Available

by Matteson Perry

  I’d found the keepsakes as I was packing to move out of the apartment we’d lived in together. If that wasn’t sad enough, the day before, I’d had to go to a wedding in San Diego, my stepbrother’s, a last-minute courthouse ceremony because his bride was from France and they needed to start the immigration paperwork as soon as possible. At least that’s what they claimed. I knew the truth: they’d rushed the engagement to rub their joy in my face. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy for my brother, but having recently been dumped, I viewed the wedding with a jaded eye, thinking, We’ll see if this lasts. They’re young and getting married quickly. And also, love is not real. Long skeptical of marriage, my breakup had further disillusioned me.

  Making matters worse, I hadn’t yet told some family members about my split, so I kept getting the question “Where’s Kelly today?”

  What I’d say—“We broke up a couple weeks ago.”

  What I wanted to say—“I have no goddamn clue where she is because we’re no longer together. She doesn’t love me anymore, despite the fact we got a puppy, so I’m alone today. But enough about me, let’s talk about something emotionally crippling in your life.”

  * * *

  Though I would come to love living alone (I make a good roommate for myself), it felt crushingly desolate at first. Having no one to eat with made cooking joyless. I stopped watching the sitcom Parks and Recreation, because Kelly and I had watched it together and the theme song had a Pavlovian effect, causing me to tear up within a few notes. At night, without another person in my bed, I felt like the sole survivor of a shipwreck, floating alone in a sea of blankets, my rescue doubtful. I quickly tossed aside my rule against Murray sleeping in the bed and discovered that a dog’s coat is remarkably good at absorbing tears.

  I didn’t just come home to an empty apartment, either; I was in an empty apartment all day because I worked from home. While I tried to make it as a writer, working on screenplays and TV scripts in my spare time, I made money working for a company that sold office furniture. Finding stocks of used office cubicles to buy and resell wasn’t exactly exhilarating enough to make me forget my failed relationship. I needed to be proactive if I was going to pull myself together.

  I came up with an eight-step program:

  1. Initiate Ghost Protocol—Act as if Kelly were a Mission: Impossible operative who’d been captured: disavow all knowledge of her and remove any evidence of her existence. I threw away pictures, unfollowed her on Twitter and Facebook, and hid her name in Gchat.

  2. Mourn her as if she were dead—It was okay to miss Kelly, just like it’s okay to miss a loved one who’s passed away, but holding out hope of getting back together would be like waiting for a dead person to return from the grave. I kept in mind that attempting to contact the dead is crazy and trying to have sex with them even worse.

  3. Listen to a lot of Billy Joel—I made “She’s Always a Woman” by Billy Joel my official break-up theme song. Anytime I felt low, I’d listen to it on a loop, singing along with every lyric. This song is amazing because it feels like it’s written specifically about your ex. My girlfriend was frequently kind and suddenly cruel—how did you know, Billy Joel?

  4. Create a “regret fantasy” —I used my pain and anger as inspiration to work harder and be better, so one day Kelly would regret having let me go. I looked decades into the future and saw her on her deathbed, saying with her last breath, “I shouldn’t have dumped you. It was the greatest mistake of my life.” “Yeah, it was,” I’d say, before hanging up so I could go back to enjoying my space vacation, which in this fictitious future I’m rich enough to be able to afford.

  5. Turn depression into a great bod —There are few exercise routines as effective for losing weight as the I’ll Show You workout plan. Especially when paired with the I’m Too Depressed to Eat diet.

  6. Fill up the social calendar—With some planning, I could be too busy to be sad. I started hanging out with people I didn’t have time for previously, my JV friend squad. Sure, I’d stop seeing them as soon as a new relationship started, but for now, I’d pretend I actually valued them.

  7. Hate all things romantic—I began trashing all movies, books, shows, and songs about love. I would decry their hypocrisy and shout about their lack of realism. I’d pity any friend in a new relationship, telling them “Good luck with that.” I became a warrior of truth, exposing love for the disease it was, a virus invented by Hallmark.

