Happily Ali After: And Other Fairly True Tales

by Ali Wentworth

  I sheepishly entered the faculty lounge where the lighting was constant. And discussed the weather. Local weather. National weather. Weather changes. Whether there’d be weather. Until the professor of agriculture told us it was, once again, time to line up. We promenaded down the hallways and staircases and stopped just outside the stadium doors. I was in my own version of Groundhog Day.

  Speech number two was sharper and improved. I paused more, allowed the words to resonate, and added funny faces. Welcome to the Improv, ladies and gentlemen!

  After the applause, I sat down to face the relentless parade of more diplomas and hairy toes. They should punish terrorists by shackling them to metal fold-out chairs and making them witness every graduation at Arizona State (largest public university enrollment in 2014 of 60,168).

  By this point, I had become a fixture on campus, like the local bartender or the senior pot dealer. I could have had my own office, hell, my own building, and ALI IS OUR SPIRIT ANIMAL sweatshirts. I knew the faculty by their first names, “Bob, are you gonna finish that key lime pie?” The hour before the third speech was spent analyzing a persnickety business professor who believed her husband was being unfaithful. The fact that he never made it home before dawn because he continually “fell asleep” at his desk or had massive amounts of papers to grade were, to me, blazing signs of infidelity. But it was not my business to get emotionally involved (our sisterhood would expire in three hours), so I shrugged and proclaimed, “Educating is exhausting business. I say let him sleep in his office if he wants. But you’re right, not on Christmas Eve.” But inside I wanted to say, “Girlfriend, your husband is probably bedding everything in a cashmere button-down and wool skirt; hire a lawyer and hide your valuables, it’s about to get real!”

  Thirty minutes later, we were marching out AGAIN to the clanging of the school band cymbals. I was borderline delirious and thought about all the scientific studies that have been done about physical exhaustion and how you can literally go crazy. I didn’t want to be taken away in a straitjacket to the Missouri State Mental Institute. The one in Palm Beach, maybe. My third and final commencement speech was a blur, like doing karaoke drunk—or for me, doing karaoke sober. I vaguely recall huge applause, so I knew it went well, and my clothes were still on, which was a good sign.

  They should have taken me to the airport on a gurney. I’d felt like this once before when I was being carted into the operating room and they had just injected a “calming” potion into my IV. The only difference was that I didn’t sing “my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard” through the intensive-care ward.

  I curled up in the Barbie plane, as frail as the tubercular Fantine in Les Miz, the words of my speech repeating over and over in my head. If someone had prodded me with a stick, I would instinctively have stood up and recited a fourth commencement speech.

  The next day I slept for sixteen hours. And got a vitamin B shot. I knew from then on that when opportunity knocked, I would open the door chastely, read the fine print, Google the location, and remind myself that 40 percent of the paycheck goes to taxes.

  And as I lay in bed sipping my kale-apple-ginger smoothie I remembered the president of the university putting her arm around me and saying,“Thank you so much for doing this! You know we can never get ANYONE to do our commencement!” Well, small wonder. At least when you climb Kilimanjaro, you do it once.

  CHAPTER 3

  Set It Free

  IF YOU LOVE SOMETHING, SET IT FREE. IF IT COMES

  BACK IT’S YOURS, IF IT DOESN’T, IT NEVER WAS.

  —RICHARD BACH

  I don’t know who Richard Bach was, but I think he was extremely misguided. If I set everything I loved free, I would end up with a can of anchovy paste and some XXL turtlenecks given to me many Christmases ago by my mother, who purchased them at an outlet in Vermont. Although if I did let those turtlenecks free, they would definitely find their way back to me. They have been donated to charity many times over, but miraculously always appear back in my closet.

  And why, if I love something, should I give it away in the first place? I’m not a Buddhist, I don’t renounce materialism, but I’m not Mariah Carey with a multimillion-dollar shoe fetish either. Some things I just don’t want to let go of. And that goes for people as well. Should I have done this with both my children? I love my babies! But if I had swaddled them in fluffy baby blankets and placed them in a box from the Container Store with a bunny soother and a bottle of formula and set them adrift on the Hudson River, I’m positive they would not have come back to me. I’d be in Bellevue strapped to a gurney with a Popsicle stick in my mouth. And I would have to confess that the evil voices in my head didn’t make me do it, but Richard Bach, a twentieth-century writer with a passion for aeronautics. But, I suspect I’m probably being too literal here.

