“It’s okay. You can laugh. Let’s hope I’m over it by now.”
“Did you have friends?” I ask.
“Not really. I mean, having weird eyes doesn’t win you too many points with the other kids. I couldn’t play sports so that was out...”
And I now understand his drive to achieve. His determination to fit in when during his developing years, he didn’t at all. I feel for him, and I can still see the experience’s effects in his current behavior. He tells me about how he had a little bit of a nervous breakdown when he worked for Teach for America, and I know that he doesn’t like admitting it because in his world, pain and weakness should not be. There is no beauty to them, only the lesson to do better next time. And I also know that I could no longer share any of these observations with him without feeling mean or strange. He would not understand.
We go to a party at a friend of Jeff’s. It is the girl’s birthday, and she has an amazing two-bedroom townhouse with sweeping views of L.A. The minute we walk in I realize that this girl is in love with Jeff.
“Hi Jeff,” Sarah croons as she hugs him. And then she sees me. “Wait, I thought you were coming with Lily?” Lily is obviously some platonic co-worker they both know. Sarah is cool with Lily. Sarah is not so cool with me.
“No, she’s at a show. This is Kristen,” Jeff says, introducing me.
“Happy Birthday!” I enthusiastically hold out my hand. Sarah shakes it but only because she has to. She turns back to Jeff. “Did you get the Radiohead tickets?”
“No, but I’m still working on it.”
“I talked to my dad, and he said he might be able to help,” she offers.
“Is this for the show in August?” I ask.
Jeff grabs hold of my hand. “Yeah.”
Sarah turns her back, and I can feel her disappointment. For the rest of the night she keeps popping up to stare longingly at my date, and I can tell this has been going on for a while. I can also tell that Jeff is oblivious. We walk around and admire Sarah’s Hollywood Hills home. As we stand outside looking out at the skyline, I notice all the other people smoking.
“I haven’t had a cigarette in sixty days,” I tell Jeff.
“Really? Do you want to go inside?”
I shake my head. “No. That’s the weird part. It doesn’t bother me. In a way, it feels like I never smoked.”
“Oh,” Jeff says. “I’ve never actually had a cigarette, so I don’t know.”
I try to ignore the Normie gap I sense widening. But as I watch Jeff try to joke with other people at the party, and get ignored, I wonder whether this is the kind of man I want. And I know that I share many of these weaknesses that I am now judging in Jeff—the fear, the insecurity, the humor, and warmth that we all trap inside when we want something so bad and just aren’t sure how to get it. But I also know that at the end of the day, it all comes down to that magical pixie dust that made our date Wednesday seem so exciting, that made my love affair with Oliver so powerful, that makes romance worth the pain we know it so frequently demands.
Jeff and I go inside, and we drool over the Warhol original of Mick Jagger (signed by both Andy and Mick) that this girl’s father has just given her as a birthday present. We try to ignore the fact that there is no way this girl is paying for her multimillion dollar life with a job as an associate A&R rep in the music industry. And as we sit down on the couch, I lean over to Jeff and whisper, “God, this girl’s dad gives her everything.”
But much like my own loving parents, he cannot give her what she wants more than anything else, which, oddly enough, is my date. But that’s the thing about pixie dust: no amount of money, or fancy dinners, or Harvard degrees, can make it appear if it just ain’t there.
It’s nearly one in the morning, and I have been at the stables all day. Before I left my ponies, I went into Arrow’s stall and reminded myself again that even if I am struggling with romance, my life is incredibly full. I rested my head on his shoulder and heard his beating heart, and I remembered that love comes in many forms. I used to feel the same way about Oliver—about his silhouette. The way love puts you at peace.
That first night I spent with Oliver, we left the party on Laurel Canyon and went back to my apartment. We might have already had sex but it was the first time we had gotten the chance to spend the night together. I lay there in his arms, his soft, tanned chest beneath my head, and I was home. His eyelashes flitted against my cheek, my body fit like the perfect puzzle piece against his own. His hand slid along the side of my face, and in his kiss I found everything that I had been searching for in the empty lines and the short skirts and the obnoxious amounts of champagne that I thought I needed to be happy. And I didn’t ever want to leave.
Jeff drives me home later, but I don’t get the same sense of peace and belonging. We kiss but only because we did the first night, and I am too tired to have that conversation.
Today, I wake up feeling great. Later as I drive past Oliver’s house, I almost want to stop in and tell him that. I want to show him how I have become the woman he always wanted. I imagine ringing his buzzer, and something in the pit of his stomach knowing who it is even before I utter, “It’s Kristen.” I imagine entering the courtyard of his building as he walks out to meet me, and space and time shrinking as it did when we were together. And I know that’s how it would happen, but the thing is, the woman that Oliver always wanted me to be doesn’t do that sort of thing. She thinks about it, and she keeps on driving.
