30 Guys in 30 Days

by Micol Ostow

  Of course, with every rainbow comes just a little bit of rain, mainly in the form of my own semipublic humiliation.

  After several weeks of smiling shyly at Jesse and hoping he’d managed to get the espresso out of his pants, I decided to step up the flirt level. I knew, technically, that talking to Jesse wasn’t the same thing as approaching someone entirely new, but the fact was that as my own skills evolved, so, I believed, should the game. Meaning that I was ready to progress with Jesse beyond the hasty “Whoops—sorry!” I’d originally offered.

  I was ready to ask him out.

  And the announcement regarding the extra credit gave me just the opportunity to do so.

  I wanted to talk to him after class, but he seemed to have other ideas. He went up to the front of the room and started an insanely long diatribe with Hartridge about coded matrices. I wondered furtively if I was supposed to know what those things were. No matter. If Jesse was actually good at comp sci, then instead of offering to work together, I’d just ask him to tutor me. See? Easy-peasy. I was a master adapter, proficient in the Art of the Flirt.

  As the moments dragged on, it became increasingly difficult to pretend that I had any reason to be lingering in the lab. Finally, I grabbed my bag and made my way into the hall. I stalled rather impressively—checking my cell, consulting my PDA, looking over my list of reading for bio.…I was halfway through creating a new iPod playlist when Jesse finally emerged from the classroom.

  “Hey!” I all but shouted. “I was looking for you. I’m, like, so excited that we’ve got a chance to do extra credit for this class,” I gushed. “Believe me, I need it.”

  He smiled at me sympathetically. It was all the encouragement I needed.

  “But you really seem to get the hang of it,” I commented. “So maybe you’ve got some time, like, this weekend, to go over it with me?”

  He shrugged. “Sure, why not?”

  It wasn’t the most gracious response I’d ever gotten, but there was no need to quibble. “So, urn, it’s Wednesday. How about tomorrow, maybe around six?”

  He frowned. “I don’t think I can make it then.”

  I nodded and went for broke. “Right. Duh. Thursday, whole start of the weekend and everything. I’m sure your girlfriend would be thrilled if you told her you were busy studying.”

  He looked at me for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Yeah,” he said. “Well, no. I mean, I don’t have a girlfriend.”

  Had I really read him so wrong?

  “But I’ve got tickets to this gallery showing downtown that starts at seven. And my boyfriend would be really pissed if I missed it.”

  Yes, yes, I had really read him so wrong.

  Anyway, I think we’re going to meet up on Saturday. Which is actually good news because I think I need to pass comp sci more than I need to find a date. Though, of course, it would have been great to kill two birds with one stone.

  —xx

  9/28, 3:34 p.m.

  from: kissandtellen@shemail.net

  to: cbclarkson@woodmanuniv.edu

  re: uh-oh

  Oh, my. Should I be concerned about this little comp sci grade situation? Don’t believe a word of it, kid—you’ll never need this stuff in “real life.” Now, the motifs of the female anatomy found in third-world feminist literature? Yeah, that’s the stuff of six-figure salaries.

  Do the extra credit and I won’t say anything to Mom and Dad.

  And re: your unreliable gay-dar? Shame on you! Surely I’ve taught you better than that!

  9/30, 6:56 p.m.

  from: kissandtellen@shemail.net

  to: cbclarkson@woodmanuniv.edu

  re: hello?

  Haven’t heard from you in two days. Slightly concerned. Was only kidding about the comp sci grade, you know. You’ll just have to do extra well in women’s history to compensate. Which is as it should be, anyway.

  Please shoot at least a quick note to reassure me that you haven’t been dragged off, Mr. Goodbar-style, by your most recent target? Okay? Because then I really would have to tell Mom and Dad.

  10/1⁄04, 8:53 p.m.

  from: cbclarkson@woodmanuniv.edu

  to: clnorton@woodmanuniv.edu, kissandtellen@shemail.net

  re: Sorry…

  … to have been so MIA. Apparently raising one’s average from an F to a sweet D-requires some serious mental energy. Not a lot left over for writing.

