51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life (21 page)

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Authors: Kristen McGuiness

BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life
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But I also know that no one could have loved me the way that they did. That overprotecting someone is sometimes the great price of unconditional love. Because how can you care so deeply for another, love them with every ounce of your being, be born by them and give them your life all at once, and not wake up every day, petrified that something bad could happen to them?
 
The next day we drive up North to an outlet mall, and we go shopping. For years my mom took me shopping. She threw clothes and money and privilege at me to make up for the hours she was at work, for the fact that my father was missing, or because Nana could be mean. But since I got sober, we refrain from such guilt-ridden enabling. But this weekend is different. I am saving money on my own now, and I have just gotten a promotion that demands I get my first business suit. As we drive up, Dixie Chicks begin to sing “Landslide” on the radio, and I turn up the volume.
 
“I love this song too,” my mom says as she turns it up more.
 
It still fills my car, this memory of driving with my mother through the green hills and misty mountains of California. Me singing, and my mother stealing glances in my direction as we both know that I am growing up, that I have changed, and the one thing that never will is our huge, magnificent love for one another.
 
27
 
Date Twenty-Seven: Revelations
 
On Saturday night I go to a party at Mimi’s house and begin to question her mental state. She called me Thursday morning at 7:15 a.m., nearly out of breath. Since we’ve recently started taking morning hikes together, I think she might be on her way to my apartment. But she’s not, she’s just excited.
 
“I have the perfect man for you,” she squeals.
 
If it weren’t seven in the morning, I might be more enthusiastic.
 
“No, really, Kristen. He could be, like, the one.”
 
I don’t mean to be callous, but Mimi’s Jewish matchmaker can get the better part of her. I have seen her do this with other female friends, and it’s scary. Even scarier, I have become her latest target.
 
“Imagine Jimmy Voltage but with advanced degrees and a trust fund,” she knows she has me on this one. I haven’t heard her speak the words “Jimmy Voltage” in a long while, so it must be time for the big guns.
 
I’m not necessarily on the hunt for a rich man, so the latter part, though nice, isn’t the clincher. But all in all, Mimi’s description sounds like exactly what I am looking for. Maybe Mimi got this one right. Maybe this guy Joel will be my second coming.
 
Mimi and her boyfriend Carty have just moved in together, so there could no better place for me to meet my future partner than in the glow of their own partnership. When Mimi and Carty met, she didn’t declare off the bat, “He’s the one!” as I have a tendency to do. And though they had slept together by their third date, there was something rather relaxed about the way it started, about the way it has progressed.
 
I walk into Mimi and Carty’s new house and know immediately that Joel is not my future partner. Because Joel is an alcoholic. I shoot Mimi a look, but she is trying to get Joel’s attention. Joel is busy dancing by himself in the corner. And though I like people who dance by themselves in the corner, I can tell by the large pint glass of whiskey and coke in Joel’s hand that he is not looking for a sober woman with an active spiritual program. He is most likely just looking for another drink.
 
Mimi has been sober for almost seven years. I consider her one of my elders in that sense, and as I have struggled with the ups and downs that come with living sober, it is Mimi to whom I traditionally go first. So why she thought this clearly active drunk, albeit a hot one, and I would make the couple of the century is beyond me. Five years ago, sure, we probably could have started some tragi-comic romance that involved a lot of fighting and devastating benders. But now?
 
We start talking because so far it is a small gathering, and we both know why we are here. I crack a Red Bull, and Joel doesn’t even seem to notice that I am not joining him in the Whiskey and Cokes. Joel seems to be pretty oblivious to everything as he talks about the limo he is renting for his birthday and the tattoos he has been trying to get lasered off his arm and how L.A. has begun to bore him. He is thinking he will move back to San Francisco.
 
Though he’s drunk, there’s an ease between us, and it’s no surprise. Because, though I’m sober, I’m still an alcoholic, and we get each other. We’re the same type.
 
“Why would you want to move back to San Francisco?” I joke, playing off the long-standing L.A./S.F. rivalry. “The women are so ugly there.”
 
He laughs. “I know. That’s why they’ll let you do the naughtiest things to them.”
 
I agree because I understand the misogynist mentality. I can certainly be one myself. Mimi is inside, watching us, and when I come in to get another Red Bull, she takes me into the bedroom under the pretense that she wants to show me their new game for Wii.
 
I see through her ruse because Mimi hates video games. Me, on the other hand, well, I can definitively state that Nintendo was my first addiction. I am already swinging aimlessly with the Wii controller when she asks, “So what do you think?”
 
I throw a right jab in an attempt to knock out my enemy on the screen. “About what?”
 
“About Joel, asshole.”
 
I grunt as I dodge my opponent. “I think he’d be an incredible hook up.”
 
“Come on, don’t waste one on him. I think this could be more than that.”
 
I barely hear her because I am in video-game land, and to be honest it feels more realistic than what Mimi is proposing. But she presses on: “You guys should get to know each other. I really feel this could be exactly what you both have been searching for.”
 
I am getting a little out of breath—Wii is hard. “Mi?”
 
“Yeah.”
 
“I don’t know if you noticed this...Bullshit motherfucker!” I have a bit of Tourettes while playing video games. “But your friend is an alcoholic.”
 
“Yeah, I know, but I thought you could help him.”
 
I’m really into the game now. “You want me to convert him?”
 
Mimi is watching the screen, which is a good thing because I might have had to take aim at her too. “No, I thought you could be his angel.”
 
“Bitch! Bitch! Bitch!” I yell at the TV.
 
And this is how I’ve grown. I have absolutely no desire to save Joel’s lost soul. No human power can. I know because even the ones who tried to save mine failed. And I loved them. Dearly. No, soul saving is for higher powers only.
 
