51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life (12 page)
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Authors: Kristen McGuiness
BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
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“Nothing,” I said, rubbing my ankle as I limped backward out the front door. Then I turned around and ran. I ran fast and hard, as though if I got far enough away from the video, Nana wouldn’t dare see it. I got to the end of the block, and then I began to smile. Because I was right; I was right! Vic was indeed gay. Very gay.
Vic calls me the other day because he has been speaking with Nana and has some concerns about my recent attempts at dating.
“Nana says it’s that neighborhood you’re living in,” he tells me.
“What? Silver Lake?”
“Such a good name,” he sighs.
“What is Nana talking about? She likes Silver Lake. I mean, I know she would prefer Beverly Hills, but she thinks it’s charming.”
“Yeah. But she says there are no professionals in the neighborhood. That they’re all artists. K, believe me, stay away from artists.”
My uncle and I both share a vision of the big dream. His was to become a top florist and mine is to become a famous writer, and we both know that big dreams can come with steep prices. My mom and Uncle Tom believe in nice things and decent jobs, but they’re no artists. They pay their bills. They do their taxes. They vote Republican. And so I understand why Vic warns me against the artist. He is warning me against our kind. He is also, without saying it, warning me against Jimmy Voltage. I should have never told Nana about him.
“I go out with professionals, Vic. I just went out with a professional last night.”
“Really? How did it go?”
I don’t really know how to respond to that. How did it go?
Peter and I met last night at a local Mexican restaurant for our second date. Because of the holidays, it has been a long and lackluster break since the first time we met. We had sent a bunch of funny e-mails, but after date number one, I was pretty convinced on the “he makes me laugh” front, so it didn’t really add much to our already humorous rapport. I don’t dread our second date, but there is no daydreaming involved. No thinking about my outfit ahead of time. No dancing around before the time of departure. I simply shower, dry my hair, put on makeup, throw on jeans and a sweater from the night before, and meet him at a restaurant up the street. And I think that this is what people do all the time and call it romance. It’s just I’m used to a little more spit in my fire. I know that life would probably be cushy with Peter. There would be paid-for travel and big meals we would cook at home together and sailing lessons. And this sounds a lot like what I first wrote about Peter, but ultimately it’s the same concern as I had on the first date. The same concerns I had with Sabbath years before. That for all our similarities, we’re very different people, and I’m still looking for my kind.
We sit down at the restaurant, we order drinks, and we launch into long and storied talk before we even look at the menu. We talk a lot.
“I can’t believe you got to study abroad in South Africa,” Peter says. He seems genuinely excited about my five months in Durban. And I like that. I loved my five months in Durban.
“Well, it’s not like you’re not well traveled.”
“I guess, but really only to Europe. Although my friends and I did once go to Normandy. We went swimming there.”
“Really? Wow...I bet that was eerie.”
“Yeah, it was. It’s crazy to think how many people died in those waters.”
We talk about his job, and I can tell he’s been waiting for a woman with whom he can share his work concerns. The first phone call. Bad day: call her. Good day: call her. And I know as I listen and ask questions and offer supportive thoughts and cheer that I am making for a good her. Peter is also a good him.
“But no spark, huh?” Vic asks me.
“I don’t know, Uncle Vic. I just feel like, is that all it’s supposed to be? Is life just supposed to be comfortable?”
Vic sighs, “You’re so much like me, it’s scary, you know?”
I am and it is.
He continues, “K, some people just want to live life with their hearts. They don’t care that they’ll be broken; they’re not afraid to lose. They just know that they have to go wherever their hearts take them. Even if it’s really hard.”
I don’t want this to come down to the emotional girl versus the safe guy. I have never wanted to play Dharma to anyone’s Greg. And so as I sit across from Peter as he analyzes the check and figures out exactly how much he should be tipping the waitress, I decide that I should try again. And I hope that it’s not simply a generational problem. That the men in our world today go swimming off of Normandy, and have long forgotten what it means to fight for it.
15
Date Fifteen: Arrow
Mimi is concerned about me. I can tell by her newfound determination to see me meet someone. Whereas before she found my mission entertaining, if not slightly ludicrous, she has now officially jumped on board the “Find Kristen a Boyfriend” cause célèbre. To her credit, she has been experiencing a significant spike in phone calls from me where I sound like I have been crying. All the same, I know that Mimi takes my dramatic tantrums a bit more seriously than I do. That’s the unfortunate nature of a tantrum thrower. Everyone else worries about you long past the point of you actually feeling bad.
“I can’t imagine there’s not anyone for you on that site,” she questions me one night.
“My God, Mimi, I’m searching
The Onion
every day. Thank God people at work can’t see my computer screen. They’d fire me if they knew that’s all I was doing.”
The Onion
Web site shares a personals database of eligible men and women with a handful of other online magazines, and they do a good job of pooling all the single, literary, liberal modernists of our fair city into one giant meat market. Ivan got me started, and I have to admit it’s a pretty impressive selection.
The Onion
every day. Thank God people at work can’t see my computer screen. They’d fire me if they knew that’s all I was doing.”
The Onion
Web site shares a personals database of eligible men and women with a handful of other online magazines, and they do a good job of pooling all the single, literary, liberal modernists of our fair city into one giant meat market. Ivan got me started, and I have to admit it’s a pretty impressive selection.
“What happened with Peter?” Mimi asks.
“We’re going out again in a couple of weeks. He’s in London.”
“London’s good.”
“I know, but I’m just not sure. I’m afraid he’s just another normie. And more importantly, he still hasn’t kissed me.”
“That’s not good.”
