Emily's Reasons Why Not (16 page)

Fortunately there is a distraction for this, if not a cure. Here I am at the beach with the girls, hunting for prime real estate to plant our umbrella, chairs, and blanket. Grace and Reilly walk in the summer heat of Malibu staking our claim.

“I’m exhausted,” Reilly says, dropping her chair and Chanel beach bag in the sand. She recently got promoted to western sales rep for Chanel, so she is keeping Grace and I rolling again in the hippest shades of overpriced frosty mauve and lavender.

“Guess this is it, then.” Grace tries to dig a hole in the sand for our oversized, checkered Burberry umbrella.

The beach is crowded with eighteen-to-twenty-four year old tan, muscular, sun-worshipping men playing volleyball beneath a rainbow flag. Why do I live in L.A.? My eyes drift over the polka-dot-bikini-wearing nineteen-year-old silicone-stuffed babes and then to my own friends, equally attractive, but desperately trying to stay OUT of the sun.

The easiest way to tell if a woman is over or under thirty is to watch her at the beach. The 20-year-old will be toting a bottle of 2 SPF tanning oil and the thirty-year-old will be reapplying 35 SPF, antiwrinkle sunblock under an umbrella, large floppy hat, and some sort of wrap that covers her ass.

Post-sunscreen slather, Grace, Reilly and I unpack our bags. Labor Day weekend is closing out the summer. The girls and Mark, Grace’s husband, and I rented a share in Malibu for the month of August. I miss just girl time, but must
admit it is nice having Mark around, especially when the garbage needs to go out or the DVD player needs to be hooked up.

The arrangement was flawless until Reilly, in a drunken stupor, hooked up late one night with Mark’s friend Goz, whom we all know better as the Roach, justifying his nickname with the fact that if a nuclear bomb were to explode and we were all disseminated, at least his gelled hair would survive. Roach looks like a cross between Wayne Newton and an all-black-suit-wearing throwback to the eighties who thinks he is really, really cool in his red, leased, overpriced Lexus. It wouldn’t be so bad, but his incessant need to bang every stripper in L.A. and tell us about it has given the girls and I a not-so-secret loathing for him. He made the moves on an inebriated Reilly at 2:30
A.M
., and woke up the next morning and proceeded to tell everyone over bagels and coffee how she likes to have her nipples twisted. Needless to say, he was promptly banished from the beach share.

Our little summer house isn’t too fancy, but it is down the beach from Chuck Woolery, who, I might add, is still as hot as he was on
Love Connection
despite the fact that he’s pushing sixty.

After having no sex with Stan, I find myself on the prowl. I can’t stop undressing every surfing, swimming, jet-skiing, boogie-boarding hottie. Currently in my sights, a twenty-something-year-old surfer with sun-streaked hair and brown puppy dog eyes carrying a long, long board. His board shorts, hanging low on his hips, accentuate that oh-so-delectable
male muscle, that hip/abdomen bulge that’s usually covered by love handles on any guy with a respectable desk job.

His eyes have wrinkles from years of squinting at the sun in the rock-ock-ock-cocking ocean, waiting for something to surf. Surfers have an innate sense of sexiness. Perhaps it is their infinite patience. They don’t rush. They just enjoy the water, the taste of the salt, and the warmth of the sun … then, as if God put a quarter in the machine, they take off, paddling with those well-defined back muscles, springing to the erect position in a single fluid motion so they can cut loose from all boundaries known within the flat, unmoving, two-dimensional world. They play with energy, gliding and carving through an alternative, liquid dimension with a balance of fear and joy.

I prop up on my elbows and eye him from behind my blue-tinted Dior glasses. He turns around, revealing the best young, rippled back I have ever seen. Tan shoulders to die for, with soft supple skin, glistening with salty droplets screaming: “Emily. Lick me. Love me. Look away. Quick. You’re gawking, girl.” AGAIN!

He swings a towel around his waist and pulls down his wet trunks, replacing them with dry ones and tying them like the laces of a corset on a Danielle Steele cover.

Drool. Physical drool wets the corners of my mouth as Grace leans up and whinnies, “Eeeaaaaasy, girl. Doooowwwwn, girl.”

I turn and look her in the face. “He’s just the tasty treat to get me back on my horse.”

