Mission aborted. I decided Body-Wrap Lady was good for losing some bloat, but from here on out I’d ignore any other advice she offered up.
A few days before I was set to take off to see Baseball Player, I once again stopped hearing from him. In my mind, at this point, he should’ve been more flirtatious, more attentive, knowing that I was flying there the next week. Ugh, why was this silent thing happening again? Boyfriends you’ve never met or had an actual conversation with can be so unreliable!
I decided he must have met someone. Or he’d changed his mind. I went into my good friend and coworker Jen Kirkman’s office and told her everything. I had to fill her in from the top, but she’s a quick learner. Neither of us could really figure out what was happening, but Jen suggested I not text him to find out; she suggested I wait to hear from him, then she promised me that if I didn’t hear from him by the morning of the day I was supposed to go, she’d go with me, and we’d make a girls’ weekend out of it.
“I have miles on Virgin, I can book a flight last-minute and we’ll go and have fun.”
She is such a good friend. I still felt anxious and oddly a little sad, but at least even if the worst-case scenario happened, my nonrefundable suite at the Four Seasons wouldn’t remain empty all weekend.
Friday morning, the day I was supposed to leave, there was still no word from Baseball Player. I still didn’t want to text him because I felt like at this point, he knew the plan, seemed excited about the plan, encouraged the plan, and was just being fucking rude.
Jen was just about to book her flight when I got a text from him: “What time do you get in?”
Jen logged off the Virgin America website and we both let out a huge sigh of relief (although she would have gone with me in a heartbeat, I doubt the idea of having to nurse me through a weekend of drinking away the pain of being blown off and trying to wrestle my phone from me every time I wanted to drunk-text him about how he was a big jerk sounded like a lot of fun to her). It’s amazing how I let a whole week of anxiety go out the window just because I got one simple text.
Now I was ready to go. I had lost a few pounds and several hundred dollars, but I felt decent about how I looked naked and therefore the money was well spent. That afternoon, I boarded my flight to San Francisco with a carry-on bag full of cute clothes, sexy underwear, and an expensive body exfoliant that Body-Wrap Lady threw in for good luck.
The flight to San Francisco from Los Angeles is barely over an hour, but I managed to down four cocktails. The flight attendant looked both alarmed and impressed.
When I arrived at my hotel, I received a text from Baseball Player asking if I was at my hotel yet. It was Friday night, and my plan was to rest up, go to his game Saturday afternoon, then enjoy a nice evening on the town with him Saturday night.
“I’m here!” I told him. “Can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”
“Well, what are you doing tonight?” he asked. “I might need a cuddle partner [winking smiley face].”
“Oh, I figured you’d be busy tonight. Where did you want to meet?”
“My hotel room.”
This threw me for a loop. I didn’t think I’d see him Friday night; I knew he had a game that night followed by a day game Saturday. Didn’t he need to rest? Why would he want to get together with me for the first time ever at eleven p.m. on a Friday night?
Oh.
In a panic, I called Tara and then she dialed in Stephanie (Tara is the only one of us who knows how to connect a three-way call).
“So you see him tonight,” they explained. “What’s the big deal?”
“I don’t know! I’m not mentally ready!” I yelled at them while I stood naked in front of my hotel bathroom mirror, checking to see if any new cellulite had erupted below my ass on the flight in. “If I see him tonight it’ll be at like eleven p.m. and he has an early day tomorrow. I thought our first time hanging out would be different. You know: dinner, drinks, some talking and laughing . . . then sex after that.” I peered in closer at what I was pretty sure was a new dimple and grabbed my tub of FatGirlSlim, a cream that supposedly makes cellulite disappear but clearly doesn’t, however I still use it because why not?
“Okay, well, now you can cut right to the sex! Who likes to have sex after dinner, anyway?” Tara said as I massaged the non-miracle cream directly under my ass.
“True. But he wants me to meet him in his hotel room. That seems like a weird place to meet for the first time, doesn’t it?”
