Kiss Me in the Coral Lounge by Helen Ellis

Author:Helen Ellis [Ellis, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2023-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

Teacher’s Pet

I use stickers to commemorate our sex life.

It started eight years ago when I bought my first Lilly Pulitzer agenda. The calendar comes with two sheets of stickers, which along with fireworks to mark the Fourth of July and a champagne bottle to mark New Year’s Eve, for some reason includes oranges, lemons, and limes. What are these for? I do not know. So, when my husband and I have sex, I stick a citrus on the date like a gold star as if to say, A++! You deserve extra credit!

“Did you see your sticker?” I’ll ask him. “Do you want to put your sticker in my book?”

I leave my Lilly Pulitzer laid open on my desk—which is right next to our bed—the way an exhibitionist hides her diary under a paper clip. Stickers are encouraging. Stickers are addictive. Stickers are seals of approval. Once you get one sticker, you want another sticker. It’s like why you want a lot of stamps in your passport and a lot of patches on your Girl Scout sash: you want to show off.

I give out actual gold stars when we host book parties at our apartment. I invite an independent bookseller to sell books and when a guest buys a book, I stick a gold star on her blouse. If she buys more than one book, she gets more than one gold star.

“Terri is a five-star general!” I’ll brag to the room.

People in the publishing business think you should give away books for free at book parties because selling them is tacky, but I don’t agree. If you’re invited to a book party, it’s because your friend wrote a book. Friends of friends who write books should buy their friend’s book. Not buying a book at a book party is like going to a proctologist’s wedding and expecting her, as she walks down the aisle, to give you and everyone else on the bride’s side the finger.

So I’m pushy. I say to a guest, “You don’t want to meet the author’s parents without a gold star, do you? Don’t you want to be like Terri? I see you, Terri, eating my homemade Chex Mix off your big ol’ stack of books! Teacher’s pet! Teacher’s pet!”

Everyone wants to be teacher’s pet. Anyone who says differently is lying to you.

I was an A student (I sat in front rows, I raised my hand), but never teacher’s pet. Teacher’s pet was class monitor when the teacher stepped into the hall. Teacher’s pet handed out pop quizzes. Teacher’s pet emptied the pencil sharpener that was bolted to the doorframe next to the American flag. Teacher’s pet led the buddy system out of the building when there was a bomb threat. You got to be teacher’s pet when you did something extraordinary like didn’t squirm during lice checks.

A girl named Angel was our third-grade teacher’s pet. With a name like that, I think her mother gave birth gunning for her to be teacher’s pet straight out of the stirrups.

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