“And judging by the way those trunks are hanging, he’s definitely a thoroughbred,” Reilly says as she rolls over onto her back.

I get up, in my surf trunks and powder-blue bikini top, and head for the water.

The tan surfer treat pours fresh, warm water over his face from an old gallon juice container, blinks the salt water out of his eyes, and begins to peel an orange.

Subtly I stroll toward the water, pretending not to see him. I never look down. I am almost past him when he reaches backward in the sand for his beach towel and his arm trips me. I stumble, falling, landing face-first in the sand.

I hear Grace and Reilly howl and clap in the background.

“Jesus, I am so sorry.” His eyes widen.

I watch his face, and a twinge of mortification flashes through my body as I look down and see that one of my breasts is out of my bikini top and in full view.

“Nice,” sweet-treat guy says, staring at my exposed are-ola…“Really nice,” he smiles.

His compliment fills me with relief as I readjust myself.

With one nipple pointing west and one pointing east, I try to rearrange them to at least semipoint in the same direction.

“I’m Lance. And, uh …”

I nod while appearing to fondle myself. “Emily.”

My nipples are both going in the same direction. A victory!

As he hands me a towel to wipe the sand off my face, Rilke’s
Letters to a Young Poet
falls from the pouch in his faded red backpack.

This small novel is my favorite. It was the first read that somehow validated my own personal perception of love, obsession, and passion. It is my all-time favorite book!

My gaze darts from the book to his eyes. They appear “knowing”—can I describe these young eyes as “knowing”?

“You should read this,” he says. “Wait.”

What?
I think to myself.
What did I do? What’s wrong with me? Besides that I am old. Why is he looking so deep into me?

“Something tells me you already have, haven’t you?”

How did he know that?

What I want to say is … Lance, would you mind if I threw my sandy frame onto your young, wet, buff, tan, soft-skinned-surfer, tasty morsel of a body, as my last boyfriend didn’t like things that were wet, and I really, really need to have some validation.

My relationship with Stan left me thinking somewhere deep down that I’m not desirable.

I sit for a second in the sand, watching Lance wax and stroke that lonnnnng boaaarrddd, with his forearms that have sun-kissed blond peach fuzz on them. “Can I help?” I say, wanting to be that surfboard.

“Here.” He hands me the melting sex wax. “Like this.” He puts his hand on top of mine and shows me exactly how his board should be rubbed. After a few moments he smiles, a big smile that looks as if he just got his braces off.

Flutter, flutter
.

With that he invited me out into the water for a surf lesson. And I said the least likely thing, “yes.” It was cold on my
feet, but not ice-water cold, mostly refreshing, and the air was hot. He sat behind me on his knees and I lay on my belly as we paddled out to where the other surfers were all sitting up. One guy nodded at Lance, the silent surfer speak. I felt immediately safe with my legs straddling this boy’s board.

Sitting out there, waiting for our wave, we somehow bonded without talking. The motion of the ocean kept me writhing this way and that, trying to keep from falling in, but he helped me keep my balance. Then it was our turn. We paddled and caught the wave, and he helped me to my feet with the confidence most men show when they open a car door or lay their credit card down to pay for dinner. As soon as I was standing, balance came effortlessly. We were flying.

His hands guided my hips as we flew beneath a dozen drifting seagulls. The wind blew my hair back and I’m pretty sure he took a deep breath of it. Then it was over. We popped up over the back of the wave and I jumped off into two feet of water on soft sand. The most honest emotion filled me.

Walking into Dr. D.’s office, I want nothing more than to show him that I’m not the hopeless bore he saw the week before.

“You look tan,” he says.

“Yeah. We had our last hoopla at the beach this weekend … I saw you on the road.” “Yes, you did. I saw you as well.”

“I like your boat, but it looks like it needs a lot of work,” I say, taking the awkwardness off my blatant pry into his life, as
if I’m not supposed to know about his life outside the safety of the wall at 20002 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 402.

“It’s a great boat, a 1968 classic, all wood. It just needs some TLC.” His eyes light up as he leads me into his office, as I can tell wants to tell me about the boat. Hmmm …

“How are you doing?” he quickly regroups.

“Good, I feel really good.”

He crosses his arms over his chest, which to me should be forbidden as a therapist for it is Bad Body Language 101.

