What Men Want

by Deborah Blumenthal

  The other possibility was that after spending day after day using the system to fight for the rights of the downtrodden, she had closed herself off to available men who came her way either by assuming that they had their private agendas or simply by feeling too mentally and physically exhausted from working twelve-or fourteen-hour days to even go out on a date and have a normal discussion.

  I could understand that. There were days when my job totally sucked the lifeblood from me. No wonder some women on the ladder to success find themselves without husbands or even boyfriends, because a demanding career chips away at how much you have to give to someone else. There is just so much loving and nurturing in all of us, and sometimes our careers become our little children, demanding full-time attention, and requiring us to wipe noses and behinds.

  Forget the image of superwoman; few of us can do it all, or at least do it all very well. And the knowledge of that—especially if you are a perfectionist and overachiever—always eats away at you and makes you feel somehow compromised.

  On Ellen’s birthday, I couldn’t resist buying her a T-shirt from a Soho street vendor that said, Just Fuck Off.

  “Whose rear did you save today?” I said when Ellen answered.

  “Not my own. Never complain again when your shower isn’t hot enough or when your super takes too long to turn on the air-conditioning. We sent a crew up to a rat-infested tenement in Harlem where the windows have holes in them big enough for a cat to crawl through and the water in the pipes is so rusty you can’t wash dishes.”

  Maybe Chris was right, reality did suck. “So what did you do?”

  “Well now, after six months, we’re forcing the landlord to do repairs and in the meantime we’re moving the family into a hotel.”

  “You did good,” I said, immediately forgetting about my gripes and feeling small for needing to vent about what was eating me.

  “Yes, for one family,” Ellen said, “after months of calls and intervention by the city. But what about the others who live in those burnt-out joints and never bother to contact consumer reporters for help because they’ve given up on everybody and everything or simply don’t know how to navigate the system?”

  “You save the world one person at a time,” I said, reaching for an old cliché. “If you dwell on the extent of the job, you’ll be paralyzed. But to change the subject, you sound like you could use a break, so how about joining me and Chris for dinner? His old roommate is in town.”

  “Now you’re trying to save me,” she said, exhaling. “A blind date?”

  “He’s not blind,” I said. “And you have to eat anyway.”

  There was silence on the other end of the line.

  “Well?”

  “Fine,” Ellen said. “But let’s not talk about what I do, okay? Last time we double-dated I woke up the next morning and found that he had slipped his résumé under my door along with several letters of recommendation.”

  I didn’t remember that. “Why?”

  “He wanted to get out of law and break into TV journalism. He thought, it was ‘sexier.’ And if they don’t want to change careers, they start telling me about how their banks screwed them, how the dry cleaner burned their suit, or how they couldn’t cash a traveler’s check without two forms of ID, even though it’s the same thing as cash.” She had my sympathy there. Everyone who had a particular beef usually ended up sharing it with a friend from the media.

  “Then there was the guy who thought that when you were fixing him up with an action reporter you meant a journalist who put out,” Ellen said. I never doubted that if she left TV she could become a stand-up comic.

  We arranged to meet for dinner on Saturday. What I didn’t tell her was that Chris’s former roommate, who I hadn’t met because he lived in upstate New York, wasn’t like the other guys that she knew.

  “What’s his name?” she asked, almost as an afterthought.

  I paused for a minute. “His name…”

  “His name, yes… Is that such a hard question?”

  “Moose,” I mumbled.

  Silence. “What? What did you say?”

  “Moose.”

  “Is he one?” Ellen said, cracking up.

  “No…he’s not an animal. He just lives up in the Adirondacks to be near them. Likes wildlife more than city people.”

  “Oh,” Ellen said, considering that. “I can understand that.”

  I started to hang up, when I heard her call my name. “Jenny?”

  “What?” I said, lifting the receiver back up to my ear.

  “You’re not fixing me up with some freaky loner like Ted Kaczynski, are you?”

  “The Unabomber?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh please,” I said. “Definitely not. He lived in Montana. Moose lives in upstate New York.”

  “Oh,” Ellen said. “That sets my mind at ease.”

  Chapter Three

  On a regular basis I get one or two angry letters from readers complaining that the media always dwells on what is “base and unsavory about the human condition, and that it can never find good news to report,” as one reader put it. I thought about that and with Christmas approaching and a warm, generous spirit warming my soul as the holiday got closer, I put off a column about major fraud in a prestigious Manhattan co-op in favor of a column about what was working well in New York and what reflected its essential goodness. I wrote up a charitable group that came to the aid of homebound people in need; animal shelters that had gone from kill to no-kill, and a group of college graduates who banded together to renovate houses for the poor on the Lower East Side. That brought a few favorable calls, and a pound of homemade dog-shaped short-bread cookies (for human consumption, I assumed) from an animal rights group.

  Slaid was obviously feeling less charitable. His column zeroed in on accounting discrepancies between what a major charity reported and what it actually took in and the fact that the authorities had found that the chairman had a criminal record. He described the widening investigation hinting at indictments to come. A coup for him, but I was above calling him to take potshots at his reporting, particularly his obvious failure to respect a news embargo. But I’d be big about that, let it slide. I considered sending him the cookies, but decided against it, once I tasted them.

