This paranoia even began to carry over into my sleep. One night I dreamed that I came home and the girls were in my kitchen cooking, dressed in matching aprons. They appeared so cheerful when they saw me … a little too cheerful. When I asked them how they had gotten into my apartment, they opened their mouths and started talking with cartoonlike enthusiasm, but no sound was coming out. For the first time, I could see them but not hear them. And to make matters worse, when Claire took the top off a pot on my stove, inside, sitting in some heavily seasoned broth, was Marvin. They were boiling my faithful dog alive, and the sickest part of all was that he seemed to be enjoying it. I feverishly woke up looking as if I had participated in a wet T-shirt contest. I checked on Marvin, who was fast asleep in his bed, far away from the kitchen stove.
I was hoping that my girls-above-me nightmare was a one-time thing, but the very next night I had another one. This time I was alone on vacation in the Bahamas, escaping any conversations from above me (I even requested a room on the top floor just in case). After an incredibly relaxing week, filled with sunbathing, scuba diving, a badminton tournament, and intense karaoke nights, I decided to ride a horse (bareback) to the other side of the island on my last day there. It was an exquisite jaunt, and I was feeling quite good about myself … that is, until I happened upon a cove where Cathy and Claire were making sand angels … with my mother. Much like Marvin in the stew, my mom was having a wonderful time with Cathy and Claire. They had all sorts of inside jokes and were even hand-feeding each other freshly cut pineapple. I watched all of this from behind a palm tree. All of a sudden my mom cried out, “I love this Club Med vacation with my soul sistas!” What the hell was going on? My mother hates Club Med!
There was definitely a moment when I contemplated abandoning writing the “letters” altogether and deleting any evidence that might expose me to Cathy and Claire. This was a big decision to make and it wasn’t easy. Was this supposed to be a quick and harmless way to vent my frustrations, or was it my duty to transcribe these discussions for thousands of people’s enjoyment? I was at a crossroads.
I pulled up Google and typed, “What to do at a crossroads?” I clicked the very first link that popped up, which was a quote from Taylor Swift. She said, “Everybody has that point in their life where you hit a crossroads and you’ve had a bunch of bad days and there’s different ways you can deal with it and the way I dealt with it was I just turned completely to music.” Wow. What a sage singer/songwriter. I could totally draw a parallel to my own life. You see, “bad days” for me represented the difficult breakup I had gone through, but then I “dealt” with it by “turning,” or in my case being forced to listen, to the conversations of the girls above me. Cathy and Claire were my “music.” Also, instead of giving interviews about it to music journalists, I had nightmares about the girls partying with my loved ones while I watched in horror.
It was partly thanks to Taylor’s wisdom that I decided to continue on, but it mainly had to do with the overwhelmingly positive responses I got each day from people who read my letters. I can only assume that my readers felt sympathy for me instead of finding me thoroughly creepy, although there were a few of those people too. But over time I actually started acquiring “fans.” These people would show up every day and comment on my Twitter posts, Facebook status, and website. This didn’t exactly put me into John Lennon status, but I did feel as though I was at least Ringo Starr. Okay, okay, I was a Monkee. But for the first time in my life I was adored by people other than the members of my own family. From a self-worth perspective this made me feel very good about myself. Here are a few of my favorite supporters:
Alexis—This high schooler visited the website’s message board often to write a haiku that had to do with whatever the girls talked about on that particular day. Most of them were quite good. “Girls Above Charlie / so easy on the eyes, yet / so hard on the ears.”
Kevin—My right-hand man. He was always the very first person to comment on Facebook and was extremely good at making sure any naysayers never returned. From his profile picture, I figured him to be about twenty years old … in 1970.
Maddy—Every evening, at six o’clock PST, Maddy would confess to me that she wanted to “comb my beard.” When I finally acknowledged her presence with “All right, Maddy, I’ll let you comb it,” I never heard from her again. Maddy, if you’re out there, does the offer still stand? Or did I ruin the whole thing by being into it? I guess no one likes to comb a willing beard.
Sunny—One day I received a message that said, “I just wanted to tell you that I met my fiancée when we were both reading ‘Dear Girls Above Me’ in a coffee shop and laughed at the same time. Thank you.” My suffering was responsible for a romantic pairing? If this couple procreated, theirs would be a child of my pain.
Carl—This young man offered me five cases of peach Snapple if I let him come over and listen to the girls. Unfortunately, I had to decline, because I already had some peach Snapple, and also I’m not a psycho.
Rebi—She always wanted to know if both of the girls above me were blondes. When I finally wrote back to inform her that one of them was in fact a brunette, she said, “Goodbye forever.” Huh? I miss you, Rebi!