  8. Talk about the breakup incessantly—I’d mull over the same things again and again, revisiting the reasons Kelly was wrong/stupid and why she shouldn’t have left me. No matter the temptation, I would NOT ask friends about how they were doing, knowing it was important for my mental health to talk only about myself.

  Grant, a former roommate and one of my best friends, was one of the people who had to endure step eight the most.

  You know when something crazy or cool happens and you think, That kind of thing only happens to other people—Grant is the person it happens to. He’s tall, athletic, good-looking, plays guitar, is a lot of fun, and random amazing things seem to happen to him regularly, particularly when it comes to women. On a weekend trip to Paris for business he hooked up with a French model, who then visited him in New York for a week of sex. Another time he met a friend of a friend through Facebook and ended up in a short-lived yet passionate long-distance romance. When a normal mortal randomly meets a woman online, she turns out to be a fifty-year-old dude who drives a truck in Ohio. In Grant’s case, she was an NFL cheerleader. I would hate him if he weren’t one of my best friends.

  During one phone call, I made a rare exception to my “don’t care about other people’s lives” policy to hear about Grant’s recent trip to Burning Man, a “counterculture festival” that takes place every year in August in the desert outside Reno. For one week, tens of thousands of people turn a dried-up lake into a pop-up town called Black Rock City. And shit gets weird. People band together in camps to create art pieces, bars, dance clubs, sex clubs, teahouses, libraries, restaurants, and anything else a town might need or want. The idea is to build an alternative society based on openness, sharing, and nonjudgmentalism. Sort of like summer camp for adults, but with way more patchouli.

  Grant told me all about his experience: the great group of people he camped with and the parties they threw; the art; and the desert at night, every person, every car covered in LED lights, making the world look like a living Lite-Brite. He loved the sense of community and the change of perspective it afforded. Most important, he told me about how Burning Man was a very sexual place and featured many beautiful women wearing little clothing.

  Grant had kissed scores of women during the week, sometimes without exchanging a word. He told me of the girl (another model, yawn . . .) he’d had sex with on top of a twenty-five-foot-high scaffolding platform while a party of hundreds raged below. Before he finished the story I blurted out, “I would like to go to Burning Man with you next year!”

  Not only did I want to go to Burning Man, I wanted to do it all the way. I wanted to embrace the experience (have a lot of sex), explore the alternative society (have a lot of sex), discover things about myself (have a lot of sex), and do it all completely unfettered (so I could have a lot of sex).

  In order to do that, though, I needed to be single when I went, and with Burning Man eleven months away, that meant going nearly a year without a relationship. This may not seem like a long time, but to a Serial Monogamist, it was daunting. It would be my longest single stretch in seven years.

  I needed a plan.

  3

  * * *

  BROS’ BRUNCH

  Growing up in Colorado, I didn’t know about brunch. We only went out for breakfast twice a year, usually to commemorate either the birth or death of Jesus.

  In Los Angeles, however, brunch is a lifestyle. Many Angelenos engage in this sacred tradition at least twice a month, sometimes waiting upward of an hour for a table so they can eat at the “right” place. After some tim
e in LA, I got a handle on the differences between brunch and breakfast.

  Breakfast—Meal lasts 30–40 minutes.

  Brunch—Meal lasts 3–4 hours.

  Breakfast—No alcohol.

  Brunch—Bottomless mimosas.

  Breakfast—Conversation about the weather or the price of gasoline.

  Brunch—Conversations about your sex life, your friend’s sex life, and your friend’s friend’s sex life. And Mad Men.

  Breakfast—Attire: I don’t know, whatever you put on when you get out of bed. Who cares, it’s breakfast, not the prom.

  Brunch—Attire: Men—aged jeans, a graphic T-shirt for an obscure band (preferably not yet formed), and sunglasses, which will remain on at all times, whether inside or out. Women—Two possible avenues: either tight-fitting, chic clothes suitable for an exclusive nightclub or an outfit so casual it could conceivably be worn by a midwestern pregnant woman binge-watching One Tree Hill. Wear nothing that falls between these extremes.

