51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

by Kristen McGuiness

  But none of that mattered. All that mattered was that I had him. And for the first time, I understood why women take their partner’s names because I wanted to be forever identified with him. I wanted to be wrapped in his orange wool turtleneck and his old French movies and the accordion he would play while riding through the hallways of his dorm on a unicycle. I loved being us. I loved being his.

  Which is why when I met Phillipe on MySpace in 2004, I thought I might have found that same great French love again. From his photo, I could tell he had the same mess of curly hair as my first Frenchie, and the same big cow eyes, and that lovely pert nose that once had been such a seamless counterpart to my Italian boxer schnoz. Phillipe and I e-mailed for a bit, and then decided to take it to the phone. The conversation was the longest five minutes of my life. Phillipe had a tenuous grasp of the English language, and in the middle of the call he hurt his thumb so badly that the conversation went from awkward to irritated. I never spoke to him again, and we dropped whatever loose plans we had to meet.

  When I decided to look Phillipe up again, I realized I had found myself in the Summer of Desperation 2007. After a very long and confusing volley about when and where we were going to meet, it was confirmed that we would get gelato together in the neighborhood. The phone call was no less irritating than the one we had years before, and so I quickly moved to be done with it, but Phillipe felt like talking. Phillipe liked to talk.

  “So you are feeling better?” he asked.

  I had been sick that week, so I replied, very slowly, because I remember in the conversation years prior, Phillipe commenting that I talk too fast.

  “Yes… I came home… and went to… bed… early.”

  “Ah, yes, last night, I rejhnjkhf kjkheug f jkh iueyh (because I have no idea what was actually said), and I put zee key in zee door. With my backpack. And I zit down on zee couch. With my backpack, my pack is for my motorbike. And I close my eyes. And zee captain. You know, zee captain of zee sheep?”

  I lay there on my bed wide-eyed. Did I miss something? Zee captain of what sheep? He lives on a sheep? Phillipe gets irritated that I am obviously not following his story. He can hear it in my silence.

  “You know! Zee pirate. Zee pirate with zee sheep. Zee wheel, he stands, zee wheel, he drives zee sheep.”

  At this point, I am playing a silent game of charades in my head. Pirates of Penzanze! Pirates of the Caribbean! There’s a pirate on TV! You’re dreaming! There’s a pirate in your house! But Phillipe has moved on.

  “And zen, I open my eyes and it’s 3:30. Zat doesn’t always happen.”

  I don’t know how to respond. I don’t even know what’s been said. I grasp, “You… must… have had… a long… day.”

  “Yes, a long day.”

  I hoped that it was just the phone. He is a French artist with a motorcycle and a cottage in Pasadena, and even beyond the Frenchie factor, man, do I want to be in that movie. Because ever since the Donkey Prince, even before the Donkey Prince, I have been addicted to romance. Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. Frenchie and Kristen. These were stories I not only told myself, they were ones I was determined to live. I wanted to love at such an intensity it felt as though I might die because of it. I wanted Wagner in the background and rain on command. I wanted the great big handsome star to sweep me off my feet, to look deeply into my eyes, and tell me, “Get on zee back of my motorbike, and I will take you to zee cottage in zee woods.”

  After three years, and two horrible phone conversations, I show up for gelato, with my fair share of apprehension, and a little bit of hope. For the most part, Phillipe is what I expected. He is wearing a fleece because it’s October now, which is kind of cold by Los Angeles standards. But under the fleece are a button-down and some sort of cravat, which looks like a bow tie meets an ascot. I dig that. I dig funky cravats, which is why I have the French fetish in the first place. Because the accent on its own can be a little annoying.

  We sit down, and Phillipe begins talking. Who knew someone with such a basic understanding of English could speak so much. Phillipe is probably strange even in his own country. He is obviously a bit of a loner and, admittedly, is “emancipated” from his family.

  “Do you like it in L.A?” I ask him.

  “Ummm, let me see. I think it is…,” he thinks for a bit, “a rape of human kind. Yes, a rape of human kind.”

  “Oh. That’s, yeah, that’s what a lot of people think. I guess I see it as much more than that. I think L.A.’s dark side is her sweetness, her quaint neighborhoods and her palm trees. The rest of it…”

  Phillipe interrupts, “They are nice, but no, it is a rape of human kind.”

  I am not sure if Phillipe is simply uninterested in what I have to say, or whether he is just confused by what I am actually saying. He tells me, “You don’t sound like a California girl. You sound like a New Yorker girl.” When I finally do speak, he sits back, much like I do while watching Telemundo—interested if only I could understand. Then he changes the channel. Back to him.

