“It’s not that. It should be, but it’s not.”
“I don’t believe you. It ruined things with my ex-wife and now it’s ruining things with you.”
“Your ex-what?”
“Didn’t I tell you I was married?”
“No, you didn’t.” It wouldn’t have mattered if you did. If that whole acting teacher/animal situation didn’t run me off I doubt an ex-wife would have.
“Well, I was married. For almost three years.”
“And she didn’t like that you edited adult movies for a living?”
“She didn’t care about that. But she was in some of them, so it just got weird when I’d have to cut her scenes with some other dude.”
I stopped chewing my turkey burger. I looked for a place to spit it out. I couldn’t find one. I swallowed. I assumed his ex-wife did, too.
“Your ex-wife was in porn? She was a porn star? She had sex with people on camera and you watched?”
He didn’t really say much after that, other than “yes” when I demanded to know if he’d been tested for HIV.
“Well, this has been great. I came here to break up with you, so I’m going to stick to that and get on out of here. You can go ahead and pay the bill. Don’t forget to leave a nice tip.”
Much like Nico, Gavin lived within walking distance of Formosa. He continued to come into the bar and have drinks long after we quit seeing each other. I really need to get a new job.
MOVE IT OR LOSE IT
Ryan and I continued to be friends throughout it all. Every time I dated someone, I couldn’t wait to tell Ryan about it in hope of a reaction. If that sounds familiar, go back a few chapters. It is.
All of Ryan’s friends hated Mary, which was very satisfying, especially since they all liked me. They continued to break up and get back together like a couple of dumb high school kids, while I continued to harbor secret feelings for him. She and I never met. I don’t know why she was fine with her boyfriend constantly going to movies and dinners with some girl she didn’t know, but she was. Or she didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t really ask. I just knew that they led very separate lives for a couple. I was positive that there was no way they could last, which kept me from developing anything real with anybody else. In case it isn’t obvious, I really, really liked Ryan.
Ryan was really successful in voice-over and made a pretty good living. Mary had a pretty great voice-over career, too, so I decided that was why he liked her better. Why would he want to be with a bartender?
My own lack of career stability made me feel really insecure and inferior, even though he seemed pretty impressed with my dedication to pursuing what I loved. It’s weird when other people are comfortable with your life and you aren’t. Then again, they aren’t balancing your sad checking account at 3 A.M. while polishing off a bottle of cheap cabernet.
Eventually Ryan and Mary ended things for good. She didn’t leave him for a woman as I had predicted, but she did end up lying to him and proving that she was an asshole. They’d taken a sort of “trial separation” but she kept telling Ryan she wanted to work things out. In the meantime, she had a full-on other boyfriend. He finally decided that he deserved better: me.
Ryan and I went out for drinks a couple of nights after they broke things off. I was happy to be there for him. At the end of the night, he tried to kiss me. It really, really pissed me off.
“I’m not a fucking backup plan,” I told him.
“You aren’t, it’s just that now I’m finally done with that relationship and would like to try one with you.”
“You’ve had about forty-eight hours to get over it. Let’s give it more time.”
My brave front crumbled quickly and before I knew it Ryan and I were in a relationship. He and Mary had only been broken up for a few weeks, but here we were. It felt good, and we had fun when we were together, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a consolation prize for what he’d just lost.
He didn’t do a ton to help his plight. As we dated, I started to realize why his ex-girlfriend and I had never met. He was really secretive, and not even about things that people need to be secretive about. If I wanted to know what he bought at Banana Republic that day I was being “pushy.” If I wondered who he was texting I was being “insecure.” That one might have actually been accurate. But give me a break. We didn’t exactly start strong. In his defense, I’m pretty nosy. I guess I need someone who can deal with it.
Ryan liked to go home to Philly as often as he could to visit his family. If he didn’t invite me, I’d invite myself. I was really trying to get this relationship to the next level. I began to realize that someone had a real issue with commitment and for once it wasn’t me. In fact, I was so busy trying to show him he had nothing to be afraid of that I had forgotten about my own fears.
I stayed the night with Ryan all the time, but he rarely stayed the night with me. He had a roommate and I lived alone, so you’d think it would have been the other way around. I didn’t understand what the problem was. Over the course of a few months, I realized that the reason he preferred to stay at his place was that it was his place. It was easier for him. He was comfortable. He didn’t like change. That was going to be a problem.
“God, Ryan. I don’t even have a place to put stuff. It’s a huge pain for me to go back and forth. I’m a girl. I need my shit and this place doesn’t have any of it.”
Most guys would just have started staying at my place to shut me up, but he was incredibly stubborn. Any move toward compromise was just me being even pushier and him losing in his imaginary battle.
That’s why he was very excited to announce to me one day that he had solved our problem. He had cleaned out a drawer in his dresser, and I was free to do with it what I would.
“A drawer?” I asked, hoping I’d heard him wrong.
“Yeah! A drawer! Now it won’t be such a pain to come back and forth here. You’ll have a place to put stuff.”
