Love by the Book

by Melissa Pimentel

  That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy myself, because I did. He was great in bed, probably because he put so much effort into perfecting his starring role. Nevertheless, I felt unsettled when it was over, particularly when he got up and started to put his clothes back on.

  “Where are you going?” I was trying to rearrange my hair into something not resembling a bird’s nest, but gave up when I saw my reflection in the window.

  “Sorry, darling. I’ve got an early start tomorrow so I’m going to shoot off home.”

  I’m not sure if it was the champagne, the wine or the images of meat lockers, but the last vestiges of the demure Rules goddess were lost and a mad harridan stood in her place.

  I pulled the covers up to my chin. “Oh, okay. Fine.” I tried not to pout but felt the corners of my mouth drift southward.

  He came and sat on the edge of the bed. “Don’t be upset, lovely girl. You told me yourself that you need a good night’s sleep tonight for your run tomorrow.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t sleep here, does it? It feels weird that you’re just racing out the door.”

  He looked irritated for a second, then rearranged his face into an expression of paternal patience. “Shh. You just go to sleep, sweetheart.”

  I felt a stab of anger. “If this is just going to be a one-time thing, that’s totally fine but don’t bullshit me and say otherwise.”

  “Darling, of course I want to see you again! What happened tonight makes me want to see you even more so.”

  “Whatever. I mean, don’t put on this whole Mr. Perfect show for my benefit.”

  “It’s not a show! I want to treat you like the princess you are. I’ll call you later, all right?” He bent down and kissed the top of my head.

  “FINE.”

  As soon as I heard a door click shut, I leapt out of bed, suddenly convinced that he had stolen my wallet. So that was his motive: he was a thief! A common thief! Okay, sure, he’d seen the inside of my admittedly shabby apartment, and I vaguely remembered him mentioning his parents sitting on a pile of money somewhere in Hampshire, but that made it even more sick!

  I pulled on my furry yellow bathrobe and ran into the living room to check the contents of my bag.

  Once I’d confirmed that all £2.35 was still accounted for, I scurried back to my room, bag clutched to my chest, and ran smack into him as he came out of the bathroom.

  “Hello,” he said, surprised.

  “Hello,” I mumbled.

  I walked him to the door.

  “Okay, well, bye.”

  “I’ll see you soon, darling.”

  “Whatever.”

  The door clicked shut and I stumbled back to bed, muttering about thieves and sexual bandits.

  April 28

  I woke up with an unpleasantly fizzing brain and had a moment of peace before remembering the purse-clutching incident.

  Ack.

  But the weekend had yet more trauma in store for me. I had a terrible shock in the afternoon when, in my hung-over and vulnerable state, I tried to call Meghan and accidentally dialed Dylan’s sister, Molly, instead. I’m not sure what was to blame—the iPhone or my shaky, apparently enormous fingers—but when I heard Molly’s incredulous “Lauren? Is that you? You’ve got one hell of a nerve, calling here . . .,” I wanted to travel back in time and throttle Alexander Graham Bell for his cursed invention. I mumbled my apologies and got off the phone, swiftly pouring myself a whisky to calm my nerves.

  I couldn’t get the hurt and anger I’d heard in Molly’s voice out of my head. I knew Meghan had been sugar-coating her dispatches from home, but now I’d heard the truth for myself. I was Public Enemy Number One back in Portland. I lit a cigarette and contemplated throwing myself off the balcony.

  When Lucy got home from her trip to Westfield, she took one look at my ashen, clammy face and dropped her Topshop bags.

  “Babe, what happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “I have, sort of.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? And did I hear you bring a boy home last night? I thought I’d come home to find you and Mister Perfect wrapped in each other’s arms!”

  “Oh, Luce, it’s all gone horribly wrong!” I was shocked to find myself on the verge of tears. Crying is usually an event reserved for extremely bad toe-stubs—certainly not for accidental phone calls or morning-after blues.

