“The guy I had a crush on in college?”
Cue another jaw drop.
Jeff puts up his left palm. “I’ve said too much. Sorry. Go on…”
“Seriously?” I whine. “You had a crush on him while we were dating?”
“Sweetie, in the first five minutes you met me, I raved about George Clooney and Rosemary Clooney. Not my fault you didn’t read the signs. Now tell me about the Jay hookup.”
We get Jeff’s bags, then spend the next fifty-five minutes creeping along through horrible LA traffic. But time flew as the two of us talked a mile a minute and spoke in shorthand about everything from our dating exploits of late, to our jobs, to what numbers we picked in the Mega lottery, to whether People’s Sexiest Man Alive deserved to have been picked that year. (Jeff said he was too old, but that a man who can provide a baby with six zeros attached clearly has some value to women.)
I have not seen Jeff in almost three years, yet we are talking as if we just saw each other yesterday.
When we get to Seema’s and my place, I park the car, and Jeff and I get his luggage. As we approach the house, Jeff asks the million-dollar question. “So, he invited you to Paris. You never answered me—are you going?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Probably not. But it’s nice to think the opportunity is there.”
“What is with you? Just go!”
“I’m not even sure if it’s a serious invite.”
“Are you having sex with the man?” Jeff asks, leading the witness.
I shrug self-consciously. “We might be having ‘met at a wedding’ sex. I’m not sure that counts.’”
“All sex counts. Don’t you keep a list?”
“A list of what?”
“Of all the men you’ve slept with.”
“I don’t need a list.”
“Oh, that’s so sad,” Jeff deadpans.
“No, it’s not sad. I’ve haven’t been with that many men. If I had a dime for every man I’ve had sex with…”
“You still couldn’t use a parking meter for more than twenty minutes. Oh, remind me, I owe you a dime,” Jeff jokes.
I make a show of glaring at him before I unlock the door. As we walk into the house, I see Scott sitting crisscross applesauce on the carpet in the middle of our living room, surrounded by white poster-board circles. He looks … pained is the only word that pops to mind. Seema stands nears him, in front of a big, purple poster board placed on an easel. She holds a black Sharpie up to a white circle with the number 3 scrolled on it. “I don’t think having a singles’ table is bad if it’s close to the dance floor,” she assures Scott.
Scott holds in a sigh. “I will give you a hundred dollars right now if you can name one person, ever, in the history of weddings, who was happy to be put at the singles’ table.” Upon seeing us, Scott’s face lights up. “Oh, company. Thank God. Break time!”
“Jeff!” Seema practically screams, running up to him and hugging him (the man inspires such enthused reactions in women). “Oh my God! You’re here!”
“Seema,” he says, giving her a bear hug. “You’re even more gorgeous than last time. Engagements clearly agree with you.” After the hug, Jeff walks over to Scott, who stands to shake his hand. “I’m Jeff.”
“Scott.”
As they shake hands, Jeff turns to Seema. “You didn’t tell me how gorgeous your soon-to-be-husband is.”
“I most certainly did,” Seema insists.
He turns back to Scott and says to him in all seriousness, “If you ever hurt her, I’ll hunt you down and kill you.”
Scott smiles. “I would have it no other way.”
We have the standard chitchat (How was the flight? What’s the weather been like in LA?), but soon Seema cuts to the chase, asking Jeff, “How do you feel about helping us with the seating chart?”
Jeff feigns insult. “You assume that just because I’m gay I instinctively know how to make a seating chart?”
She looks at him as if that were the stupidest question in the world. “Um … duh.”
“Set me up with someone cute and single?”
Seema looks over at me. “Don?”
My eyes light up and I nod. “Yeah. Don’s good.”
Jeff eyes widen. “Oh, Don. I am loving Don. Now tell me, who’s Don?”
“He’s the principal at my school,” I tell him. “Insanely hot, age appropriate, and recently out of a long-term relationship.”
Jeff immediately scribbles his name and Don’s onto table six. “We have a winner.”
“Wait, why did you put yourself at table six?” Seema asks.