  The thing is for all of Phillipe’s knowledge, he doesn’t know how to laugh. Maybe he hasn’t yet learned to tell jokes in English. Or maybe he’s just not funny. Frenchie was hysterical. And perhaps that’s what made our otherwise fantasy romance feel so real. Because for all the slow dancing and long romantic talks, he could also make me laugh. We stayed together for one year, and then Frenchie graduated. The following summer I was working at High Times as an intern, beginning my journey into alcohol-induced bad behavior and rushing to the mailbox every day to see if I had received another one of the fountain pen-scrawled letters that contained the words, “I cannot stop thinking about when I will have you in my arms again, feel you. When I do, I forget everything, I’m just happy. Past, future, everything disappears when I am with you, ma chere. J’attend, j’attend, j’attend.”

  I wait, I wait, I wait.

  There are days when I still pull out those letters. They remind me that though it’s been so long since romance held me close, at one point it did. At one point, I sat with that man on a porch in France. We read our books and breathed softly. As his foot rested on mine, I looked over to find him watching me, and I knew that this was all that love ever needed to be. And though ten years have gone by, and he lives in France with his wife, and in many ways, feels as though he was a movie I once saw and not a man I knew, those letters always remind me that he believed in who I was, and he loved me for it.

  I was almost afraid that Phillipe would remind me of him. That some long-healed wound would feel fresh for a moment. But he didn’t. He did remind me that my dating life since the first Frenchie has been a game of Goldilocks—always searching for the romantic perfection I found in some silly relationship that I had before I was even twenty. I hold them all up to that prince, and I judge. Too smart. Not smart enough. Too wild. Not wild enough. Too funny. Not funny enough. And it’s not to say that I didn’t fall in love again because I did. For the most part though, I find myself slowly shaking my head that this one just won’t do. Never just right, like that man, who ten years ago held me on a Paris street and told me he would love me forever, then put me in a taxi and never saw me again.

  When I look at it that way, I can feel the years of disappointment. And tonight, as the minutes drag by, as Phillipe launches from one story to the next, as I pretend to listen, I can feel the wound. And I know I need to let go of this fantasy. I can’t keep thinking that it’s only the romances that take place across daunting odds that are the ones worth having. It hasn’t served me in years, if it ever did.

  Phillipe doesn’t seem to notice that I am making life-altering resolutions across the table from him. Instead, he leans back, cocks his head, and asks, “Do you know who you look like little? I hope you don’t sink it’s an insult. Zee woman with zee curly hair, and zee big eyes, she sings, ‘I love you like a woman.’”

  I don’t know this song. He attempts to sing it, but I am even worse at that game. “Oh you know, she was in zee ope
ras in zee seventies.”

  I smile, “Barbra Streisand?”

  “YES!! YES!! Little bit. Barbra Streisand.” I don’t take it as an insult. Because I get that. Often. And I don’t even look like her. But I kind of dress like her. Or rather her in the seventies. As my friend Siren says, “All sweatery boots and tight pants.” I would have liked to have shared her brilliance with Phillipe, but it was terminology like “sweatery boots” that was making it easier for me just to stay silent.

  “So would you like to get some food?” Phillipe asks.

  I look at the time on my cell phone, “Oh well, it’s getting kind of…”

  Phillipe interrupts, “Of course, I should say, I do not have enough money on me for two people. You pay for you. I pay for me.”

  “Yeah, I really should be going,” I say, standing up. Because as much as I like the image of dating a French artist with a motorcycle, I realize that in this case, it would only be another fantasy. A celluloid still from a silent film that always sounds interesting when you’re scrolling through Netflix, but gets boring before you’re halfway through. And I know that’s not the movie I want to be in; it would only be a really bad sequel to the masterpiece I made years ago. Today, I think I’ll let that film reel crackle into oblivion. I will kiss that Donkey Prince on the forehead, and I will leave him standing in the rearview mirror of my Parisian taxi, forever waving goodbye.

  3

  Date Three: Normies

  I’m rather excited for my second date with Richard. I see him as a perfect opportunity to find romance in reality. I even get a little dressed up for the date and talk to my mom about him minutes before he arrives. We drive to the restaurant, and it hits me—Richard is a “normie.”

  Being a normie is not a bad thing. Most people would say it’s rather good. A normie is the nickname we alcoholics give to non-alcoholics. They drink in good measure, they don’t overspend, they might have done drugs, but they’re by no means addicts. They’re just people who for whatever reason didn’t come out quite as crazy as the rest of us. They follow directions. They pay attention. They don’t even have eating problems. Honestly, we try to be like them every day. Many of us not-so-normies even go on to marry them, and interbreed. But it can be hard. Because they want to do things the right way naturally, and we have to work at it all the time.

  “It’s gotta be here somewhere,” Richard mutters as we walk up and down Ventura Boulevard, in search of the Hungarian restaurant where he made our reservation.

