In Which We Hate Tall Girls with Teeth

“Why don’t I have a butt?”

Naomi looked up from her Entertainment Weekly and appraised Lorrie’s butt in the vague way friends usually appraise other friends’ butts. For those not in the practice of butt appraisal, it’s a sort of lazy glance that purposely absorbs nothing; because no female friend would ever give a negative butt appraisal to another, no matter how wildly deformed or unexplainably invisible said butt may be.

“You do have a butt,” Naomi said, quite rationally, then returned to her magazine.

“No, I don’t.” Lorrie was surveying herself in Naomi’s full-length mirror, craning her neck at odd angles to get the best possible view of her backside. “It’s just not there.”

“Well I’d rather have no butt than too big a butt,” Naomi reasoned.

“That’s the thing,” Lorrie said, “Look at it! It is big! It’s big and flat! The absolute worst kind!”

Naomi decided it was best to stop responding at this point and instead began to read an article containing ‘sexy spoilers’ from the Desperate Housewives season finale.

“I’m serious! A good butt is like, a cute little—hill, or something. I’ve got a mile long plateau!”

Though impressed with the on-the-spot metaphors, Naomi merely clicked her tongue and decided that the spoilers weren’t all that sexy.

“It’s a big, cellulite-covered plateau!”

“That’s a nice image.”

“It’s not funny!” Lorrie cried. Naomi agreed. She couldn’t think of anything less funny than a cellulite-covered plateau. “I was in the dining hall today and I saw this girl with, like, the perfect butt. It was totally proportionate to her body and perfectly round. And she was skinny. I hate her.” Lorrie paused to scowl into the mirror. Naomi took the opportunity to ask the obvious question one asks when their normally down-to-earth friends start sizing up unsuspecting girls’ butts in the dining hall.

“Have you recently changed your meds or something?”

“Shut up! You know it’s true! It’s completely non-existent.”

“Maybe you should get butt implants.”

“I hate you.”

“Seriously. Then you could insure it. Like J-Lo.”

“I wish I had J-Lo’s butt.”

“I’m glad you don’t have J-Lo’s face.”

“Me too.”

They both laughed and Lorrie sprawled across Naomi’s bed with a frustrated groan.

“Allan told Josh that his friend told him, I didn’t have a butt,” she said to the cracked dorm ceiling.

“Which friend?”

“That girl. You know, the one with the teeth.”

“Which one with the teeth?” Naomi asked, not because this was an impossibly vague description, but because there were now technically two girls they considered ‘the girl with the teeth’.

“The taller one.”

Naomi snorted and tossed her magazine onto her desk. “She’s just jealous because she’s the tall girl with the teeth.”

“That’s true.”

“Anyway, you know I hate tall girls. Who have teeth.”

“Me too,” Lorrie agreed thoughtfully.

“Ready to go get dinner?” Naomi asked, already pulling on her fleece.

“Yeah, Ok.”

“Hopefully there won’t be too many nice butts in there, I might lose my appetite.”

“Me too,” Lorrie sighed.

Actually, there were quite a few nice butts in the dining hall when the girls arrived, but Lorrie made a point of finding other flaws with those that owned them; thatone had weirdly shaped eyebrows, thatother one had ugly black roots, and she, well, she just looked like a whore.

“How do you know?” Naomi asked as they watched the alleged whore filling up her glass at the soda dispenser.

“Just look at the way she’s standing! With her shoulders back and her chest out--”

(Naomi wondered whether this effect was caused by the act of holding up her cup in one hand and pressing the Diet Coke button with the other) “--and one of her legs bent, with her foot resting on its toe like that; please! She’s just begging for a guy’s attention.” Naomi was about to tell her friend that she often stood just like that at the soda dispenser, but decided to bite into her grilled cheese instead.

With so many flawed females around them, Lorrie’s appetite was roused enough to finish a salad and then a large bowl of sugary cereal. They left feeling content and confident and Lorrie only checked her butt’s reflection in three dark windows on the walk back to Naomi’s dorm room.