36
Date Thirty-Six: This Brother of My Mother
My uncle Tom and I have always been close. Ever since he moved to Dallas when I was six, he has done his best to fill in the gap left by my father. He came to Dad’s Day at my schools, he taught me how to ride a bike, and he took me horseback riding when no one else would. He would always tell me that my dad loved me very much and that he wasn’t there to replace him but rather to fill in for him while he was gone. My uncle had once been good friends with my dad, and that is another thing we share—this belief that somehow my father could be a better man.
So when Tom called me and asked if I wanted to drive down the coast of California with him for his birthday weekend because his girlfriend was traveling and he didn’t want to spend it alone, I jumped at the chance to be there for this man who has always been there for me. And then he asked me if I wanted to stay in Big Sur, and this is why I love my uncle. I have been dreaming of going to Big Sur forever. I have planned more solo trips up there than I could count. Siren once told me, “You’ll get there however you’re supposed to get there.” And I do.
My uncle pays for me to fly up to join him in San Francisco. He takes the train to the airport from his hotel so he can meet me there, and we rent the car together. Tom loves nothing more than a good deal so he makes two reservations at Thrifty, one using his slightly bogus travel agent membership, and the other under my name, using what they call a “Wild Card.” The Wild Card wins, and we get a convertible at an incredibly reduced rate. My uncle and I jump and cheer. Our sales agent Shirley laughs at our antics, and my uncle and I like nothing better than playing the hams.
It can be awkward traveling with a fifty-year-old man who looks so young for his age, and if not for the very different styles in dress, could be mistaken for my boyfriend. I know most people don’t have this type of relationship with their uncles. I can tell them anything, and I have been the bearer of many of their secrets as well. On the outside, Tom and I couldn’t be more different. He is a conservative insurance agent with suburban homes in Dallas and Atlanta (talk about Red States) who likes Classic Rock and water skiing and pleated khakis. I am L.A. and New York as much as I am Texas. And if you saw us together, you wouldn’t think we would have much to say to each other, but I think that on its best terms, this is what family is because the love between us is real.
We drive down the Coast, listening to the E Street Radio on XM. Once we get to Monterey, we take the top down, and it feels like we could do this forever. My hair blows in the wi
nd, and Tom drives. We pull over frequently to drink in the view. We get to Big Sur and check into our cabin with our twin beds and a wood-burning fireplace. We go for a ten-mile hike, and I tell him about this book and my romantic troubles and the shaman and my very single life.
“I don’t get it, Bo. What’s wrong with these guys?” My uncle frequently calls me that—Bo and Puppy and Little Moose.
“Neither do I, Uncle T. You’d think I’d be able to find someone who would want to stay.”
“You’re just...” He looks at me and cups my head with his hand. “You’re such a terrific girl.”
My uncle was married before. He had been with Tonya for almost eight years when they finally got married. Tonya was as much a sister to me as an aunt, and when two years into their marriage, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, we all felt the fear that only cancer can instill. One year later, at the age of twenty-nine, Tonya died. And my uncle gave up on the idea that he would ever be a father, and for a while, he gave up on love. But then he met Cindy—his new girlfriend. Cindy is his age and has grown children of her own already.
As we walk I tell him, “For whatever reason, God didn’t give you children, just as he didn’t give me an active dad, but I’m glad he gave us each other.” I know my uncle does not want to take the place of my real dad, but for all intents and purposes, he has. I want to be his daughter because he would have made the best father, and I am so sad that he never got the chance.
We stare out at Big Sur, the wall of ocean pulling down on itself, and the wide great sky hovering bright blue above us. We seem so small here in this landscape, just two little ants, worried about the crumbs that might not fall from the table. I tell my uncle about the guys that will get out of the car to greet me, and those who park down the street.
“See, I get out of the car.” Tom walks next to me, and I smile because of course he does. “How else can you properly greet your date?”
“I need to find someone like you, Uncle T.” My uncle just shakes his head as though he is at once mystified and disappointed in his fellow man.
We get home that night, and Uncle Tom gets the fire going. He sits in a reclining chair and pulls up a blanket. I pull down the comforter from my bed and lie in front of the fire, and I read to him the first seventy pages of my father’s memoir, the one my dad has been writing while I have been writing this. And in a way, my father is there with us. As I read to my uncle about my father’s early years of smuggling pot through California, the same great state we have been driving through, as I tell him about the Mexican prison and the early days in Haight Asbury, as I listen to myself tell these outlaw tales of the man who is my father, I feel him there. I feel protected by both of them. The man who I have been learning to slowly love again, and the one lying in that chair falling asleep.
37
Date Thirty-Seven: High Fidelity
I feel a moment of intense honesty tonight when I say to Jeff, “I promise you, you will find a lovely, beautiful, amazing girl someday, and it won’t be long because I can feel it. She’s coming soon.” I don’t normally make romantic predictions for my dates, but I can tell Jeff is bummed out, and I can also feel that he will meet an amazing girl someday. Just not the one in question.
