Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (8 page)

Which brings us back to Tuesday night. He IMed saying he didn’t quite have a plan. I kind of wanted to kill him because he’s the boy, and this is his job. I just wanted to have to look cute and be smart. Despite knowing I live on the Upper West Side, he suggested the Lower East Side, which might as well be Jersey, and when I heard, “The Bowery,” I wanted to cancel. “Look, sorry to be a brat, but I’m not trekking down to the Lower East Side.” Normally, I would have swallowed it, but come on, he should’ve known better. He ought to have suggested what was convenient for me. “Well, I know you work midtown, so what do you think of this place or that place.” That is ideal. “How about someplace citysearch.com categorizes as ‘dive’ that’s completely out of your way? Sawdust is such a good time…keeps you grounded.” That was my date.

I pulled out the honesty via e-mail…it’s so much easier to be brave when you’re hiding between well-constructed sentences:

ABRASIVE BUT HONEST
.

I really needed to get the T-shirt made.

We circumvented the hurdle when he responded, “On a weekend, I’d leap at the chance to pick you up. I’m having a tough day.” When I heard “tough day,” I thought of what my father has said to me, more than once: “Hey Steph, stop being such a ball-breaker. People have tough days. Take it easy.” So Greg hit a soft spot. I could do relaxed.

Greg was one drink in when I arrived at Cibar, which he later said was “too fancy.” It was
not
fancy, unless fancy means they serve martinis in actual martini glasses. It was a normal, good, first date place, for our second date. There was no actual food served there…which is not such a good second date place. He looked the same, in an unzipped black cardigan sweater and jeans. Cute, actually. I ignored his fancy comment, we had some drinks, and then the real fun began.

“Stephanie, I could never really love a woman unless I lost her. You know, I’m the type of guy who never realizes what I have until it’s too late, until it’s gone.”

In vino veritas?

In vino, heisanass.

Okay, so, that was his way of telling me he’s still not over one of several of his exes. It was also his way of telling me he’s a big baby boy. I responded, I kid you not, with the following diatribe….

“Well, this is the part where I ask for the check.”

“Come on. Are you serious?”

“Quite. You see, I believe people when they tell me who they are. Clearly, you know you, way better than I ever could, so I’m going to take your word for it. And some boy who doesn’t know a great thing when he sees it isn’t the guy for me. I hate to use the ‘I want a man not a boy’ line, but that’s me telling you who I am.”

“Oh, come on, at least go out with me one more time.”

“Um, we’re on our second date, and we’re FIGHTING. Don’t you think that tells us something?”

“It tells me you’re smart. I mean, we’re not fighting—we’re having a discussion, and most of the girls I date don’t know how to do that.” Oh man, I knew what would come next. “You know, ’cause I date a lot of gorgeous, dumb girls.” Okay, I said he was cute, but he was in no position to say he dated a lot of anything, never mind with the word gorgeous in it.

“Um, okay. How’s that working out for you?” Then I really did ask for the check. He then tried to backpedal out of his statement, but the truth already slipped out when he was playing with the thin red straw in his nothing-but-ice-now glass.

“Please, just go out with me again?”

“The only going out with you again will consist of is going out to the street to get a cab so I can go home. Alone.” There’d be a lot of this in my future. Oh, joy to the world and the deep blue me.

ALONE, IN A GRISTEDES AISLE, I HUNTED FOR “NEEDS” INSTEAD
of “wants” while Max collected the remaining dinner ingredients. Wee-wee pads for Linus—big time need. The beauty of having a small dog is his turds are rarely bigger than baby organic carrots, so I can encourage him to make on the floor of my apartment.
Make:
I love this word. “Can you please pull over? I have to make.” “Make what?” “You know, MAKE!” I also love saying, “Baby, let’s go make it.” It’s so retro. It’s like a full-grown bush.

I was clutching rawhide chews and a thick plastic sack of Luvs diapers—because Gristedes doesn’t sell puppy training pads—when I ran into a “want.”

This is when it happens, when you’re in the grocery store! That’s what people say, right? You’ll meet him when you least expect it, when you’re in the Goya aisle. Hot Grocery Store Man catches my eye just as I approach the adobo seasoning. Our eyes lock, and I swear we both stand still, staring, too long for it to be trivialized. I look down quickly. He looks down. I was suddenly fourteen years old, carrying tampons, or worse, some sort of maxi pad box with pastel blue doves and wings. Oh Shit. He’s going to think I have a kid. And then it happened, as fast as that. Hot Grocery Store Man sees the Luvs and realizes he can’t give me
the luv
. Sigh.