“I know,” I say. I’m beginning to think that my uncle is wrong. That I need my kind. I want someone who gets me, the way I thought Jimmy did. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m still thinking about Jimmy Voltage.
“Hmmm,” Mimi mulls this one over. “You need a sober alcoholic.”
“Jimmy was sober,” I offer, but my friends have been getting pretty good at ignoring his name these days.
“Have you looked to see if there is a dating Web site for sober people?”
“Goddamn, you’re brilliant, Mimi.” Since I don’t have Internet at home, Mimi does the research for me, and she finds a number of sites.
“Aha,” she exclaims while doing some preliminary prospecting, “I found him.” Him is a tennis pro with an MBA. Him is from New York and has been sober for four years. And by his picture, Him looks hot and yet still sweet-natured.
I sign up for the site and e-mail Him. Him turns out to be a guy named Micah. We e-mail back and forth, and though his e-mails are curt, and slightly uninterested, I decide he is just a man of few written words. So when he asks me what I am doing tonight, and my genuine response is “laundry and a viewing of
Dial M for Murder
,” I am a little surprised that he asks me to bring the movie to his part of town.
Dial M for Murder
,” I am a little surprised that he asks me to bring the movie to his part of town.
I call him and explain, “I do not go to strange men’s apartments bearing Hitchcock films as a general rule, sir.”
“Okay, then,” Micah offers. “Let’s get coffee.”
It’s Saturday night, and I don’t have any other plans, but it still feels a little wild and clumsy nonetheless. Most Saturdays, I am pretty exhausted from working at the stables.
A year ago, I returned to my childhood passion of riding horses. I was the little girl with a collection of plastic Breyer ponies and pictures of horses on my walls. I rode Arabians and was jumping at thirteen. But then I met boys. And getting up at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings when I could be sleeping over at a slumber party after sneaking out with them, just didn’t sound like too much fun anymore. So I chose boys over horses. When I turned twenty-nine, I decided to go back to the horses. It had been a dream of mine for years. About a month before I moved home to Dallas to get sober, I went to the Equestrian Center in Burbank. I walked around and pet the ponies and promised myself that one day when I had my shit together, I’d come back here and would learn again to ride. And I did.
Whenever I think that nothing has changed in my life, the stables always remind me things are entirely, wonderfully different. I used to sleep every Saturday until five or six in the evening. I would try to fall asleep against the chirping of birds and the sound of waking life, and I would want to die. Now, today, I am a part of waking life. And I get up early every Saturday, and I go to a morning meeting in the Valley, and I see my sponsor, and I have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and I drive to work at the stables, knowing how much my life has changed.
My favorite horse at the stable is a thoroughbred named Arrow. If Arrow were human, he would be exactly what I am looking for. I went into his stable today, and he leaned his chestnut head against my body, and I wished so desperately that I could find a man who does the same. Arrow fights with all the horses around him. He is, in fact, a bad boy, and he has the scars all over his face to prove it, marring his otherwise perfect thoroughbred beauty, and yet, he stops fighting almost every time I enter his stall to come and tell me that he loves me.
“He is my unicorn,” I told my mom recently.
My family has gotten to know so much about this horse that they ask about him as though he were my boyfriend. And I know all the Catherine the Great jokes that can be told, but the truth is that horse gives me love like no other. When Jimmy Voltage disappeared, it was Arrow whose shoulder I cried on. When I got my new job, it was Arrow who bit my ponytail when I told him. And today, when I said hello, he rested his head in my hand and let his lids slide closed, and we stood there—me holding this sleeping horse in the palm of my hand and having no doubt what kind of love I have in my life. I looked out past Arrow, out onto the San Bernardino Mountains: the sun played against the shadows of the hills, the perfect breeze of a seventy-degree day in January whistled through the barn and through my hair. I leaned into Arrow’s neck. Griffith Park surrounded us with its burned-out brush and its wild coyotes and its rough and ready horse trails veiled in oak trees and the scent of eucalyptus. And I knew that I could not love more. And that is what sobriety has given me.
I need to meet someone who is also sober and could understand that moment. Who could understand the path that I have walked to get here. Well, that’s a good someone. As Mimi says, Micah is an albino. At first, I retort that he has brown hair, but then she reminds my blonde brain that he is like an albino because he is rare. So I drive to Micah’s side of town at a moment’s notice because I’ve been looking for an albino.
There is a chance, and a relatively good one, that Micah was just not attracted to me. I might be too blonde, or not blonde enough. I might be too tall, or short, or skinny, or fat. I might be too overdressed or underdressed, or not sexy enough, or too sexy. In other words, I might not be his cup of tea. Or he might just be incredibly, painfully dull. Because I discover that Micah is not just a man of few written words, he is a man of few words. Period. This does not make for an easy first date. I end up sitting in my chair, legs crossed, hand under chin, like some hackneyed version of Barbara Walters. Not even. More like Tyra. I ask questions. I elaborate on the questions. I respond to my own questions. I try to go deep. I try to stay shallow. I do anything to get him to talk.
Kristen: So, where’re you from in New York?
Micah (in a mumbling, barely audible baritone): Mm, around… (pause) Riverdale.
Kristen (really trying): And you moved straight out to L.A. from there?
Micah: (looks at me, yay, then he stops, boo) No. (Thinks some more) Miami.
Kristen (with my usual enthusiasm for all places warm and sunny): Oh, you lived in Miami. I love Miami!
Micah (hold it, hold it; his eyes glaze; he looks like he is about to fall asleep): Me too.
If he weren’t sober, I would have suspected pills. Really. Strong. Pills. But that’s not the case. Micah is just bored, though I’m not sure with me, with him, or with life. And it’s funny because in some alternate universe, I think Micah and I might have had something.
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