Unwifeable

by Mandy Stadtmiller

  “Sometimes even younger,” he says with a smile and a wink. I take this as a guy doing a bit with me, so I “yes and” him to the ludicrous extreme.

  “You fuck kids?” I ask. “Wow, this guy fucks kids!”

  The man laughs and raises his glass to me. We are all drunk, cracking up, in hysterics, being obscene, like a scene from The Aristocrats, when Blaine turns to me and hisses, “You need to tone it down.”

  I look at him, blind from the alcohol, and get up and leave the table. He comes and finds me, where I am crying in the bathroom, enraged. I say that I’m going to go back to New York.

  “Oh, come on,” he says. “You’re acting like a hot mess.”

  “What does it matter?” I say. “Everyone’s laughing.”

  “I don’t care,” he says. “You need to stop.”

  I go back to my seat and stare down at my food the rest of dinner. The next day I apologize, but I know that the anger is coming from somewhere else. What we’re talking about doesn’t have to do with one tasteless joke to an old pervert. Blaine doesn’t approve of me in general—nor do his friends.

  Every week the ritual of doing the column starts feeling like an exercise in self-immolation. I can never write about the issues that I’m actually concerned about in the relationship. His urging of me to exercise more, the little white lies I catch him in. And mostly, his pointed censoring of my writing, which even now fascinates me. It’s so interesting to see what is shameful in someone else’s eyes. What we must do anything to deny, lest the world know that sometimes bad choices and bad things happen. Blaine’s editing notes read like:

  • “What’s the point of writing that you were so drunk that you don’t remember having sex except to call attention to yourself and know that someone is going to read that sentence over seven times?”

  • “Can you change ‘porn fetish loop in your brain’ to something tamer?”

  • “Can you not imply that you went back to that guy’s hotel room?”

  • “Can you take out the nipples thing?”

  Rather than seeing these issues as the problems they are, I decide that the column is the problem and that I must find a way to change it lest I ruin my secret relationship, which I hope against hope will someday turn into a legitimate public union.

  One weekend just the two of us travel to Newport, looking at potential houses Blaine might buy for fun, and I feel a wave of smug confidence. He’s taking me house hunting. Me. I’m like the best fake wife ever. I cannot screw this up. I need to take action right now to change the future of About Last Night lest I suffer another “Fakin’ It for Super Preppy”–size disaster.

  Inspired and overconfident, I email my editor Lauren, being sure to mention that we are just having a chill Newport house-hunting weekend together, NBD, what are you doing by the way? I suggest that I think it’s best if we change my column into a weekly advice piece instead of a tell-all about my romantic life. Oh, the arrogance. There is no better way to piss off an editor than to assume that you have any say at all in changing the entire direction of something you were very lucky to get in the first place.

  Lauren writes back to say we should discuss it in person. I forward everything on to Mackenzie, who asks if I will be okay if Lauren doesn’t want it to continue. But I am in a delusion of my own making, and I hardly even think of this as a possibility.

  “I’m sure she will be open to it,” I tell Mackenzie. “I mean, I’m not worried.”

  But Mackenzie calls it. Lauren has no interest in anything other than what the column has always been. So we make plans to discontinue it after it has reached a year of running, and I will announce the end of it within the pages of the Post.

  It feels like a risk, but also like a relief. Blaine seems pleased at the idea of no longer being written about every week, but I notice he is also twitchy and stressed, as if I now expect something from him. Instead of expressing how I really feel, I provide nothing but reassurance to him, as always.

  “I just think we should give this a chance, outside of the pages of the Post,” I tell him, patting his hand as we share a bottle of prosecco. “Don’t worry. I don’t expect anything. No pressure. I’m doing this for me.”

  I am utterly and completely full of shit. I expect everything.

  In my final About Last Night, I position it as the breakup that Super Preppy didn’t expect—but the breakup is with the column, not him, do you get it?