“Well, I was starting to think I was never going to have sex again, with another person, and then I met someone.”

He nods. “Did you have sex with him?”

“No, but I’m going to.”

There’s a silence as I am waiting for feedback, judgment, approval, something!

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say.

“Do you? What am I thinking?” he says, poised to write it down.

“You’re thinking that I’m jumping into another relationship. But I’m not. This is simply
arm candy.”

He says nothing.

“Arm candy, you know, like men who have trophy wives. A young, hot, firm, guy who looks good and tastes even better.”

“Someone you can boss around,” he smiles.

“No. Hmm, maybe,” I tease, “but only in bed. I am NOT making him into a boyfriend. I am simply going to have an easy-breezy dating adventure filled with a ton of sex to make up for the last seven months.”

More silence. God. I hate his silence. I should have gotten used to it by now. I am never quite sure if he is just reevaluating the situation, waiting for me to talk, or planning what he is going to make for dinner tonight. UGH!

“What?” I finally blurt. “You think it’s a bad idea, don’t you?”

“No, I think you should do what makes you happy. But sex or no sex, I think you need to be careful about the men you let in, particularly
into
your body, because you and I both know that there is no easy-breezy for Emily. Did you make a list?”

“I don’t
need
to make a list, as I don’t want him to be my boyfriend,” I reiterate with an authoritative tone.

“How young?” he asks.

“Young.”

I can see this is going nowhere, as Dr. D. is predisposed to thinking that I am, as I always do, making a bad decision with Lance. But he is wrong. For the first time, I am not looking for Lance to bring something to the table other than his naked body, so I spend the rest of my session talking about the potential of changing jobs, apartments, or possibly hairstyles.

Dr. D. didn’t bring up Lance again until I got up to leave. “Make a list. At least try.”

At home I dig through my bookshelf desperately looking for Rilke’s
Letters
…

“Do you think he’s too young?” I ask Grace and Reilly on a three-way call.

“Young-shmung, men do it every day,” Reilly pipes in. I
reach to the top of the bookshelf …there it is … almost got it …when I catch a glimpse of myself in the living room mirror.

I raise my arm in the mirror and watch the skin on the bottom jiggle. I cringe, grab the book.

“Look at it this way … you won’t have to go to spinning class—he’s totally exercise,” Reilly laughs. “After gay-straight Stan you should go for it.”

“You deserve it, honey,” Grace chimes in. “I say, go work up a sweat! I gotta go. Mark and I are going to his parents’ for dinner. Love you.”

“Thanks. Love you.” I pick up an arm weight and try to flex.

As Grace hangs up, Reilly’s other line beeps. “Hold on,” she says.

Arm lift. Arm curl. Arm curl. Shoulder rep. OW! Something just pulled in my shoulder. I set down the weight and pick up the book.

“Hi. Sorry.” Reilly clicks back on.

“Well?”

“Do it. DO him. For Christ’s sake, Emily, you’ve had sex what, like, once in seven months?

And almost two of those months you were in a monogamous relationship.”

“As always, I appreciate your love and understanding,” I chuckle.

“I just think it’s about time you had someone to be nice to you, ‘kay? I gotta go, I have a blind date,” Reilly adds.

“With who?”

“Some Brazilian guy that my boss knows.”

“Good luck. Love you.”

“Remember that you’re a great, beautiful woman, who could possibly be mistaken for his mother, but you’re a Catholic so don’t let it bother you.”

When is a man too young? In this day and age,
age
isn’t supposed to matter. As a thirty-one-year-old woman I have at this point in life found myself not in
need
of a man for anything other than company and sex …maybe love. So why not do it with a young hot guy who worships me. What’s wrong with having the upper hand for once?

Friday night Lance comes over for dinner. He arrives in a white, dented, 1971 Chevy Malibu with surf racks on the roof, minus hubcaps. My eyes squint a little and I feel my stomach cringe, as the thought of spending the rest of my life in the passenger side without bling-bling tire decoration scares me. Scares me a lot.

I watch him get out, see his big brown eyes, and remember why it was I wanted him to come over.

The instant negative emotion that his car gave me could be a potential “reason,” but that would be
IF
I wanted him as a boyfriend, which I don’t. Everyone has different needs in a relationship. This is NOT a relationship. It is sex.