The Blonde Theory

by Kristin Harmel

  “Patience, Harper, patience. And no, we can’t wait until tomorrow. Tonight’s the first night of The Blonde Theory, and that means you have to start playing the part today. The girls will kill me if we show up and you’re still the same old Harper. I promised them a dumb blonde, and a dumb blonde they will have.”

  I sighed. She had a point.

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly. I took a deep breath and resigned myself to whatever it was I had gotten myself into. “What do I have to do?”

  Chapter Four

  By the time I had left the soap-opera set, the promised roast beef sandwich in hand, Emmie had taught me how to insert the word like into sentences every few words instead of speaking concisely, to bat my eyes shyly rather than stare people down confidently, to carry myself with my bosom thrust perkily upward instead of standing with my shoulders back and my head held high. She had taught me how to gaze at someone in consternation over simple points rather than following every move in a conversation, to exclaim, mystified, “I don’t understand!,” and to speak an octave higher than normal instead of keeping my voice low and assured. She had even talked me through fictitious backgrounds in my new profession. I was now Harper Roberts, New York Knicks City Dancer.

  Not that that was even realistic. Thirty-five-year-old women who hadn’t seen the inside of a gym in months couldn’t pass for NBA dancers, could they? But Emmie dismissed my objections out of hand.

  In short, Emmie had taught me how to be the complete opposite of me. And I was doing a frighteningly good job of it. As I’d looked at myself in the mirror, the fuchsia dress clinging to my curves, my hair teased with a can of Aqua Net and false eyelashes that looked like giant spiders glued to my eyelids, I almost believed that I was a few tuna cans short of a Jessica Simpson. I even felt dumber as I trudged back to my office that afternoon—having changed back into my suit—chomping hungrily on my sandwich and dreading the evening ahead.

  YOU MIGHT wonder why I feel that I need to resort to something as drastic as The Blonde Theory. After all, you might say, She seems to have it pretty much together. Why does she feel like she has to fake being someone else?

  Easy for you to say. You don’t have a dating history that reads like a train wreck. Or maybe you do. But if that’s the case, you probably wouldn’t be asking me why I’m trying out The Blonde Theory. Right?

  Okay, let’s just study this for a moment:

  Boyfriend Number One: Jack. I’m eighteen; he’s twenty-two; we seem to be a perfect match. He looks into my eyes, tells me he loves me, sends me flowers, writes me love letters...and then seven months into our relationship announces that he’d like to get married and have kids soon. “But, Jack,” I say, “I want to finish college. I want to go to law school. I’m not ready for kids yet.” He protests; I relent and say that maybe I’ll think about it once I’ve finished college, because after all, I’m only eighteen, and I don’t realize that you aren’t supposed to give up all your dreams just because the guy you stare dreamily at says so. No, he tells me, I want kids within a year. “But, Jack,” I say again, “I’m not ready.” Three weeks later, Jack calls and tells me that God spoke to him in the car and told him that Southern Baptists (which he is) shouldn’t date Catholics (which I am). Two months later, he’s planning his wedding to Southern Baptist Suzy, a month after that they’re married, nine months later they welcome Jack Jr. into the world. Okay, I think. It’s not me. It’s a religious thing. It’s not about me.

  Boyfriend Number Two: James. I’m nineteen. He’s twenty-three. The complete opposite of Jack. Probably never seen the inside of a church. Good, I think. God won’t speak to him in the car. We date for two years. James works as a newspaper reporter in Columbus. When I find out the spring of my final year that I’ve gotten into Harvard Law, I’m ecstatic. James is upset. “But you were supposed to stay here and go to law school in Ohio,” he says, sulking over the celebratory champagne I ordered to break the great news to him. I never said that, I protest. It’s always been my dream to go to Harvard. “But now I’m in the picture,” James says angrily. “Your dreams should take me into account.” They do, I assure him. You can come with me and work at a newspaper in Massachusetts, I say. Or I’ll visit all the time and move back as soon as I’m done with school. “I hate Boston,” James tells me, although I know he’s never been there. Two weeks later, James leaves me a message on my answering machine. “I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore,” he says cheerfully. “I’m ending this. I’m sure we’ll stay friends.” I try calling him back, but he never answers his phone. Okay, I think. It’s not me. It’s because he doesn’t want to move. It’s not about me.

