The Lonely Hearts Club

by Brenda Janowitz

  “What do you know about live tweeting?” I ask my mother.

  “It’s a thing,” she says. I suspect she’s not entirely sure what Twitter even is. “I heard one of the other guests talking about it in the ladies’ room. They said they were going to live tweet the green-room experience so that by the time their segment went on, they’d be going viral.”

  “That’s actually kind of brilliant,” I say.

  “Do you want me to live tweet for you?”

  “Do you know how to use Twitter?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “But how hard could it possibly be?”

  My mother has a point. I quickly hand over my phone, and give her a brief explanation of 140 characters and what a hashtag is.

  “Can you tweet a photo?” she asks, holding my phone up to my face to take a quick shot.

  “Sure,” I say, and then take the phone back to show her how. It’s then that I see what her proposed first tweet is:

  Jo looking gorgeous as she gets ready to chat up Matt Lauer. #LonelyHeartsClub

  “Mom,” I say. “You cannot tweet this.”

  “Why not?” she pouts. “You look fabulous. I told you that black leather jeans were the way to go.”

  “You just can’t tweet that,” I say.

  My mother’s about to object again, something about how the Twitterverse would want to see how beautiful I look, when we’re interrupted by Matt Lauer. I don’t even have a chance to question my mother on how she knows what the Twitterverse is.

  “Jo?” Matt Lauer says as he comes to greet me. “Hey there, just wanted to say hello before we went on the air.”

  “Hi,” I say, shaking his hand. I’m hoping that mine isn’t too sweaty. It’s easy to look cool, but my hands always betray me. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m Jo’s mother,” my mom says, grabbing Matt Lauer’s hand. “Nancy Waldman. You can call me Nan.”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Matt says. “Jo, did Bee tell you how it’s going to go today?”

  “Yes,” I say. “We’ll talk about how the whole thing started, how social media plays into it, what my plans for the site are.”

  “Exactly,” he says. “I saw your NY1 interview. It was great. Do the same thing—look at me, not the camera. We’re just having a conversation. Nothing to be nervous about.”

  “Oh, she’s not nervous,” my mother interjects. “She’s been on stage since she was five years old.”

  “Great,” Matt says. “Then we’re all set.”

  “You have a glow about you,” Matt Lauer tells me. We’re on air, and I’m trying to act natural, just like he said. Trying to pretend we’re just two friends having a regular conversation. But it’s not easy. My face feels like it’s on fire and I could really use a glass of water. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were in love.”

  I laugh nervously. I don’t really know how to respond. Do I deny it? Do I admit everything? Do I accuse him of being glib?

  “Love?” I say, and Matt smiles back.

  “But I’m guessing that’s not it, since you’re the face of the anti-love movement taking place in Manhattan right now,” he says. “Tell us about that.”

  I take a deep breath. I can do this.

  “It all started on Valentine’s Day. I was broken-hearted, alone, and drunk. Not a very good combination.”

  “No, it’s not,” Matt says and laughs.

  “I decided to get out all of my feelings, all of my frustrations, on my blog. Little did I know, I was actually broadcasting these feelings—my deepest, darkest thoughts—to 2,500 of my closest friends.”

  “Your band’s old mailing list,” Matt says.

  “Right. But it turned out to be a good thing. Because now I know I’m not alone. There are other people like me. People who’ve had their hearts broken. People who have been betrayed by love. People who want to vent their pain and anger. And we’re the Lonely Hearts Club.”

  I look off camera, and I see my mother frantically taking pictures of me. I can’t help but smile, and I take another deep breath.

  “And for those of you who don’t know where to find them,” Matt says, “we’ve got the Web address right there at the bottom of your screens right now. Tell us, Jo, what’s next for the Lonely Hearts Club?”

  “Okay, lonely hearts: mark your calendars. Get ready for the Lonely Hearts Club Ball—this year on Valentine’s Day. Now you don’t have to sit at home drinking vodka and eating cheap drugstore candy. You can be with people like you—others who have sworn off love and just want to rage.”

  “I assume information about the party will be on your Web site?”

  “It’s there now,” I say. “Tickets go on sale in October.”

  “You heard it here, folks,” Matt says. “Go to the Lonely Hearts Web site and check out the information about the Lonely Hearts Club Ball. Now, Jo, before you go, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you one last thing. Are you sure you’ve sworn off love? There isn’t anyone out there who could convince you otherwise?”

  “No, Matt,” I say, looking into the camera. “I’m done with it. No more love for me.”

  30 - You Drive Me Wild

  “Well, if I show you how to do that, you won’t need me,” Max says. But it’s not true. I will need him, still. I do need him. I tell him so.

  He smiles widely and shows me how to make the changes to the site I was talking about. He has it set up in a very user-friendly way, since when he first created it, he imagined that he’d be setting it up for me and then walking away. He didn’t intend on staying around quite as long as he did.

  “Thanks,” I say, and he tells me that I am very welcome.

  Everything he says to me seems like an unqualified invitation to sex. “You’re very welcome” means “Let’s have sex.” “What do you want for dinner tonight?” means “Let’s have sex before the food comes.” “Whose place are we meeting at?” means “Do you want to have sex at your place or mine?”

