594. He didn’t reply
595. May 23: He didn’t reply
596. May 24: He didn’t reply
597. May 25: Mel took my phone away
598. Also—
599. He didn’t freaking reply
On May 27th Mel and I spoke on a panel at a book conference. Ours was a session on women breaking the rules in publishing and forging new directions. The place was packed, and my urge to barf nearly won. Somehow, I made it onto the stage without yakking on the audience. Win! Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned my outfit very well, and—
600. Wore too short a skirt to sit on the high stool they’d put out for us
601. Seriously, this thing perched eight feet off the ground
602. Or so
603. Had to sit twisted sideways with my legs crossed
604. Mel kept shooting me dirty looks because my feet were in her space
605. Fell off the stool once
606. When the moderator asked me a question about Yash that they’d agreed not to ask
607. Stupid moderator! He’d totally done that on purpose!
Once I climbed back onto the stool—good thing I’d worn cute undies—the audience sat quiet and waiting. For me. The moderator repeated the question. Do you regret putting your former boyfriend in the spotlight?
My mouth went dry. My tongue melted into some kind of glue, sticking my talk hole closed. Mel reached over and took my hand. With a squeeze of support, and using her for ballast, I stood to answer.
I licked my lips. “I was an asshole. So yes, I regret it.”
The audience tittered a little. Mel gave me a proud-friend smile, and I kept talking. “Not really sure why that question is relevant. We’re here today to talk about women breaking barriers, and you ask me a question about a boyfriend. But here’s the thing—women have been out there, being awesome, redefining books and the world throughout all time. We on this stage aren’t new. Virginia Woolf said, ‘For most of history, anonymous was a woman.’”
I started pacing now, a wireless mic on my dress. “We invented science fiction. We invented superheroes. We’re amazing, and, who knew—we’re people. We do groundbreaking things, but we also fuck up. When dudes fuck up, it can be considered romantic. Oh, look—he tried hard. Give him a second, third, fourth chance. Give him more money—shit, how many times has Donald Trump gone broke? But when women screw up, it’s the end of the world, and the world loves vilifying us. I’d worked my whole life to be a perfect woman, and it’s not possible. I failed anyway. So I did a one-eighty, and I wrote about my imperfections, hence my being here today. And yeah, I really screwed up my relationship with the best man I’ve ever known. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve to be outed in a video on fucking YouTube. Thanks, fellow asshole, for doing that.” I flipped the bird at the audience, and they broke into applause.
I started to laugh, as did the panel behind me. “Maybe things really are changing for women, because I have a following for fucking up. I have thousands and thousands of fans even though I’ve made some pretty huge mistakes. The women especially tell me that I’ve inspired them to be less afraid of failure. That makes me proud. But fans of a mistake don’t make it any less of a mistake, and yes, again, I’m really sorry to that beautiful man who allowed me to be his friend for a while.”
I turned to the moderator. “I only came on this panel under the agreement that you wouldn’t bring him into this—I want that known. You fucked up. And now I’ll ask—Do you regret putting my former boyfriend in the spotlight here today?”
The room went wild. The moderator at least had the temerity to look abashed.
I wandered back toward my Stool O’ Doom. “Men are told to achieve. Women are told to behave.” The panel around me broke into agreeing murmurs. “It’s true! And while I regret hurting someone I love, I don’t regret my fuck-up adventures. Because, for better or worse, I’m less afraid now. I’m more apt to take wild chances. I care about outside opinions less now, and more about my own. If I have one thing to tell this audience, it’s to not just behave to please others—behave in a way that pleases you. Because the mistake that comes from your heart is a helluva lot easier to live with than a mistake that comes from someone else’s.”
The room applauded and whooped and hollered. I sat back down again and gave the floor to the other awesome ladies on the panel, many of whom gave a similar message—Listen to your own voice, be true to yourself, and help empower other women to do the same.