“Not too close to the dance floor and its booming speakers. Not too close to the bar and its booming drunks.” Jeff tapes circle six to the middle-left part of the chart. “Who’s next?”
Seema scrunches her lips as she examines the chart. “What if we put your aunts Beth, Jane, and Nancy with your uncle Sam?” she suggests to her fiancée.
“Sam’s fine,” Scott tells her as he picks up a circle from the floor, stands up, and hands it to her. “Just don’t sit Aunt Beth next to Uncle Solomon.”
While Jeff sticks the white circle onto the poster-board seating chart, Seema turns to Scott. “Do you have an Uncle Solomon?”
“I do. And I’m pretty sure he hates Aunt Beth.”
“Have I met this uncle?” Seema asks.
“Probably not. I haven’t seen him since I was five.”
“So naturally we invited him,” Seema says sarcastically.
“He’s also my godfather.”
Seema turns to Scott. “Wait, you have a Christian godfather named Solomon?”
“Yeah. Why?”
Seema won’t take the bait. “No reason. Why doesn’t he like Aunt Beth?”
“She left him for Aunt Jane.”
Jeff leans in. “Let’s put Aunt Beth at table six. She sounds fun.”
Jeff takes the names Aunt Beth and Aunt Jane and tapes them onto table six as Seema scrutinizes the board again. “Do you want your uncle Solomon at table thirteen or fifteen?”
“Whichever’s farthest from table six,” Scott reasons.
Seema writes Solomon in red pen on table fifteen.
“What does the red pen mean?” I ask.
“Danger, danger, Will Robinson. If this person sits next to the wrong person, all hell will break loose, and someone might not enjoy his chicken tikka masala,” Seema says dryly.
“Have you considered Vegas?” Jeff asks Scott.
Scott leans in to Jeff and says quietly, “I suggest it daily.”
“I heard that,” Seema says to Scott.
Scott puts out his hands. “Did I stutter?”
Something tells me a lot of prewedding conversations contain those words verbatim.
SEVENTEEN
That night, Jeff and I decide to take a cab over to central Hollywood and go on a “cocktail crawl.” Jeff calls it “research”—he needs to observe how the décor of the hot new clubs has changed over the past few years, what new drinks are in, what the happy hours are like, etc. He even asked one bartender to get the manager so they could discuss lighting.
It’s now around midnight, and I am lounging on a sofa/mattress at bar number four doing another quick round of texts with Jay:
So … going out with another man already? I’m hurt.
Not just another man—a ridiculously handsome one plying me with booze.
I guess in 21 hours, I am going to have to fight him for your honor.
Oooooohhhhh. I hope so.
Have you bought something in red lace yet?
No.
I immediately type this and send. Then I reconsider and type:
Maybe.
Ooohhhhh—send me a sexy pic when you get home.
I most certainly will not.
All right, I’ll just have to get one of you myself tomorrow.
The hell you …
I see Jeff snaking through the crowd, lightly pushing people out of the way as he c
arries a tray with six martini glasses in a rainbow of colors: green, purple, pink, blue, orange, and one that has layers of yellow and red. I quickly type:
I gotta go. Leave me a sexy voice mail before you go to bed.
Actual talking? I must really like you. Good night.
Good night.
xoxo
xoxo
I smile as I look at our conversation on my screen one more time. Xoxo. Life is good.
Jeff arrives at my couch and hands me the tray of martinis, which I place on the club’s version of a nightstand. Jeff is on the phone, calmly making a point to the person on the other end. “Because he’s an asshole.… Because he’s an asshole.… I don’t know.… Okay, did you sleep with him?… Well, there you go.…” I watch him shake his head and wince. “Because we’re men!” he says in a Duh! voice. “We are not only able to have sex with you even if we don’t like you, sometimes we prefer it that way.” He hands me the blue martini as he listens on the other end. “That is not sexist! There are scads of men I’d sleep with who I don’t like. Do I have to remind you about Schrödinger’s blow job?” Jeff looks up at me and puts up his index finger to tell me one more minute. He says into his phone, “Sweetie, I’m out with friends, and I have to go.… I love you too.… Okay, good-bye.” He hangs up the phone and shakes his head. “I swear, I wonder how any of you ever breed.” Then he breaks into a smile and motions to the blue drink. “What do you think?”