  Boyfriend Number Three: Dusty. I’m twenty-two. He’s twenty-three. He plays guitar in a rock band. I meet him at Ned Devine’s Irish Pub in Faneuil Hall. I’m drunk—too drunk to realize that I am not exactly compatible with a rock guitarist who hasn’t been to college. I’ll go out on a limb, I think the next day when I’m sober and trying to rationalize my new crush. I’ve never dated a musician before. Maybe I need someone creative. Soon, creative translates into alcoholic, which translates into unreliable. We date for a year. Clearly, I should break up with him, since I’m fairly sure he’s cheating on me, and he spends much of his time stumbling around in a drunken stupor. But I feel sorry for him. And so I am caught off-guard when he breaks up with me on our one-year anniversary. “You spend too much time with your nose buried in a book,” he says, then belches. “Would you mind asking the bartender to send me another Jäger Bomb on your way out?” Okay, I think. It’s not me. It’s because he’s an alcoholic who spends his life in smoky bars. It’s not about me.

  Boyfriends Numbers Four, Five, and Six: Greg, age twenty-five; Brad, age twenty-seven; Griff, age twenty-six. After Dusty, I go the other way and date three Harvard students for a few months each. Greg is in a few of my law classes and breaks up with me after three months the day after our professor calls me up to the front of the class to announce that I’ve earned the most prestigious internship in the whole class. “You’re always trying to one-up me, aren’t you?” Greg mutters sourly on the way out. “Don’t bother calling.” Brad is getting his master’s in public policy and has already spent some time working on Capitol Hill. We differ in our political opinions and after a lengthy fight two and a half months into the relationship, he explodes at me. “The other girls I’ve dated all share my viewpoints! What’s wrong with you that you don’t?” he yells at me. I have opinions of my own, I shout back. “Well, I wish you didn’t!” he yells back. For once, I am the one to dump the guy. But I notice he doesn’t seem too upset about it. Then there’s Griff, another law student. It works out fine for a while. Then one day, when things seem to be going beautifully, Griff tells me curtly that he can’t see me anymore. Why, I ask, stricken. “I shouldn’t have to explain it,” Griff says, glaring at me. “You’re supposed to be the smart one here, aren’t you?” Okay, I think. It’s not me. It’s because they all have issues. It’s not about me.

  But by the time I get to Peter six years after breaking up with Griff, I’m beginning to wonder...Is it me? After all, the common threads among the breakup speeches are that I’m too smart. I don’t know my place. I’m not ready to have kids. I’m too driven. Are we starting to see a theme here?

  Maybe I should just give up, buy five or six cats, subscribe to Reader’s Digest, and commit to being an old maid. Or the neighborhood’s resident Crazy Old Cat Lady. But I’m not ready to do that yet. I’m only thirty-five. I’m not horrible once you peel back all the layers of my scary lawyerness. Surely there’s a nice, smart, successful, cute guy who could like me for me if my job doesn’t get in the way. Right? Besides, I’m allergic to cats.

  This is the only reason I’ve allowed Emmie to persuade me that a tube top, a miniskirt, and masquerading as an NBA dancer are the way to go this evening. Against my better judgment, The Blonde Theory is on.

  WE MET AT 7PM at the trendy rooftop bar of the Hotel Gansevoort in the Meat
packing District. Meg came in a rumpled black linen dress, straight from a late evening at the Mod office; Emmie came with a full face of makeup, an Amy Tangerine love tee, and a worn pair of Robin’s Jeans with the signature wing stitching on the back pockets; Jill came in a slim-cut crisp white shirt, a black pencil skirt, and, of course, her diamond wedding ring, roughly the size of a disco ball and no less attention grabbing.

  I, on the other hand, slunk out of the elevator, feeling humiliated, in a tight pink halter top, a short white denim skirt, and nude sandals with three-and-a-half-inch stacked heels—all of them designer labels, of course, although I still couldn’t fathom how any designer in his or her right mind would make clothes like this. And what if I ran into someone I knew? I didn’t think any of the partners at my firm were hip enough to come here, but it would be horrifying if they did. How had I let my friends talk me into this?

