Has Anyone Seen My Pants? (7 page)

Tara and Stephanie liked the flowers idea; they thought it was sweet.

“Why not? I doubt he’s been sent flowers very often,” Tara said. “He’ll think it’s cute!”

Steph said to just text him and ask where he’s staying. “Just ask him what hotel they stay in, because you go to Seattle a lot and are wondering if it’s one of your faves.”

“But I don’t go to Seattle a lot.”

Silence on the other end of the phone.

“Oh,” I said. “Okay, I get it. Just
pretend
. . .”

Tara sighed and they both got off the phone so I could order the flowers. And
yes
, we do three-way phone calls as if we’re still in high school.

I was nervous, so I consulted one more person: my friend Liz. She has been divorced once and engaged another time, but that time they broke up before they got married. She tells me I should always ask her advice about guys, because she’s had two rings and I’ve had zero. In fact, she calls herself “Two Rings” when giving me advice and insists she knows better. I never retort that she no longer has either of those rings, so maybe her advice isn’t the best to take, because when I’m feeling uncertain her logic makes sense.

Two Rings liked the idea of the sunflowers. She said it was “thoughtful” and that in his profession he probably didn’t meet a lot of thoughtful women, “just a bunch of whores.”

Thanks, Two Rings.

I decided the idea of getting myself into a more esteemed category than “whore” sounded nice, so I logged on to
1800Flowers.com to send some sunshine to Baseball Player, along with a note that said, “Since the sun isn’t there, I’m sending you a little . . .”

I’M SO SWEET! I can’t believe I’m single!

I nervously anticipated his response—this felt like a pretty bold move. A few hours later, he sent me a text with a photo of the flowers attached and wrote: “You’re so sweet!” (
Told you!
)

I smiled and clicked on the image of the flowers to admire my work and was horrified to find that 1800Flowers.com did not send Baseball Player the sunflowers I had requested. Instead, it was just an arrangement of various flowers with like one-and-a-half sunflowers shoved in the middle. So now my sweet idea
because of his text about no sun
made no sense and it just looked like I randomly sent him a bouquet that looked like something you’d only send to a baseball player if it was for his funeral.

I immediately wrote back: “That was supposed to be all sunflowers! To send you sun in Seattle. Ugh, nobody ever listens to me.”

He wrote back “Haha,” and that was it. I was mortified. He probably picked the flowers up at the front desk, after his game, with all of his teammates standing right behind him, asking him who had died.
Ugh, I’m such a loser. A sweet loser, but a loser nonetheless.

I immediately called Tara and Steph and told them my life was ruined, then I called Two Rings and told her that next time
I wanted her to give me advice, I was going to remind myself that two
failed
rings doesn’t necessarily trump my zero rings. She laughed; it’s something I’ve said to her like thirty-seven times. Then she came over and brought me a bottle of vodka.

I felt like communication from Baseball Player tapered off a little after that. I might have just been paranoid, but it didn’t seem like he was as flirty as he was before. And the texts were coming a little less frequently. God, I hated flowers.

To make things worse, daily, I’d get an e-mail from 1800Flowers.com reminding me that I’d sent a big dumb bouquet of flowers to a
Major League Baseball player
. For some reason, I couldn’t seem to unsubscribe. I swear I tried—it was like a mean joke was being played on me every time I checked my e-mail.

Of course, I kept Tara and Steph updated on any and all conversation between Baseball Player and me. They figured he was just busy and soon things would “heat up” again.

They were right. Out of nowhere, our texting picked up again.

“Maybe he suffered a concussion and forgot about the flowers!” I happily told Tara and Steph.

They agreed, but also suggested enough was enough. This back-and-forth, high-and-low, was too much for them to take anymore. They informed me it was time to take this texting relationship to the next level: sex.

“He won’t be here until the end of the summer,” Tara said. “That’s too far away.”

Steph and I agreed and so together, over margaritas, we pored over his team’s schedule and came up with a plan.

“A
game
plan!” I said proudly, and laughed.

Tara and Steph just looked at me.