  “Right, that’s it. Up you get!” Lucy pulled me off the couch and directed me toward my room with a firm pat on the ass. “Get dressed and put some make-up on. We’re going to the pub!”

  • • •

  And so, after a month of fastidious Rules following, booze and paranoia had blown all of my careful research. I had no idea if I’d hear from Popeye again or if my burst of lunacy had put him off for good. Regardless, The Rules was done and it was time to assess.

  The main thing I learned from The Rules was that I’m really not very good at following The Rules. My natural instinct with men is to try to force things to a head (ahem) because I don’t like not knowing how things will turn out. Hence the big old freak-out on poor Popeye.

  So, in a way, it had been good for me to be forced to be more reserved. I should probably leave the ball in the other person’s court more often. I get so caught up in the drama of a new assignation that I don’t stop to think if it’s something I actually want to get involved in, and then I end up driving it over a cliff.

  And it had been strangely refreshing to let the guy make all the effort and I’d realized that, most of the time, they prefer it that way. Sometimes it’s nice to have a man make a fuss over you.

  The Rules in Conclusion

  Works best on . . .

  Alpha males who are used to getting what they want and who love a challenge. They tend to be happy to make a big song and dance out of things and to spend money in order to get what they want, especially if it’s particularly hard to get. They’re the ultimate capitalists.

  To be used by . . .

  Women who don’t need instant gratification and who are looking for commitment (though how you could keep up the Princess and the Pea act for forty years of marriage, I have no idea). And it’s probably preferable if you’re a teetotaler, as following The Rules when drunk is pretty much impossible.

  • • •

  So it was with sadness tinged with relief that I put The Rules aside. The only way forward was through a new book, this one fittingly called The Technique of the Love Affair. I obviously needed some help fine-tuning my technique.

  BOOK TWO

  THE TECHNIQUE OF THE LOVE AFFAIR

  May 1

  Shockingly, I heard from Popeye again. He texted during my epic pub debrief with Lucy on Sunday night to say he was going to be away for a week on business and would be in touch when he got back. I’m not holding my breath.

  I am, however, holding the new book in one hand and a cigarette in the other and thoroughly enjoying both.

  The Technique of the Love Affair: By a Gentlewoman was first published in 1928 and caused quite a stir at the time, with Dorothy Parker (beloved wit, glorious alcoholic and devoted divorcée) saying that if she had read the book earlier in life she may have been “successful rather than just successive.” It was out of print for years but is happily back in circulation, complete with helpful editorial notes.

  Let me tell you, my friends: it is fucking awesome.

  It was written in the time of the Bright Young Things and conjures up the frothy, tongue-in-cheek attitude that epitomized the post-WWI era (see also: Noël Coward, Evelyn Waugh and the aforementioned Ms. Parker). It was a time of bootleg gin, sharp wit and romantic dalliances. The author, Doris Langley Moore, was only twenty-three when she wrote the book. (She was married at the time but later went on to divorce her husband. After reading some of her advice, I can’t say I’m surprised.)
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  The basic principle revolves around the idea that the “love affair” is an art form and should be viewed as a diverting hobby rather than a necessity. The author advises her readers to garner as many suitors as possible; you’re meant to be light, charming and flirtatious with everyone and invest in no one. It’s all about building and maintaining your “prestige” (which is essentially what we now refer to as the upper hand). By showing a man that you care more for him than he cares for you, or by investing in one man to the exclusion of others, you lose your prestige and therefore your appeal.

  Swept up in the excitement, I made a list in my notebook of things I thought would come in handy over the coming month:

  cigarette holder

  kohl eyeliner

  very short flapper-esque dress

  bathtub gin distillery (?)