  Lest you think that I’d forgotten, “target practice” is proceeding with its typical semi-smooth regularity. To recap:

  • Tuesday, 9/27: Delivery boy at the Chronicle office. Dropping off some paper goods. I mentioned that his uniform really brought out the … yellow in his eyes. He looked at me as though he’d won the lottery. I guess he doesn’t get that a lot.

  • Wednesday, 9/28: Jesse in comp sci. We’ve been down that road already. Let’s not go there again.

  • Thursday, 9/29: Neo-beatnik I met at on-campus poetry slam. (Our friend Shelley had entered a poem, and Charlie and I went in support.) The look: black-on-black clothing, goatee, John Lennon glasses. All was a-okay until he asserted that I was “altering his experience of reality,” at which point I decided I needed to find a new reality of my own.

  Besides, I don’t even own a black ribbed turtleneck.

  • Friday, 9/30: Cool skate-punker with shiny streaks of blue through his hair. Very counterculture. I was pretty impressed with myself. Charlie and I picked him up with a friend in Porter Square, at Gabe’s favorite CD shop. But we had to put them back down again when I caught my “target” lifting lens cleaners and stuffing them down his pants. Highly problematic scenario on a number of levels.

  • Saturday, 10/1: “Target #28(!) was a sweet-looking redhead—a first for me!—at the Red Sky café in the heart of our little town center. We were each waiting for our designer drinks by the coffee bar when I struck up a bit of conversation. To my delight, he bit. Alas, I knew we were not meant to be when, as our coffees arrived, he took a sip of double-iced-latte, grimaced, and screamed to the barista, “Are you SURE this is skim?” He shoved his drink back down on the counter, sloshing potentially fattening coffee goo everywhere, and stormed out. Which was just fine by me. Coffee-rage: highly unattractive.

  Of course, each of these encounters is a learning experience, blah, blah, blah…And I almost can’t believe that I only have two left. Almost. But then I think back to some of the more dismal highlights of the experience and it all becomes incredibly vivid again. Sunday, and Monday, and then it’s back to the life of a regular old single girl, for better or for worse.

  Haven’t heard from Drew since he went back. Which is, of course, as we had decided. But still unsettling.

  Anyway, can’t dwell. T minus forty-eight hours and counting until the extra credit is due. And I need credit where credit is due.

  Hardy har har.

  —xx

  10/2, 9:07 p.m.

  from: cbclarkson@woodmanuniv.edu

  to: kissandtellen@shemail.net, clnorton@woodmanuniv.edu

  re: I have…

  … some news.

  You might want to sit down for this one.

  Now, I know that as of yesterday I was up to #28 on my “target practice,” and that it seemed as though I was careening toward finishing the game much in the same position that I had begun it—that is to say, single. Oh sure, skills, new friends, yadda yadda—reasons abound as to why the game could never be considered a total waste. But as I was saying ever so recently, the fact remained that the game was almost over and, for what it was worth, I was still single. Cord-less, and single. And that was sort of an anticlimax to all of this flirt, flirt, flirting going on right and left, no?

  NO?

  No.

  I had planned to meet up with Gabe on Sunday to go over his pop culture paper outline. Other than a quick e-mail of my Mad Salad article, and a brief conversation of the when/where of our study session, we really hadn’t spoken at all this week. Not even in class. But I was busy—what with
the failing of the comp sci, the heavy therapy sessions for Charlie re: her evil pledge stepsister, and, you know, “target practice.” Way too busy to dwell.

  Sunday rolled around and I was ready; detached, focused, and fully prepared to concentrate on Gabe’s outline rather than his latest iron-on T-shirt logo, or the finer points of his last column.

  Charlie had bribed me, paradoxically, with chocolate, to hit the gym with her again, and I did, spending a cool forty-five minutes safely spinning away on a stationary bike. I came home, showered, and threw on my “weekend casual” outfit: my best jeans, and a hoodie in the perfect shade of plum.