He was really trying, but he was definitely missing the point. I took the drawer. I put stuff in it. I tried to take the baby steps with him. Unfortunately, I’m a really fast walker.
After we’d been together for more than two years it was clear that he had no interest in living with me. We had a long conversation. I told him that I wanted to get married someday and that if he couldn’t even stomach living with me after all this time, that was certainly never going to happen. He was five years older than me and I figured if a man in his late thirties preferred to have a roommate over me, I wasn’t the girl for him.
Ryan didn’t see it that way. He was of the mindset that moving in was something that “just happened” and that me suggesting we do it was him being pushed again.
“Moving in can’t really ‘just happen,’ Ryan. There are apartment hunting and movers and all kinds of things that have to take place, which involve decision-making and talking. And you can’t keep waiting for your fears to subside. You have to fucking try.”
It didn’t matter what I said; he wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t believe that I was the one trying to convince someone that moving in together was no big deal. At least he had a roommate; I’d been living alone for seven years and the thought of having to give up my alone time terrified me. But for the first time ever, my desire to find out what it could be like to take the next step was outweighing my insecurities. I wanted to take the risk and he didn’t. We broke up. I was heartbroken.
I continued working hard on my career. Audition, stand-up, make drinks for people, repeat. I just needed to stay busy. I was in my early thirties and single once again. I told myself that it was okay, that I hadn’t walked away from something great, that he didn’t deserve me if he didn’t want to try to move forward. The alcohol helped.
One of our good friends had a birthday party and both Ryan and I showed up. The problem was, it was a small party, about ten people, so it was totally uncomfortable for everybody that we were both there. The birthday honoree had been his friend first, so I didn’
t stay long. I had put a lot of work into looking good, knowing I would see him, so I just said I had another “event” to go to and got the fuck out of there. There was no event, just my couch. I stopped at the nearest liquor store, picked up a bottle of wine, went home, drank it, then joined eHarmony.
Two days later I got an email from eHarmony telling me that they’d found my perfect match. I hadn’t really paid any attention to it since I drunkenly joined, but I was intrigued to see what they’d come up with.
“Ryan from Philly is your perfect match,” my email read. I found it really annoying that they’d set me up with someone with the same name as my ex-boyfriend and from the same city as my ex-boyfriend. Still, I went to scope out my future husband’s profile.
eHarmony didn’t match me with a guy with the same name as my ex-boyfriend. They matched me with my ex-boyfriend. It’s possible that I’ve never been so angry in my entire life. I immediately called Ryan and went off.
“What the hell are you doing on eHarmony?” I asked him.
He was confused. He hadn’t gotten the “Sarah from Arkansas is your perfect match” email yet.
“What are you talking about?”
“eHarmony just matched us up. You’re ‘Ryan from Philly.’ You’re my perfect match, you stupid, stupid jerk.”
“Wait, I just joined that. Wait, they matched us up? Wait …”
“Yes, you dumb, dumb asshole. And guess what? You shouldn’t fucking be on eHarmony. Have you seen the commercials? It’s for people who want a relationship, people who want to get married and shit, it’s not for people like you. It’s not for people who can’t give somebody more than a drawer. Did you put ‘terrified of commitment’ in the ‘about me’ section?”
Ryan was actually more freaked out than I was. “Well, what are you doing on eHarmony?”
“Uh, I am not the one with the commitment issues. I went on it to find a mature, healthy relationship. I never said I didn’t want to be in one, so I’m not the big fat liar.”
“I never said I didn’t want to be in one, either, Sarah. I just said I didn’t want to move in yet.”
“Oh shut up. Just shut up with your bullshit. eHarmony is so stupid. And you’re so stupid.” I was handling this great for someone who had just accused the other person of not being mature.
We were both silent for what felt like ten minutes. I refused to speak until he apologized.
“I’m sorry Sarah. When I saw you at Sean’s party, you looked so pretty. Like you were going on a date. Then you just left and never said a word to me. I stopped at a liquor store, then went home and drank. I got pretty banged up, then I went on the computer and joined eHarmony,” he explained.
“That’s the most pathetic story I’ve ever heard,” I told him.
I hung up and called eHarmony customer care.
“Yes, I need to cancel my subscription,” I told the customer service representative.
“Okay. I can cancel it now. It will disable one month from the date that you joined,” the lady said oh so sweetly.
“That’s not good enough. I need it completely canceled now. Also I need a refund.”
“We don’t do refunds.”
“You set me up with my ex-boyfriend. I need a refund.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am—”
“Don’t call me ma’am. I’m sure you’re older than me.”
“I’m twenty-seven.”
“Can you just get me a fucking refund, please?”
“Our computers match people based on interests and goals. If you and your ex are both on the site, we can’t help the possibility that you might be matched up. Perhaps that’s why you were together before—you had similar interests. So if you look at it from our point of view, we’re doing a really good job.”
“If you look at it from my point of view, this is the worst day ever. I filled out a whole bunch of shit and I made it very clear that I wanted to find someone who can handle an adult relationship. ‘Ryan from Philly’ is not capable of that. He’s a commitment-phobe and you set me up with him on your site that’s supposedly all about people who want a commitment. That’s false advertising. I want my fucking fifty-four ninety-nine back.” I was crying.