  I was chomping at the bit to get started but while enjoying a homemade highball after work (in the name of research, of course), I realized that, once again, I had an alarming lack of test subjects. With Popeye AWOL, possibly never to be seen again, the cupboard was bare, and I needed someone to experiment on. And the nature of the book dictated that I didn’t need just one someone—I needed several. There was no way I could summon up an army of men to be flirted and trifled with just by batting my eyelashes on the tube (though I’d certainly be giving that a shot). I needed help. Modern, forward-thinking help.

  I needed the Internet.

  So, on my lunch hour and after doing a quick sweep of the area to make sure no one was around to catch me, I signed up for Castaways.

  Castaways is based on the idea that one person’s trash is another one’s treasure. People nominate friends who’ve recently been dumped but who deserve to meet Prince/Princess Charming. The Dumper can also nominate the Dumpee if they feel their ex is a wonderful person but couldn’t quite get over the way they pronounced the word “prosciutto” or whatever.

  I wasn’t entirely convinced that the people doing the nominating were genuine, but I’d heard that it was filled with decent, non-disgusting men and I didn’t have to take a psychological test to join, so I was sold.

  The catch was that I had to ask someone to write a testimonial saying how unbelievably gorgeous, talented, brilliant, hilarious, sexy I was and how they just COULDN’T BELIEVE that I was still single and it must be because men are intimidated by me because of my incredible beauty and searing intellect. At least that’s what most of the testimonials I scrolled through seemed to say, always accompanied by a very arty black-and-white photo of a pouty mouth or half a hooded eye.

  I asked Meghan, as I figured she knew me better than anyone and was bound by blood to say nice things about me. She doesn’t have all that much experience in the dating world herself, having married her soul mate, Sue, after they met at a Lilith Fair revival back in college.

  They live in a converted barn and spend their weekends blissfully making jam and knitting each other scarves. Meg owns a successful gardening center and Sue’s a surgeon at Mercy Hospital. That’s right, my sister is married to a doctor. Meanwhile, I’m conducting my love life as a science experiment, accidentally phoning my ex’s irate sister and joining a dating site presumably filled with lunatics and weirdos. Obviously luck is one thing that does not run in the family.

  Anyway, I asked her to write something that would entice the menfolk and she came up with the following:

  Lauren is an American expat who’s been in London for a while now. She reads, drinks and smokes a lot. She excels at the following activities: having fun, making sure her companions are having fun, eating baguettes, being clever.

  As a child, she rode a very fat horse named Jason, played defense in football, kick-boxed on a regular basis and got in trouble at her Catholic high school for reading Candide in church. When you meet her, none of this will surprise you.

  Now. First of all, let me say that all of the above is true. But more important to the cause at hand, it makes me sound like Ignatius J. Reilly out of A Confederacy of Dunces. And yes, I know that reference just reinforced her description of me, but I’m trying to hide my true, hideous self from prospective suitors (at least for a little while).

  So Meghan’s description just wasn’t going to cut the mustard. In the end, I confessed to Cathryn that I’d signed up to Castaways and begged her to write my description, hoping that her relatively scant knowledge of my adolescence would work in my favor. I was right, and Cathryn wrote a great, slightly fabricated couple of paragraphs that made me sound eminently more attractive than Meghan had.

  It went online today along with a full-color photograph of my entire smiling face and from then on it was in the hands of the Internet dating gods.

  Soon, messages from Castaways started pinging into my inbox. I was retrospectively pleased that I’d used my hotmail account rather than the work email as, by the afternoon, I’d clocked up over fifty emails from various online suitors vying for my attention. My head had swollen to the size of a watermelon.

  When I got home from work, I mixed myself a sidecar (more research) and started clicking excitedly through the replies. I soon realized that the number of emails wasn’t at all a reflection on my good self. The guys on this site were playing a numbers game, as there were lots of generic one-line emails from men who were just spamming all of the female Castaways out there, hoping one of them would bite.

  In fact, after a little bit of scrolling, it became clear that quality merchandise was thin on the ground. It was kind of like being a kid in a really shit candy store, one that was mainly filled with slightly stale licorice sticks with the occasional peanut butter cup shining through.