Angela, Sarah, and Lena—One day, all three of these girls asked for my hand in marriage. When I clicked on their profiles I noticed that two of them were in middle school and the other was already married with two kids, but a proposal is a proposal. I let all of them know that they needed to get my mom’s approval before we could begin planning any legally binding ceremony. My mom said I should go for it with Angela because she was president of her school’s debate team.
Once I had decided to make letter-writing a full-time job, I realized that I needed to prepare myself for the worst-case scenario—the girls above discovering my secret identity. I needed a blueprint that I could throw into action at a moment’s notice, kind of like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. But instead of two desperate criminals invading my house, I would be facing two prima donnas with expensive handbags and a serious attitude problem. A far worse scenario.
THE GIRLS ARE WORLD TRAVELERS
Dear Girls Above Me,
“Claire! I just met this Asian guy who had a British accent! How is that even possible?” Let me ask my white South African friend.
Dear Girls Above Me,
“I think I wanna learn a new language. Maybe a little parle vu espanol, por favors?” I’m not sure which Rosetta Stone to get you.
Dear Girls Above Me,
“He’s going on a family vacation to Amazon? To like the headquarters or something?” More likely than that measly rainforest.
Dear Girls Above Me,
“He said he was French Canadian? Wait, France and Canada aren’t even near each other!” Wait, neither are Africa and America!
Dear Girls Above Me,
“He said he was Spanish but not a Mexican. What the hell, that doesn’t even make sense!” It does to the entire country of Spain.
Dear Girls Above Me,
“Her wedding is in Costa Rica?! Wait, don’t Americans get kidnapped in Mexico all the time?” Good thing you’re not going there.
THEY LOVE THEIR CELEBRITY MEN
Dear Girls Above Me,
“Umm, Bradley Cooper is not the Sexiest Man Alive. What about Gos, Effy, Chan, Laut, and Gylly?” Oh no, I totally understood that.
Dear Girls Above Me,
“Hey Olympic website, stop being so annoying and just tell me when David Beckham is swimming!” I think you’re confusing your abs.
Dear Girls Above Me,
“I hate to say this but even if Ryan Gosling proposed to me with a Zales ring, I would say no.” Because it’s Ryan Gosling, right?
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My previous relationship had lasted several years; the one before it lasted even longer. Even in my precollegiate days I never found myself between girlfriends for any meaningful period of time. I was the Green Bay Packers of relationships.
&n
bsp; Here’s what I mean by that: It’s extremely rare for a football organization to have an elite franchise quarterback. And it’s almost unheard of to go from one franchise quarterback to another within a season. Most organizations need many off-seasons to rebuild their team, and then, maybe if they’re lucky, another golden QB strolls in and saves the day. Well, the Packers went from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers before there was enough time to even change jerseys.
My romantic life had been the relationship equivalent of that. From high school to college and then grad school, I was in three serious relationships. So if you think about it, I actually have the Packers beat. Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers are amateur hour. I had three franchise relationships without having to ever suffer a lonely, miserable off-season.
Now, however, things were different. I was rebuilding. I didn’t even have a draft pick. (Not sure what the equivalent of a draft pick would be for this analogy. Match.com maybe?) The point is, I’m a relationship guy. Dating is an entirely different ball game. And after a solid ten-year run of relationships, the prospect of dating seemed quite daunting. I mean, just think about all that’d happened in the span of years I’d been out of the dating game.
CULTURAL LANDMARKS THAT OCCURRED SINCE I WAS LAST ON THE DATING SCENE
Facebook was invented
The Kardashians were invented
Twitter was made
A Kardashian sex tape was made
Our first African-American president took the oath of office
Two Kardashians took the oath of marriage
A spacecraft passed through space, landing somewhere on Mars
Two babies passed through a Kardashian birth canal, landing somewhere in Calabasas
Basically, what I’m trying to say is, I had a few things to brush up on and I needed some sort of CliffsNotes crash course on today’s dating landscape—
“Ugh, Chad just texted me ‘Dinner tonight?’ Doesn’t he know that drinks are text-approved but dinner deserves a phone call?” Cathy adamantly asked.
Right. Thanks for reminding me, Cathy. That was another big change. Texting had become the primary way to communicate in the beginning stages of a new relationship. Some other helpful snippets overheard over the past few months:
“Ugh, he showed up with a condom. I so would’ve fucked him if he hadn’t expected to fuck me.”
“Never date a guy who doesn’t routinely update his Facebook profile picture.”
“I find it so sexy when he orders a drink for me, but when he orders my dinner it’s like, whoa, getting a little aggressive there, OJ.”
I had a week before drinks with Katie, and if this was what dating had turned into, I desperately needed to prepare. The girls above went from a nuisance to crucial in the amount of time it took Michael Phelps to re-up his Subway endorsement deal—er, I’m sorry, I meant the amount of time it took a Kardashian husband to be traded and signed to two different Los Angeles NBA teams.