  * * *

  ONE NIGHT AFTER many martinis, I engage in a long conversation at Langan’s with Post editor in chief Col Allan, and I tell him boldly all about The Secret and vision boards I have made to try to get Blaine to propose. (Oh, and I don’t remember this part, but Mackenzie tells me later that I also apparently tell him that when I’m drunk I call phone sex lines. So that’s good.)

  “You should do a vision board for increasing the newspaper’s circulation,” I slur. “Seriously. I’ll show you the one I made up with a bunch of engagement rings and stuff for Blaine.”

  Col chuckles, and the next day, I triumphantly bring my big dumb hot-pink floppy poster board into the office and ask his assistant to give it to him. Honestly, I have a lot of drinking regrets, but thinking about this grizzled, legendary Australian newspaperman receiving my ridiculous vision board covered in Tiffany rings and Vera Wang gowns still makes me laugh to this day.

  But when Blaine comes home with me to San Diego for his second Christmas with the Stadtmillers, it provides me with a small revelation that is a wake-up call and counterpoint to any vision-board delusions. There is a moment late at night in our austere hotel room after we’ve made all the visiting family rounds together.

  “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” Blaine begins, “but I have to ask because it’s been on my mind. If we break up, you’re not going to try to get revenge or anything, are you?”

  It feels like a knife to the stomach.

  “No,” I say coldly. “Do you want to break up?”

  “Not at all,” he says. “I just wanted to ask because it was on my mind.”

  “Why would you ask that?”

  “I just wanted to put my mind at ease.”

  Blaine’s doubts make me see very clearly where all this is coming from. It’s not even Blaine’s anxiety. He’s a fairly roll-with-the-punches kind of dude. It’s coming from all those people around him who are concerned about me. And make those concerns known any chance that they get.

  That will never go away, I realize, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve already given up the column. I’ve broached the idea of breaking up with him several times when he expressed doubts. And now here we are in San Diego with my family, and I see that all of that is fairly worthless.

  * * *

  IN ALL OF my stories for the Post, I cover dating and relationships so much that sometimes it feels impossible to not let them worm their way into my head—and stay there permanently.

  That’s the case with Sherry Argov’s opus Why Men Marry Bitches. I hold on to the book, and the longer Blaine and I date, the more I find myself consulting its pages, wondering if there might be something to the advice.

  One day, I find myself greedily flipping through the manual, perusing sections about the importance of interjecting the word fun into conversation as much as possible (a man’s “favorite word”!), how bitch stands for “Babe in Total Control of Herself,” when suddenly the headline of chapter 8 catches my eye: “From ‘I Might’ to ‘I Do’: How to Have the Delicate Conversations About Engagement and Marriage.”

  Whoa! Holy crap. Now this is exactly what I need. I just didn’t have the right speech and talking points! That’s all it’s been this whole time. Above all else, the book advises, if engagement is your goal and it doesn’t seem to be happening, you best make yourself scarce to your significant other when you’re wanting him to pop the question.

  When I finally gather the courage to try to casually drop some amalgam of all this advice on Blaine, I review my notes, and m
y spiel comes out like, “I’m having so much fun. You’re so much fun. I love that about you. How fun you are. I don’t want you to do anything you’re not ready for, but we might want different things. I’m having a really fun time, and I mean, I’ll be fine no matter what, but I want you to be honest with yourself about where you see this going.”

  I consult the book later after I’ve given my super-casual speech and see this warning: “A strong woman does not hint about marriage or ask, ‘Where is this going?’ Instead, she hints about the removal of herself from the relationship. The word marriage never even comes up.”

  Oh, well, fuck it all to hell. At least I didn’t use the word marriage specifically. And quadruple points to me for using “fun” four times. Men just love fun.

  Blaine’s reaction to all of this is to clear out a drawer in his giant loft where I can put three to four dresses and a few pairs of underwear. I’m elated, to the moon, until I tell my mom, who can’t stop herself from being sarcastic.

  “Wow,” she says. “A whole drawer.”

  Oh, right. A drawer.

  On Valentine’s Day, I disregard the rules of the book entirely, and I just straight-up ask him, “Are you going to ask me to marry you?”

  “Thinking about it,” Blaine says.