I make a face. “What is it this time?”
“Something with blue curaçao and ginger. We have a blue drink at Male ‘Ana, but I think I could improve on it.”
I take a sip and wince. “Blech! Too spicy.”
“Fair enough.” Jeff hops onto the mattress with me. “Speaking of spicy, who here is cute?”
“Everyone. But we’re too old to talk to any of them.”
“Well, that’s just limited thinking.” Jeff takes the yellow-and-red martini drink from the tray and samples a bit.
“Really? And what would you suggest we talk with them about?”
Jeff shrugs. “Prom, Chutes and Ladders, One Direction…”
I look around the room at all the beautiful twenty-two-year-old girls in miniskirts and sky-high heels, and I can’t help but whine, “This is depressing. Why aren’t we at a gay bar?”
“Because I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’m actually working.” Jeff hands me his drink to sample. “Besides, I’ll go to one tomorrow night, when you’re with your loo-oove-ah.”
I try to suppress an embarrassed smile as I take the cocktail. “He’s not my lover.”
“Did you make love to him?”
I shrug and turn away from Jeff sheepishly. “Maybe.”
“Then let’s hope he’s your lover. Otherwise, he’s a one-night stand, and you’re a slut.”
Jeff’s phone rings again. He answers without so much as a hello, saying instead, “I don’t even know how I got designated the gay best friend who can give advice in the first place. God knows, I can’t keep a man.” He listens to the voice on the other end for a good thirty seconds before putting his thumb and index finger to each eye, and squeezing his eyes shut. Another good thirty seconds pass before he pops his eyes back open. “Schrödinger’s blow job.” He repeats for the second time in less than five minutes. “Now go have fun.” Then he presses the button to hang up. Jeff points to an orange drink. “Taste that, and tell me what you think.”
I take a sip. “Ick. What is that? Gin?”
“I thought it was a misstep myself when I watched him make it.” Jeff picks up the glass and holds it up to examine the color. “Although maybe with a coconut rum…”
As Jeff takes a sip of the gin drink and swishes it around in his mouth, I say, “Okay, I have to ask—what is Schrödinger’s blow job? And what does it have to do with dating?”
Jeff reaches over to the nightstand to pick up a pink drink in a martini glass and hands it to me. “Do you know what Schrödinger’s cat is?”
“Of course I do,” I say, vaguely insulted. “In the 1930s, Erwin Schrödinger came up with his theorem—”
Jeff nearly does a spit-take. “Theorem? Good Lord. When you get drunk, you become even more of a geek. Okay, so you know there’s a cat in a box with a flask of poison that has been opened, and the cat might be dead from said poison. Or not. And until you open the box, you don’t know whether the cat is alive or dead. Which means until you open it, the cat is both and neither, all at once.”
“I fail to see what a dead cat has to do with sex.”
“Really? You’ve exhausted all the possibilities for the word pussy?”
Without wanting to, I begin racking my brain, trying to come up with different wordplays.
“I’m kidding,” Jeff says, then taps my forehead with his index finger and smiles. “But I love to watch that little mind race. Anyway, in the gay community, some of us, on occasion, have dated men who think they’re straight because there are certain things they won’t do with us. But no matter who the guy is or what his hang-ups are, he usually will be willing to get a blow job.”
“Do I want to hear the rest of this?” I take a sip of the pink drink.
“Knowledge is power. Anyway, basically the theory from some of these men goes like this: If a man puts on a blindfold and gets a blow job, it doesn’t really matter if he’s getting it from a man or a woman, because he can’t see who is giving him the blow job. Therefore, if he happens to be getting a blow job from a man, that doesn’t make him gay.”
“Meaning the blow job is like the cat in the box, in that it could be either from a man or a woman until you take off the blindfold.”
“Exactly.”
