Everything was going well with Adam. We seemed to be bending our lives to meet in the middle, just the way I thought you were supposed to do in a healthy, adult relationship.
Then I made a mistake. Or maybe it wasn’t my mistake—maybe it was his. Either way, I said something that drove him away. It happened one Sunday morning when he was leaving my apartment to go to a football game. I was still in bed and I whispered, “I’ll miss you.” I didn’t give the words a second thought, they just came out of me, as sincere and honest as his first e-mail to me had been.
He didn’t call that evening after the game, as he normally would. And suddenly, instead of being up for anything and always available, he was “too busy at work” to see me. I knew the sound of an excuse when I heard one—I’d made too many of them myself not to recognize the signs of someone pulling away.
Finally, we got together for “the talk.” He told me that he really cared about me, but that he “wanted to be friends.” The excuse he gave was that he needed to concentrate on his work.
He wanted to be friends? But we weren’t friends. We were way more than that. I knew in my gut, in an instant, that being friends with him wouldn’t be good for me. I had plenty of friends already—really good friends who loved me—and I didn’t need an ex-boyfriend to fill the friend stable. I’d only get mixed signals from him, I’d end up feeling bad, and I’d certainly end up hurt far worse than I was already. So, without thinking much more than a second, I said, “No. Either we’re a couple or we’re not.”
I knew it was the right thing to say, but still, I couldn’t believe those words came out of my mouth. They came from inner strength and self-esteem. These were things with which I didn’t have a whole lot of familiarity.
Adam teared up, and I cried too. It was very sad. I think I cried an entire week after that. I had some moments of doubt that made the whole thing feel even worse. I kept questioning myself—had I made the right decision? Other women have remained friends with exes and end up getting back together and eventually marrying, why not us? I also felt the pain of letting go of someone I really cared about. But as confused as I often felt, I always came back to my gut certainty that I’d made the right choice for me—and probably for him as well.
We’re often told to stand our ground and fight, to never give up. But sometimes it’s harder to walk away from a difficult situation than it is to stay and keep struggling. It would have been easier to relent to Adam, and keep a glimmer of hope that he’d change his mind. But in the end, that would have been a disaster and I knew it. I’d rather experience some up-front misery than to sign on to a long, hopeless slog. Pre-epiphany, I would have chosen the slog, but now I didn’t even consider it. I had officially bloomed—and better late than never.
I may have soured on romance at various points, but somehow I always came back around to seeing how sweet life can be. So I came up with a recipe for this chapter that’s a perfect combination of sour and sweet. These aren’t your typical lemon bars, which can be mouth-puckering and adults-only. Even kids (and those clinging to childhood) love my lemon bars, because they taste just like ice cream. (PS, they’re also really good à la mode.)
LEMONS-INTO-LEMONADE BARS
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1¼ cup oatmeal (not instant)
Juice of 3 lemons
Grated zest of 2 lemons
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line a 9 x 13–inch pan with parchment paper so the sides overhang.
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add flour, then the oatmeal. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, stir juice and zest into milk until well incorporated.
Press two-thirds of the dough into the pan. Now spread the lemon-milk mixture over dough. Break up and distribute the remaining dough over the top, so it resembles a streusel.
Bake 30 to 35 minutes, until topping turns golden.
Cool completely, then slice. Keep refrigerated in an airtight container.
Makes about 32 squares, depending on how small you cut them.
CHAPTER 16
GETTING LUCKY
I don’t get lonely. Despite the fact that I can be the life of the party, and for years I threw myself into every major launch, promotional event, and concert I was invited to, I’ve actually never been afraid to be alone. The downside of this is that I have never felt like I needed a partner to make me feel complete. The upside of this is that I have never felt like I needed a partner to make me feel complete. On the one hand, it’s made me less likely to reach out, but on the other hand, it’s given me high standards. After Adam and I broke up, I realized that I was doing just fine on my own. It’s not that I wouldn’t have been happy to meet someone wonderful, but only if he were truly right for me—and good for me. I didn’t need to be with someone because I was afraid not to have a boyfriend on Saturday night.
I had definitely come to appreciate my close friendships over the years. The less I stopped spinning like a manic top, the more I noticed how lovely it could be just to hang out with a girlfriend or two and talk. I still had fun and could enjoy a great party, but it didn’t have to be every night. Being alone with myself was really nice, too.
Once I broke free of my old ways in my personal life, I made a change in my work life as well. I’d been at WOR for three years when I realized that I wanted a different kind of challenge. I’d been walking a straight line of job to job to job, and I suddenly felt a strong desire to branch out, and to do something for me. I had a website before a lot of celebrities (and companies) even thought of that, and I’d always been really smart about marketing myself—after all, I’d pretty much single-handedly gotten myself on TV. So I decided to leave WOR and start my own marketing and public relations business, working for myself for the first time in my life. The thought of giving up a steady paycheck was terrifying, but I reminded myself that I’d turned a little friends-only cookie party into an annual, star-studded bash. I had corporate contacts, and I’d been promoting a product—myself—for years, and doing a really good job at it.
