I’ve never not taken one of Mark’s calls before, but I really didn’t know what else to do. The mix-tape Kevin made me isn’t helping. It was fine — all Depeche Mode and The Smiths and The Stranglers — until all of a sudden in the middle of everything, this Whitney Houston song comes on. I’m sure Kevin thinks he’s hilarious, but it’s really not funny.
I told him what happened with Mark in confidence, after I got the completely wrong reaction from Laurie. She thought it was “sweet” the way Mark has taken to calling me “Baby.” She says that’s what guys do. It means they love you, she says.
I can’t deal with it. Every time he says it I think of actual babies and when he says it in that little-boy baby voice it makes me think of him as a baby and all of that is gross.
I want to tell him to stop, but I’m afraid he’ll break up with me. Girls are supposed to like being called “Baby” I guess. I don’t get it. It has to stop. So I’m avoiding his calls. I told my Mom to tell him I had a sore throat when he called. She looked smug and smiled when she spoke into the phone. She doesn’t like Mark much.
Kevin, at least, cringed when I told him and said I had to break up with Mark at once. But then he made this mix-tape and I may have to kill him.
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Image: Whitney Houston, photographed by Marco Glaviano for Harper’s Bazaar, September 1986. Clothing by Bill Blass.
Welcome to the Little Room is a series of 250-word re-imagined vignettes from my ’80s youth with a focus on music and style. It appears weekly on periodicult.com.