I went out with Jeff again on Saturday but only because I promised myself I would. And my mom pretty much made me. It’s amazing how a Harvard degree has the power to hypnotize people, particularly parents hoping to see their daughters marry well.
A few days before the date, I was telling Jeff about my weekend in Big Sur, about the incredible views, and the power of a convertible along the coast.
“I’ve never done that,” he said.
“Done what?”
“Driven down the coast... driven anywhere really. I hate road trips. I get nauseous.”
I didn’t know how to respond. If I could, I would move into my Honda Civic and drive around the world for the rest of my life. But they still haven’t built a bridge between here and the rest of the world, so California will have to suffice.
“Oh, wow. Yeah, I’m pretty much a trucker,” I replied. And the silence that sat there said it all.
I speak to my father again, and for the first time he grasps that this book I am writing is memoir and not fiction. That these dates are all real. Immediately, he puts up some awkward pretense of fatherly concern. “Oh, K, don’t tell your old man that.”
“It’s all pretty innocent stuff,” I explain.
“Yeah, but you don’t need to be dating.”
“Dad, I’m thirty years old. I better be dating.”
I think my father forgets or fails to understand how old I am. Because he hasn’t been an active father since I was four, I am some median age between now and then to him.
“I want to have kids someday,” I tell him. “I should probably start by going out to dinner with a few potential mates.”
“I guess.” Then he thinks about it. “I would like grandkids.”
I take the conversation further, explaining that I am the last of a very interesting genetic line, and that I don’t want it to die with me. And I am. Besides a missing half-brother in Mexico, I am the last of my father’s DNA and the last of my mother’s.
“It’s a pretty wacky bloodline, Dad. I’d hate to see it go to waste.”
“Wacky? It’s not wacky.”
I sometimes forget that my father is sixty-two and that he has been in prison since he was thirty-five, and that we do not share a vocabulary. When I was in college, I remember once telling him that I was shanking on some work. To me shanking meant procrastinating; to my father, it meant getting knifed during lunchtime in the mess hall. Needless to say, wacky to me means fun, wild, crazy, loving. To my dad, wacky means weird, bad, dorky. I explain what I mean, and I tell him that’s why I believe in finding the right mate.
I think he should understand this. Last month my father moved to South Texas to live on a citrus farm. From what I can tell, he spends his days smoking pot, fishing for clams, and helping a local breeder raise Blue Tick hounds. He crosses the border to Mexico for cheap beer and women, and I think that if anyone would get why I am looking for a more interesting partner than one who hates road trips, it would be him.
I come from a family who regularly dances to Madonna after Christmas dinner. We go clubbing together. And when I drank, we were basically a frat party without the Greek letters. But even now that I’m sober, there is nothing formal about the way we treat other. And all of us, including my mom simply by choosing my dad, have been incredibly wild in our time. I think that’s why Jeff’s response to my road trip bothered me because whomever I bring into that fold needs to be able to keep up. I will not let our concentrated eccentricities be dulled by a man who couldn’t fit in as one of our own. But perhaps even more importantly, I don’t want our children tempered by some safe and boring bloodline. My father is a little thrown that I have put so much thought into this. And I realize that this is the great fear of all men. That they are somehow always being interviewed for their semen.
This makes for an even more awkward conversation with Jeff. Jeff and I decide to go to a movie on Saturday, which is pretty couply for a third date, but I also welcome it. I haven’t been to a movie with a man I was dating in years. Jeff picks me up, and we get burgers on Sunset. We have time to kill, and so we decide to go to Amoeba Records. We get out of the car in the ArcLight parking lot, and Jeff corners me. Not in a threatening way, just in the way that Jeff wants some kind of reassurance of my interest, and I have been a little vague in terms of hand-holding and hug-returning. So he comes up and tries to kiss me, and I back off.
Before I went on the date, I did some energy work, asking my ancestors for the strength to be honest. And it works because I stand there in the harsh glare of the movie theater parking lot, and I ask Jeff not to engage in the physical until I have a better idea about whether there is something between us.
I don’t say it like that of course because I am new to this honesty
, so it comes out like a language that is foreign to my tongue. “I can’t. Please. I need... I’m not good at this. I want to see what’s here. What I want. What... oh, shit. Can we stay, the physical, stay away, the physical. I’m not good at this. Do you understand?”
Though disappointed, he understands. We continue to walk to the record store.
“I’m writing a book,” I tell him point-blank because we have gone too far now for me not to. “I’m going on 51 dates this year, but that’s not why I didn’t kiss you.”
He laughs. “Oh, I hear you. I’ve been on so many dates recently, I should write a book.”
We walk into the record store and are going through the racks of Used Rock. I pretend I care about the music as I say, “I guess in the end, it just all comes down to chemistry.”
“Well, if you think that, and you’re not sure about us, that doesn’t sound good.”
“Jeff.” I look down. I cannot hold his gaze. I cannot hide the truth.
51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life Page 20