  Love is an ethereal thing and cannot be owned and cannot be taken. And if it goes away, then it was never meant to be, but if it comes back then it’s true love. Well, if it’s true love, then why did he leave in the first place? If you set him free, he gets to screw around and then decide whether or not to come back, and if he does decide to come crawling back, then why would you want him? To set free implies he’s been imprisoned, enslaved, and, therefore, probably really pissed. And, anyway, in the most optimistic scenario, if he does come back to you, he’s probably riddled with STDs.

  When Kathy Bates tied James Caan to the bed in Misery, it was very clear the intent was not to set him free. And she knew that if she did release him, he would go to the authorities, or kill her. So she did the right thing! Well, except he did ultimately kill her.

  Leo was majestic and imposing and smelled like warm vanilla. It was the only time in my life, aside from with my husband, that I experienced a true carnal appetite. Leo was a Portland-based photographer who came to Los Angeles on a temporary film job. It was clear by his swagger that he was single. And he had tattoos—the true branding of a bad boy. But also perfect teeth—a combo as rare as an albino Amur leopard.

  At that time in my life, I compromised when it came to relationships. I would overlook fundamental issues like fidelity, alcoholism, and a propensity toward sex with men. I was so dazzled with Leo. (Even though I knew deep down that any long-term relationship with him would entail my solitary breastfeeding of a colicky baby while receiving texts and photos of him with topless ingénues in St. Barth’s. “I’m a photographer, honey, this is work! The girls have to be naked and sprinkled with white sand. And the champagne is only to loosen them up”!)

  It’s amazing how a man’s scent can narcotize a woman into a spell of complete abandon and recklessness. Yes, just like what all perfume ads say.

  After months of serving as a Protestant geisha to his mercurial affections, I had to face the fact that it was time for Leo to return to Oregon. Yes, our relationship had a shelf life. I refused to be the emotionally indigent woman begging for an engagement ring or a vial of his blood, or accost him with a fake pregnancy scare. (I have known male friends who were harnessed with the girlfriend who flushed the pill down the toilet or punctured holes in the condoms and presented pregnancy like it was a freshly baked pie as he had one foot out the door. This never unfolds happily. It’s a sure recipe for ending up a single mother, except with even more rage and a smaller net in the dating pool.)

  With Leo, I decided to be detached and aloof, yet still seductive and freshly waxed. The clichéd aforementioned phrase, “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was,” echoed in my head, inevitably merging into the Police lyric, “If you love someone set them free . . . free, free, set them free.” I decided the only way to ensure his coming back was to make it impossible for him to leave in the first place. (See: the aformentioned Misery.)

  I couldn’t rely on my less than stellar sexual techniques or my feeble bank account. And then it came to me, the same way it came to that psychotic female astronaut who decided to wear Depends while she drove across the country.
I would take Leo to Hawaii for the weekend as our final soirée before he departed for Oregon. A romantic tropical dream that he would never want to wake from, certainly not to move back to windswept, rainy Oregon with all those moose. Or mooses. Meese?

  I borrowed some money from my friend who had a safeguarded corporate job and an actual savings account. I found that if I could sustain a balance of zero at the end of every month, then I was ahead of my financial curve, which always careened downward. Obviously, the fact that my friend had tons of leftover coin meant it was free for the taking, up for grabs; she could have just burnt it in her balcony hibachi.

  Leo was having lunch with a business acquaintance at a trendy Italian eatery, Locanda Veneta, in Beverly Hills. I knew that because I would scour his itinerary late at night after he succumbed to a two-bottle-of-Merlot stupor. Okay, stop judging, everyone has gone through their boyfriend’s private agenda or iPhone, right?

