How to Be Single (20 page)

Alice took my wrist. “No, not right now,” she said. “It's time for Julie to talk to some single men.” She then led me toward a crowd of men. Then she added, “Man drought my ass. Statistics don't mean anything. I'll prove it.”

Soon enough, Alice had made friends with a group of four young men, all in business suits. She had the whole group in rapt attention as she started telling how she once got a judge to let a drug dealer go because of a lack of evidence, and the drug dealer promptly offered to thank her by giving her an ounce of blow. They were enthralled and impressed.

“That's awesome, really,” one of the exceptionally handsome men said.

“It's impressive, to be so young and so accomplished,” another said.

Jim back home must have been doing something good for Alice, because at that moment she didn't feel the need to lie or minimize herself in any way. She felt good enough about herself to just blurt out the truth. “Well, I'm not that young. I'm thirty-eight.”

All the blokes looked incredulous. The exceptionally handsome one said, “I thought you were around thirty-two!”

“I reckoned you were about thirty,” the shorter, stockier one said. Their two mates murmured in agreement.

“No. Thirty-eight.” And then Alice had to drag me into it. “Julie here is thirty-eight, too.”

Now, let's be honest, the only correct response from any man at that moment would be a gigantic display of disbelief, which they all thankfully made.

I always feel so guilty at how pleased I am when someone thinks I look much younger than I am. As if it's such a disgrace to just look your age. Every time I say “thank you” when someone says I look much younger than I am, I always think,
We both just acknowledged that it's terrible for a woman to be old.

“Wow, you both look great for your age,” the short, stocky one said. Somehow, just by the detached way he said that, I suddenly felt ancient. The music started to get louder and people were begining to dance. Suddenly, two of the men seemed to have somewhere else in the room they urgently needed to be. The exceptionally handsome blond man wasn't going to get away that easily. Alice asked him to dance. He said okay, and then, the shorter, stockier man and I stood there and stared at each other until I asked him if he wanted to dance. He politely said yes.

Alice and I got on the dance floor with these two men. Now, I don't want to brag, but Alice and I know how to dance. We don't go crazy on the dance floor, nothing embarrassing, mind you, we're just two girls who have a little bit of rhythm. “Groove Is in the Heart” was playing, and who doesn't love to dance to that? Alice and I were boogying away, shaking our hips and moving our feet, clapping our hands a bit, but the men were just shuffling their feet a little. Okay, they're not dancers, that's fine. But it immediately put a damper on the boogying vibe. I started to shake my hips a little less, move my feet a little slower. Alice, on the other hand, kept at it, dancing closer to the handsome guy, putting her hand on his hip for a moment, then taking it away and swirling around. She wasn't making a fool of herself by any means. She was just out there having fun. But Handsome Guy didn't seem to want to play along. I was still having fun because I love the song, but it was hard not to notice that Short-Stocky Guy was looking above my head as he danced with me, not making eye contact with me at all. Now, here's what I love about dancing: it's a time when you can feel free and sexy and flirty with someone you might not necessarily even be interested in. Like kissing in Rio, it's a great way to rev up your sexy engine without having to actually sleep with someone you don't want to.

So I was looking at Short-Stocky Guy, smiling, trying to be friendly and flirty. He had very closely cropped hair and a big round, ruddy face. He smiled back at me, briefly, and he went back to sort of staring four feet over my head. It was pretty disconcerting. So when the song ended I was planning on just getting off the dance floor and away from Stocky Guy. But then “Hey Ya” by Outkast came on, and I really,
really
love to dance to that. So I kept dancing, not giving Stocky Guy a chance to slip away.

As I was bouncing up and down, I made a moment of eye contact with Stocky Guy and smiled. He just sort of ignored me and again turned his attention to four feet above my head. In that split second I knew exactly what was going on:
He did not find me even remotely sexually attractive.
Of course I've felt that before, on dates, in conversations, but never on the dance floor doing my sexy moves. A wave of humiliation came over me.