  I hear his words, I know what he means, and I don’t like it. He’s not even doing anything wrong. I am the one at fault for staying in this fucking thing. The problem is the power dynamic I’ve set up: He’s not trying to prove himself to me. He’s deciding if I’m good enough for him. Because, let’s be honest, I don’t think I’m good enough for him. Otherwise, I would have left long ago.

  * * *

  NOW, IF YOU’VE cringed at things I’ve written so far in this book, prepare to have a full-on heart attack as you read the final plea I send Blaine suggesting he both launch a lifestyle brand based on the “Super Preppy” moniker I gave him in my dating column—and propose to me.

  Yes, you read that right. I hold myself in such low regard that I think that I need to show him what an amazing limited-time offer I’m selling and to prove, once and for all, why I am indeed so wifeable. Because it can’t just be that he loves me. No, I’m far too practical for that.

  In fact, the two things are so completely intertwined in my mind, I can’t even distinguish between where my relationship begins and my ambitious career striverism and potential to be a marketing “value add” ends.

  The subject line to my email is a forward: “Fw: Superpreppy.com—Protect your brand today.”

  Because I have—wait for it—actually registered for him “superpreppy.com”—as some weird ultimatumish-y present. The idea is that since he is getting more into entrepreneurship, I suggest he can spin off a lifestyle brand based on the Post column name.

  My email to him reads like the perfect sludgy storm of soul-dead, car-salesman-like career opportunism and my worst romantic hardball bottom-lining tendencies. It’s enough to make you want to stab your eyes out via pure mortification by proxy.

  Hi Blaine. This is an email that you are welcome to discard—but I had a realization tonight as I was whining to a friend about, “I just feel like it’s now or never with Blaine . . .” and she was mostly quiet and said nothing, and then she said, “It’s funny—because you guys are so sophisticated, but then in this way you are so typically male and female.”

  Maybe that’s when it hit me. Is that I’m 33, and you are 39, and as much as romance is fun and stewing is fun and pining is fun and the titillation of will you/won’t you is fun, I’m over it. I thrive when I have forward movement. And right now, I don’t feel any. You are adorable for cleaning out that drawer. This email is a lot more than that drawer.

  It’s a bunch of ideas.

  You can ignore them. But I’m letting you know where I’m coming from. Because I have dreams. I have like recurring dreams about you proposing. It’s making me crazy. And—dude—one thing to be clear on, I am fine if you don’t—but let’s decide now. Or soon. Let’s—or rather, YOU—please, decide soon.

  So, in the spirit of symbolic forward movement, I just registered the domain name superpreppy.com.

  Here are a few ideas I have.

  1. I think that you should propose to me.

  2. I think you should do so soon.

  3. I think we should meet with a media investor at your fancy impressive place, and he can meet you and be wowed by you, and we can say that we have some big news on the horizon and then he will have the heads-up to write the post when we are linked as being engaged on Facebook. You can then announce that you are launching a lifestyle site on superpreppy.com. It’ll be like PerezHilton.com—for the preppy lifestyle.

  4. If you don’t feel comfortable being linked on Facebook, then I question you ultimately feeling comfortable being in the Times with me as your spouse.

  5. I think that if we get married—possibly even as early as this summer (this would allow you to get my health insurance right away), we could plan to have a small garden wedding at your mother’s house in E. Hampton with just your immediate family and my immediate family.

  6. As I said above—re: all of this, if we break up tomorrow, that is totally cool. Seriously. These are ideas.

  7. Ideally, I would like a Tiffany Setting engagement ring—no cheap flower-stand roses, please. (To use an analogy.)

  8. I will happily sign a prenup agreement saying I want none of your money. As I said over a year ago, the only reason I even have you pay for dinner and drinks is simply because I cannot keep up financially with this level of leisure.

  This is all. Thanks for listening—and thanks for the fun times so far.

  Mandy

  Are you dead? Did you die? Because I did, and I do every time I look at this hot garbage fire of an email. Every time I think I am done feeling physical revulsion, I slap myself on the forehead yet again. “You can have a site like PerezHilton! I want the Tiffany Setting ring!”

