The Blonde Theory (3 page)

I blamed Peter. Okay, so none of this was
actually
his fault, but I had decided long ago that I would blame him anyhow. He made a good scapegoat. I mean, c’mon, what kind of a guy just walks away one day because his live-in girlfriend gets a promotion and a raise? Why couldn’t he just tell me that with every success I had, he felt just the teensiest bit more emasculated? If I’d known, I wouldn’t have kept talking about the things that made me happy at work. I wouldn’t have invited him to my work parties and let my colleagues talk me up. I mistook his mounting discomfort for happiness somehow, deceived myself into believing that for the first time, I was with someone who was
proud
of my accomplishments rather than terrified by them. My mistake.

And so I came home from work each day and, horror of all horrors, told him about my day, which I now recognized as tactical error number one. I told him about all my hopes and dreams—tactical error number two. And then I had the nerve, the gall, the indecency, to go after what I wanted and to make partner at my firm, which came with a lot more prestige and a nice pay hike. Clearly that had been the biggest tactical error of all. Perhaps Peter had been clinging to the hope that I would one day see the light, decide to leave my legal career, and become a stay-at-home mom, like all the good little girls his buddies were dating.

It would have been nice if he had consulted me about that plan.

Now I knew better. The more successful I was at work, the less successful I was at dating. It was a simple causal relationship, and somehow I had only recently managed to wrap my mind around its logic. Perhaps I wasn’t as smart as the senior partners at my firm thought I was, or I surely would have figured this all out sooner.

The irony of it all was that none of the men at work—who were my professional peers—would ever understand how I felt. That’s because they were the victors in the world’s most unfair double standard. All of my male co-workers—even Mort Mortenson, with his enormous belly, ubiquitous suspenders, and ridiculous comb-over—had pretty little pixies of wives ten, twenty, or even thirty years their junior. Many of the secretaries at the firm (all female, of course) considered themselves the dating pool for the firm’s young, overworked
male
attorneys, and more than one conference room secretary-on-associate scandal had inexplicably blossomed into marriage.

But wonder of all wonders, there were no men in the I-want-to-date-an-attorney secretary pool. Or at the bar in the building next door to our Wall Street high-rise, where women waited to pick up the attorneys and bankers who filtered out of our building each evening. Or in any bar, bookstore, coffee shop, or apartment party I’d ever been to in New York so far.

I was beginning to run out of options. Or maybe I already had.

O
F COURSE
I didn’t realize then, in my hungover, brownie-stuffed state, hunched over a plate of too-runny eggs, soggy hash browns, and a mug of coffee as big as my throbbing head, that this would be the brunch that would change my life. Or at least my
dating
life. But I guess I had underestimated Meg, fresh out of any Advil or Neosporin to heal the sting of repeated rejection, who of course couldn’t stand for any of the people she loved to be unhappy. I thought, sometimes, that she should run for president. We’d achieve world peace in no time, because Meg wouldn’t sleep until every last person on the planet had a smile on his or her face. She would sit down personally with Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein and Tran Duc Luong, bake them cookies, talk to them in that soothing tone of hers, and get them to see the light. They’d be having tea and biscuits in her living room and signing peace treaties in no time. That’s just the way she was.

Clearly, in retrospect, I should have been wary of the pleased expression on her face as Emmie and Jill discussed my singledom and I cracked self-effacing jokes at my own expense.

“Maybe you shouldn’t tell them what you do for a living,” Emmie was suggesting helpfully as I tried steadfastly to ignore her unsolicited help. “I mean, that seems to be what scares them away, you know.”

“What, so I’m supposed to lie?” I asked petulantly, pushing my eggs around on my plate with considerably more violence than they deserved.

“I don’t know,” Emmie said. She shook her head. “Not necessarily
lie
. Maybe just not bring it up.”

“But I
don’t
bring it up,” I protested. “You know that, Em. In fact, I avoid it for as long as I can. But it always comes up. How could it not?”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t tell them,” Jill chimed in. “Even if they ask.”