“Maybe don’t lead off with one of your ‘jokes’ when you meet him,” Steph suggested gently.

“But . . .” I started to defend myself and my “jokes.”

“Sweetie, no,” Tara said flatly.

“Okay.”

So the
game
plan (they aren’t here to judge me right now) was this: he would be in San Francisco in a few short weeks and I would fly up for a game and some long-time-in-coming “doing it.”

Unsure of how to proceed, the girls suggested I inform him of the possibility of my having the weekend free when he was only a short flight away and told me to ask him if he thought he’d have time to “take me out for a drink.”

“Of course!” he quickly replied. “Do it, come see me.”

The plan was in motion. I booked my flight.

“Look, he’s a
Major League Baseball player
,” Stephanie said (this had become her favorite thing to say). “He probably has a ton of twentysomething-year-old girls after him. You need to show him that you have your own career, your own money, and that he doesn’t need to take care of you. You need to show him that you can travel the same way he is used to traveling. You can be his
equal
.”

“Oh, you mean like how I needed to show him how thoughtful I am by sending him fucking flowers like a big dumb asshole?”

Steph and Tara stood behind their decision to tell me to send the flowers and disagreed that it had any kind of negative impact on our blossoming (pun intended) relationship.

“He probably doesn’t even think about it,” Tara chimed in. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but I hoped she was correct.

Eager to show off my ability to travel like a big girl, I booked a huge suite at the Four Seasons. Fuck it; I’d been working my ass off. At this point I’d been out of town almost every weekend and my personal life was still suffering. I couldn’t meet men when I was on the road. I couldn’t “hook up” with guys I met at my shows; I didn’t want that kind of reputation. However, I could fly up to San Francisco and let a
Major League Baseball player
put it in me (by “it,” I mean “his penis”). Plus, I was pretty sure the only people who would know about my slutty adventure would be the friends I told, and I wasn’t telling many. I suppose this chapter kind of ruins that theory, but I’m trying to paint a picture for you guys of what this certain period of my life was like,
okay
?

Steph’s statement about “a ton of twentysomething-year-old girls after him” stuck in my head. I needed to compete with more than just my pretty-decent income. I needed to pull out the big guns.

So I booked a series of body wraps.

The woman at the spa I made the appointments with was a little crazy, in a good way . . . whatever that means—I think it’s some sort of compliment.

Body-Wrap Lady poured me tea, measured my body fat, and made me drink alkalizers. I didn’t know what an alkalizer was; it sounded like something you’d use to measure your blood-alcohol content. Actually, I didn’t know what any of the stuff she was having me ingest was or what it was supposed to do, but she seemed to think it would make me thinner, and she was the pro, so I drank it.

She wrapped me in towels that were soaked in some sort of detox concoction and talked to me about what I was “holding on to” in my body that made me feel bloated. She got very philosophical about things and during each appointment I shed water weight in both sweat and tears. The tears came when she would diagnose some sort of mental or emotional block in me that caused my body to “grab on to fat and never let go,” but they probably had more to do with the fact that it was like one hundred and forty degrees underneath all the towels.

I ended up spilling my guts to her; I figured why hold back secrets with someone who had seen me completely naked, covered my body in a charcoal scrub, and wrapped every inch of me like a mummy?

After hearing all the details I could remember while suffering from heatstroke, Body-Wrap Lady told me I was being too assertive with Baseball Player. She said he couldn’t feel like
a man if I was flying myself around and putting myself up in a hotel.

WAIT, WHAT?

This was the opposite of what Tara and Steph told me. So I explained to her that I was showing him I could do my own thing, unlike the twentysomethings who were chasing him around. She shook her head and said, “A man still has to feel like a man.”

She suggested I take photos of different parts of my body—like my leg and the “sexy” part of my arm (wherever that is)—then tell him there was “more to see” when I met him in the hotel.

This sounded kind of fun, and it didn’t involve a picture of my boobs or my Tweaky (I started calling it that when I was six years old). So that night I put on a little black dress and a pair of heels and attempted to take a sexy shot of my leg. But with every photo, I found a weird freckle or angle that I didn’t think was sexy. I tried to hike my leg up into a really flattering position and fell over, landing directly on the iron I had used on the little black dress just moments before, which was still scalding hot. Now I had a burn the shape of an iron on my ass and not one sexy photo to send.