Months ago, I’d never have stalked around this stage calling people assholes and telling a famous author moderator to, basically, shut up. But today, I wore a yellow wiggle dress and spoke my truth, good and bad.
Not a mistake.
As the other women talked, I scanned the audience for familiar faces. There were many. Marlene had come out, too, and had whooped the loudest of all. I met her gaze, and she winked at me. Whew. My boss-slash-editor, today with orange hair, approved of my rant.
I smiled at a few more people behind her, and—
And—
Holy shit, it was Yash. Yash!
608. I teetered into Mel, who shoved me upright again with a frown
I clutched her arm and squeezed my apologies while trying not to attract attention. But him being here had literally thrown me.
Yash wore a cap pulled very low, tinted eyeglasses, and a scarf he didn’t need inside. On the aisle, halfway back. He’d turned away from the people sitting next to him, but I’d recognize that chin, that nose anywhere.
I swiveled my gaze to the floor, lest he catch me noticing.
Holy moly.
Holy cheese.
Holy donut wrapped around a vibrator!
Hope—a dry riverbed pocked with my millions of salty, dried tears—sprang forth with fresh, clean water. My heart tried to dance and barf at the same time, like a drunk girl at a bachelorette party.
The rest of the talk flew by in a blur of lustful hope.
609. It probably doesn’t say much about my feminism that I was thinking about a boy instead of the important philosophical discussion of women in the workplace
As soon as the house applauded the end of the talk, I slipped gracefully—er…
610. Fell
Off my stool and beelined to Marlene under the guise of talking to her. While I gave her a hug, I stood on tiptoe to spy Yash’s location over her shoulder. Oh no! He’d made it to the exit already!
611. No
612. No
613. Noooooooo!
With a quick “I’ll explain later” to Marlene, I followed him out of the door. Some folks wanted to chat—aw, so nice—and I waved at them. “I’ll be right back!” I said while continuing to follow him a ways down the block. No way I’d let anyone witness this and film it.
614. Fucking social media
615. Except when it helped me
“Hey!” I called, not even wanting to use his name.
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He stopped! Oh, hell—my heart had thumped out of my chest and was currently humping his leg.
I approached slowly, as I did with my cat, Gray Lady.
616. Of course, she always ran away
617. Made me insecure, honestly
“Yash,” I whispered. His head turned, and even from his profile, I saw the struggle to stay or go.
I held my breath, so afraid to do the wrong thing, it paralyzed me.
He finally turned all the way around and I nearly burst into tears. I held my chest with both hands—he was too beautiful.
With a little head shake, he took off his glasses and slapped me with a look of hurt mixed with anger.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He waved a hand. “Enough with the apologies. What you did can’t be fixed that way.”
A single tear spilled onto my cheek.
618. It would have been poetic if I weren’t the villain
I said, “I understand that. Please know that everything that happened betwee
n us was the real me. Just…a different name. And occupation. And curtains…”
He laughed.
He. Laughed!
My knees buckled with happiness, but I snapped those slutty joints back into place so I could stand. “When we met, I’d been fired for not fucking the boss. My cheater boyfriend had just abandoned me with an apartment I couldn’t afford. So I escaped into Giselle. It was supposed to be temporary.”
His face clouded over. “I was nice to a cat for you. I keep finding cat hair on my stuff…” He took a step forward. “You flashed the whole audience in that sexy dress.”
“I…sorry…thanks?”
“Sexy sex writer guy? Really?”
I couldn’t seem to draw breath into my lungs. “It was a compliment?”
“Are you asking or telling me?”
“Uh—”
“People are harassing me on your behalf. Telling me what you did was romantic.” He tossed off the word as if it tasted rancid. “Lying isn’t romantic, Gis—Dagm—Whoever!”
“I kno—”
“But it rather was!”
“What?”
With a grunt, he put his hands on his hips and stared at his shoes. “I mean…you went to all that effort. Just to…keep seeing me.”