I knew that there was a time limit to how long I could rest on my radio laurels, and I needed to pick up some clients before people thought I was old news. There were only so many months that I could introduce myself as Lisa G., formerly of Hot 97, WOR, and so on. So I went to a million events, networked and called people until my fingers bled, and I got clients right away. Self-confidence is contagious, I learned—if you have enough faith in yourself, other people have faith in you too.
I specialized in web marketing, which was still in its very early days, and it turned out that even big companies with huge marketing departments needed the expertise of people like me. Nike hired me after I handed out cards at the Rucker Park basketball tournament in Harlem, and Purina hired me to host and produce videos for their “Greatest American Dog Challenge,” which was kind of an Olympics for dogs, only instead of discus throwing, there was Frisbee catching.
It was around this time, when I had all this newfound flexibility in my schedule, that I decided to pick up the violin again. You probably forgot all about how I played the violin, didn’t you? Well, I hadn’t forgotten, and I’d always longed for it. I was terrified that if I picked it up again I’d find out that I’d lost any talent or skill I once had, but I put aside my fear and decided that I needed and wanted the violin in my life.
I looked up a place called Strings and Other Things, on the Upper West Side, and I rented myself a violin. Then I registered for a basic violin class at the New School. Back in college I was way, way beyond basic violin, but I truly didn’t know now if my skill would come back to me. I figured that if I took the beginner class, I could just start from scratch when I inevitably fell flat on my face.
Even though I had the violin before I went to class the first time, I refused to touch it—I wouldn’t even take it out of the case.
I was too afraid to pick up the bow and find out how bad I was. I figured I would delay the heartbreak of learning that I’d lost it. The night of my first class I was terrified, but within three minutes of starting the class, lo and behold, it had all come back to me. It was like riding a bicycle. Actually, it was more like skiing. I still had all the moves I’d had as a kid, but now I had something new and adult: trepidation. The same way kids don’t worry about breaking a leg on the slope but adults do, I now felt an unfamiliar fear of making too great a leap on the violin, challenging myself too much, shifting up to third position and taking those notes quite as fast as I once did. But that fear was something I could live with—and get past—as long as I could at least play.
The New School’s music program at night was a hilarious, freewheeling place. There were all kinds of classes going on all the time. Mine was the only group violin class, so while we played our refined chamber music, in every other room there were all kinds of guitar lessons, and rock and jazz bands. There were all these people having fun all the time, and every once in a while when my quiet little group was on a break I’d peek in on one of the other classes to see what they were up to. I remember one particular band had a Wall Street banker-looking guy on guitar and a Hasidic Jew—payos and all—on drums. The musicians came in all shapes and sizes, all exercising their secret passions. And here I thought I was the only one.
At the end of the semester I realized that I needed more of a musical challenge than the beginner class. I actually tried private lessons for a short while, but I found that I missed the musical camaraderie of a group. This was really different for me—to feel that I wanted other people to share my experience with. Chamber music is so much about teamwork and interdependence. The fact that I craved it and enjoyed it so much was a really big step for me—or a rediscovery, more accurately. I’d loved this aspect of music when I was younger, but over the years of depending just on myself and keeping my eyes on the prize, I had lost touch with how wonderful it was to lift instruments together.
Eventually, when it was time to renew my violin rental, I decided to go ahead and purchase my violin. This was major. I would say that it was like buying a car, but it was more serious than that because a violin you have for a lifetime and the average Toyota you do not. When I paid for it, the store employees gathered around me to say congratulations and shake my hand. You’d think I was getting bat mitzvahed. Or married. Which, in a way, I was. Because this was also about love and commitment, and I’d shown that I had both.
FROM WORKING FOR MYSELF to playing the violin again, this was a year of awakening for me. So far, all my risk taking had paid off, so I was probably ripe for the plucking when a casual acquaintance of mine said that she thought I should mentor high school students. She didn’t know me well at all, so I’m not sure what she saw in me that day to make her think that I could do it. Maybe I had a searching look on my face. Whatever her reason, she said she thought I’d enjoy it, and instantly, it felt to me like the right thing to do. She was a math teacher at LaGuardia, the highly regarded Manhattan arts high school (also known as the school from Fame), and she said that she’d sponsor me to be a mentor in their program.
I passed the background check (ha!) and was invited to an orientation in which the prospective mentors were given all the ground rules—where we could take the kids, and what our exact responsibilities and time commitment would be. They made it very clear that meetings were to occur weekly, and that if we didn’t intend to stick with our student throughout their high school career, then we shouldn’t do it. I gulped and signed on.