“You're reading too much into it,” Alice said later as we waited for our Sammy's at the bar. “He didn't like to dance. I had the same experience with my guy. That's why he just swayed back and forth to the music. You don't see me taking it personally.”

“Alice, he stared above my head the whole time. ABOVE MY HEAD.” I was practically shrieking.

We drank our wine, which was delicious. The music was still really great for dancing.

“Let's go dance by ourselves,” Alice suggested. “Fuck these guys.”

I looked around at all the beautiful people. This was my first night in Sydney and I was damned if I was going to have a bad time because of some Above-the-Head-Starer. We set our wine down and headed out to the dance floor.

I was still on a roll. Yelling over the music, I said, “I'm telling you, if I was on fire, that guy wouldn't have gone near me to put it out.”

Alice yelled back, “I'm telling you, Julie. Some guys just don't like to dance! It has
nothing
to do with you.”

Just then, my eyes glanced past Alice. There was the short-stocky-above-my-head guy doing the cabbage patch with a twenty-two-year-old blond pixie. He was perspiring, he was dancing so hard. From the expression on my face, Alice turned around and saw him. She turned back to me, speechless. Then, at the same time, we looked to our left and saw Exceptionally Handsome Guy grinding a woman on the dance floor. He had his hands on her hips and his pelvis was thrust close into hers. He must have met her about three and a half minutes ago. His hands moved toward the side of her face and he kissed her. They stopped dancing and they just began making out on the dance floor. Alice saw this. And this is another reason why I love Alice. She knows when to admit defeat. She leaned in to me and said, “Let's get the fuck out of here.”

Back in the States

The cutest thing about Georgia's date was that he was nervous. Shy. This was Sam's first date since his divorce four months ago and he seemed like a boy at his high school prom. They had been set up by Alice, who knew Sam from her days in Legal Aid. Now that she and Jim were “exclusive,” Alice had a lot of extra time and energy to dedicate to finding other people boyfriends.

They were at an out-of-the-way little restaurant on a block Georgia had never heard of, Tudor Place, which was slightly elevated above the rest of the neighborhood. This allowed for a 360-degree view of New York at night, with one side featuring the United Nations building looming above like a giant. Georgia was entranced. The restaurant was all candles and drapery, which made the room feel as if you were in some sheik's love tent. Sam took charge and ordered a bottle of wine for them, which impressed Georgia immediately. Dale knew a lot about wine and she had to admit, it was something she always liked about him. Actually, it was something she always liked about
them.
Before the kids, they would take wine-tasting classes at the local wine store and once even went to Sonoma for a wine-tasting vacation.

Tonight Sam ordered a lovely Shiraz, and then he began his adorable, completely winning confession.

“This is my first date since my divorce, and I'm really, really nervous. I tried on three different shirts before I left the house.” He was smiling, his eyes looking at his hands, which were drumming nervously on the table.

Georgia liked him already. An honest, vulnerable man who knew about wine.

“Well, you look perfect.”

And he did. He was a tall beanpole of a man, with beautiful sleek brown hair, that came down just past his ears. He looked a little like James Taylor, if James Taylor still had hair.

“Thank you.” Sam looked up at Georgia, and then back down at his hands.

“Alice told me that you were really beautiful and smart, so I knew the pressure was on.” Sam now looked straight at Georgia. “I just didn't know how beautiful you actually were going to be.” He nervously pushed his hair back away from his face. “Thanks for agreeing to have dinner with me. I really appreciate it.”

Georgia laughed. “I'm not doing it as a favor. You sounded nice on the phone and Alice said you were great.”

Sam laughed, embarrassed. “Right. I guess I shouldn't sound so pathetic, right? It's just, going through a divorce, and the unhappy years of a marriage, well, it kind of undermines your confidence, you know?”

Georgia nodded slowly and said, “Oh yes. I know.”