The point being, I became a courtroom stenographer. Anything I overheard Cathy and Claire discuss in the dating realm was immediately transcribed and committed to memory. At this point I had grown quite adept at deciphering their lingo and breaking it down into human-speak. Yes, it was time to get back out there, and with each passing day, I was growing stronger. Not physically, of course—in fact, I think I may have put on a few pounds—but I was getting date strong.
That being said, there were a few hiccups along the way. Like the time I was transcribing a riveting conversation between Cathy and Claire about the mixed messages that “swallowing too early on in a relationship” might send. Their friend Becca had stormed in, interrupting the entire flow of this captivating discussion—
“So I stopped at Starbucks this morning and you’re not gonna believe who I met and have been texting back and forth with all day!”
“A cast member from Entourage?” I groaned to myself.
“Turtle from Entourage!”
I mean, that’d been my go-to response after each overreaction to a celebrity sighting. It was bound to happen; I’d just been playing the same lottery numbers over and over until I won.
“He was totally hitting on me while he was waiting for his Very Berry Coffee Cake to get warmed up. And the best part is, he’s not, like, fat anymore. I think we’re gonna end up meeting for drinks! Can you believe it? Me and Turtle!”
Maybe I was irritated because Becca had barged in on my eavesdropping dating seminar. I mean, this was my time with Cathy and Claire. Didn’t she know that? Or maybe I was just upset because I couldn’t fathom anyone generating that level of excitement based on scoring a date with Turtle. When television’s history book is finally written, I’m fairly confident that Turtle will have his spot securely immortalized two notches above Screech.
Then, suddenly, like most of the vapid conversations before it, this back-and-forth led to something quite troublesome that I hadn’t previously considered.…
“I would never date Turtle,” Cathy proudly declared as if she deserved some sort of medal for this bold proclamation.
“You’re telling me you wouldn’t have drinks with Turtle from Entourage?”
“No, I’d totally have drinks with him. But on the friend tip.”
“But he’d go out for drinks with you thinking it was a date.”
“Well, he’d find out very quickly that it wasn’t.”
Uh-oh. My brain was a computer that had just crashed. Was it conceivable that Katie assumed we were just two old friends reconnecting and catching up over drinks? I mean, was it actually possible that Katie didn’t even consider Friday night a date?
I’d love to say that the idea of this horrific prospect’s coming to fruition was a one-time concern, but it wasn’t. It was a fear I was all too familiar with, an awkward dating trend I’ve been unfortunate enough to experience on every single first date I have ever been on. And that dating trend is:
I never know if the girl I’m on a date with knows that she’s also on a date.
By and large, all the relationships I’ve ever had blossomed into a romance after we were already friends. So there was never any need for a “first date.” We already knew each other fairly well; I skipped right from friend to boyfriend. I said “by and large” because there were a few rare instances where I’d meet a girl and go out on what I hoped was a date. Hoped being the operative, italicized word …
I have yet to experience a first date where prior to it I was able to say with 100 percent certainty that it was in fact a date. Over the span of my three marathon relationships, there were times when a big fight would happen and we’d take a breather from the relationship. It usually never lasted more than a month or so, but on those rare relationship time-outs, sometimes I’d find myself going out with a girl I’d just met. It was always really tough for me to gauge whether or not the girl was interested in dating me, wanted to make a new friend, or wanted to network socially and make a new contact. This is L.A.; even people’s pets meet for drinks at five for networking purposes.
Most of the time, on a first date, guys are trying to measure how well they’re doing, gauging whether or not their date is responding favorably to them. Not me. I find myself in the unique position of dedicating my energy to figuring out if my date even knows she’s on a date.
CLUES THAT MY DATE KNOWS SHE’S ON A DATE
She doesn’t tell me that she’s really pulling for me and my ex to patch things up
She doesn’t volunteer to help me and my ex patch things up
She laughs at my Seinfeld impression
She doesn’t laugh at my Seinfeld impression
She goes through the charade of pretending to reach for her purse to contribute money to the bill, but then lets me pay after reminding me that I don’t have to
She has sex with me (this one is a big clue)
If I’m being conservative, I’d say that up to this point, 84 percent is the highest level of assurance I’ve ever felt going into a date that the person facing me knew sh
e was also on a date. With Katie, though, this was a whole different situation. We’d known each other for years but had been out of touch for just as many years. I’d say I was 96 percent confident that she knew this was a date and understood that I wasn’t just trying to build up contacts in my LinkedIn account. Just kidding. I’m not a douche. I don’t have a LinkedIn account.
LIFE’S IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
Dear Girls Above Me,
“What do you think happened first, tea bagging or like actual tea bags?” Is this your version of the chicken and the egg?
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