“Sorry, ma’am. We can’t refund your money. But your account will cancel in one month. In the meantime, maybe you’ll get matched with someone who—”
“Someone who will chop my head off?” I yelled. “For all I know I could be set up with a serial killer, because clearly you don’t have a screening process.” I hung up. Obviously she wasn’t going to budge on the refund.
I met Casey for afternoon cocktails the next day in the middle of the old farmer’s market. It was and still is one of my favorite drinking spots. Most of the patrons there are senior citizens and the ladies drink white zinfandel out of plastic wineglasses. It’s always good people-watching. We definitely didn’t go there to meet guys, since most of them were in their early nineties. But that afternoon we ended up talking to two men and I found one of them really, really cute. They didn’t stay long, but later that night the one I was flirting with walked into Formosa. I had mentioned in passing that I worked there, and he decided to come in to ask me out. It was a pretty bold move. Ryan who?
Aidan and I went on a few dates. He worked at a studio building sets, so he was slightly in the entertainment industry but not really. He was more of a construction worker. I decided not to hold my past with construction workers against him.
Aidan had a nice house, a nice car, and a nine-year-old son. What is it with guys who build things for a living not wearing protection? I wondered.
Our relationship was very new and very casual, so luckily he never tried to get me to meet his kid. He just made me dinner and took me to sushi. It was the perfect distraction from what I was coming out of. And he was fun.
Just when I started to really like him, I ran into Ryan.
“You have the worst timing,” I told him.
He didn’t even ask what I meant. He just told me that he wanted to take me out for dinner.
“No thanks,” I replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean no thanks I don’t want to go out for dinner.”
“Okay, smart-ass. But I want to take you out. I want to talk to you.”
“Talk to me here,” I insisted.
“We’re in a parking lot.”
“So, talk to me in a parking lot.”
“Sarah, I would like to take you out and talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you.”
“You might want to hear what I have to say.”
“Say it here.”
I won’t bore you with the rest of that conversation. If you guessed that it continued to go on like that for ten minutes and was really annoying, you guessed correctly. Eventually he broke me down and I accepted the invitation to go to dinner with him the next evening.
I got home from running into Ryan and started to get ready for a date I had with Aidan that night. It dawned on me that I had two dates in two nights. This is what it must have felt like for Stella when she got her groove back, I thought as I put on a pair of really uncomfortable heels.
While I was getting ready, I got a phone call from the Hollywood Improv asking if I could come do a set on the 10 P.M. show that night to fill in for someone who had canceled. I had to say yes, it was work, so I called Aidan to ask if we could reschedule our date.
“I’m so sorry, but they just called me,” I explained to him. “I should definitely show up.” I probably should have invited him to come, but I don’t like for guys to see me perform too early on in the relationship. It’s better for them to find out that I’m kind of slutty on their own time.
“All right, fine. Have fun,” he responded.
“Thanks. Do you want to try to get together maybe over the weekend?”
No response.
“Hello?” All I heard was silence. I assumed that the call had dropped. I tried him back and he didn’t pick up.
Nor did he try to call me back.
Later, on my way home from the Improv, I got a text from him that said, “Sorry, but I’m looking for someone with a little more care.” Oh my God, really? This guy was in his late forties. I didn’t want to be with a guy who got his period. Aidan was also a big pot smoker, which I’m not a huge fan of. It’s okay in increments, but when someone does it too much they become the “what’s the rush, we have all the time in the world!” kind of guy. Sometimes you don’t have all the time in the world. Sometimes the movie starts at eight. Since I had a date with Ryan the next night, I figured this was just the universe working it all out for me anyway. Aidan did later try to retract his childish attitude, but I had already shifted my focus back to Ryan.
The next day I got home from the gym (that’s my way of telling you that sometimes I work out) and found a bag on my porch. I picked it up, then spotted my neighbor. “Did you happen to see who left this here?” I asked her.
“No, sorry. Hope you had a nice swim.” She went inside. Swim? I had no idea what was she talking about.
Then I looked down at my clothes and noticed how sweaty they were. Great, I sweat so much that she thinks it’s from swimming. Worse, she thinks I swim in workout clothes.
When I got inside and opened the bag, I found a really pretty black dress. It was from BCBG, which was where Ryan always bought my Christmas presents. I immediately called my mom, who’d been there for me over the weeks following our breakup.
“Ryan bought me a dress. He left it on my doorstep. Should I wear it tonight or is that too Pretty Woman?”
“Don’t wear it, and don’t go to dinner.”
“What? I thought you’d think it was great that he wanted to go to dinner. He probably wants to get back together,” I told her. “Shouldn’t I hear what he has to say? And the dress probably cost like a hundred and fifty dollars.”
“Of course he wants to get back together,” she assured me. “But you broke up with him for a reason. Don’t go out with him and listen to his crap unless he gives you a ring.”
Life As I Blow It Page 19