  Breakfast—Food: Eggs over easy, hash browns, bacon, and sourdough toast. On a special occasion, like your birthday, you might order a Denver omelet.

  Brunch—Food: A frittata with figs, applewood-smoked bacon, fresh goat cheese, and artisanal chives. A side of “fiesta hash browns” with fresh goat cheese. Just for fun, for the table, a stack of pumpkin walnut pancakes with Saigon cinnamon, real maple syrup, blanched bananas, fresh strawberries, and a dollop of crème fraîche. And a side of fresh goat cheese.

  When Kelly and I broke up, my brunch habit kicked into high gear as I started getting together with two of my good friends, Kurt and Evan, almost every Saturday (and sometimes Sunday too). I went to college with Evan, and met Kurt through him. Evan is tall and wears glasses, portraying a mix of athleticism and bookishness that suits his personality, while Kurt is fit, with a boyish face. We became tight because we shared the three most important things when it comes to friendship—sense of humor, taste in pop culture, and a love of seasonal pancake toppings.

  Every weekend we’d meet up, enjoy breakfast sweet-treats, and talk about relationships, dating, and feelings. Yes, we were basically acting out Sex and the City. As a writer and the main character in this book, I guess I’m Carrie, but I always felt the most affinity for Charlotte. Or whatever. Who knows, ’cause I’ve barely ever watched the show. Too busy watching football and shows about chopping wood.

  Anyway, it was at a Bros’ Brunch that I announced The Plan.

  “I’m making a pact with myself to not have a girlfriend for a year, until after Burning Man,” I said, between mouthfuls of avocado toast.

  “That doesn’t seem hard,” Kurt said.

  Kurt hadn’t had a girlfriend in the two years I’d known him. It wasn’t that Kurt couldn’t get a girlfriend—he was funny, good-looking, and often successful with women—he just wasn’t interested, content with the single life and spending time with family and friends. Like a veteran criminal used to solitary confinement, he scoffed at the minor stint of one year I’d have to serve.

  Evan was, romantically speaking, the opposite of Kurt—he wanted nothing more than to be in a relationship, and he had a specific girl in mind. About a year earlier, a girl named Joanna had dumped him. Then they’d gotten back together. Then they’d broken up again. Then they’d gotten back together. And so on.

  Kurt and I kept hoping Evan would move on, but he hadn’t, even when Joanna relocated to Salt Lake City. We thought a seven-hundred-mile separation would be the death blow, but Evan wasn’t so sure, pointing out that distance doesn’t matter when it’s True Love. (He would say stuff like this jokingly, but Kurt and I knew he was only half kidding.)

  So, my goal to spend one year without a girlfriend didn’t impress them. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t important. Not only would it leave me single to frolic at Burning Man, it would also be a chance to break my relationship pattern.

  I’d decided that going quickly from one relationship to the next had been setting me up for failure. When driving stick, you have to downshift when you hit a red light; relationships should work the same way. Being in a loving, long-term relationship is like fifth gear and I hadn’t been taking enough time off between women to get back to emotional neutral. I’d let a new relationship get serious right away, acting like a boyfriend from date one because I didn’t know how else to act. A year off would allow me to start my next relationship fresh.

  I hoped this strategy would help me find someone I not only loved, but who would be an objectively good life partner. Lust and infatuation had blinded me to objective incompatibilities in the past. In choosing partners, I’d been far too reliant on my “feelings,” and my heart had proven to be a poor navigator, a Christopher Columbus type who claimed he’d found India just because he’d struck dry land.

  Given my age, the next person I got serious with could become my wife, so I needed to pick wisely. To do this, I’d create a list of traits I wanted in a partner during my year of being single. By creating the list while single, I’d have a metric against which to measure future partners while in the throes of love.

  Kurt took a bite of his French toast with quince and cardamom and considered how to respond to my airtight case.