Thankfully, Joel is not trying to get sober that night. I come out to find Joel sitting on the couch, taking pictures of himself with his iPhone. He doesn’t seem all that interested in talking to anyone at the party. He just keeps hitting the “capture” button while he stares into his cup. And I get that too. I used to look into my cup all the time. Fearing that it would end soon, wishing it would end soon, hoping somehow that there was an answer down there, and I just needed to get to the bottom of it.
 
Joel sees me and lights up. He doesn’t seem to care that I am not drinking; I think he just likes that I am willing to have fun at this relatively boring, grown-up affair. He asks me to pose for his pictures, and we end up doing our own photo shoot. Not sexual ones. Goofy photos. One where I am curled up on the floor like a cat. Another, we’re both throwing gang signs. One where we are head banging. Regular all-American fun. One o’clock hits, and I am about to leave. I plan to leave. And then everybody else starts leaving, and I realize that Joel is spending the night there. I sit down on the couch, and he comes and sits down next to me. We are getting tired, and he lies down against me. And then I feel it. The stir that had gone missing these last few months. The pulse I had once known with both frequency and intimacy—my raging fourteen-year old hormones. My libido’s back, and I’m gonna get in trouble. Mimi and her boyfriend, Carty, sit on the opposite couch, and it’s as though Mimi knows this when she suggests, “Kristen, why don’t you stay the night?”
 
Yes, why don’t I? Surely, I shouldn’t be driving home the four short blocks between our houses. I am sober, and it is before 2:00 a.m. “Okay,” I agree as Joel begins to quietly rub my leg. Mimi and Carty go to bed. Joel and I make room for the both of us on their couch. I am having trouble sorting out all the pillows, and I don’t like being in control in these situations and am playing the dumb blonde to get out of it.
 
Joel laughs. “And you’re the sober one.”
 
“But I’m still the girl,” I whine. Even pouting my lips for good measure.
 
And that’s all I need to say. Because instantly Joel goes into action. He sobers up. He sorts out the pillows, takes off his shirt, positions me on the inside of the couch, curls in behind me, pulls me in close, and it is on.
 
It has been years since I had sex like that. Hair-pulling, hickeyleaving, love-making sex. The type you see in the movies when it looks like the actors are about to devour each other and names get uttered over and over. And then it feels like the back of your brain just got blasted out, and your bodies go slack, and your mind goes dull, and it isn’t love. And it doesn’t matter. Because I never do this. And I get to enjoy it with the same amount of satisfaction as if it were the real thing.
 
Joel knows this is just play acting. We’re both pros. We know how to pretend we’re in love for one night. And it’s fun to do it with such intensity: We don’t ask too many questions; we don’t pretend this is the beginning of anything; we just kiss and snuggle and find something quite nice for a night. Something that both of us have been missing in our very different lives. Me with my rigorous sobriety and my clean and healthy choices. And Joel? Joel is still living the life I used to live. And it shows. It shows in the dark circles around his eyes. In the clench of his jaw. In the graying hair around his temples.
 
I fall asleep praying for him. I pray that his higher power saves him as mine did me. I pray that he gets the chance to live a responsible and healthy life. I pray that he grows up.
 
28
 
Date Twenty-Eight: California Country
 
I’ve been listening to a lot of country lately. And not even good country—cheap, modern, pop country. Shit like Taylor Swift and Shania Twain and Billy Ray Cyrus. When I was a kid growing up in Dallas, country made me nauseous. It was everywhere, like football, and created an immediate, visceral reaction. The first twang of Travis Tritt or the roar of the stadium crowd created an anxious churn in me, which I can only guess is what one feels during a heart attack.
 
To this day the mere sight of a football green will make me light-headed, but my opinion on country has changed. Now it seems to be the only type of music that truly relaxes me. Which as I am singing “Red Neck Girls” on my way home tonight, makes me wonder whether I am becoming more Texan. Because I never felt at home in Dallas. I still don’t. I read too much, thought too much, and definitely talked too much to ever be accepted there. And though I have friends and family in that town who love me, and whom I love, I know that I do not belong there, anymore than I belong on a football field. But Texas… well, Texas is all about horses and guns and independent women. And those things I am.
 
Which is why when Frank invites me to go shooting for our first date, I can’t help but be excited. Frank is a lighting consultant on blockbuster films. He is from a suburb outside of Chicago. He reads authors like Thomas Pynchon and Jonathan Kozol. He is extremely funny on the phone, and from what I can tell by his pictures, really cute. And I am actually pretty excited about this date. I even shave my legs because I want to feel pretty. And I worry about what I am going to wear and end up putting on a sexy top, paired with my trusty decade-old cowboy boots.
 
On Thursday, I went for my first trail ride in Griffith Park. As much as I have loved learning how to walk, trot, and canter in the dust-streaked arenas of the equestrian center, the hills that surround it had begun to beckon me. My friend Jen introduced me to a British horsewoman named Jane, who teaches neophytes like me how to race a horse up a mountain without falling off. With the same thick, woolly hair that all of us horsewomen seem to have and the perfect London accent, Jane quickly became my hero. I borrowed one of her horses, and we went through a tunnel that runs under the 134 Freeway, and she took me up and deep into the Griffith Park hills.
 
Growing up, all of my report cards were littered with the same comments, “Refuses to listen,” “Won’t follow directions,” “Doesn’t pay attention.” I hated them like I hated country music, but they weren’t altogether wrong. Later, I would take that inability to listen and bring it into workplaces, relationships, and my conscience. But as I rode with Jane, I paid close attention to her British accent and her wise words about how to stay on a horse while riding on the side of a cliff.

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