“Not for a Major League Baseball player,” Stephanie yelled.
“You’re breathing funny,” Tara said. “You aren’t massaging that stupid cream onto your body again, are you? There’s no way that stuff works.”
“Of course I’m not, Tara, Jesus,” I said as I rubbed another layer onto my belly because, again, why not? “I don’t know; I feel like if I go see him tonight we won’t hang out tomorrow night.”
The girls told me that seemed silly and I should just go with it. “You’re already there—maybe this is even better! Your body wrap may wear off before tomorrow,” Tara said.
They were right. I had already put so much into this; why not just let it play out however he wanted it to?
On the way out the door, I noticed I’d developed a large pimple right on my cheek (the cheek on my face, you guys). What the fuck? Really? I’m fucking thirty-seven. I did my best to cover it and prayed Baseball Player wouldn’t be looking at anything above my neck.
So at eleven thirty p.m. I knocked on his hotel room door, which was ajar.
“Come in,” Baseball Player yelled out.
I realized up to that point I hadn’t ever really heard him talk.
I walked into his room to find him snuggled up in bed, under the covers, watching ESPN.
Oh my God, he’s even cuter in person.
He motioned for me to come lie next to him, so I did. My heart was racing. What the fuck am I doing? I slowly took off my shoes, with my head turned just so to hide the pimple, hoping he’d notice the cute outfit that I’d labored over for three hours before it came flying off. (Cute top, tight jeans, and motorcycle boots. Hello?! What says “laid-back cool girl” more than that?) He didn’t notice.
He pulled me close to him and put my head on his shoulder. He apologized for ESPN’s being on.
“Oh, that’s okay, I watch it all the time.”
“I’m super hungover from last night,” he told me. “Some of us went out and I’ve felt like shit all day.”
“You can play baseball hungover?” I marveled at this like it was a serious talent.
He smiled. “Let’s watch a movie.”
A movie? Okay. Maybe we are going to just hang out tonight. Maybe my plan is still intact and drinks and dinner tomorrow night would be next, then we will do it . . . just like I planned.
I’m not sure why, in my head, putting sex off for one more day made me look less slutty, but let’s not try to rationalize a horny and slightly lonely thirty-seven-year-old woman’s thoughts when there’s a hot Baseball Player involved . . . deal?
Together we selected a movie, but that was really the only conversation we were having. Other than that, he was pretty quiet. It was weird . . . we didn’t know each other. But at the same time, it felt like we did; it was kind of awesome. Or so I thought. It’s very easy to rationalize awkward silence as some kind of comfortableness when trying to romanticize a situation you’ve built up in your head.
The movie-ordering feature wasn’t working, so I called down to the front desk. The clerk confirmed what room I was in, then said, “So . . . are you with the baseball team?”
I laughed. “Yes, yes I am.”
When I hung up Baseball Player asked me what was so funny. I told him the guy asked me if I was “with the baseball team.” “It sounded kind of accusatory,” I giggled.
He giggled, too, but he didn’t quite
seem to know why.
We watched the movie in its entirety. I can’t remember the name of it now or what it was about. My adrenaline had taken over, and I couldn’t focus on anything but trying to see the pimple on my cheek out of the corner of my eye.
Once the movie ended, he turned his face toward mine and laid one on me.
Okay, maybe we are going to have sex tonight. I could hear Steph and Tara in my mind: “Just go with it.” So I did. ( Just to be clear, I didn’t continue to hear their voices during the sex.)
I won’t lie; it was enjoyable. No fireworks went off and no bells sounded, but everything felt nice and everything was working properly. There was only one problem: he was on top of me the whole time. No, that wasn’t the problem, although I prefer to be on top (sorry, Mom, I should have told you to skip this chapter).