  Soon after sending this, I go over to Blaine’s place, and he tells me he thought the email was “funny.” We never discuss it again. Maybe if I had about eighty more bullet points. That would have done the trick.

  Not too long after, we go to Stratton, Vermont, to go skiing with all his friends. I go out and buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of wintry clothes to try to look like it’s not my second time skiing in my life, along with a pair of Timberlands so I don’t wipe out in the snow.

  As the weekend progresses, as per usual, there is a heavy amount of drinking. After five or six gin sours on the first night there, I’m nice and loose. By midnight, I’m suggesting a game of truth or dare in the hot tub and making out with one of the girls in the house who is a drop-dead gorgeous blonde and a hard-core Republican.

  “It’s so funny,” she says the next day as we laugh about it over coffee. “I’ve made out with a girl one other time, and she was also a six-foot-two blonde.”

  “I guess that’s our thing,” I say.

  While this debauchery is totally enjoyable, I also think I am impetuously trying to show Blaine what a cool, fun party girl I am, and how he will have the best time ever with me if he does decide to propose.

  It’s in many ways even more thirsty than that shit show of an email I sent.

  Soon after, when Blaine and I go to another party in Brooklyn, we get incredibly drunk on draft beers, and a friend of mine from college, Katie, and I are dancing hot and heavy under the neon lights of the rave-like atmosphere of the Bell House.

  As our dancing grows increasingly flirtatious and sexual, I ask Katie and then Blaine if they’d want to have a three-way. Everyone is on board. So we all pile together into a cab to head back to Blaine’s loft, where I proceed to ravish Katie—which is pretty fun, actually—as Blaine watches and occasionally joins in.

  Going full-on Caligula is always a good time, but let’s be real, I know what I’m doing. I might as well start bringing in a cavalcade of porn stars to start pleasuring Blaine when I’m not there—that’s how bad I want his appr
oval and commitment and to “close the sale.”

  We go to East Hampton soon after, and my stupid non-ultimatum ultimatum is still hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles. I find myself unable to concentrate on anything.

  “I want it to be summer,” Blaine observes, without a care in the world, as the March winds whip around his sprawling estate.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” I ask, not able to follow one train of thought for too long.

  To combat this problem, I decide to do a detox. I don’t allow myself any alcohol, caffeine, flour, or sugar like I did before in Brazil. Let’s see how long I can go this time.

  By the time Blaine’s fortieth birthday rolls around, I feel slightly reinvigorated. The months-in-the-planning party is a formal affair with his relatives, closest friends, and, of course, his mother. I’m pumped to go, and when I do, I am seated next to an old family friend of Blaine’s.

  He’s a lawyer, he tells me. I introduce myself, and he grins.

  “Oh—I know who you are,” he says.

  I’m so thrilled. This means Blaine has been telling old family friends all about his awesome girlfriend!

  “You do?” I ask, my eyes lighting up.

  “Yeah,” he says. “Blaine was going to ask me to draw something up to ask you to never write about him again.”

  I can feel the tears welling, so I stab my hand with my fingernails until it bleeds. I am not going to cry over this. The internal mortification is enough.

  I confront Blaine about it later, and he says he’s not sure what the guy was referring to—maybe it was something he mentioned when we first started dating? Which confuses me, because I was the one who tried to end it then, and he made a concerted effort to keep it going.

  Unsurprisingly, this birthday evening humiliation—along with all the other little slights I’ve felt and enabled—feels like a death by a thousand cuts.

  I revert to my spend-less-time-with-Blaine-to-make-him-love-me strategy. About a month later, when I am booked to perform at a comedy show with several friends, I ask comedian Jessica Delfino to hang out with me afterward instead of just heading straight over to Blaine’s. I’m feeling amped, and the show was so fun it’s like I’m on a natural high soon to be enhanced even further by many unnatural ones. This is the night I finally throw my “detox” to the wind. As we down our first of many martinis, I tell her we should take sexy pictures of ourselves sipping them, and I’ll post them on Facebook to make Blaine jealous.