My heart flip-flopped. “Yes, I did.”
“But you can’t just make up sexy, wonderful identities to suit you!”
“I kno—”
“Do you even have a twin? Or was all that family drama just fodder for the eventual book?”
“No!” Now I was starting to get angry. “No, that was all one hundred percent real. They hate the blog and the book and the everything just as much as you do.” I laughed—short and bitter. “Maybe you all should compare notes on how I’m the worst.”
His demeanor cracked. I watched him pity me, hate me, lust for me. He then began to back away.
No no no! He was bending, I could feel it. And also he couldn’t tear his eyes away from my tits.
I talked in a torrent of word vomit. “Look, Yash. It just…spiraled. When I found out who you were, and that we were in the same business of all things…I didn’t want to be my normal, no-job, sensible-underwear loser. Blade had said nobody would ever want to stay with a boring nothing like me, so how could I be Dagmar with you, when she was—”
I completely lost my breath then and my face went numb. That was it. That was why I never came clean to Yash—
619. Deep, deep down…I’d believed every hateful thing Blade had said to me
620. I thought if I were me with Yash, he’d never want to stay with such a piece of crap
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. The horrible defeatism of it all nearly knocked me off my feet.
“What the hell is…a Blade?”
I looked at Yash again. “My ex. He told me nobody would ever love me…because I was boring and naive and—”
“Boring?” His eyes nearly bugged out. “You’re a smoking hot con artist with a book and a TV deal!”
“You think I’m smoking hot?”
He threw his hands up. “Ugh, what am I doing? I— This is nuts. You might be nuts. And cats suck!”
He huffed away, and I didn’t run after him. Reality had walloped me in the shins, and I couldn’t make my legs work anymore. I might have been ‘smoking hot,’ but I was also a complete and total fool still under the thumb of a man I’d let convince me I was worthless.
Yash was long gone when my phone rang—
“Hey, Mel.”
“You ran off.”
“Yeah… Yash was here. I talked to him for a second, and I’ve come to a major realization—”
“I’m sure it’s super deep, sug’, but your friend Latisha is, I think, sick with the flu, and can you help me take her home?”
I turned on my heel and started back. “Of course! I owe her a lot—she’s been putting up with my bullshit since I got that job.”
Mel laughed. “She can join my club.”
621. I hung up on such truths.
* * * *
Hours later, Mel and I sat on Latisha’s living room floor while she bundled on her couch. We’d urged her to rest in bed, but she’d been there for hours and wanted human company. Most likely it was a twenty-four-hour flu—poor lady shook and shivered, fit to tear herself apart.
Latisha sat up and took the chicken soup I offered her. “Thanks for staying with me. My girlfriend is in Hawaii for a week with her family, the turd.”
“She should have taken all of us with her,” Mel observed, and we nodded in mute agreement.
“That was some speech today, Dag.” Latisha managed to crack a small smile. “I’m glad you told that moderator off. He shouldn’t have asked it.”
I nodded. Mel started on a rant about what a jerk he was while searching the Internet to see if anyone had filmed my sermon.
“You’re quiet,” Latisha said to me.
“I just want to make sure you feel okay, office buddy.”
“Eh, I’ve had worse.”
Mel inclined her head to me. “She’s introspecting about Yash. He was there today.”
Latisha sat up. Well, she tried to. It was a very forceful twitch. “Tell me what happened!”
My face fell. “No, no. Not my drama today. You’re sick, and you—”
“Oh, hush.” Sickie collapsed onto the couch again. “I’m sick and unhappy—not that you two aren’t entertaining—and I order you to tell me about your stupid drama. I have to hear about it anyway, as your editor. So spill. My relationship is smooth-sailing and full of love.”
I shook my head. “That’s just awful.”
“Yeah,” added Mel.
Latisha grinned through a coughing fit. “So did he talk to you?”
I sat back and nibbled on a bagel. “Yes. I made him laugh, and he called me smoking hot.”