  “Tell me again why I have to wear this outfit,” I growled at Emmie as the three girls collapsed in giggles. I mean, this was humiliating. Worse than humiliating. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be caught dead in an outfit like this...and yet here I was, proudly sporting it at one of the trendiest bars in Manhattan to the apparently endless amusement of my three best friends.

  “Because a real dumb blonde wouldn’t have the taste to pick out the clothes that hang in your closet, now, would she?” Emmie asked between giggles.

  “Besides, you look hot,” Meg choked out between full-out laughs. I made a face at her. “I’d take you home, hot mama,” she sputtered out before doubling over again.

  “I cannot believe I am doing this,” I muttered to no one in particular, feeling none too amused. While they giggled, I adjusted the halter top to make sure I was as covered as possible and yanked down on the hem of the white skirt, trying to conceal as much thigh as I could. I wasn’t sure this outfit was such a good idea, as the color of my thighs more or less matched the color of the white denim. But Emmie, who was still doubled over, had assured me that I looked good.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, sitting down at the table with them. “I’m not going to get any of these supposed dates tonight if the three of you are cackling like lunatics.” I took a deep breath and looked at them reluctantly. “So what’s the game plan?”

  Apparently, Meg, the boss of this absurd operation, had decided that I would start off our little experience with a big bang—acting as ridiculously dumb as possible from the outset. She started to explain.

  “Do I really need to act that bad?” I interrupted, looking around the table for support but finding none among the girls, who were all grinning at me broadly. So I took a big swig of the Bacardi Limontini they had ordered for me. At least it gave me some kind of support, albeit not the very tangibly helpful kind. “Can’t I just be borderline ditzy?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was begging. “I mean, I’ve known lots of girls who weren’t exactly rocket scientists, but they weren’t laughingstocks, either.”

  “Nope.” Meg shook her head firmly. “Tonight we have to kick this experiment off the right way. Full-on ditziness, as dumb as you can possibly be. Those are the rules.”

  “Now, are you in?” Jill chimed in, her eyes sparkling. “Or are you chickening out?”

  I glared at her for a second, then sighed in resignation. My friends obviously knew me way too well. They knew all the right buttons to push—and they were currently pushing them with glee.

  “So what do I have to do?” I asked carefully. Meg rubbed her hands together, her eyes sparkling. She actually looked surprisingly like a cartoon villain—or one of those scary guys from those Old West movies, plotting mercilessly against the heroes. So was it any wonder that I felt like the hero who was about to take a major fall?

  “Tonight, you’re Harper Roberts, New York Knicks dancer,” Meg said, clapping her hands together as Emmie and Jill giggled. I moaned. I mean, I’d known it was coming, but I still couldn’t exactly envision myself as a high-kicking, split-doing, bouncy dancer type. Was it too late to talk my way out of it? I mean, hey, maybe the girls would take pity on me and let me slide by as, say, a waitress or a bartender or something.

  “You know, I don’t exactly look like an NBA dancer type,” I protested, gesturing down to my admittedly un-dancer-like body. Not that I was fat. Actually, I was pleased at how slender I had managed to stay at thirty-five—a result, no doubt, of the long hours I often worked while forgetting to eat. But see, when I went to basketball games—which was actually pretty often during the NBA season each year—I eat hot dogs and drink beers in the bleachers. I don’t leap across the court in acrobatic displays. Heck, I sometimes had trouble climbing the bleachers without getting winded. Hence the less-flexible-than-the-average-pom-pom-girl body and lack of dancer-friendly body parts.

  “That’s true,” Meg said with a frown. Hey, wait a minute. She wasn’t supposed to agree with me so readily! I made a mental note to add an additional fifty sit-ups to my morning exercise routine. Eh, who was I kidding? I’d be lucky if I rolled out of bed with enough energy to walk to the Starbucks on the corner, never mind actually do exercises, despite the stack of hand weights, yoga mats, and encouraging-looking Denise Austin DVDs currently gathering dust in the corner of my living room. I had long operated under the theory that buying as much workout gear as possible was one step closer to actually having that perfectly fit body I dreamed of rather than the slightly round-around-the-edges and jiggly-in-all-the-wrong places one that nature—and my own laziness—had bestowed upon me.

