Apron Anxiety (7 page)

I
am standing near City Hall, heading toward my home across the Brooklyn Bridge, and there’s a gray-haired millionaire wearing an Hermès tie, dancing to the tunes of a homeless man on the trombone. New York, it’s good to be back.

Over the past year, I left the West Coast, disassociated myself from the
Glamour
dating blog, turned thirty, and after six intense interviews, got a full-time job that I’m really proud of. I’m a staff writer at
People
magazine, with a good salary, a private office, and interesting assignments involving film, music, television, health, human interest, and a lot more than celebrity news. My editors all know that I accepted the job under the condition that I won’t have to go clubbing, stalking, or slithering into places where I don’t belong, and that I’m a
reformed
party girl with an early bedtime.

Living in California completely reset my body. It took the
mani-pedi, buy-the-shoes, blow-the-doorman
right out of me. Ultimately, I had to go all the way across the country just to come back down to earth.

When I’m not reporting, I spend a lot of time with my forever sweet and easy sister, who’s working at
Real Simple
magazine, just a few floors down from
People
. Or I’m having long talks
over a few drinks with my closest New York girlfriends, Beth and Jill (Shelley, who I talk to ten times a day, and who is gradually mellowing out herself, never came back from L.A.). Beth is from Western Massachusetts like me. She’s strikingly pretty and reminds me, in her unpretentiousness, of the girls from home. (When Jean died, Beth and I had just started working together at a PR firm, and I remember feeling like she was the only person who understood how the tragedy rocked my tiny town.) And then there’s the smokin’ hot Jill, who’s as devoted as she is difficult. She works in fashion and dates only fancy men whom I describe as “camera ready.” She’s the one I count on every time there’s a party or a plus-one; I just love her company.

As always, I’m enjoying a lot of alone time, too—hunkering down at poetry readings, jazz clubs, and other weird and wonderful gatherings, befriending singletons with short bangs and Buddhists with perfect posture, and conversing with total strangers on everything from capitalism to colonics. In this city, you can meet more great people while buying a stick of gum than most do in a lifetime elsewhere. Everyone has a story, mind-bending or blood-racing, on this island of provocateurs. On my favorite nights, I just putter around aimlessly, vacillating between culture and curiosity. There’s nothing I’d rather do than roam the streets without watching the clock.

Not that life has been uneventful.

After L.A., I invested my life savings in an apartment in an almost-happening neighborhood of Brooklyn called Ditmas Park. I lived there for a few months, but when a meth-head mooned me in the building’s elevator, I realized I wasn’t as edgy as I thought. Soon thereafter, I rented the place to two librarian pescatarians on a budget, while I waited for the property to appreciate and the neighborhood to become a little less sketchy and a bit more Starbucks.

I then moved in with my parents, who just bought a luxury loft in a more enviable Brooklyn enclave called DUMBO (which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). Now, I listlessly inhabit a spare, windowless, prison-white room meant to be an office (the only option besides bunking up in my parents’ bedroom, which, disturbingly, they probably would have loved). On one hand, living at home was a smart, economical decision so I could figure out the next steps in my housing situation. On the other hand, I’m about to turn thirty-one, and I feel a little foolish being a single, stay-at-home daughter with all her money tied up in an apartment that other people live in and that most taxi drivers can’t find.

I’m still meeting guys everywhere I go—at Citibank, before a Shakespeare in the Park play, while doing crosswords on the subway—and even though many men have that
je ne sais quoi
, no one has been quite right for me. The problem is I
need
to be with an alluring, off-the-grid kind of guy, otherwise I lose interest. But it seems like all the dazzling men have such dark problems: impending divorces, sex addictions, secret debt. I go to art shows and housewarming parties with no shortage of fetching, successful, normal bachelors who just want to love and be loved like the rest of us, yet I end up embarrassed for their unoriginality and unable to bear a conversation with them about work or the weather. So instead, I wind up in the arms of guys like the hot, Hungarian bike messenger who was at a book reading (on a drug deal) and put me in his phone as “Alyssa Sexy Jew.” Bad judgment, exceptional hands. Such lousy, lust-driven decisions are why Dr. Pappa, who I’m still seeing, has me committed to a summer of no dating, no drama, and no strings attached.

