If it’s something outside of my bed or this house, then it’s off the table. Sister Annie has one job: to make sure that this time, I don’t screw everything up.
From: [email protected]
You’re making me blush, Ali
However, flirting with an adult content creator is a bit of harmless fun, especially under the shroud of secrecy we’re operating under. Immediately after my boss Patricia gave me this project, as soon as I contacted him, right off the bat, he demanded to communicate via email only. No real names. No texts or phone calls, no video chat. I could watch his videos to get his “general vibe,” but that’s all.
To him, I’m Ali, which is just my email address—short for Anne Li—so I’ve never bothered correcting him. Ali, the ghostwriter from who-knows-where. He didn’t give me a name, so I call him by his email, too.
But it’s tough to get a handle on someone’s voice while they parade naked through a kitchen. Aside from the faceless hunk of meat, something about it seems impersonal. His voice is sexy but seems unnatural and practiced. Fake. I get that it’s for privacy’s sake, but… if I wanted to do a good job on this cookbook, I needed his real voice. So, in old Annie form, I started flirting him out of his shell.So, fuck you, Sister Annie—it’s for work.
My phone rings, indicating a group video chat.
“Hey, everyone,” I answer with a smile.
“That’s one way to get his dick wet,” Fernanda shouts, her eyes magnified by the thick lenses of her glasses, not one strand of hair out of place from her hairspray helmet.
“Jesus,” Izzy says, “I’m walking down Broadway right now, Fernanda. You can’t yell that shit.”
“Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who blasts their music in public,” Betty snarks. All I see is the underside of her wrinkled chin on my screen.
“A cry for help,” Fernanda shouts once more, “some real main character behavior!”
“I forgot my headphones at home,” Izzy mutters, topknot bobbing at the top of her screen.
“Your parents not give you enough attention growing up?—”
“Did we want to discuss this episode or use this as a forum to air our grievances regarding sidewalk etiquette?” I chime in, heart filled with warmth for my best friend Izzy Flores and my two newest and realest friends.
After a few months of Sister Annie, I got bored in the basement. I figured the Brooklyn Public Library branch in my neighborhood was about as G-rated and safe as it got, so I started volunteering for a family literacy program, helping kids fall in love with books. I love kids anyway—they’re chaotic little goblins like me. And Fernanda and Betty. I watched the twoof them performGrumpy Monkeyfor a group of five-year-olds, both of them wearing clothes that were blazingly loud and/or blindingly sparkly, trading off animal voices like a well-rehearsed comedy duo. I loved them immediately.
Still, I hung back. Sister Annie had me convinced that getting too close would somehow ruin their lives. But Fernanda and Betty vehemently disagreed. They barged their way into friendship like they’d done it before—maybe they saw something in me and decided I could use a little love. Maybe they just didn’t scare easily. Whatever it was, they found me in a quiet place and gave me something louder: community. And not of the five a.m. afterparty in Bushwick sort.
Izzy loved them instantly, too. Which mattered—because after over a decade of being the “honorary triplet” to me and May, her stamp of approval wasn’t optional.
“Izzy’s the one watching pornography in public right now.” Fernanda says the word “pornography” as loudly as possible.
“Jesus, can everyone please lay off? I have a privacy screen on my phone for work.”
“This episode’s pretty good,” Betty interrupts casually, as if we are watching a normal sitcom with a laugh track and not a group of women ages thirty to seventy-five watching a naked giant explaining the science behind cooking the perfect French fry.
“I feel sorry for his dick,” Izzy mutters.
“I could never feel sorry for what he’s packing. Seems like a standard occupational hazard for him, anyway,” adds Fernanda.
“That’s what I said!” I yell.
Fernanda and Betty do not like to cook. Fernanda and Betty are, however, thirsty for all the men who cook on various cooking shows. After listening to their particularly long, pining soliloquy of “that mean daddy, Gordon Ramsay,” I mentionedNakedReactionsto them, and within the hour, they had eachsubscribed to his channel. We try to have a cute little watch party for all of his episodes.
“Aww,” Fernanda coos eventually. “Look at him. He’s all red in the places the oil splashed on him. It got on his weird tattoo.”
I turn back to my phone.
From: [email protected]