  “How about you be a retired New York Knicks dancer?” Jill asked, smiling at me.

  “Unh-unh, no way, I’m thirty-five,” I said, shooting her a look. “I’m too young to be a retired anything.”

  “I guess that just leaves current New York Knicks dancer then,” Meg said, her eyes twinkling mischievously. Rats, she had me trapped.

  “Gooooooo Knicks!” squealed Emmie, loudly enough that the people at the adjoining tables turned to stare. “She’s a Knicks dancer,” Emmie explained loudly to their questioning glances. They smiled tentatively at me as I groaned.

  Just what had I gotten myself into?

  I QUICKLY DOWNED a second Limontini—under the very wise notion that playing dumb would be easier if I was a bit intoxicated—and set to work.

  “Don’t forget to toss your hair a lot, like I taught you,” Emmie whispered to me as I set off to the bar with a giggling Jill. The three girls had decided that if we all went up to the bar, I’d be too intimidating to approach. So they drew straws to see who’d come with me.

  “Let’s go find you a date!” Jill enthused, grinning at me and reaching over to squeeze my hand encouragingly as we approached the bar.

  “I should warn you,” I said, only half kidding. “I don’t find dates very easily.”

  “We’ll see,” Jill said mysteriously, brushing her silky blonde hair back over her ears with one perfectly manicured hand and smiling at me.

  Ten minutes later, I was eating my words.

  “So your friends over there tell me you’re dancer for the Knicks,” said the tall, dark, and admittedly handsome stranger who approached me at the bar. He gestured to Emmie and Meg, who waved and grinned. Great, so he had hit on them first and they had sent him here. He was their leftovers.

  But I had to admit, for a leftover, he looked pretty good. He appeared to be in his late thirties, about six foot four with broad shoulders, dark, piercing eyes, and a wide smile. His dark hair was close-cropped in a way that made me think he might have been in the military at one time, an assumption supported by the at--attention way he was standing beside me rather than lounging against the bar.

  In other words, just my type. Tall, masculine, probably successful. The type that usually rejected me as soon as they found out I was a lawyer instead of a garden-variety bimbo.

  “Yes, I am a dancer,” I said primly, then I caught Jill’s threatening look. Oops, I had answered him like I normally would have. I raised my voice an octave and tried not to roll my eyes at mys
elf. “I mean, uh, yeah. I, like, totally dance for them.” It was my best dumb-Valley-girl impression, and actually, I’d done pretty well. I’d nearly convinced myself that my IQ had slipped fifty points in the last few minutes. I choked back a giggle.

  For an instant, I wondered if I’d gone overboard, acted too vacant. But Mr. Tall, Dark, and Handsome didn’t seem to be turned off by my apparent stupidity and lack of mastery of the English language. Instead, he slid in a bit closer and smiled.

  “Is that right?” he asked, his voice thick as syrup.

  “Totally,” I confirmed in my best chirpy, perky voice. “Like, I totally love doing those cool split jumps in the air, you know?”

  I snuck a glance at Jill, whose face had turned beet red as she valiantly struggled to keep her laughter in. She looked as if she might explode at any second. Hey, I wasn’t half bad at this! I was surprising even myself.

  “That’s fascinating,” the guy murmured, leaning even closer and dazzling me with his big, white smile. Perhaps this fake me was fascinating. So I smiled back and batted my eyes, trying hard to recall the way that Emmie had batted hers at me in front of the dressing room mirror this afternoon. I thought I was being sexy. Then I realized that Tall, Dark, and Handsome was looking at me with apparent concern.

  “Are you okay?” the guy asked, taking a step closer and looking worried. “Do you have something in your eye?”

  I stopped batting. Okay, clearly I was going to have to ask Emmie for a follow-up tutorial on the finer points of eyelash flirtation.

  “Uh, I’m fine,” I chirped in my elevated-octave dumb-blonde voice. “Just a little problem with my contact lens.” I tittered softly in that high-pitched giggle Emmie had taught me. I thought I sounded like one of those squeaky toys dogs played with. But instead of looking startled, the guy seemed to like it. He took a step closer, until he was effectively blocking my view of Jill, who was just feet away from me.