“Really?” Latisha gasped.
“It’s not so far-fetched that I’m hot, okay?” I threw half a bagel at her, and she caught it and took a bite. “But I ended the talk abruptly…because—ugh.”
“What?” Mel punched me in the arm.
“Ow!” I scooted away from her. “I suddenly realized why I sabotaged my relationship with Yash.”
Two sets of eyebrows raised with expectation.
“My ex said many hateful things the day he left. He told me I was boring and worthless and nobody would want me. And, even though I never acknowledged it to myself…I believed him.” I stared at the floor and tried to squish my eyes shut to keep the tears at bay.
Mel’s arm closed around my shoulder, and I leaned on her. “So,” she said, “you kept up Giselle…”
“Because Dagmar was too shitty for Yash to stay interested in.”
“That’s fucked up,” Latisha said, saying it all. “You’ve spent months feeling sorry for yourself. What you gonna do about it?”
I looked up into her red, tired eyes.
“What you gonna do about it?” She set her container of soup on the table. “If he called you hot and stuff, and he came to the talk today, then he wants you back! What are you gonna do about it? Don’t make me ask again. We need an ending to this book, and it had better be happy. I want a yacht before I’m forty.”
My mouth dropped open, bewilderment robbing me of words.
Mel sat back on her arms. “It seems to me you can go on as you have, leaving him pathetic messages on the blog and praying to your shrine.”
622. “It’s not a shrine!” I lied about my shrine of Yash, containing
623. An old tee he’d worn
624. Selfies of us
625. And the dirty wine glass he’d used last time he was over
626. Not pathetic
627. I said not!
“Or!” Mel said with a friendly kick in my direction. “Or you can go get him.”
“Yes!” Latisha said. Then she coughed, and we shoved more blankets around the poor girl.
“How do I get him? You want me to play In Your Eyes on a boom box while I s
tand under his window?”
“Hell yes!” Mel said, leaping to her knees.
“No, no, no.” I waved my hands. “Noooooo. Someone would put it on fucking YouTube. People are the worst.”
Mel took me by the shoulders. “Yash fell for a weird, brash, hot weirdo who had guts and fire. Who exposed a date rapist to all the world!”
“What now?” asked Latisha.
628. “Nothing,” we replied
“If you want him back,” Mel said, “you need to be Giselle again. Wild, grifting cats, jetting off to Hawaii Giselle. Make a gesture. Let him know that you are she.”
They both looked at me with hope. And maybe a little greed. But mostly hope!
“He’s obviously been reading the blog, Dag,” Latisha said. “He came to the panel. He unblocked your number. He wants you back. You have to let him know you’re all in.”
“No.” I shook my head and squeezed my eyes shut. “No! I got myself into this mess by being her.”
Mel escalated from shaking me to punching me in the arm. Again. “You got him in the first place by lying! You wouldn’t have gotten him and lost him and had a chance to get him back without lying.”
I rubbed the owie on my arm while I parsed through that sentence to understand it. “But…aren’t I supposed to be learning a lesson about lying, and honesty…and…shit like that?”
“Nah,” Latisha said. “Good girls never succeed. You gotta have a little devil in you somewhere, even if it’s just enough to not let people walk all over you.”
“Amen,” Mel agreed.
A swamp of indecision swirled in my guts. I shook Mel off me and lay back on the floor. Wow, Latisha really kept her hardwood spotless. I was so afraid of turning Yash off with more deviousness.
629. But then again
630. What did I really have to lose?
631. My life was sex and loveless anyway
I stood. “Okay. I’ll do it. What’s the worst that can happen?”
632. “He could tell you to go to hell,” Mel said
633. “Marry someone else to spite you,” Latisha added
634. “Throw you into the ocean”
635. “Get a forehead tattoo saying, ‘I hate Dagmar!’”
667 Ways to F*ck Up My Life Page 25