This is Lauren. She has recently learned that she is anemic after a 5-year absence from her PCP due to a long-standing needle phobia. Now that she is officially anemic, she has noticed all manner of ailments that she’s never noticed before. Excessive bloating. Fatigue. Brain fog (she’s read a lot about that - surely this is why she can’t calculate tips in her head), dry skin...the list goes on.
These are four old college friends who are going on a girls trip to the beach. They desperately need this getaway. They spent about an hour debating over text whether they should get trip insurance after a 3-day back and forth over the actual beach house. One refuses to sleep in a bunk bed, and two say they’ll sleep anywhere (but will be annoyed to get the bunk bed).
Meet Brooke - she’s the 17 year old overzealous lifeguard at your pool. Brooke may be spending her summer weekend nights getting drunk on the peach Schnapps at the back of her parents’ liquor cabinet, but during the days she’s drunk on power.
Meet Parker. She’s a real show pony. Parker was a solid C student most of her life. She never really saw much past her immediate surroundings and life, but boy is she a looker! Thank goodness for her. Want to talk about a mortgage application? She has no idea what a mortgage is. Want to laugh about Kim Jung Un’s latest movie-style insults to the US? You’ll get a blank stare. Need to ask her what the latest is in the impeachment hearings? She thinks we’re talking about fruit. But if you need makeup tips or need celebrity gossip, Parker is your girl! She prances around town on the arm of her ambulance-chasing personal injury attorney husband, with perfect makeup, hair and jewelry. Her home is plastered with Live Laugh Love signs, and she collects Yankee Candles and celebrity fragrances. Parker laughs at every joke she hears, but understands none of them. She relishes cat-calls from construction workers, the homeless, teenagers - anybody. One day Parker’s beauty will go, and so will her husband. But until then her mane is shiny, her haunches are firm, and her teeth are strong. And she secretly likes the sting of a whip.
EVERYBODY LOOK AT KIM!!! She’ll make sure you do, because Kim is an attention whore. As a child Kim put on approximately 1,478 skits and small performances for unsuspecting friends of her parents’, neighbors, family pets and imaginary friends. As a teen, Kim attended an R.E.M. concert that was being recorded live, and discovered if she waited until a quiet moment she could scream really loud and garner enormous attention as well as be heard on the recording in perpetuity. From then on, Kim became a serious attention whore. Massive amounts of beads at Mardi Gras (if you catch my drift). Karaoke every weekend. Excessively loud sneezing. Exaggerated blood sugar issues. The loudest music at a red light. Record holder for most bachelorette parties attended. This all came to a head last spring when her boyfriend took her to the Masters and Kim yelled “Get it in the hole!” on Bubba Watson’s back swing, causing him to shank the ball and a nearby fan to call her the c-word. They were escorted out of the tournament, and Kim found herself single two days later. Kim sure is fun, though. You just have to let her be the star, and never take her anywhere quiet.
Meet Lora. Lora breeds Angora rabbits. What started out as a hobby after receiving one for a pet 6 years ago has now become an obsession. Lora’s friends say she’s changed but she doesn’t see how. Okay so maybe she wears angora sweaters all year round, which of course accounts for how brilliantly white her skin tone has become, but she happens to be cold natured. The scrutiny she’s receiving from friends and family about her lifestyle habits has caused her to become a closeted salad eater. She craves lettuces and raw veggies - locking herself in the bathroom to scarf down an erotically fluffy pile of glistening, quivering romaine...mmm. After enjoying a quick suckle of water from a squirt bottle held aloft, she heads off to find her husband, Steve, for yet another quickie (it’s gotten up to four times daily - poor Steve is chafed and exhausted). Then she hops right on over to the fridge for a handful of long, firm carrots. The other day, as Lora was spreading a third layer of cedar mulch in the plant beds surrounding her home’s perimeter, she heard a strange noise. Her head shot up, hair in her face. She couldn’t see so she sniffed in the air, frozen in place. It turned out to be just a squirrel but she hopped right on inside to be safe. Steve looked on from their living room window with concern before running to hide in the closet for fear of a third quickie that day. Lately she’s been incorporating her two large front teeth in their activities and he’s a little scared.
This is Shareen. Shareen is what you might call a “type A” personality. I will say that she looks polished and put together ALL the time. Because she is. Her daily schedule is planned down to the minute and she plans out her outfits at the beginning of each week. Shareen has the same breakfast each morning - a green smoothie and a hard boiled egg. She takes her coffee with exactly 1 tablespoon of cream and 1 sugar cube. She has a bowel movement at 7:43 each morning, followed by a thorough shower, of course. She insists that she could never skip washing her hair because it would be “a total grease pit!” but the reality is that she’s never even tried. Shareen is always cold, goes to bed by 9:30 each night, gets up an hour earlier than necessary to get a good start on her day, and cannot remember the last time she let her gas tank get below a quarter of a tank. Greasy food makes her feel “icky” and she has claimed to have an allergy to red dye 40. Once when she and her husband were getting frisky, he got carried away with the role play and swept everything off the table onto the floor. She tried to go along with it but she ended up pushing him off her and yelling “we do not live like animals, dammit!” before furiously cleaning up the mess. Shareen really wants to lighten up and even started allowing herself one glass of wine in social settings (once she had two and ended up admitting to an acquaintance that she has sexual fantasies about her UPS man). I will not say Shareen is going to give you a wild night, but she will help you get your shit together.