How was this my life? I’d drown my sorrow in snacks. Ben & Jerry’s, Pepperidge Farm, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. The cereal aisle hosts my rebellion on its shelves. My mother never permitted sugar cereals in the house, save for Frosted Mini-Wheats, which is so not a sugar cereal by virtue of the word
wheat
in the name. I’m talking marshmallows, purple and green loops, cereal that makes the milk change color.

Along with my rebellion, the shelves hold the key to dating. Managers keep the sugar cereals and variety packs toward the bottom shelves, down near the economy-sized bags. The dancing rabbits and toucans attract kids. They needn’t reach, only grab the easiest. The sensible choices are harder to attain and often overlooked. I’m your basic high-fiber top shelfer, but most men can’t see past the chick with the nice toucans.

I’m a harder reach. Most things worth effort are, and too many men prefer the variety pack to anything with the word
millet
in it. Why elect only one cereal, no matter how good it is, to have every single day for the rest of your life when there’s a variety of other great cereals out there?

“Max, variety packs are for cowards,” I said as he stared at the one he was holding in both hands. A toothy smile escaped when he looked up at me.

“I hear it’s the spice of life.”

“Seriously. Instead of Tony the Tiger on the package, it should be the Cowardly Lion from
The Wizard of Oz
. I’ll tell you this: a man terrified of commitment invented the Variety Pak. I’d sell my hair on it. God forbid he wakes up to his favorite cereal until death do they part. No, he’s gotta surround himself with flashy empty calories.”

“Oh, puhleeeze. You’re one to talk. When we were together, you opted for variety instead of me.” Then he put on his sad face, the one he makes when he wants something, like affection, food, or a blow job.

I blasted him with a forced smile and offered, “timing,” as I batted my eyes.

“Yuh, the timing was bad,” he said while rolling his eyes, “and besides, you’re not my type.” Max put the variety pack back on the shelf and began to stroll down the aisle. Without turning to face me, he continued, “Look, put it this way, why are there like ten flavors of Coke?” He paused even though he wasn’t expecting an answer. “People like choices, but sometimes they don’t like making them.”

“Wait a minute. I’m not your type? What the hell is your type, then?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“You really have a type? I mean, really?”

“That’s not the point.”

“No, come on! You said it, now go there, you whiner.”

“Okay, I picture her.” He stood still, looking up toward the canned coffee, as if he could see her waving to him from just beyond Juan Valdez’s Colombian mountaintop. “She has dark straight hair and dark eyes.” Clearly, not me. I kind of wanted to stab him. “She’s opinionated, but she babies me. She makes fun of everyone else, so they all think she’s a bitch, but she’s super nice to me.” How can anything with a scrotum say “super nice?” “She has an addiction to giving oral sex and sex in general.”

“Well, duh.” I began walking ahead of him.

“She’s got a great set of bagpipes, is smart, and knows what a vasectomy is. And she doesn’t use words that she doesn’t know to seem smart—because she
is
smart. She has a real job. Like, she isn’t an actress or a bartender.” He held up the plastic bag of artichokes, shaking it. “She knows how to cook because I sure as hell don’t.”

“Who doesn’t know what a vasectomy is?”

“Dumb Elspbeth.” Girls with names like Elspbeth memorize Grateful Dead sets and head up Amnesty International. They don’t know from vasectomies. “She has to be loving, at least when we’re alone. Like, she has to be able to cry with me because we miss each other or something like that. She can’t be too tough in that sense.” Too tough meant me; it had to.

When Max and I were dating, he expressed his need for soft as often as he complained he was hungry. “You come off as so, so abrasive. There has to be a pile of mush in there somewhere. I just wish you’d let me see it, sweetie.” I hated this, having to manufacture feelings and invent something to foster tears and closeness. Wanna see mush? Pull up a chair and have a front seat gander at my ass. Okay there, Big Guy?

Just after splitting with Gabe, I wasn’t ready to do vulnerable again. All I wanted was affection and really good sex, the kind you could smell on your fingers and taste on your breath hours later. Sadly, Max couldn’t do dirty unless I did vulnerable first. How chicken/egg.

“Ew, Stephanie,” he had said when I asked him to talk dirty to me while I watched him masturbate. “I can’t be that open with you. I need to feel a connection first.” He was ingesting too much reality TV for any manly diet.
Connection
is right up there with
spark
, and unless you’re an electrician, it shouldn’t be uttered, not even in a whisper.