But what she was really thinking, while she looked at him, was, Guileless. He was completely without guile or pretense. He was a grown-up, openhearted man who told her she was beautiful and practically blushed. She wanted to dart him, cage him, and bring him back to her place, where she could keep him to herself, unspoiled by the outside world. As they ate their dinner, she learned that he was from the Midwest, which perhaps explained a lot. His manners were impeccable. He was kind to the waitress but he also had a dry sense of humor that amused Georgia to no end. Best of all, when he spoke of his ex-wife, it was clear that it pained him to say anything bad about her; it was well into the conversation before Georgia got out of him that his wife had cheated on him. Many times. They talked and talked, sharing their personal stories about their marriages and how they ended, and besides being completely smitten, Georgia was totally impressed. Somehow this man managed to make being a beleaguered, cuckolded, mistreated husband—hot. He was noble and kind and funny with just enough self-awareness of the absurdity of it all to be utterly charming about his disastrous wreck of a marriage and fifteen lost years. They finished dinner and ordered another bottle of wine. They drank that and were both officially a little drunk. He waited while Georgia got in her cab and kissed her good night. And then, with complete sincerity, Sam told her he had had a great time and would love to see her again. They made a date for exactly a week later, which seemed like a long time away to Georgia, but she knew he was new to this whole dating thing, so she didn't want to push. Georgia went upstairs to her apartment, paid the babysitter, and went to bed, happy. There was hope now and hope's name was Sam.

Back in Australia

I got up early the next morning to search for more statistics. I couldn't get enough of them. While I was surfing the Web for “man drought,” there was one writer whose articles kept coming up. Her name was Fiona Crenshaw from Tasmania (a small island off the coast of southern Australia) and she wrote articles for the single ladies of Australia. She did it with cheeky Australian humor, but was adamant that no matter how bad the drought, the ladies must remember that they're
Goddesses,
that they mustn't settle, and must stay positive. She gave one woman the earth-shattering advice that—get this—
she has to love herself.
Isn't that novel? Apparently, as long as you love yourself the men are going to start lining up in droves.

This irritated me immensely. I sat on my bed, listening to Alice purr, and felt furious. Here's a woman who was reciting the statistics in her columns, but telling the ladies to love themselves and “stay positive” anyway. If there were a starving village, with no food in sight, no one in their right mind would tell the village that all they had to do was love themselves and think positively and food would show up. But love has a mystical quality about it that makes us feel we can ignore the cold hard facts—one of them being that there aren't enough men out there.

Luckily, I didn't have to think about this for long, because our hostess, Rachel, called to brighten my day.

“My friend, Will, wants to take you out on his boat today. Can you two make it? It seems like it's going to be a super day for that.”

“Really? He wants to take us out on his boat?”

“Yes, he's a businessman, so he loves doing all this networking rubbish.”

“But he knows that Alice and I aren't necessarily…”

“Oh please, you're writing a book about dating. Who doesn't love that? He's going to bring some of his mates on board so you can get the male perspective on it.”

“Well, that's awfully nice…” I wasn't used to all this generosity. I'm a New Yorker and we're all too busy to be that accommodating to anyone.

“See you at two at the hotel. The boat will pick you up right there.” And she hung up.

His boat was a Donzi—a speedboat that looked very expensive and went very fast. We were rocketing around the harbor, our skin getting pushed back on our faces as the wind hit us, our hair getting knotted and gnarled. Will showed us where Russell Crowe lived (good going, Russell) and he pointed out the building that Rupert Murdoch owned. He also had brought along two of his mates, John and Freddie. They were in their early thirties, handsome, and, from what I could gather, extremely rich. John was the first swarthy man I had seen in Sydney, looking almost Italian. Freddie was a member of the family that Rachel worked for. In his own right, Freddie owned or partly owned five or six restaurants or hotels in downtown Sydney alone. He reminded me a bit of Lance Armstrong: tall, slim, confident, and kind of an asshole. He had narrow eyes and the ability never to crack a smile or look at you directly. I took one look at these handsome, rich gentlemen who live in the middle of a man drought and saw them as one thing and one thing only:
kids in a candy store.