51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

by Kristen McGuiness

  “Such a good name,” he sighs.

  “What is Nana talking about? She likes Silver Lake. I mean, I know she would prefer Beverly Hills, but she thinks it’s charming.”

  “Yeah. But she says there are no professionals in the neighborhood. That they’re all artists. K, believe me, stay away from artists.”

  My uncle and I both share a vision of the big dream. His was to become a top florist and mine is to become a famous writer, and we both know that big dreams can come with steep prices. My mom and Uncle Tom believe in nice things and decent jobs, but they’re no artists. They pay their bills. They do their taxes. They vote Republican. And so I understand why Vic warns me against the artist. He is warning me against our kind. He is also, without saying it, warning me against Jimmy Voltage. I should have never told Nana about him.

  “I go out with professionals, Vic. I just went out with a professional last night.”

  “Really? How did it go?”

  I don’t really know how to respond to that. How did it go?

  Peter and I met last night at a local Mexican restaurant for our second date. Because of the holidays, it has been a long and lackluster break since the first time we met. We had sent a bunch of funny e-mails, but after date number one, I was pretty convinced on the “he makes me laugh” front, so it didn’t really add much to our already humorous rapport. I don’t dread our second date, but there is no daydreaming involved. No thinking about my outfit ahead of time. No dancing around before the time of departure. I simply shower, dry my hair, put on makeup, throw on jeans and a sweater from the night before, and meet him at a restaurant up the street. And I think that this is what people do all the time and call it romance. It’s just I’m used to a little more spit in my fire. I know that life would probably be cushy with Peter. There would be paid-for travel and big meals we would cook at home together and sailing lessons. And this sounds a lot like what I first wrote about Peter, but ultimately it’s the same concern as I had on the first date. The same concerns I had with Sabbath years before. That for all our similarities, we’re very different people, and I’m still looking for my kind.

  We sit down at the restaurant, we order drinks, and we launch into long and storied talk before we even look at the menu. We talk a lot.

  “I can’t believe you got to study abroad in South Africa,” Peter says. He seems genuinely excited about my five months in Durban. And I like that. I loved my five months in Durban.

  “Well, it’s not like you’re not well traveled.”

  “I guess, but really only to Europe. Although my friends and I did once go to Normandy. We went swimming there.”

  “Really? Wow...I bet that was eerie.”

  “Yeah, it was. It’s crazy to think how many people died in those waters.”

  We talk about his job, and I can tell he’s been waiting for a woman with whom he can share his work concerns. The first phone call. Bad day: call her. Good day: call her. And I know as I listen and ask questions and offer supportive thoughts and cheer that I am making for a good her. Peter is also a good him.

  “But no spark, huh?” Vic asks me.

  “I don’t know, Uncle Vic. I just feel like, is that all it’s supposed to be? Is life just supposed to be comfortable?”

  Vic sighs, “You’re so much like me, it’s scary, you know?”

  I am and it is.

  He continues, “K, some people just want to live life with their hearts. They don’t care that they’ll be broken; they’re not afraid to lose. They just know that they have to go wherever their hearts take them. Even if it’s really hard.”

  I don’t want this to come down to the emotional girl versus the safe guy. I have never wanted to play Dharma to anyone’s Greg. And so as I sit across from Peter as he analyzes the check and figures out exactly how much he should be tipping the waitress, I decide that I should try again. And I hope that it’s not simply a generational problem. That the men in our world today go swimming off of Normandy, and have long forgotten what it means to fight for it.

  15

  Date Fifteen: Arrow

  Mimi is concerned about me. I can tell by her newfound determination to see me meet someone. Whereas before she found my mission entertaining, if not slightly ludicrous, she has now officially jumped on board the “Find Kristen a Boyfriend” cause célèbre. To her credit, she has been experiencing a significant spike in phone calls from me where I sound like I have been crying. All the same, I know that Mimi takes my dramatic tantrums a bit more seriously than I do. That’s the unfortunate nature of a tantrum thrower. Everyone else worries about you long past the point of you actually feeling bad.

  “I can’t imagine there’s not anyone for you on that site,” she questions me one night.

  “My God, Mimi, I’m searching The Onion every day. Thank God people at work can’t see my computer screen. They’d fire me if they knew that’s all I was doing.” The Onion Web site shares a personals database of eligible men and women with a handful of other online magazines, and they do a good job of pooling all the single, literary, liberal modernists of our fair city into one giant meat market. Ivan got me started, and I have to admit it’s a pretty impressive selection.

  “What happened with Peter?” Mimi asks.

  “We’re going out again in a couple of weeks. He’s in London.”

  “London’s good.”

  “I know, but I’m just not sure. I’m afraid he’s just another normie. And more importantly, he still hasn’t kissed me.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “I know,” I say. I’m beginning to think that my uncle is wrong. That I need my kind. I want someone who gets me, the way I thought Jimmy did. Maybe that’s the problem. I’m still thinking about Jimmy Voltage.

  “Hmmm,” Mimi mulls this one over. “You need a sober alcoholic.”

  “Jimmy was sober,” I offer, but my friends have been getting pretty good at ignoring his name these days.