I shook my head. “It’s part of who I am,” I said stubbornly. “I don’t want to lie about that. Why is it so scary anyhow?” After all, even if it
was
the death knell to my love life, I was proud to be a lawyer. It’s what I had wanted to do since I was a little girl, and I had done it, even though there had been lots of people who had tried to discourage me along the way. I was happy with my job, and I didn’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to at least mention it. It was a part of
me.

“Men are jerks,” Emmie said simply. “They’re scared to be with a woman they feel at all threatened by. And lots of them feel threatened by women who are smarter or more successful than them.”

“So basically, it would be easier to get dates if I were just a dumb blonde,” I muttered, reaching up to tug at my naturally blonde hair, which, almost unfortunately, hadn’t actually succeeded in making me less smart. So much for the theory that blondes have more fun. I was the walking antithesis to
that
. “Because then I wouldn’t be the Scary Lawyer Lady. Is that what you’re saying?”

The girls were silent for a moment.

“No, not necessarily,” Jill said uncomfortably. Emmie looked nervous, and Meg looked lost in thought. I knew what they were thinking, and they were right. It sure
would
be a lot easier if I didn’t have anything going on north of my neckline. Whoever thought that intelligence—and the courage to go after what I wanted—would wind up being such a curse?

“Say that again,” Meg said finally, breaking the stifling silence and turning to me with a gleam in her eye that made me a bit uneasy.

“Say what?” I asked, looking from Jill to Emmie, who shrugged.

“What you said a second ago,” Meg said, sounding excited.

“What, that it would be easier to get dates if I were just a dumb blonde?” I glanced at her nervously. I knew Meg well enough to know that I should be more than a bit worried about the look on her face. I’d seen that look before. And it never ended well.

“Yes!” she said triumphantly, grinning at us and clapping her hands with glee.

“What’s wrong with you?” Emmie asked, staring at Meg skeptically. “You’re being weird.”

“Nothing’s
wrong
!” she exclaimed. “I just had the best idea! For ‘Dating Files’!”

“Dating Files” was one of the sections that Meg edited in
Mod
magazine. Each month, a different dating topic or strategy was dis-cussed. To be honest, I thought it was sort of ridiculous. I mean, I’d been reading “Dating Files” since Meg started working at
Mod,
and look where it had gotten me. Absolutely nowhere. I had even resorted to taking notes on the columns in one particularly discouraging dateless slump in my late twenties—and still nothing.

“I’m trying to assign out ‘Dating Files’ for August, and none of our stringers’ suggestions or the suggestions we came up with at the editorial meetings really struck me as right,” Meg bubbled on. “But this. This is perfect!”

“What’s perfect?” I asked slowly, knowing Meg well enough to be feeling just the teensiest bit apprehensive as she grinned at me like a lunatic. I had a bad feeling about whatever was about to come out of her mouth.

“You’ll write ‘Dating Files’ for the August issue!” Meg said, clapping her hands again.

“I will?” I didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about, but I knew I would have remembered agreeing to pen a column for her.

She just kept on talking, as if she hadn’t heard me. “It’s perfect,” she said gleefully. “You can try dating like a dumb blonde for two weeks and write for
Mod
about how it changed your life!”

“What are you talking about?” I asked slowly. “And what exactly is dating like a dumb blonde?”

Meg shrugged and thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know, just acting ditzy, vacant, airheaded,” she said finally. “Stereotypically blonde. No offense to the three of you.” The three blondes at the table—me, Emmie, and Jill (who wasn’t really a natural blonde, but who was keeping track?)—exchanged glances. “We’ll iron out the details later,” Meg continued excitedly. “But you’re not allowed to say you’re a lawyer. You’re not allowed to say anything smart. Just act brainless and see how it changes your life.”

“Why would I want to do that?” I asked dubiously. Emmie and Jill were both grinning and nodding with what appeared to be agreement to Meg’s harebrained plan.

“Because it’s about time you put your money where your mouth is, Harper Roberts,” Meg said, suddenly as stern and as mother-like as I’d ever seen her. “You’re always talking about how it would be so much easier to date if guys didn’t feel so threatened by you and your job and your intelligence. Well, let’s see.”

“I don’t think so,” I said skeptically. It sounded insane. How was I supposed to be a dumb blonde? I wasn’t a dumb blonde. Besides, wasn’t the whole concept offensive anyhow?