  Of course, I could have taken the opportunity to call and demonstrate my largesse—simply congratulate him. Christmas was in the air, why be mean-spirited? It was a nice piece of reporting and we were all working for the common good. But he’d never accept my praise at face value. He would ponder my real agenda, so I held back.

  So what did the high-brow columnist do? He called up and started making barking noises—combining the bark of a Lab with the howl of a beagle. Can I swear that it was him? No, but I racked my brains to think of who else might have stooped to that level and I came up dry. Rather than dignify the call with a reaction of any sort, I hung up, annoyed, and left my desk to escape to Bloomingdale’s, this time to buy myself a gift or two.

  Bloomingdale’s is a place where you can lose yourself for hours. And even if you have one of those days when every garment you pick makes a mockery of your face and body, you can always find a pair of Pumas in a scrumptious new space age–type design or color combination; treat yourself to a jar of something heavenly like Origins White Tea body cream, or at the very least, find solace in a quick cup of vegetable soup and half a tuna sandwich or a large dish of custardlike yogurt with health pretensions downstairs at the in-store restaurant called Forty Carrots.

  I started my outing by going through the aisles of costume jewelry, trying on various Tahitian pearl-wanna-be necklaces, and wondering what it would feel like to wear the real thing. Then, even though I rarely wear earrings, I tried on dangly chandelier styles, hoping that they would help liberate that uninhibited part of me that lurked close to the surface. After that charade was over, I headed upstairs like a kid in a candy store to lingerie, my weakness. I examined bras, thongs and string bikinis as delicate as snow
flakes, looking for my favorite brands, Natori, Hanro and Cose Belle. Now I’m in my element. It amazes me how just a few ounces of the right underwear can make one’s sexuality confidence soar. I’m hoping that a few new purchases will make Chris’s head swivel from the TV to me as I undress in front of him in lingerie that if calculated by the pound, probably costs about three hundred and fifty dollars.

  Never for a moment do I forget that he could as easily have chosen to live with someone who was a decade younger, not to mention firmer. A career that has you sitting for ten hours a day has cumulative effects. It’s not that I’m what you would call fat. I’m not. It’s just that everything could benefit from a large body stocking that would cinch it all in, raise it up just a tad, and overall smooth out the flesh.

  So half an hour later, I’ve collected four thongs—fuchsia, petal pink, black and navy, and matching demi bras with just the slightest layer of padding that do an amazing job of creating impressive cleavage so that the unsuspecting would immediately assume that I’m a 36C rather than a 34B.

  Then I’m on to nightgowns. I spy a plain, ivory-colored silk slip-style nightgown and hold it up in front of me in the mirror, trying to decide whether it’s classically simple and elegant, or simply dull and sexless. I stare into the mirror, but it’s a tough call, not to mention that the fluorescent light is turning my skin a coordinating shade of jaundiced yellow.

  As I’m studying myself in the mirror with the gown pressed up against me, in my peripheral vision I pick up the outline of a man in a black leather jacket. I have to confess that one of my pet peeves is seeing men lingering about awkwardly in the women’s lingerie department. It’s not that they’re not entitled to be there. Or that they don’t actually belong there. They might be buying gifts for women or accompanying girlfriends on shopping outings or what have you, and legally their presence is as defensible as mine is. Still, this little catty voice in the back of my head keeps saying, “Oh, get out of here, you’re invading my privacy.” I do get some consolation, however, from the fact that at least some of the men look away when you stare at them because they’re uncomfortable and feel out of place.

  So those kinds of thoughts were swirling around in my head as I gazed at myself. I tried to ignore the image and turned back to the nightgown, holding it this way and that, but then the image moved closer, and then closer, until he was almost next to me and I was about to pivot and yell out for security.

  At the sound of a low wolf whistle, I looked back, startled. He was leaning up against the corner of the mirrored column, black eyeglasses now pushed up on the top of his head.

  “Yes?” I said in a too-loud voice, intended to alert fellow shoppers to beware as well.

  “Jenny George,” said a low teasing voice.

  It took me several seconds to realize I was staring at the face I had seen only in the newspaper that appeared with his column.

  “Slaid Warren,” I cooed back, moving only my eyes, leaving the nightgown pressed against me.

  He tilted his head to the side, as if in judgment, holding my gaze. “Your picture doesn’t do you justice.”

  I smiled briefly, to trivialize the compliment, not knowing how else to handle it. He was right about the picture. I photographed like a deer caught in the headlights.

  “Is this where you usually hang out after work?” I said, trying to gloss over my discomfort. He leaned over to whisper in my ear.

  “If I can’t actually slip behind the velvet curtains.”

  I turned back to him and studied him briefly—noting the worn jeans teamed with a black cashmere sweater and black leather Pumas. But while I was surveying his outfit, the silky nightgown slipped from my grasp. We nearly collided as we simultaneously kneeled down to get it. He got there first, and handed it to me, amused by my discomfort.