  “Have you looked to see if there is a dating Web site for sober people?”

  “Goddamn, you’re brilliant, Mimi.” Since I don’t have Internet at home, Mimi does the research for me, and she finds a number of sites.

  “Aha,” she exclaims while doing some preliminary prospecting, “I found him.” Him is a tennis pro with an MBA. Him is from New York and has been sober for four years. And by his picture, Him looks hot and yet still sweet-natured.

  I sign up for the site and e-mail Him. Him turns out to be a guy named Micah. We e-mail back and forth, and though his e-mails are curt, and slightly uninterested, I decide he is just a man of few written words. So when he asks me what I am doing tonight, and my genuine response is “laundry and a viewing of Dial M for Murder,” I am a little surprised that he asks me to bring the movie to his part of town.

  I call him and explain, “I do not go to strange men’s apartments bearing Hitchcock films as a general rule, sir.”

  “Okay, then,” Micah offers. “Let’s get coffee.”

  It’s Saturday night, and I don’t have any other plans, but it still feels a little wild and clumsy nonetheless. Most Saturdays, I am pretty exhausted from working at the stables.

  A year ago, I returned to my childhood passion of riding horses. I was the little girl with a collection of plastic Breyer ponies and pictures of horses on my walls. I rode Arabians and was jumping at thirteen. But then I met boys. And getting up at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday mornings when I could be sleeping over at a slumber party after sneaking out with them, just didn’t sound like too much fun anymore. So I chose boys over horses. When I turned twenty-nine, I decided to go back to the horses. It had been a dream of mine for years. About a month before I moved home to Dallas to get sober, I went to the Equestrian Center in Burbank. I walked around and pet the ponies and promised myself that one day when I had my shit together, I’d come back here and would learn again to ride. And I did.

  Whenever I think that nothing has changed in my life, the stables always remind me things are entirely,
wonderfully different. I used to sleep every Saturday until five or six in the evening. I would try to fall asleep against the chirping of birds and the sound of waking life, and I would want to die. Now, today, I am a part of waking life. And I get up early every Saturday, and I go to a morning meeting in the Valley, and I see my sponsor, and I have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, and I drive to work at the stables, knowing how much my life has changed.

  My favorite horse at the stable is a thoroughbred named Arrow. If Arrow were human, he would be exactly what I am looking for. I went into his stable today, and he leaned his chestnut head against my body, and I wished so desperately that I could find a man who does the same. Arrow fights with all the horses around him. He is, in fact, a bad boy, and he has the scars all over his face to prove it, marring his otherwise perfect thoroughbred beauty, and yet, he stops fighting almost every time I enter his stall to come and tell me that he loves me.

  “He is my unicorn,” I told my mom recently.

  My family has gotten to know so much about this horse that they ask about him as though he were my boyfriend. And I know all the Catherine the Great jokes that can be told, but the truth is that horse gives me love like no other. When Jimmy Voltage disappeared, it was Arrow whose shoulder I cried on. When I got my new job, it was Arrow who bit my ponytail when I told him. And today, when I said hello, he rested his head in my hand and let his lids slide closed, and we stood there—me holding this sleeping horse in the palm of my hand and having no doubt what kind of love I have in my life. I looked out past Arrow, out onto the San Bernardino Mountains: the sun played against the shadows of the hills, the perfect breeze of a seventy-degree day in January whistled through the barn and through my hair. I leaned into Arrow’s neck. Griffith Park surrounded us with its burned-out brush and its wild coyotes and its rough and ready horse trails veiled in oak trees and the scent of eucalyptus. And I knew that I could not love more. And that is what sobriety has given me.

  I need to meet someone who is also sober and could understand that moment. Who could understand the path that I have walked to get here. Well, that’s a good someone. As Mimi says, Micah is an albino. At first, I retort that he has brown hair, but then she reminds my blonde brain that he is like an albino because he is rare. So I drive to Micah’s side of town at a moment’s notice because I’ve been looking for an albino.

  There is a chance, and a relatively good one, that Micah was just not attracted to me. I might be too blonde, or not blonde enough. I might be too tall, or short, or skinny, or fat. I might be too overdressed or underdressed, or not sexy enough, or too sexy. In other words, I might not be his cup of tea. Or he might just be incredibly, painfully dull. Because I discover that Micah is not just a man of few written words, he is a man of few words. Period. This does not make for an easy first date. I end up sitting in my chair, legs crossed, hand under chin, like some hackneyed version of Barbara Walters. Not even. More like Tyra. I ask questions. I elaborate on the questions. I respond to my own questions. I try to go deep. I try to stay shallow. I do anything to get him to talk.

  Kristen: So, where’re you from in New York?

  Micah (in a mumbling, barely audible baritone): Mm, around… (pause) Riverdale.

  Kristen (really trying): And you moved straight out to L.A. from there?

  Micah: (looks at me, yay, then he stops, boo) No. (Thinks some more) Miami.

  Kristen (with my usual enthusiasm for all places warm and sunny): Oh, you lived in Miami. I love Miami!