This is Amber, your kids' hot nanny. She's been nannying for y'all for around 8 months. She's 23, drop-dead gorgeous, size 2 and full of energy. You interviewed several candidates, all of whom were great, but your husband, Dan, really made a strong case for Amber, and you guess his points were pretty valid? Since she's started it's been really great seeing how hands-on Dan has been in making Amber feel like a welcome part of the family. Normally he's really insular and quiet but Dan has been eager to give Amber rides to and from home (even though her car works perfectly fine), shown her how to make a new mac and cheese recipe (he cooks??), shoulder massages, and even seems to be checking on her here and there throughout the day on his phone! Wow, how knew Dan could be so accommodating??!! You sure are a lucky lady. Amber has been lovely, but you have to admit that her presence has caused a little self-consciousness on your part. You have been on a diet for...oh look at that...8 months. You've started using whitening strips on your teeth and have spent $2,000 on Botox. Further complicating things is that your 9 year old son has mentioned how much he likes Amber's short shorts and is asking lots of awkward questions, and you think you're going to have to have "the talk" with him. Your daughter keeps asking you if you think Amber would like her outfit, or what you think Amber would say to the boy at school. But no, Amber's GREAT! Everything is fine! Oh look, Dan is taking Aber home again tonight...
I want to introduce you to Temperance Longfield. Temperance lives with her husband, Hampton Longfield IV, in a sprawling cedar-shingled waterfront manor in Rhode Island, thanks to Ham's multi-generational wealth stemming from a great grandfather's patent on a special spring that fits onto any standard gasoline engine's third piston when run counter-clockwise, "Tempe" has mastered her role as Lady of the Manor having schooled herself in antiques collecting, nautical flag identification, silver patterns and tasteful taxidermy. Tempe and Ham host various hunts each year at their country home, so they have five bird dogs used primarily for these occasions. Tempe makes a big show of adoring these dogs but secretly she hates them because they're always sniffing her crotch while she tries to make pleasantries with their guests. What most people don't know about Temperance is that her birth name is Kiki Byrd and she is actually from a small town in W. Virginia where she worked as a cashier at Dairy Queen for several years, has an ex boyfriend who is now her town's chief meth dealer, wore a confederate flag bikini in the summers, and got in two actual fistfights as a teen. She also used to have a multi-pierced belly button and a rumored piercing farther south, if you know what I mean. But that's unconfirmed (it hurt a little just to write that). Eventually Kiki decided she was going to get out of that town after her cousin, Perry, approached her about working as a dancer at the strip club he owned located at the back of a truck stop. Kiki changed her name to Temperance and headed to New England, stringing together waitressing jobs long enough to allow her to prowl the high end restaurant bars on her nights off. She fed a false life story to many, but Ham Longfield finally took the bait, and the rest is history. Tempe is full of shit, and has actually convinced herself to feel legitimately superior to their domestic help, but she is also a survivor and had all of us fooled. So raise your Pabst to Temperance!
Meet Sheridan. Sheridan is an equestrian. She was born into a family of generational wealth and always had a braid in her hair until the age of 14. Sheridan's childhood was such that trips to the Caribbean, giant mansions and summer homes were passé and boring to her - normal shit. As Sheridan aged, she began to notice boys because they noticed her - at least someone was noticing her. So she messed around with the pool boy, the yard guy, the math tutor and even the lacrosse coach (oops). Sheridan eventually graduated to other stimulating conquests that took the form of powders and pills. She had quite an exciting reputation at her boarding school. Upon graduating she landed a prestigious internship with an established fashion house in New York but her heart wasn't in it. Then one day she met Erika, a chef in a restaurant where Sheridan was attending a work dinner. It was love at first sight and now they have two dogs and own a gourmet meal delivery service in Denver where Sheridan is starting a blog aimed at lesbian foodies. She's wearing braids again. The end.
Meet Sandra. I know that on the outside Sandra may seem like an elegant, responsible, maybe snooty lady, but rest assured there is more to her. Yes she loves chinoiserie, pearls and expensive clothes but in two days she will descend upon Burning Man with the intensity of a Jack Russell on coke, which she will be on. She will sample a variety of psychedelics, noodle for 5 hours straight one night, eat 36 grilled cheese sandwiches, sleep with one yoga instructor, 2 investment bankers, and catch the clap. She will ride on the back of a 10-seater bike that shoots flames with a 75 year old vagabond named Stu who communicates through "beep" sounds. When she is done she will come back home where she has a successful dental practice and resume her life as usual. In her office she plays an adult contemporary Spotify playlist, but in her car she plays Lizzo.