  I’m in a particularly good mood today because the Amber Fairchild lip-synching scandal is on full tilt. Her fake celebrity friends have all shunned her, and there’s even talk that her squirrely husband has moved out. I have to Google the word “schadenfreude” to explain to Max how I feel about it.

  “Well, that’s not very nice,” he says, furrowing his brow.

  “Maybe I’m not a nice girl,” I say, an attempt at flirtation. I edge closer to him, but Max doesn’t respond.

  “No, seriously,” he says. “Why would you revel in someone else’s misfortune?”

  “I should have had her life,” I say, anger I didn’t know was there bubbling in my voice. I feel the folds of my forehead deepening, my hands balling into fists. “I should have had her career.”

  “You don’t want her life, do you really? Married to a man she doesn’t seem to really love, making music that you think is overproduced and awful, tethered to an image you think is deplorable, and surrounded by sycophants, not real friends.”

  “Well, no,” I say. “I don’t want those things. But I do want a record deal. I want a career in music.”

  “You will get a record deal,” he says, taking my hands in his. He takes one hand and raises it to his lips. He kisses it gently and it sends a chill down my spine. “Jo, you’re enormously talented. If only you could see what I could see. It just takes the right person to see what you have, and you’ll get what you want.”

  Is it any wonder we end up in bed?

  Blog comment from Pianosoundslikeacarnival:

  I know you don’t believe in all this negativity, Jo. Love exists!

  Response from Wannabestartinsomething:

  Jo rocks. If you don’t agree with that, you shouldn’t be on this site in the first place.

  Response from NYDolls:

  What are you doing on this site if you don’t want to rage? Get off the Lonely Hearts Club blog if you aren’t on board.

  Response from Londoncalling:

  Easy to sit behind a computer and criti
cize. Lonely Hearts Club forever!!

  An hour later, we’re back to it, working on my site together. Sitting side by side with an amazing guy, I can’t help but think that Max was right. I may not have the music career that Amber has, but I have someone wonderful in my life, and I’m surrounded by friends and family. I may not have a place to live other than Chloe’s couch at the moment, but that’s only temporary. I’m doing pretty well for myself.

  Could it be that the rather large shove my dad gave me out of the nest was actually a good thing?

  “What should we do for dinner tonight?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “What do you want?”

  “I was asking you what you wanted.”

  “Oh, me?” I say, feigning innocence. “You know me, I’m so predictable. I always want the same thing.”

  “You do?”

  “Yeah.”

  He grabs me and kisses me.

  “Hey, what are you doing for Thanksgiving?” he asks.

  “Thanksgiving?”

  “Yeah, I was going to head up to my parents’ place for the long weekend,” he says. “I was thinking that maybe you’d like to come?”

  “To meet your parents?” I say. A million thoughts flood my mind:

  My parents don’t even know about Max.

  No one knows about Max.

  How can we keep this secret if his parents know about us?

  Where would I tell my parents that I’m going?

  What would I tell Chloe?

  “Don’t look so terrified,” Max says, laughing. But I can tell it’s a fake laugh. I know that I’ve disappointed him.

  “I’m sorry,” I quickly say. “It’s just that I haven’t even told my parents about us yet. I haven’t told anyone.”

  “What, are you afraid my parents will rat you out to the Lonely Hearts Club community?” Max jokes. But I don’t respond. That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. “Oh man, that is what you’re afraid of. Do you really think my family would do that to you? And anyway, what would be so bad about that? What would be so bad about letting people know about us?”

  “Nothing would be bad about it,” I say. “In fact, it would be great. It’s just that if I do that, the Lonely Hearts Club Web site would cease to exist. You can’t run a Web site that stands for the opposite of love if you’re busy falling into it.”

  “You’re falling into it?” he asks.

  “You know that I am.”

  “I am, too,” he says.

  “But that’s not enough for you?” I ask.

  “For now it is,” he says. “I guess. But it won’t always be.”

  “After the Lonely Hearts Club Ball, we can go public, I promise,” I say. “I’ve got so many people working so hard on it, I don’t have the heart to destroy everything we’ve built up so far.”

  “I understand,” he says. “You’ll probably want to sell the Web site around then, too, so we should keep planning for that.”

  I shake my head in agreement, but the truth is, the thing I don’t really want Max to know, haven’t told him yet, is that I don’t want to sell the Web site. It’s my band’s Web site, not my own really, and I can’t let go. Not yet, anyway. But there’s no way Max will understand that, so I keep it to myself.

  I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

  31 - Stop! In the Name of Love

  When you book an event at the Chalice, an old abandoned bank in Chinatown, now newly renovated into a humongous party space, you get the services of a complimentary party planner. My mother, who gleefully accepted the responsibility of the Lonely Hearts Club Ball décor, is not pleased with this development.

  “And what exactly is your experience in planning a party on this large of a scale?” she asks the planner.

  Our party planner, Kitty, comes from the Barbie Johnson school of enthusiasm.