  Micah (hold it, hold it; his eyes glaze; he looks like he is about to fall asleep): Me too.

  If he weren’t sober, I would have suspected pills. Really. Strong. Pills. But that’s not the case. Micah is just bored, though I’m not sure with me, with him, or with life. And it’s funny because in some alternate universe, I think Micah and I might have had something.

  He was nice looking enough—with the brown curly hair, big brown eyes, and the pert nose that I normally find to be such a kicker. Had he been magnanimous, I would have gladly been magnanimous in turn. We had plenty in common. He grew up in New York City. My mom lives there. He had time sober, relapsed for two weeks, came back in and has been sober since. I relapsed for three weeks and did the same.

  Micah tells me, “It didn’t take me long to figure out that I didn’t want to drink anymore, that I needed sobriety.”

  “Me too. I just wanted to go home.” I think we might be having a moment, but Micah’s focus is back to over my shoulder, like he’s waiting for somebody else to walk in. I turn around because I’m kind of hoping someone will. Please. Anyone. Take my fucking seat. I want the date to end. But that is awkward too. Because what do you say? Well, outside of the fact that we have a lot in common, and we’re both sober, and we’re sitting at a Coffee Bean in the middle of West Hollywood on a Saturday night, I’ve got to go because, quite frankly, this is the worst date of my life.

  Micah doesn’t really laugh, so I can’t even make a joke to break the long silences. Instead, I just take the opportunity of one of the tumbleweeds blowing through our conversation to say how tired I am and that I should probably get going. He readily agrees, and I can tell he has been dying for me to shoot this one in the head. And within the space of an hour, the most entertaining prospect on the table ends not with a bang, as I think Micah might have initially hoped, but with an interminably awkward mumble.

  But I do not drive home sad. I do not miss that sober guy I recently dated whose name shall not be uttered. I do not feel anything but the same joy I felt looking out at the San Bernardino Mountains. Because tonight, I’m going back to horses.

  16

  Date Sixteen: Jakes of All Trades

  “Yeah, I got laid off about two months ago,” Jake tells me as he sips a beer.

  Jake is a struggling writer. Jake lives above the bar where we are now meeting in a small studio that he has been in for the last ten years. Jake just went through a major breakup last year. Jake is depressed. And though Jake looks at me with the bored resolve that he knows I won’t date him, my guess is he’ll probably still try to invite me upstairs by the end of the night.

  I had more hopes for Jake when we found each other online. When you’re e-mailing, it seems like everyone is funnier, more successful, and definitely more optimistic about the state of their life. But as I sit next to Jake at the old Korean bar below his apartment, I know there is little here between us but a memory of a Jake I knew years before.

  My first Jake, who henceforth shall be named Jake One, was a mother’s worst nightmare. Definitely my mother’s worst nightmare. He was a drug dealer. An ex-con. He drove a motorcycle. If only I had had a pink shiny jacket, we could have formed a gang and started a musical. Sadly, Jake One was also the one to give me herpes. So although it might always be entertaining to make fun of him, part of that joke still stings.

  Jake Two doesn’t hold a candle to Jake One. He has neither the charisma nor the chutzpah nor the je ne sais quoi to pull the wool over my eyes the way Jake One did. I met Jake One when I was twenty-three. I had been trying for two years to be a good girl. To go to work and collect my check. To only do drugs at concerts and on the weekends, to prove to myself and my family that the degree I had just earned would be put to good use in the rat race of New York City. I rode the F train every morning, and so what if I jumped a turnstile or two on weeks where I had blown my paycheck. I wore enough Club Monaco to make up for it, and for all intents and purposes, it looked like my shit was together. And then I met Jake.

  I can still remember watching him play pool for the first time. He would aim the cue and take down shot after shot, knowing how his actions would cause a reaction. Knowing how the game was to be played out. Jake was like any drug, wonderfully seductive on the outside and incredibly abusive once you were hooked. And I was hooked. If Oliver was my cocaine, Sabbath my relaxing spliff, Frenchie, a lovely glass of Beaujolais, Jake One was nothing but pure crack rock.

  “The reason why you two love each other so
much is because you bring out the rogues in one another,” Nana warned me at the outset. She was partially right. He brought out the rogue in me, but that’s all he was. Jake One was trying to get over his crack addiction when we met, and after two years of fronting like I was normal, I was heading back into my addiction for coke. So we met halfway, and we fueled the relationship with cocaine, whiskey, roast beef sandwiches, and sex. There would be nights when it would just be him and me on the streets of the East Village, making out in phone booths, doing bumps off each other’s body parts and singing through the streets because we were in L-O-O-O-O-V-E.

  But like all relationships fueled by cocaine, whiskey, roast beef sandwiches, and sex, ultimately, we also began to fight. Big fights. Though I had always prided myself on not being a codependent lover, I discovered the most powerful drug I had ever done in Jake One. With his scent, his cock, his arms around me in the moments when it was good, I found everything I had ever wanted. The bad boy I had spent my whole life waiting to come home, finally did. And instead of it being in the form of my dad, it came in a close approximation of him. It came in the form of Jake One.