Then I get a press release.…

Bravo’s A-List Awards are happening tonight and the lineup
includes
Top Chef
’s current season of cheftestants. While I have zero interest in cooking, something catches my eye. In my wholesome, post-Californian-life, I’ve started to watch
Top Chef
from time to time because even as a noncook, the show relaxes me. So much so that I’ve written about a few of the winners and the master chefs who have influenced them. But what really hooked me this season was a crush I developed on the token bestubbled bad boy, who I cleverly nicknamed “Chef.” Chef looks like James Dean, says he’s Greek
and
Jewish, and totally turns me on. I even forced my family to watch an episode, because as I tell them, “I’m pretty sure the one making blood sausage is my soul mate …” Only
they
would see that as a perfectly logical thing to say.

Today, like a paper airplane sent from Aphrodite, Chef is on the tip sheet thrown on top of the
New York Times
and next to yesterday’s coffee. Usually I’d go to something like this myself, but I’ve just sworn off men, I’m living out of boxes in my parents’ apartment, and I just don’t look or feel my best; I’m even wearing one of my mother’s muumuus—which is not as Sienna Miller as it sounds.

So in my place, I send a pretty, blond freelance reporter named Stephanie to the Bravo party with simple instructions: “Do not leave until you find out if Chef has a girlfriend. And ask him what he looks for in a woman. Get specifics!” Professionalism has never been my strength.

I head home, take a sunset jog, eat a few bowls of cereal and an entire carton of strawberries, floss my teeth, put on a nightgown, and crawl into bed feeling slightly pitiful, not that I’d ever say so. Just before midnight, my phone vibrates as I’m tossing and turning. Apparently, professionalism isn’t Stephanie’s thing either. She’s e-mailed me her transcript from the Bravo
event, along with a note: “Chef is very nice and very single. Thanks for the assignment!! P.S. I know you’re not looking or anything, but here’s his phone number.… Just in case.” Screw journalistic integrity. Give the girl a raise.

While tucked under the covers in fuzzy socks and shea butter cream, I reach for the light on the bedside table and start to read the two-page interview on my BlackBerry. I am prepared for a slight rush, a raise of the brow, and then hopefully, a better night’s sleep. But as I read his responses—part juvenile delinquent, part plain ole Joe—my eyes, freshly dotted in cucumber serum, start to widen. He talks about his family’s villa in Greece, and how he dreams of taking a girl there and making her a peasant dish called reginatta, which he describes as stale bread sprinkled with ocean water, covered with bright red tomatoes and crumbled fresh feta. As for the girl, she should be funny, down-to-earth, and extremely family-oriented. He says he’s been a “kitchen-rat” his whole life and that it’s starting to get quite lonely. He’s happy to have been on
Top Chef
, but he might just become a marine biologist in Florida or a fisherman in the South of France.

Wow. He’s just what I thought he’d be like: creative, carefree, and vulnerable. As I read his answers, I am struck by how unaffected he is.
How can he be lonely?
He’s such a rock star in my eyes.
And the perfect woman he described?
She sounds a little familiar. I mostly love that he’s a dreamer but doesn’t sound totally dysfunctional. That’s exactly what I want, exactly what I need. A flash goes off, and suddenly, I know without any hesitation, that Chef is more than just a TV fantasy. He is my next boyfriend.

Let me explain. There are three things I know about my biological self:

1. If I walk into a McDonald’s, even just to use the bathroom, I will get a glistening red zit on the left side of my cheek that will terrorize my life for ten days straight.

2. If I combine alcohol with pot, in any quality or quantity, I’ll convince myself that I’m paralyzed from the neck down, pee in my pants, and then puke.

3. When the future-boyfriend flash goes off, though it’s always primal and
never
practical, the world better buckle up, because we’re all in for a ride.

The next day at work, I immediately e-mail the special projects editor at
People
, asking if I can interview Chef for our annual bachelor issue, explaining that a freelancer had revealed his single status and that he’s definitely an up-and-coming heartthrob. It honestly doesn’t matter if she gives me the green light or not.
I have to meet him
. I then go to my weekly therapy session with Dr. Pappa, who, just one week ago, made me promise to not date this summer. At the time, I was totally on board, but who would have thought Chef would be right around the corner?