  I confess, there may have been some blow-drying involved.

  Okay, it’s possible I wasn’t as detached as I’m making it out.

  But, hey—I decided it’s okay to want to put my best foot forward. I mean, you never know when you’re going to happen upon your next target.

  And how!

  We were set to meet at 2:00. I arrived at 1:43. Yes, friends—1:43 was the precise moment that the life of one Claudia Beth Clarkson took a turn for the unexpected.

  Having seventeen minutes to spare, I stopped off in the computer lab to check my e-mail. I sidled up to an empty terminal and grabbed at the mouse, clicking away. It only took a second to realize that my screen was completely dark. Totally out of service. I looked up to see that literally every other terminal in the room was taken. Annoying.

  Damn.

  “Yeah, that one’s not working.”

  I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken out loud until my neighbor at the next terminal responded to my little temper tantrum. He didn’t sound at all fazed. If anything, he sounded mildly amused. This was, of course, even more annoying to me.

  “Such a pain,” I said, dangerously on the verge of a full-on rant. “How long are you going to—”

  I turned to confront my neighbor and froze.

  My neighbor was adorable.

  He stood about five feet ten inches and had a nice build. He wore a rumpled button-down over a T-shirt, but even through the layers I could tell that he was fit but not a crazed bodybuilder type. He wore lose cords, and scuffed trail shoes that suggested actual trail use. His eyes were the color of my best jeans (post—coffee stain removal, of course), and his hair was sandy and tousled, about a week or two away from needing a trim.

  I was gone.

  “I’m done, if you need this,” he offered, eyes twinkling.

  “Oh, uh—that’s really nice of you,” I said awkwardly.

  He logged off and stepped away from his computer so I could slide myself in. But he didn’t walk away. Instead, he stood there, watching me, that same bemused grin playing steadily on his lips.

  I didn’t mind.

  “So you knew that terminal wasn’t working?” I asked, glancing at him from the corner of my eye while at the same time sifting through my e-mail in-box.

  “Guilty as charged,” he said, putting his hands up in a “busted” gesture.

  “Nice,” I teased. “Very chivalrous.”

  His smile stretched wider. “I had my reasons.”

  “Oh?”

  “Well, it was the perfect opportunity to start a conversation with you.”

  Oh.

  And that was it. I closed out my in-box without even checking the remainder of my messages. He walked me upstairs into the front pavilion, where we sank into the large armchairs and exchanged the superficialities. He’s a junior, he lives uphill in Rigby Hall. He interns as a photography assistant at the Boston Beacon, a paper that operates out of the financial district. He’s a double-major: finance and international relations. He loves sushi. He saw me in the Brew and Gold a week ago, didn’t get it together in time to approach me before I left, and has been wandering the campus on high alert, waiting to see me again. He promised himself he wouldn’t let another opportunity go wasted.

  And, of course, he didn’t.

  We’re going for sushi tomorrow night.

  His name is Sean. Sean Brightman.

  Mrs. Sean Brightman…

  Needless to say, I was ten minutes late meeting with Gabe. Which is totally unprecedented behavior. But I’m done with my unrequited Gabe-crush, done with “target practice,” done with doubting my feminine wiles.

  Starting now.

  —xx

  Ten

  When two binary code sequences are merged into an algorithmic pattern, the resulting program will be run at a …

  Mrs. Sean Brightman

  Claudia Brightman

  Claudia and Sean Brightman

  Sean and Claudia Brightman

  Mr. and Mrs. Brightman

  The “consciousness raising” groups of the early 1970s were considered a harbinger to the new feminist era in which “politicizing the personal” was the order of the …

  It is with great pleasure that Sean Matthew Brightman and Claudia Beth Clarkson invite You to join them on June 14, 20—, as they are joined in holy …

  The responsibility of newscasters to censor the violent content of their broadcast during prime-time hours has long been …

  CBB

  CBB

  I shoved aside the piles of reading that had been gathering dust since I’d sat down at my desk. It was useless; my eyes danced across the page, unprocessing regardless of subject matter. I was utterly and completely consumed with Sean.