  “Maybe Nancy fucked up,” I suggest. I am trying to be funny because I am not as freaked out about the missing restaurant. Unfortunately, I think my stab at humor is just riding Richard’s nerves. Richard drives a Prius, and Nancy is his OnStar navigator. I call all OnStars that because, well, it makes sense. Richard, however, trusts Nancy. Strike one against him. I know it’s not fair of me. Maybe it’s even downright bitchy, but I can’t understand how people can’t find their way without those things. And the restaurant in question was around the corner from an apartment building Richard had lived in for years. I have never lived in the Valley and actually find it to be a bit of Kryptonite to my otherwise heightened sense of direction, and even I could have gotten us to Ventura and Campo de Cahuenga without Nancy’s soothing yet slightly irritated voice giving us the most boring route possible. I think Nancy is exhausted. She’s just a burned-out phone sex operator who dispenses the easiest means possible to what could be a far more interesting journey.

  “Richard, I think this is it.” We are standing in front of an Indian restaurant with the same address as the Hungarian joint that once sat in its place.

  “Well, they could have told me that when I made the reservation.”

  “I’m okay with Indian if you are.”

  “I guess. I don’t really eat Indian, but if it’s our only option,” Richard pouts.

  Of course, when Richard confesses to not knowing what Tikka Masala is, I realize “I don’t really” means never. Strike two. I can’t date someone who doesn’t have an adventurous appetite. I just can’t. I’ll eat anything. The way I look at it, what’s a little food poisoning that this mysterious human body can’t handle? So we order, or rather I order. For us. Another strike. And we haven’t even begun the second-date conversation. Richard started a new job this week. And they work a lot of hours. And the natives aren’t entirely friendly. And apparently, he’s having insomnia. The admission of which was in response to my describing the hell on earth that is a come-down from cocaine. That’s when I find out Richard’s never tried cocaine. And herein lies the difference between the normie and me. It is this gulf in decision-making and risk-taking that makes the normie gap so terrifyingly wide.

  It all started when Richard asked if I had ever been to Good. Good is an awkward, gay-owned, gay-friendly restaurant with really bad food. The next thing I know, I am telling Richard about how when I first started getting sober, I had gone to Good to try to do some controlled drinking. I was three weeks out of the relationship that changed my life.

  Years after Frenchie, Oliver became the one. He was the one to replace my first young love with my first adult love. He was the one who I thought would save me but ended up not being able to love me at my worst. He was the one whom I lost, whom I loved more than drinking and still couldn’t quit to keep. So he quit me. The day after he sent me the e-mail ending our three-month affair, I found myself in my first meeting. And two weeks later, I found myself at Good, trying to do some controlled drinking. I ordered a pitcher of beer, and I allowed the control to commence.

  “Wait, wait, you ordered a pitcher, and you thought that was controlled drinking?” Richard asks, confused. “Yes,” I say. Deadpan if you will. “See, I figured that I would just have a glass or two out of the pitcher, and then…”

  “Isn’t that like saying you’re going to do some controlled eating, and then go and order a huge chocolate cake?”

  Richard might be a normie, but he’s a smart one. I explain to him that by the time I was done, the restaurant was closed, and I was sitting there drinking by myself watching Cher’s last tour on DVD. I remember I was crying a little so she must have been singing, “Believe.” But who knows? I might have been crying because my heart was more broken than it had ever been before. Or I might have been drinking because Sonny Bono was dead.

  “Had he just died?” Richard asks.

  “No,” I shrug. “But it’s still sad.”

  The night before my date with Richard, I had gone bowling with some friends. The only problem with bowling is that I hate it. Thankfully, there was someone there whom I had been trying to meet for some time. Ben. Toxic, sober alcoholic, Ben. I had seen him around at my meetings for a while, so when a mutual friend brought him to the bowling alley, I began to think fate was shifting to my side. Ben is a balding writer, who appears to wear a T-shirt and shorts on any given occasion, but he handles a pool stick with all muscle and cock, and though I barely know him, he seems like the type of guy who is more intrigued by the journey than by anything else. This might also explain why Ben is forty and single.

  Toxic Ben said last night, “The only problem with normies is there’s just no heat there.” Normies like Richard. They ask how a pitcher is controlled drinking. They ask why one would do cocaine to feel less drunk when it would be much easier to simply stop drinking. They ask Nancy for directions. And that’s the thing. There is just no heat there.

  I get up to use the ladies room. I don’t look so good. I’m tired. I’m still a bit bummed out about Toxic Ben. We and a couple of other anti-bowlers had left the pins to start a renegade game of pool. Ben and I had been having a great time playing pool and lightly flirting until my friend Joan asked me, “How’s your 51 dates going?”

  There might as well have been a scratch on the record. Ben quickly looked up from his shot and asked, “What 51 dates?”

  “I’m going on 51 dates in 50 weeks in order to find love,” I pronounced. I smiled across the pool table at Ben. I was hoping
he would ask to be one of my dates. I even tried to swing my hip to the right, the way someone with much better flirting skills might do.

  Ben just looked at me, pool stick in hand, smirk on face. “Good luck with that,” he snorted. And then I watched as Ben took his shot and sunk the ball. And then I watched as he turned his attentions to Joan.