“I am going to contact him and who knows what will happen,” I say, after quoting verbatim the cute, off-the-cuff answers he gave to Stephanie. I include the reginatta bit, hoping the Greek nostalgia will perhaps soften her.

“Don’t do it, Alyssa. Please …” says the shrink. “It’s not a good idea.… You really need to be single.”

“Don’t worry, Dr. P.,” I say, writing a check. “I’ll proceed with caution.”

Who knows why I’m so self-assured when it comes to pursuing guys, and in this case, an almost-famous guy. Some people might say that I’m a hot girl; others might go with a hot mess.
I think it’s somewhere in between. I can be beautiful or I can be busted, but I can’t get by on my looks alone, even if I tried. Whether it’s my inherited confidence, or an inner cool when it comes to the opposite sex, or some life-less-ordinary-aura, getting guys has always been easy, and getting Chef should be cake.

Despite Dr. Pappa’s warnings
and
my editor’s impending e-mail saying that Chef isn’t famous enough for the magazine, I leave a message on his cell, in my deepest Demi Moore voice possible, that I want to do an in-person interview with him for
People
magazine’s bachelor issue.
Screw it
. I can get him on the pages if I really need to. If not, this could be worth getting fired for. He returns my message in a few minutes, sounding dead tired and terribly adorable. He’s excited about the interview, which I feel a little guilty about (but not really). We start to e-mail and text, comparing our schedules, warming things up. He says he lives in Brooklyn but is in the process of moving somewhere else. I write him that the sauce he made on last week’s episode looked so good that “I wanted to take a bath in it!” He writes back four seconds later: “That could be arranged.”
This is my kind of guy
. Eventually, we agree to meet at a corner café in Williamsburg called Fabiane’s. Even over the phone, we are on fire.

Hours before our interview, I am searching online for something food-savvy to say. At this point, the only thing I really know about the culinary scene is that white wine goes in the fridge, guacamole makes you fat, and Tom Colicchio is bald. The more I think about how little we could have in common, the more nervous I get, so I leave early and order a tequila shot at DUMBO General Store, my neighborhood hang. I ask to speak with the restaurant’s chef, who is “preparing for the dinner rush,” not that I understand what that means. “Hey … um … what’s like a hot topic in the chef scene right now?” I
ask. He speaks broken English, is sweating his ass off, and tells me he’s totally slammed. “No problemo,” I say, pounding the shot and heading to the F train.

On the subway, I remind myself that our get-together is a “business meeting,” so I put on my reporter’s hat and fool myself into forgetting about any romantic anticipation. I brush into Fabiane’s with the look of an unflappable journalist, in a very flappable short skirt, who’s done this hundreds of times. Chef is there already, waiting for me by the dessert display, now walking toward me to say hello. He’s long, ruddy, and crazy cute. Before I can reach out my hand, there’s a kiss on the cheek and a tight hug hello. This doesn’t happen with Justin Timberlake.

We arrange a table for two outside, while I take out my tape recorder, which I won’t be turning on, and my list of fake questions, which I won’t be flipping through. I try to stay in character, but the way he looks, the way he speaks, the way he dresses, how our knees touch … I’m trembling. I’m not sure what one orders on a bogus interview that’s turning into a first date, with a French-trained chef and me, a kitchen-phobe, so I fumble through the menu and somehow come up with chicken curry salad. He gets a tomato and mozzarella tartine. We agree on a round of Stella Artois. When the waitress walks away, we waste no time getting to know each other.

“So, what’s your story?” I ask, with a beer bottle to my mouth, half reporter, half temptress.

“I’ll tell you about me, if you promise to tell me about you?” He smiles.

“Fair enough.” I smirk, locking my eyes onto his for a beat too long.

He swiftly shares fascinating stories about his past, really personal things, and I assure him that everything’s off the record. (If he only knew
how
off the record!) We are so instantaneously
comfortable around each other that when his Greek and Jewish heritage comes up, I tell him that a Greek man once broke my heart. Our food comes and I make the long story short. My eyes well up when talking about John, as they always do, and he asks if it still hurts. I say that I’m doing fine, that it’s all part of my fiber now, and that I’ve never believed we get only one great love anyway. I realize that I’m committing a faux pas by bringing up old boyfriends, but this is not the kind of guy who plays by the rules. He doesn’t even know they exist.