  It was wonderful.

  It had been a week since we’d met and, in that time, we’d spent some part of every day—not to mention every night—together. Sean was friendly, outgoing, giving, and uncomplicated. I adored spending time with him. He was smart, and always made me laugh. In all my days (twenty-eight, to be exact) of “target practice,” it had never occurred to me that the game could ever lead somewhere. Certainly not to a new maybe-boyfriend.

  Because that’s what Sean was shaping up to be. I didn’t want to jump the gun, or assume too much too soon, but the truth of the matter was that I was head over heels for him. Around Sean, all of the insanity and uncertainty of being on my own for the first time melted away. With him, I felt comfortable, stable, safe, and warm.

  Mrs. Sean Brightman

  I could only guess what sort of impact he’d have on my GPA—we hadn’t gotten our extra-credit scores back from Hartridge yet, but at the moment, I couldn’t have cared less.

  The door burst open and Charlie flounced in, dropping dramatically onto her bed. She groaned, leaned back against her pillows, and flung an arm over her eyes as though the light was killing her. I didn’t bother to point out that it was seven thirty at night and the only glow in the room was coming from my tiny desk lamp. She’d been doing this more and more over the course of the week—coming home, dropping dramatically onto her bed, and groaning, usually due to Anu-related issues. How could I not sympathize? I felt partially responsible for the situation, and it sounded like Anu was really being horrible.

  I swiveled around in my chair so that I was facing her, even though she still had one arm over her eye and really wouldn’t have known, either way. “Tell.”

  Charlie sighed. “Today, we had to show our pledge books to the pledge master,” she explained. Their pledge books reflected their “scores” in the pledging process, chronicling signatures of sisters interviewed, tasks completed, pranks, boys, the letters of the Greek alphabet … it never ended. The amount of useless information contained in those pledge books was staggering. Charlie’s grades were fine—more than fine, really (one of the tenets of the Georgia Peach mantle involved scholarship, as a matter of fact), but I figured if it weren’t for the energy going into her pledging, the girl would be a national merit scholar. Or at least dean’s list.

  I had an idea, however, that her pledge book was probably not in the shape that it needed to be in, all things considered.

  “Let me guess—there’s a problem with yours?”

  She sat up on her bed and pulled her hair into a ponytail secured at the nape of her neck. “Well, for starters, I don’t have enough si
gnatures.”

  “Charlie, how is that possible? I know for a fact that you had lunch with at least six of the upperclassmen last week.”

  “Exactly. And normally a big sister would let me count all six. But, according to Anu, the whole point of the signature is to indicate that I had an up-close-and-personal interaction with a sister. Therefore, there’s no way that this could take place at a lunch with four other girls. Which means that all of the signatures from that lunch are null and void. And I’m at least ten signatures behind.”

  “That sucks,” I said, clucking my tongue sympathetically.

  “The worst thing about it is that, technically, she’s right, and so there’s not much I can do. Complaining won’t get me anywhere—and I really don’t want to complain, anyway. That would only make her hate me more.”

  “Smart thinking,” I agreed.

  “And get this,” she continued, warming to her story. “All of the pledges have to paint the cannon, right?”

  The cannon was a landmark situated just in front of the president’s house, at the top of the hill. It’s been around since Woodman was first established. No one knew what it signified. These days, the thing to do was to paint it: team colors the night before homecoming, pledge colors the night before initiation, for your best friend on her birthday, as a declaration of love…you get the picture. The catch was that the cannon could only be painted at night, and on any given night, so many different groups were vying for the chance to work a little Michelangelo that, if you wanted to ensure that your artwork made it to daybreak, you were basically up all night, guarding it. I could see how the activity could foster school spirit, team unity, etc., etc., but to me it just seemed like prime sleeping hours gone to waste.

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, we were divided into groups and assigned different nights, you know—based on our class schedules and who was available what night. Trick was that we were all going to be doing it in groups. But, of course, guess which one of us is groupless?”