Eat Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

trying radical celibacy for a while first.’
    The other three widened their eyes and looked at Julia with disbelief.
    She and Jake didn’t get out of bed until three that afternoon. She lost track of the condoms. Jake went to the local shop to buy them some lunch—with her money, of course—and came back with strawberries and Homer Hudson Chocolate Rock ice cream. They ate nearly the whole container. ‘Well, I’d better be going,’ he said through lips limned with black chocolate. He probed his chin for pimples. ‘I’ve got to go home and break out.’
    Just as he was walking out the door, Julia suddenly remembered something. ‘What was that thing about vegetarians?’ she asked.
    â€˜Vegetarians? Oh, I used to see this girl who was a vegan.’
    â€˜Yeah?’ said Julia. ‘And?’
    â€˜Well, she refused to have oral sex.’
    â€˜Silly girl. But what does that have to do with her being a vegan?’
    â€˜She didn’t, you know, believe in swallowing animal proteins.’
    Julia snorted with laughter as she shoved him out the door. They were seeing each other again in a few days. But he was to stop calling her Norma, she’d told him, or he’d be in big trouble.
    â€˜Yes, celibacy. Really,’ said Julia, straight-faced. ‘I mean it. Besides, why do I have to be the one who has to give a blow-by-blow account—so to speak—of my love life? Philippa’s allowed to be mysterious about hers, Chantie’s allowed to be mysterious about hers. Helen’s mysterious about hers.’
    â€˜I am not mysterious,’ Helen objected. ‘I don’t have a love life.’
    â€˜Neither do I,’ chimed Philippa.
    Chantal arched an eyebrow. ‘Nor I.’
    â€˜Yeah sure,’ sighed Julia, tipping her cup and studying the dregs of coffee in the bottom. Looking up, she suddenly brightened. ‘Check this one out,’ she whispered. ‘Looks like Jerry Seinfeld.’
    â€˜I know him,’ said Chantal. ‘He’s a deejay.’
    â€˜Cool,’ commented Julia. ‘A star.’
    â€˜A star’s a star,’ Chantal shrugged. ‘But he’s the wrong sexual orientation for you, darling.’
    While the others launched into a discussion of why the prettiest boys were always gay, a name bounced around, just out of sight, in the murky regions of Philippa’s brain. Each time she tried to shine her mental torch on it, it hid itself behind another tree. Jason? Jonathan? Justin? Julian? Jeremy? Jay? Suddenly, it popped out and waved. It’s me, Jake! It’s Jake! That was the name of the boy she’d met at that party in Glebe, the name that went with the phone number on that scrap of paper she’d found in her pocket a day or two later. She wondered if she should call him.
    â€˜And what are you smiling about, Philippa?’ Chantal queried.
    â€˜Oh, nothing,’ she replied.

ROAST LAMB
    â€˜Do you fancy Seinfeld, then?’ Chantal had taken Julia’s glass and was refilling it from a bottle of shiraz.
    â€˜Ta,’ said Julia. ‘Not as much as Kramer. I suspect Kramer’s hair isn’t the only thing that’s kinky about him.’
    Over a week had passed since their meeting at Cafe Da Vida and the girls were having a TV veg-out evening at Chantal’s place in Potts Point. Seinfeld had just delivered his closing monologue. Julia sat curled up on Chantal’s prize Norman & Quaine zebra-striped armchair. All in black from her t-shirt to her leather mini and opaque stockings, she looked like a panther relaxing on its quarry. Philippa, who was sitting on the floor and leaning against Julia’s chair, had picked up the remote and was channel surfing.
    Helen picked distractedly at a spot of tomato sauce on her favourite beige skirt where she’d dropped a bit of gourmet pizza. Wood-fired, half smoked trout, half Moroccan lamb—and it still