“First off, obviously, these men are gay.”
“Honey, you say ‘tomato’…”
“And second, so what does this have to do with dating?”
“Single, straight men, for the most part, will let any woman blow them or have sex with them. But they might as well have a blindfold on. Getting sex doesn’t mean they’re in a relationship with the woman. And just because the poison is out of the bottle doesn’t mean your pussy is dead yet. You have to open the box to know for sure.”
I glare at him. “A dead pussy being one that is in a relationship?”
“You look offended.”
“Why can’t you say the cat is still alive if you’re in the relationship?”
“Because the cat was alive, then is dead. You are single, then in a relationship. My point is, just because a woman is sleeping with a guy, that doesn’t mean he thinks they’re in a relationship. He needs to take off his blindfold first.”
I blink several times while I absorb Jeff’s theory. I take another sip of the pink drink, which seems to be mostly vodka. “That actually kind of makes sense,” I am forced to admit. Then I shake my head slowly. “I still can’t believe you killed yourself to get a PhD in theoretical physics only to wind up opening a bar.”
“The two are completely intertwined. I’m trying to solve the problem of cold fusion by using the ideal combination of ice, rum, and a blender.”
I furrow my brows at him. “Have you been working on that joke long?”
“Not too long. Oh, I got another joke for you. A neutron walks into my bar and orders a beer. When he asks for the check, I tell him, ‘For you, no charge.’”
I shake my head slightly and chuckle as I grab the green drink. “You are such a geek.”
“So the neutron says to me, ‘Are you sure?’ And I say, ‘I’m a proton—I’m positive.’” Jeff opens his mouth wide like Fozzie Bear right after a terrible joke.
I shake my head again. “I’ll admit, that’s kind of funny.”
“Thanks. I got a charge out of it myself.”
“Do you get a lot of men with these jokes?”
“No, but I screen a lot of men. If they don’t get it, they’re out.”
“Unless they can loan you a blindfold.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to be a snob ab
out it.”
The rest of the night was spent talking about men, about college, about everything from Hawaii to physics to backgammon. I was having a great time.
And I was really happy. Unlike the bevy of women who seemed to call Jeff every five minutes to ask him to translate what the men in their lives were doing, I did not ask him one question about Jay.
Because in the back of my mind, all I could think about was the xoxo I got.
I was one dead cat.
EIGHTEEN
Thursday, Jeff had to spend the afternoon visiting family, so I had the whole day to get ready for my reunion with Jay.
I do all of the things an obsessed girl with too much time on her hands does to get ready: I buy new bubble bath and spend twenty minutes debating which scent to choose. What makes a guy want a girl more—if she smells like a rose or a cucumber? I also go to Bloomingdale’s to buy not one but two new matching bra-and-underwear sets. One in red lace, as requested. The other in black satin. (The satin one makes me look good, but not as if I were trying. Because God forbid a man knows you’re trying.) As long as I’m there, I buy a new set of sheets with a thread count so high, it resembles the winning numbers of this week’s lottery.
Which is fine—I feel as if maybe I won the lottery with Jay—we shall see.
That afternoon, I pick up Jay from the airport.
His look is casual, yet flawlessly put together. Wearing a dark blue, tailored suit, no tie, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned, he looks like a model in Esquire magazine.
Of course, he’s speaking (and laughing) in French with a gorgeous redhead in a low-cut dress, which makes him a little less appealing.
Cue the insecurity.…
Fortunately, his face lights up when he sees me. “Mel!” he says, beaming. He trots up to me quickly, kisses me hello on the lips, then pulls me into a hug.
Ahhhhhh … Life is perfect. My shoulders slump and I ooze into him, inhaling the scent of his hotel travel soap. I could stay in these arms forever.
I hear a woman’s lilting French behind me. I pull away and turn to see the woman he was speaking with waiting politely to be introduced.
All I catch from Jay is excusez-moi and some other French words and phrases (including the words mon amour? Or did I imagine that?) before he says, “Mel, this Colette, a friend of mine from a rival agency. Colette, c’est Melissa.”
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