And then, in the frickin’ cereal aisle, he was talking about wanting a woman in librarian glasses who’d wear her hair in a bun, then whip him with it in bed when it all fell down. “She has dark straight hair, wears dangly earrings, and she should be a good planner,” he added. “I like plans.”

“Yes, you mentioned the straight hair before.” Jackass. “You’re too funny.” The funny part was listening to him describe me to me if only I’d get on with the Japanese hair-straightening thing and dye my hair boring.

“Bottom line, she can wear the pants, as long as she lets me get into them from time to time. Oh, and she’s a good napper, too.”

“What if she snores?”

“That’s okay.”

“Really? You can sleep through that? I can’t date a snorer. Spend the rest of my life with someone who keeps me up all the time? I doubt Linus could deal with it either. He’d crawl on the guy and try to suffocate him with his fur necklace move.”

“And then when he’d try to push Linus off, he’d get bitten in the FACE.” He enunciates face as if it’s mostly
s
’s.

“He doesn’t bite when you move him,” I reminded him.

“Yes he would, if you push his FACE.” I laugh whenever Max talks about Linus, especially when he mentions his face because when he does it, he lifts both hands into the air and pretends he’s squeezing Linus’s little mouth shut.

“You have to grab him by the belly.” Common knowledge for anyone who’s sleeping with me.

“Well, it’s dangerous when his mouth is next to your EYE.” Max shouted the word
eye
and pointed to his.

“She’d have to put up with the fact that I’m a big wimp sometimes,” I mocked in a whine.

“Think what you want, but I’m not a wimp sometimes.”

“Fine, all the time?”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Whatever,” he said smiling, making it seem like they were two words. “When I meet her, I’m going to call her Bunny.”

“You can’t pick a nickname. It just has to happen.”

“Nah, I’m going to work it in, ’cause it’s cute.”

“Alexandra calls me Cookie. Sometimes Cooks. Today she called me Cookie Monster Face, but mostly she sticks with Cookie or Cookie Face.” Alexandra was a new instant best friend who called all her girls “Cookie.” She probably heard someone else say it once, decided she liked it, and made it her own.

“I like Bunny.”

“Well, I guess I can understand Bunny for a lover, ’cause you can fuck like rabbits. But you can’t choose a nickname—it just has to happen. Like I call Linus Noodle, Bear, or Roast Beef Sandwich Head depending on my mood. I’m never called anything but Sweetie. How lame.”

“Or Red.” He pulled on a lock of my hair.

“Nah, you’d think people would call me Red, but they don’t. And I always wanted Gabe to call me Red because of
The Philadelphia Story
, with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. Grant calls her Red, and when he does it, it’s powerful and submissive all at once. Yum. I’ve never been a nickname, ever. Oh, except for Moose in high school, but we won’t talk about that. ’Cause I’ll start to cry.”

Max kissed me on my forehead. “Okay, Red, we won’t talk about that.” And with that, he skipped down the aisle, working up speed, so he could hop onto the back of the shopping cart and coast. Skipped, for the love of God and all things girly.

At that moment, seeing him ride the back of the shopping cart, I stopped walking and shook my head. How was this the same guy I’d undressed in candlelight and associated with Norah Jones songs? I wish I associated him with something less mainstream, something harder or punk. Norah Jones and baby talk. Nothing really changed from when I’d first met Max years ago; he was the same kid. Only then, it wasn’t the back of a shopping cart—he rode a skateboard around our office. He was a final-semester computer science major from Princeton interning for the summer. I was dating Gabe, but I noticed Max, the way you notice anyone who’s that good-looking. Max was a Diet Coke commercial. Dimples, bronzed arms, tough guy strut. He’s a stack of flaxen hair, indigo eyes, aquiline nose, and probably the greatest smile I’ve ever seen. He wore a thin leather rope around his neck, and sometimes I fantasized about pulling him to me by it. What I didn’t know then was he was also a cheerleader who highlighted his hair and enjoyed knitting and gardening as “favorite pastimes.” “Whatever. Cheerleading was normal where I grew up.” He grew up near Amish country, Pennsylvania. Horse-drawn vehicles, suspenders, and prayer bonnets are normal there. Candlelight, fieldwork, sewing. Cheerleading? Notsomuch. “And it’s not gardening. It’s a green thumb. Sheesh.” Yeah, and to this day, if he gets a zit on his face, he’ll tent it with a Band-Aid, cancel plans, and tell people he fell out of bed and hit his head.