  “Thanks,” I said, pulling it back to me. “Nice to see you,” I said, unable to come up with anything better than a platitude. I turned abruptly toward the cashier ready to pay for the nightgown, although at that point I had decided the thing was plain, boring and matronly and that I didn’t want it. I considered telling him to keep away from dressing rooms or he’d be the subject of my next column, but then decided to keep quiet and head off without starting up a dialogue.

  “Wait,” he said, reaching out to touch my arm to stop me. “I want to show you something.” He led me over to a designer rack and took out a long, low-cut charcoal-gray silk nightgown with a deeply cut back that was held together with delicate crisscross laces of pale yellow satin. He held it up to me.

  “This is the one that will knock your guy’s socks off,” he said with a small smile on his face. To be honest, it was heavenly, beautiful and sexy in an elegant, sophisticated way that nearly made me swoon. If I had seen it I would have grabbed it.

  “Hmm,” I said. “Not bad.” He nodded. I looked at the price tag, then shook my head. “Can’t afford it. They must pay more generously at the Trib.”

  “A gift from me,” he said, starting to lead me to the cashier with his platinum card in hand. “A peace offering.”

  “No thanks,” I said. “I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I was sleeping with the competition.”

  “I wouldn’t either. I’m all for the naked truth.”

  I looked back at him briefly and then looked away, swiping the nightgown from his hand and hanging it back on the rack. He picked it up again and tossed it over his shoulder.

  “Too nice to pass up,” he said. “I’ll buy it for a friend.”

  “Lucky girl,” I said, regretting the words just a nanosecond after I said them, knowing how he’d misinterpret them.

  He nodded, amused.

  “Well, merry Christmas,” I said, scooping up the underwear that I had tried to hide beneath my handbag. I was about to head across the floor to another register to pay.

  He pointedly stared at the underwear that was squished up in my fist and narrowed his eyes.

  “Lucky guy,” he whispered, then walked off the other way.

  Chapter Four

  “So where do we have dinner with a mountain man who probably eats grilled roadkill for dinner?” I asked Chris when I got home from Bloomingdale’s.

  “Moose?”

  “Who else?”

  “He’s easy,” Chris said. “He eats meat when he has to, but he prefers vegetarian.”

  “Hmm,” I said. I thought of a local health-food restaurant, but then remembered the soy burger that I had there that tasted as if it was made from corrugated paper. Mexican? We could have fajitas with beans and rice and guacamole—and margaritas.

  “He does drink,” I said, more as a statement than a question.

  “Everything except the worm in the mescal,” Chris said. We agreed to meet at a Mexican restaurant in the Village. Characteristically, Chris and I walked. Since both of us spent our days sitting and didn’t have much time to exercise, we looked forward to a chance to take long walks together. Even when we weren’t talking, we usually felt very much in sync. I knew when he was quiet, he was absorbing things around him, which usually ended up, in one form or another, in one of his ads or TV commercials. There were talking beagles in a commercial for dog food that reminded me of the sad brother and sister up for adoption in the neighborhood pet store. In a commercial for packaged deli meat, Chris incorporated a character with black beady eyes and curly hair who looked like a man who worked in Todaro, our favorite Italian grocery.

  “Life is all ad copy,” he said. I knew what he meant. Half of the things I experienced day to day worked into upcoming columns. We walked down First Avenue past Bellevue Hospital and New York University Hospital and then past apartment complexes. Chris thought of what he could use in commercials for pain relievers, while for me, the scenery triggered thoughts of the latest hospital mergers, Medicaid and the best emergency room to go for gunshot wounds.

  “When was the last time you saw Moose?”

  “I visited him a couple of years ago,” Chris said. “He had just split
with his girlfriend and was having a tough time, so we went skiing during the day and drank a lot of beer at night.”

  “It must be hard for him to meet the kind of women who’d like the same lifestyle that he does.”

  “Just the opposite,” Chris said. “Women love his mountain life—at least for a while. They’re fed up with the big-city bullshit. Land is cheap, you have all the space and quiet that you want, and you only concern yourself with the basics, like survival. You don’t go to four-star restaurants, you don’t go out to Broadway shows. You don’t run down the street and shop at Victoria’s Secret.” (How did he know?) “You’re together a lot at home working on your house or cooking and canning and doing blue-collar stuff, so you find out very fast if you’re compatible.”

  “So what happened to his relationship?”

  “I guess when the initial fascination faded, she felt cut off and she wasn’t pulling her weight.”

  The image of a woman as a member of a dogsled team came to mind. “What do you mean?”

  “He wanted to share his life and for Moose that means someone who could help him cut down trees for firewood and build an addition to the house. She liked to cook and help him fix up the house, but that was it.”

  “You mean she couldn’t even chop down trees?”

  He nodded, laughing.

  “He’s liberated—to a fault,” I said.

  Chris shrugged. “He has a lot to give, but he hasn’t found a girl who’s big enough to take it.” I thought about Ellen. I hoped that wouldn’t be a big mistake, unless he wanted someone to stand by him to fight with local industry about polluting the air or water.