  “So, you’re going to stay single for a year and think about what you want in a partner. Does that mean you’re not going to have sex for a year?”

  “No, I will be having a lot of sex,” I said. “That’s the second component of the plan—aggressive dating.”

  At the age of thirty I’d had sex with seven people, almost all serious girlfriends. I didn’t know if this was a lot or a little, but either way, I wanted to diversify my experiences, to have casual sex, one-night stands, emotionless bangings, hookups, hook-downs, patty-cake parties, skin sessions, flip-digs, and other euphemisms I may have just made up. Were I a middle-aged white woman, this would be when I ate, prayed, and loved. Were I a middle-aged black woman, this would be when I got my groove back. As neither of those, this would be when I sowed my wild oats.

  I would grab new experiences and go out with people I normally wouldn’t consider. Anything was on the table, short of dating a vegan. This didn’t mean I was planning on becoming a Pickup Artist, someone who went clubbing and owned flavored condoms. No, my aim was to date people respectfully, but without expectation of a relationship. By being up-front about my intentions, I’d get involved with like-minded people. I’d be a womanizer, but one of those nice womanizers that women love.

  Evan stirred cream into his third cup of coffee (he has a problem) before he spoke.

  “So, to fix the relationship problems you tend to have with women, you’re going to have a ton of relationships with women?”

  “Exactly! Instead of long-term, serious relationships, I’ll have a string of noncommittal sexual relationships. By going against my normal dating pattern I’ll figure out what I want in a partner.”

  “Wouldn’t not dating anyone at all be a better way to do that?” Kurt asked. “Wouldn’t that actually be the opposite of serial monogamy?”

  He had a point.

  “But then I wouldn’t get to have all the sex,” I said.

  The Plan

  1. Be single for a year.

  2. Date and have no-strings-attached sex with a lot of women.

  3. Hurt no one’s feelings.

  4. Develop a list of traits in an ideal partner.

  5. Go to Burning Man and have crazy weird desert sex.

  6. Use my list of traits to find my ideal mate.

  7. Live forever in eternal bliss with my perfect wife.

  Simple, logical, easy. The heart had its chance with romance. It was time for the brain to run the show.

  I would take a little more time to mend before hacking through the dating jungle, but I set a target for my re-release into the wild: Halloween. The sluttiest holiday of them all would be an optimal time to debut “Single Matteson.” Halloween was about five weeks away; by then I’d definitely be over Kelly. Or at least over her enough to
have sex with a slutty Amelia Earhart or something.

  4

  * * *

  BLACK SWAN

  The party was at the Park Plaza Hotel, an Art Deco throwback that had long ago stopped being a hotel and now hosted events like these. We entered the grand marble lobby to find it transformed into a Halloween carnival, but I barely noticed the barker yelling through a megaphone or the freaks on stilts. Instead, I registered all the exposed flesh—long legs underneath naughty-schoolgirl skirts, cleavage escaping from black witches’ corsets, and bare arms protruding from leotards. I’d chosen a good place to start being single again.

  I went as a “dead cowboy,” complete with toy arrows sticking out of my chest as if I had been shot by Indians. I figured the costume embraced the macabre spirit of Halloween, while still being sexy—who can resist the Marlboro Man? Kurt, my plus-one for the evening, dressed as Glenn Danzig from the Misfits, with a long black wig, fake tattoos, and a tank top.

  There was one downside to the party—Kelly was going to be there. We’d bought tickets before the breakup and she’d let me know she was still attending. I dreaded seeing her, but at least it would be a good opportunity to further my ongoing quest to “win” the breakup.

  After a relationship, it’s not about recovering emotionally, it’s about winning, and you win by seeming like you’re doing better than the other person, even if you’re not. If Kelly spotted me at the party making out with a slutty Eleanor Roosevelt, she’d think I’d moved on and I’d score major points in The Breakup Game, points I needed, because when you get dumped, you start way behind.

  * * *