  I felt I needed the element of surprise so Leo would not have much time to consider or reconsider the offer. I had a letter placed on his table before Leo and his lunch mate were seated. I had run out to the Paper Source, where you can buy recycled cards that smell like sweet sage for eight dollars. And in my amateurish calligraphy scripted a Downton Abbey–type invitation for the weekend away at a secret location. The bottom stated, “Nothing to pack, bathing suit optional.” I had become the siren of amour. I knew subconsciously I was wasting my craftiness on the wrong person, but I have a tendency to get enraptured in whatever life fantasy I’m performing at that moment. Sometimes I sing “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” out our apartment window wearing a feather boa. Doesn’t bother me that children point and laugh.

  Leo had no inkling as to our covert destination even after we taxied down the runway. Just as the wheels went up, the stewardess, in her saccharine way, belted out, “Aloha!” Leo turned to me and said, “We’re going to Japan?” He was from rural Oregon.

  We stayed in one of six clusters of thatched-roof huts on the Kohala Coast. The rooms featured a four-poster bed with Hawaiian flowers carved into it, an outside rain shower, nightly baths with floating orchids and candles. And the breakfast buffet? As many malasadas (Portuguese doughnuts deep fried and coated with sugar), pancakes with macadamia nut sauce, kalua pig sausages, Spam (Hawaii is the largest consumer of Spam in the world) you can pile on your plate, and fresh papaya juice. He was Tarzan, me Jane. He actually looked like Tarzan . . . I was more Jane . . . but fully clothed and wearing sunblock. Our days were filled with splashing in the luminous sea, dancing at luaus of suckling pig with quaint local Hawaiian ukulele bands who belted out “La Bamba” and “Like a Virgin.” Yes, the sand was black and gravelly and every dish I ordered had a shrimp tail sticking out of it (and this includes desserts), but I had isolated Leo from his known and familiar habitat. I had immersed him in a trans-Pacific Zen sanctuary of geothermal wonders and wicker chairs. And as it turned out, he’s one of the few Oregonians able to take the sun; he browned instead of appearing like he had just come from a chemical peel. I really knew I loved him when I discovered he didn’t wear open-toe sandals.

  One afternoon we strolled down to the shore to the exclusive Four Seasons for lunch. We consumed four mango mojitos (well, he did, I had a sip), some spicy ahi poke, coconut crab cakes, washimi Kobe beef skewers, and polenta-fried calamari. The Four Seasons in Hawaii is a second home to many of the studio brass in Hollywood. So naturally, I charged our lunch to an executive who once tried to feel me up. I only hazarded a guess he was staying there, but, as with most clichéd Hollywood hunches (hair plugs) I was right and we got a free meal.

  Confident that a weekend by the sea and verdant, lush flora would deter Leo from the miserably rain-sodden and unshaven bevy of mountaineer women, I flew back to Los Angeles rosy and buoyant.

  The day after homeward-bound Leo left for the airport, I spent the entire day in bed. Well, first I made myself a goat cheese omelet and downed a box of Raisinets. I still held on to the notion that he would realize his mistake, grab a fistful of blueberries (isn’t that what Oregon is known for?), and board the first Southwest Airlines flight back to Los Angeles. In other words, after all the setting-free business, he would come back to me. When I saw in what turmoil he’d left the bathroom (half-used shaving cream, toothpaste smeared all over the sink, shower drain clogged with dark hair), it did anesthetize the sting a bit.

  But he never did come back to me. There were no naked frolicking ingénues, no torrid affair with Swedish models. He ended up marrying a lovely physical therapist and had six children. And appears very happy. He probably even changes dirty diapers.

  Wait, this story doesn’t end so simplistically; it’s not a tear-jerker. I wouldn’t have written this tale if it didn’t come out smelling like the leis that hung around my neck in the Waikiki airport.

  When I set Leo free, something else came back to me. Something better . . .

  Leo took a book to Hawaii, which I found slightly offensive, as I assumed the weekend would be spent gazing into each other’s eyes and stimulating dirty parts. I mean, I was going away for an erotic adventure, not Oprah’s book club! The best-seller he purchased was a memoir of life in the White House. Why that and not Lady Chatterley’s Lover? I’d have settled for The Joy of Sex (I actually had some questions about a couple of things). But Leo was obsessed with politics, a subject that I had come to loathe as a result of my upbringing in D.C. submerged in all the minutiae of the Nixon administration.