  “Well, I’m coming from the corporate side,” she explains. She’s about one glaringly large smile away from bouncing up and down like Barbie. “I worked at the USTA? Tennis? You know, the US Open? I planned all of their corporate events. I even got to meet Michelle Obama once!”

  “Well, for this event, discretion will be important,” my mother says. “This is an altogether different crowd from the tennis people you’ve worked with, and you’ll need to turn a blind eye to some of the things you’ll be seeing here.”

  I find it hilarious that my mother is trying to tough-talk this poor party planner with her tweed suit and three-inch Chanel Spectators on.

  “Will we have full access to the vaults?” Chloe asks, and Kitty tells us that yes, our guests can use the old vault spaces.

  The ballroom is massive—the ceilings are triple height, the windows are enormous, and there’s not one, but four, separate chandeliers dangling from the ceiling. There are catwalks all along the ballroom, with tiny alcoves that look down. When this operated as a bank, those served as the offices. Now they are set up like miniature lounge areas. Some lonely hearts are not going to be lonely for long with those things.

  Then it’s time to see the vaults. We go through a corridor toward a cavernous space. The massive vault door is now left permanently open (“Don’t want any party guests getting locked up!” Kitty nervously laughs), but there are five different vaults inside, one bigger than the next. Chloe goes off to the first one, and I just stand still, taking it all in. My mother has stayed back in the ballroom, where she is trying, in vain, to get a measurement on the windows for draperies.

  “This area would be great for dressing rooms, if you and Chloe were planning on having hair and makeup done here,” Kitty says.

  “We weren’t,” I say.

  “I hope you won’t hold this against me,” Kitty confides, “but I recently got engaged! We’re planning to have the wedding here, and I’ll be using this area as my bridal suite.”

  “Congratulations!” I say. “That’s wonderful news!”

  I give Kitty a warm hug, but she’s holding back. “I wasn’t expecting that reaction,” she says.

  “What were you expecting?” I ask.

  “I was just hoping you wouldn’t fire me when you found out!” she says with a laugh. She tries to play it off like a joke, but I know that she’s serious. She really thought we would fire her because she was engaged.

  “I wouldn’t fire you for that,” I say. “In fact, I’m happy for you!”

  “Happy for what?” Chloe asks, emerging from the third vault.

  “Kitty just got engaged,” I say, grabbing her hand to look at the ring.

  “You’re fired,” Chloe deadpans.

  “Chloe!” I chastise. And then to Kitty: “You’re not fired.”

  Kitty laughs.

  “I’m pretty sure she gets the joke,” Chloe says. “But the real question is, why don’t you?”

  I ignore Chloe. “Have you decided on a theme yet?” I ask Kitty. I now know, after listening to Barbie, that without a good theme, your wedding will be a total and utter failure. It might even make the marriage a disaster.

  “What’s with all the questions?” Chloe asks me as we make our way back to the ballroom.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All those questions you were asking Kitty about her engagement. What’s with that? You hate love,” Chloe says. “Don’t you?”

  My mother is on a two-story ladder, tape measure in hand.

  “Oh, hi, girls!” she says.

  “Get down from there!” I say. “You’re going to kill yourself!”

  “I’m going to coordinate décor and drinks with your mother,” Kitty says calmly, but her legs betray her. She runs to my mother as quickly as her high heels will allow. She steadies the ladder, and then talks my mother down from it.

  “What’s with you?” Chloe asks me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “First you’re humming pop songs, and now you’re asking some stranger about her wedding plans. Who are you, and what have you done with my friend Jo?”

  “I’m just try
ing to be nice,” I say.

  “Nice is saying congrats and then looking at the ring,” Chloe says. “You’re about to become an invited guest.”

  “I am not.”

  “And throw her a bachelorette party.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Seriously,” Chloe says. “What is with you lately? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say there’s a guy in the picture.”

  I look down at the floor. I can’t bring my eyes up to meet Chloe’s.

  “Oh my God,” Chloe says. “There is a guy! And you haven’t told me about it. Wow. Is Jesse back? Did he come crawling?”

  “No,” I say. “Jesse did not come back.”

  “Well, then where are you every night? You don’t have that many friends who I don’t know. NYU and Columbia weren’t exactly that far apart from each other. Where have you been?”

  “Okay, okay,” I say. “I have been seeing someone.”

  “Who?”

  “Max,” I say, and Chloe’s face explodes with a million expressions at once: shock, surprise, but most of all, joy.

  “Max?” is all she can say in response.

  “Yes, Max.” Just saying his name makes my pulse start to race.

  “Max from my office Max?”

  “Yes!” I say. “Why are you so surprised?”

  “I didn’t see that one coming,” she says. “He is total boyfriend material, though. Very good guy.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say quickly. “We’re just sleeping together. No feelings, just sex. That’s all it is.”

  “Really?” Chloe says. “He doesn’t seem like that type of guy. He seems intense. Like he doesn’t do surface. Like the kind of guy you fall in love with.”

  “Well, he’s not,” I say. “He’s a rebound guy. Nothing more.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then good for you,” Chloe says. “If you’re happy.”

  I nod my head in response.

  “You are happy, right?”

  If she only knew.

  32 - (You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party)