“Ooh, you should do it, Harper!” Emmie said excitedly, tossing her own blonde curls.

“We’ll call it The Blonde Theory,” Meg went on, also ignoring me and grinning like a lightbulb had just gone on in her head. “The theory that acting like a dumb blonde will make you have more success with guys. We’ll see if dumb blondes really
do
have more fun!”

“I love it!” Jill gushed, reaching across the table and squeezing my hand. “You
have
to do it.”

“The Blonde Theory?” I asked skeptically. I looked around at the three of them. Their eyes were all gleaming—with excitement or with vulture-like hunger, I couldn’t tell. They looked insane. Actually, this whole plan was insane. “No way. I’m not going to do something like that. It sounds crazy. You guys are crazy.”

“Are you scared?” Jill asked, innocently cocking her head at me, a devilish grin dancing across her face.

I turned to her. “What?” I asked sharply. She knew better than to ask that. Nothing scared me. “No,” I said defensively after a moment. “Of course not. I just think it’s a dumb idea.”

“So you’re scared,” Jill singsonged triumphantly.

I glared. “I am not.” For a moment, I felt like we were back in junior high again.

“So what’s the problem, then?” Jill pressed on. “You’re always saying that it would be easier to date if you weren’t smart or didn’t have such a good job.”

I knew she was trying to goad me into saying yes. So were Meg and Emmie, who were staying conspicuously silent as Jill pressed me.

“I don’t know...,” I said reluctantly, half swayed by Jill’s implication that I was wimping out, half swayed by the idea that maybe this
was
the way to test the theory I was always whining halfheartedly about.

“C’mon, Harper, you’ll find out once and for all if it really is easier to date if you don’t have a brain in your head,” Jill coaxed. I bit my tongue before I said something I’d regret, like something about how she had seemingly already proved this by batting her eyes right into the heart of Dr. Alec Katz, who didn’t seem all that thrilled when Jill expressed a thought or opinion of her own. Emmie, Meg, and I didn’t like him much—he seemed pompous and superficial—but we had thus far restrained ourselves from saying anything negative about him since the day Jill had announced she was marrying him.

Instead, I tried my best line of defense. “I don’t know
how
to act like a dumb blonde,” I declared with finality, looking suspiciously among the three girls. They’d clearly already made up their minds. I suddenly felt like the odd man out.

“I’ll help you, I’ll help you!” Emmie exclaimed, clearly so excited that she felt she had to announce it twice. “I’ll give you lessons!”

“She
is
an actress,” Jill pointed out helpfully. Then she paused for a moment, her eyes gleaming. When she spoke again, her words were slow and deliberate. “C’mon Harper. We
dare
you.”

I sucked in a quick breath. Oh geez. She had said the magic words.
We dare you
. I knew from the looks on Emmie’s and Meg’s faces that they’d realized what had just happened, too. It was common knowledge in our group—heck, in the whole town of Worthington, Ohio, where we had grown up—that Harper Roberts
never
turned down a dare. But this was different from the dares of our childhoods, where I was sent out to trip dumb boys in the junior high hallways or to hide frogs caught at the creek in the desk of our unpleasant science teacher. This was a
real
dare with
real
consequences.

I knew I couldn’t say no.

Three years
was
an awfully long dry spell, I had to admit. And this could be my chance to find out the truth. Were men scared away because I was smart and successful (horror of all horrors)? Or because I was
me
? The latter was a possibility I had been trying to ignore as long as possible, but maybe the problem was just that I wasn’t attractive to guys. What if, smart or dumb, they just didn’t like
me
? If I could do an experiment to control the intelligence factor, at least I’d know where the problem lay.

“Harper, you have to!” Emmie said, unaware that I had already made up my mind. “It would be so fun!”

“Two weeks?” I asked finally, trying to sound reluctant. I didn’t want the girls to know that in reality, frightening as it was, I was actually starting to embrace the idea of dating as someone other than me. After all, dating as myself hadn’t exactly been a resounding success.

“Two weeks,” Meg confirmed with a confident nod, reaching over to begin buttering her bagel.