  After I deleted all the spammers, I weeded out anyone with a tag name like “Rocstarz” or “ChocolateBum.” These men have qualities of their own, I’m sure, but they are not to be sampled by me.

  Here’s the thing that I quickly discovered about online dating: it enables shamelessly shallow behavior. All of these codenamed, speechless photos blinking up at me . . . it was impossible not to judge fairly heavily on the photo. So out went the hideously ugly, the morbidly obese, the wearers of wraparound sunglasses. Off you go, Oakleys! Back in the sea!

  Finally, and most crucially, I got rid of all the dudes who used text-speak in their emails or, worse, emoticons. What self-respecting man uses a winking smiley face in a pick-up line? I ask you.

  I assessed my lot after the cull and was pleasantly surprised to find half a dozen decent-looking, sane-sounding, proper-grammar-using guys still in my inbox. I fired off what I hoped were reasonably witty replies while eating an avocado in my old gym shorts. If this was any indication of online dating, I was hooked. Not having to wear heels in some sweaty meat-market bar was incentive enough.

  May 8

  My first Castaways date! Hooray! Eeek.

  His online name was inoffensive enough, and after a few fairly promising email exchanges, he suggested we meet up for a drink. Whoop! How easy was that? I immediately agreed and a date was set for this evening.

  Here’s what I knew about him. He photographed well (if a little moodily). He had dark curlyish hair and brown eyes and appeared to spend a fair amount of time leaning up against slightly grimy walls in East London. A female friend recommended him to the site, which made me slightly suspicious because if he’s so great, why wasn’t she dating him herself? But his profile made him seem funny and clever and interesting, so what the hell. Plus, I needed to start testing out my technique and he was as good a candidate as any.

  One interesting little curve ball: he was a fashion photographer. This was both alluring and terrifying. On the one hand, I quite liked the idea of someone a bit artsy and right-brained but, on the other, I hated the idea of going on a date with someone who spent lots of time in close proximity to models. I could already feel a hot kernel of jealousy ready to pop inside of me and I hadn’t even met the guy yet. Not good.

  I got re
ady in the bathroom at work, Cathryn looking on in fascination as I applied eyeliner.

  “I don’t know how you manage to get it in a straight line. I’ve tried it a few times and I’ve always got it in my eye,” she said, blinking at me with her irritatingly long-and-mascaraless eyelashes.

  “Practice. My sister and I used to give each other makeovers all the time when I was a kid. I’ve been an eyeliner expert since I was seven.”

  “You were allowed to wear make-up when you were seven?” Cathryn touched her peachy cheek with her hand, horrified.

  “Christ, no. Not out of the house. It was just for fun! What kind of a nut do you think I am?”

  “Thank God,” she said, gently exhaling.

  I swiped some red lipstick on, knowing I would end up eating it off before I even got to the bar, and cuffed the hems of my jeans so my new yellow heels were on show.

  “All right, I’m off. Wish me luck!”

  “Be careful! Remember to call if you need to make your excuses! And for goodness’ sake don’t follow him down any back alleys!”

  “Thanks, Mom. See you tomorrow!”

  I stood outside the pub in South Kensington, took a couple of drags on my cigarette and then gave a piece of Trident a couple of chews to cover the smell. As much as I’d brushed off Cathryn’s warnings, I was a little nervous myself. The Photographer could be anyone. He could be a sociopath. He could be a drug addict. He could slip me a mickey and sell me into the sex trade.

  Within five minutes of meeting him, I knew my evening wasn’t going to be anywhere near as exciting as all that. The Photographer was a dud.

  He stood up nervously when I approached him and gave me a slightly damp handshake.

  We ordered our drinks (separately, with no movement to order/pay for/carry mine from him—suddenly I missed The Rules) and sat down at the bar so that I could begin to dazzle him with my sparkling conversation.