Mission aborted. I decided Body-Wrap Lady was good for losing some bloat, but from here on out I’d ignore any other advice she offered up.

A few days before I was set to take off to see Baseball Player, I once again stopped hearing from him. In my mind, at this
point, he should’ve been more flirtatious, more attentive, knowing that I was flying there the next week. Ugh, why was this silent thing happening
again
? Boyfriends you’ve never met or had an actual conversation with can be so unreliable!

I decided he must have met someone. Or he’d changed his mind. I went into my good friend and coworker Jen Kirkman’s office and told her everything. I had to fill her in from the top, but she’s a quick learner. Neither of us could really figure out what was happening, but Jen suggested I not text him to find out; she suggested I wait to hear from him, then she promised me that if I didn’t hear from him by the morning of the day I was supposed to go, she’d go with me, and we’d make a girls’ weekend out of it.

“I have miles on Virgin, I can book a flight last-minute and we’ll go and have fun.”

She is such a good friend. I still felt anxious and oddly a little sad, but at least even if the worst-case scenario happened, my nonrefundable suite at the Four Seasons wouldn’t remain empty all weekend.

Friday morning, the day I was supposed to leave, there was still no word from Baseball Player. I still didn’t want to text him because I felt like at this point, he knew the plan, seemed excited about the plan, encouraged the plan, and was just being fucking rude.

Jen was just about to book her flight when I got a text from him: “What time do you get in?”

Jen logged off the Virgin America website and we both let out a huge sigh of relief (although she would have gone with me
in a heartbeat, I doubt the idea of having to nurse me through a weekend of drinking away the pain of being blown off and trying to wrestle my phone from me every time I wanted to drunk-text him about how he was a big jerk sounded like a lot of fun to her). It’s amazing how I let a whole week of anxiety go out the window just because I got one simple text.

Now I was ready to go. I had lost a few pounds and several hundred dollars, but I felt decent about how I looked naked and therefore the money was well spent. That afternoon, I boarded my flight to San Francisco with a carry-on bag full of cute clothes, sexy underwear, and an expensive body exfoliant that Body-Wrap Lady threw in for good luck.

The flight to San Francisco from Los Angeles is barely over an hour, but I managed to down four cocktails. The flight attendant looked both alarmed and impressed.

When I arrived at my hotel, I received a text from Baseball Player asking if I was at my hotel yet. It was Friday night, and my plan was to rest up, go to his game Saturday afternoon, then enjoy a nice evening on the town with him Saturday night.

“I’m here!” I told him. “Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

“Well, what are you doing tonight?” he asked. “I might need a cuddle partner [winking smiley face].”

“Oh, I figured you’d be busy tonight. Where did you want to meet?”

“My hotel room.”

This threw me for a loop. I didn’t think I’d see him Friday night; I knew he had a game that night followed by a day game
Saturday. Didn’t he need to rest? Why would he want to get together with me for the first time ever at eleven p.m. on a Friday night?

Oh.

In a panic, I called Tara and then she dialed in Stephanie (Tara is the only one of us who knows how to connect a three-way call).

“So you see him tonight,” they explained. “What’s the big deal?”

“I don’t know! I’m not mentally ready!” I yelled at them while I stood naked in front of my hotel bathroom mirror, checking to see if any new cellulite had erupted below my ass on the flight in. “If I see him tonight it’ll be at like eleven p.m. and he has an early day tomorrow. I thought our first time hanging out would be different. You know: dinner, drinks, some talking and laughing . . . then sex after that.” I peered in closer at what I was pretty sure was a new dimple and grabbed my tub of FatGirlSlim, a cream that supposedly makes cellulite disappear but clearly doesn’t, however I still use it because why not?

“Okay, well, now you can cut right to the sex! Who likes to have sex after dinner, anyway?” Tara said as I massaged the non-miracle cream directly under my ass.