  Leo would lie out on a sun chaise with his simian features and glistening tattoos as he read excerpts from the book aloud to me. “‘From my chair pushed up against the President’s desk, I was the link between Clinton and the House Democrats’”—“Fascinating!” he would then bellow. I would lie next to him (eyes rolling) perusing People magazine and scrolling through the best and worst bodies in Hollywood. I found myself competing with this political confidant Leo kept quoting. As I would rub sunscreen on Leo’s toned thighs, I would hear (ad nauseam) about Colin Powell’s foreign-aid policies. Eventually I snapped. “Jesus! Can you stop quoting George Stephanopoulos for five minutes so we can get it on!”

  Leo’s infatuation with the book lasted for all three days we were in Hawaii. I would sheepishly hide it under his towel when I emerged from the ocean in my snorkel gear carrying a handful of cowrie shells or toss it into the laundry bag at night. But, magically, the book would appear in his hands again by sunrise.

  Leo left the book on my bedside table the day he disappeared from my life. As well as some loose change and an unfinished prescription bottle of codeine. And that same battered paperback with mai tai stains sits on my office shelf today.

  I married George Stephanopoulos, author of the memoir that foiled my passion play on the isle of Maui. I loved something, set it free, and something even better came back to me. And I’m never setting George free. I don’t care what Sting says.

  CHAPTER 4

  Be Curious

  BE CURIOUS, NOT JUDGMENTAL.

  —WALT WHITMAN

  It’s impossible to live in our society with an open heart and an open mind (and closed legs). I am bombarded by the Internet, on TV, at potlucks, by the brutal snap judgments people make about everyone else! I’m not proud to say that I fall prey to it. Just for an example: I hate Kendall Jenner. I don’t even know Kendall Jenner. I wouldn’t know Kendall Jenner if she knocked on my door and said, “Hi! I’m Kendall Jenner!” But I hate Kendall Jenner. Why? I guess because I’m supposed to?

  It’s easy to look down on all the haters on the Internet who harsh on (anonymously) the general population, but you don’t have to be a forty-seven-year-old recluse who lives over his parents’ garage and downloads porn all day to pass vicious judgment on a daily basis. Of course, trolls (and I’m talking the trash-talking kind, not the creepy ones who frequent chat rooms dedicated to dungeons) offer the most flagrant examples of ignorant vitriol; they don’t try to understand, accept, or even know the people they so swiftly condemn
. And if I ever did bump into @DirtyPieHole on the street, I’m sure he would be very sweet and gracious, unlike his comments: “If Ali has cancer, then sorry, but she is one ugly bitch #WearMakeup.” I would forgive him only if he was actually missing a face.

  But let’s be honest: we all judge others, usually without making the slightest attempt to address the fact that our judgment is born of ignorance. And as a guy I dated from Brown who dropped a lot of acid once said, “You have to have understanding to have acceptance and then love.” He also totaled my Saab.

  Now that I am in my forties, I aim to be more accepting. Unless you’re a man wearing knee-length denim shorts. Or have a goatee. Or use #grateful on your Twitter feed. Oh God, I’m doing it. Okay. Open heart.

  I was recently at a fiftieth (she says forty-seventh) birthday party in Malibu, California. A place famous for being incredibly judgy, but in a non-judgy way. “It’s all good” is the cornerstone of the vernacular on Point Dume, yet it is only “all good” if you’re Pilates fit, surf, have a Frank Gehry beach shack, and are sleeping with your yoga instructor. Malibu is also one of the few places in the world where you pay hundreds of dollars for worn and tattered sweatshirts. Fine, I bought two. But in my defense, I was on Ambien because of jet lag. I also have no recollection of purchasing six pairs of the exact same jeans on that drug. (My friend Amelia took an Ambien and bought five princess canopy beds from a Pottery Barn kids’ catalog. She doesn’t have children.)

  The birthday party was made up of a group of eight women, some of us who knew each other, others who were meeting for the first time. It’s was a real girls’ night with an ocean view and a delicious board of smelly French cheeses and bottles of Pouilly-Fuissé. We were all exuberant to be away from kids and husbands for a night of debauchery (which for women my age meant a night of delving into such topics as varicose veins, sex dreams about the contractor, and the latest pill everyone was taking for anxiety). All topped off with some form of dark chocolate.