I DANCE!” Zara beats me to the next line as I listen to Lea fire off angry questions.
“You’re cheap and you told me you don’t like my Namilia sweatshirt bodysuit thong combo. PARIS HILTON modeled it for fashion week. You just don’t get me,” I slur into the phone, sloshing my glass around, peering out the floor to ceiling windows, imagining I’m in an expensive snow globe or a modern art exhibit.
“My dad does everything for us. You can’t buy him a fucking drink?” I continued, even though Meghan, the only sober one of us, was gesturing for me to hang up.
I let out a burp and Zara erupts in hysterical laughter.
“You’re disrespectful, you know that?” Lea asks, “do you even care where I am right now?”
I resist the urge to suggest somewhere that didn’t cost any money, perhaps the library or the local LGBT center.
“Of course I do. Are you safe? I’m at Zara’s.”
“Come home.”
“No.”
“The cat has diarrhea,” she countered.
“Okay, I have diarrhea every day of my life. I am having diarrhea right now on Zara’s couch.”
“You’re a bitch,” Lea spits, and hangs up. I try to muster up some feeling but all I can do is belly laugh and fight Zara for the curling wand we are using as a makeshift microphone.
“You better let me be Angel in 1000 kisses,” I pour us another glass, measuring my life in love and hate.
Obsessed with Dayna? US TOO! have you checked out our new podcast GirlZ, InterrupteD? It’s available on all podcast platforms and it’s lit as fuck — we swear to Lana Del Rey.
LOVED this. It’s one of the funniest pieces I’ve read in a long time. I love your sense of humor (esp the library & diarrhea parts). I’ve also dated cheap girlfriends—who always appear to have their shit together but they’re so stingy (and at least in my experience have no taste in music or good food).
YES! stingy girls never have good taste. thank you for reading beauty! xo