Over the course of my time there, I would sponsor two students—both remarkable girls—and I would become deeply attached to both of them. I’d chat with the girls, listen to their boyfriend sagas, give them judicious yet nonjudgmental advice when I thought they needed it. It was unlike any volunteer work I’d ever done before. In radio we were always doing big events for charities, and truthfully it was just like another day at the station. There was no getting your hands dirty, no real interaction with the people that you were supposedly helping. And those charity events were usually once-a-year gigs—no one expected me to keep a hand in. There was no one with a name and a life story that I knew, who would depend on me to be there and not flake out, who looked up to me as a role model.
I’ll never forget my first day picking up Olivia, the first student I worked with. I waited for her outside the school, and a group of teenagers were goofing around. One of them started pelting me with jelly beans, and I thought to myself: What the heck am I doing here? I don’t belong here. At that moment, all I wanted to do was pick up those jelly beans from the ground and throw them right back at the brat. But I suspected that wasn’t in the LaGuardia guidelines for mentors. I felt like such a fish out of water, and I was full of self-doubt. What was I going to say to this teenaged girl? What did I possibly have to offer her?
Finally I found Olivia and we went someplace nearby to have coffee. Very quickly I realized that she wasn’t looking for a teacher or a parent or even an authority figure—she already had those in her life. She needed a friend, and one with a little sense and perspective. Most of the kids who signed up for the mentoring program (or were forced to sign up by their parents) were feeling a little lost, a little outcast. But because they all went to LaGuardia, they were also passionate about the arts—they were talented and focused, but also incredibly confused. It was like seeing myself in a mirror—they all knew what they desperately wanted to be, they just weren’t at all sure who they really were.
The thing I learned most from that experience was that ultimately I got way more out of my relationship with those girls than they got from me. I did help them—I was there for them rain or shine for years, and I made calls, got them internships, that kind of thing. Olivia’s mom said she thought I had saved her daughter’s life at a time when she might have spiraled downward. That meant the world to me, but as wonderful as my girls were, I bet they would have found their way without me. I’m not so sure that I would have done the same thing without them, though—the inspiration that I got from those girls, and the newfound respect I gained for my own ability to give to someone else, was life changing for me.
I’M A CREATURE OF habit, and years of radio have taught me one of my most die-hard mantras: On time is late. In radio, you always want to be early. So very often when I was going to my weekly violin class, I was quite early and I had time to kill in the neighborhood. Pretty frequently I would be drawn to the same pet store and its display of kittens. I’d stare at them, enjoy watching them play, and track their growth from week to week. I’d never wanted a pet before, but suddenly I was obsessed.
Which didn’t mean that I actually wanted a cat for myself. No way. I just liked looking at them … right?
Pretty soon, my kitten obsession became a running joke with my friends, who wondered why I didn’t just take the plunge and get one. I mean, it was obvious that I wanted one—why else would I be looking at them so much? But I had every excuse not to get one. This one was sick, I said, this one wasn’t orange enough. That one didn’t have enough stripes, that one was too big or too black. I came up with a million bizarre and contradictory standards for what would make the perfect kitten for me. And there were just so many kittens to choose from! I got overwhelmed at the number, and the thought of making a decision, so I just didn’t make one at all.
By this point I had gotten to know the owners of the pet store, and they pointed out a new litter of kittens to me and told me the sad story of how someone had left the pregnant mother for dead outside their door. They took her in, slowly nursed her back to health, and now they had these kittens to find homes for. The runt of the litter was a tiny little tabby, and he became my focus over the coming weeks. There were lots of other kittens around—healthy, happy, playful kittens that had a lot better chance of survival than my malnourished little runt. But those other kittens didn’t do it for me. I looked forward to seeing my little guy—maybe I
saw a little bit of myself in this scrappy, disfavored child. Every week I’d ask after his health, and every week he got a little bigger. Finally, I said the words: “I’ll take him.”
I couldn’t take him home until he was eight weeks old, but once I decided he’d be mine, there was no going back, no changing my mind. I’d made a commitment, just like I’d recommitted myself to the violin and devoted myself to my LaGuardia girls.
The day I took my kitten home, the pet store gave me a carrying case fit for a full-sized animal, so big for this tiny little creature that you could barely see in there. He was eight weeks old, but closer to the size and strength of a five-week-old—he seemed so fragile and breakable, with a heart the size of a hummingbird’s. I think the pet store owners could see the panic in my eyes and realized I had no idea what the heck I was doing. So they also loaded me up with a litter pail, a scoop, and some food. Then they sent me on my way—no doubt with their fingers crossed behind their backs. Riding home on the subway, strangers looked into the carrying case quizzically, trying to figure out what that little ball of fur in there might be. One person actually said, “Is it a rat?”
Meanwhile, the whole way home I was crying and thinking to myself, What am I doing? He’s going to die—I’m going to kill him. I didn’t know how to take care of anything, not really—I didn’t even have plants. All I had to guide me in how to keep this little ball of fur alive was a cat book. So I made an appointment with a vet the next day, and I prayed to the universe that my runt didn’t die in the night.
Sex, Lies, and Cookies: An Unrated Memoir Page 15