The problem was, he was wearing a gold chain and it kept hitting me in the chin. I tried to maneuver my head around the chain, but there was no dodging it. Then I tried to let him know that his jewelry choice was kind of getting in the way of my completely enjoying myself by subtly jerking my head from side to side. He probably just thought I had a tic or something, because he didn’t seem to catch on and continued pounding me while his necklace continued pounding me in the face. Eventually, I took my index finger and pressed the offending accessory up against his chest and kept it there until we both finished.
At least we both finished.
Afterward, he got up and went to the bathroom. I then took my turn, threw some more concealer on the pimple, and came back to find him once again snuggled up under the covers. He pulled me in again and fell asleep. No talking.
I figured he did have an early game tomorrow and he needed his rest, so I let him have it. I, however, lay there with my eyes wide open, unable to fall asleep. I was trying to figure out how visible my pimple would be in the light of the morning. There was also some sort of band playing on the street below that was so loud that at one point I got up to make sure they weren’t playing in the hallway. Baseball Player’s sleep was affected by neither the noise nor my insomnia.
The next morning he got up, showered, and put on a nice button-down and pants. I marveled at the fact he got dressed up to go to the field. Who knew?
We spoke a little, but not much. Okay, maybe verbal communication just isn’t our thing.
I lay on the bed with my head propped in my hand as my newest maneuver to hide my adult acne. He asked if I wanted to go to the game that day. I said yes and he let me know he’d leave two tickets for me and explained where I should pick them up.
Two tickets? I was by myself. I was there to see him. I thought we had discussed that. I didn’t have any friends who lived in the city to call last-minute and invite so that I didn’t sit there alone like an asshole. But instead of reminding him I was there this weekend to see him and only him, I just said:
“Perfect! One of my girlfriends will come with me.” Then, to cover for postgame when he and I would meet up again and my friend wouldn’t be with me because she didn’t actually exist, I said, “But she has a kid so she has to go home right after the game.”
Now not only did I have a fake friend joining me for the game, my fake friend had a fake baby.
I thanked him for the tickets, wished him a good game, and headed for the hotel elevators. As I got on, so did a couple, whom I immediately recognized as one of the other players for his team and that player’s wife (I saw her giant wedding ring, there was no missing it). They looked at me curiously. Well, he did. She looked at me like I was a big fat whore.
God, this is by far the sluttiest thing I have ever done, I thought. I was both humiliated and proud.
An hour later, as I was getting super cute for my new boyfriend’s baseball game, I decided none of it mattered. He wouldn’t see me at the game; I knew where the players’ guests sat. He’d never even know I was there alone.
I arrived at the stadium and picked up my tickets. They were there waiting, with my name spelled correctly and everything. That made me happy, although all he really had to do to get that right was look at my Twitter handle. The envelope read “guest of Baseball Player,” along with “Family Section.”
I took a picture of the envelope and texted it to him along with a note that said, “Family section? Slow down, Tiger.” I was proud of my funny little joke; I knew Steph and Tara would be, too.
He wrote back, “Oh, no—that’s the section they put all our guests in.”
Ugh. He didn’t get my funny little joke. This seemed like a pattern.
The game was fun; his team lost but not without his hitting a solo blast in the ninth and scoring his team’s only run.
I immediately wrote him after the game: “Nice homer. My friend and I had a blast, thanks for the tickets, she says thanks, too.” My fake friend was so polite!
“You’re welcome.”
I went back to my hotel room and showered. I assumed we’d meet for drinks in a couple of hours, after he got back and got settled from the game. A couple hours later, when I hadn’t heard from him, Tara and Steph instructed me to just write him and say, “What’s the plan?”
At this point, I had nothing to lose; I had already had sex with him, made up a friend, given her a baby, and failed at getting him to laugh at my jokes, plus I was sporting a tiny bruise on my chin from his gold chain.
Silence. Kind of like after my first bold text to him months ago on opening day, but much, much worse.
I was panicking. I had a long, detailed, three-way phone call with the girls in which we tried to decipher why he was now blowing me off.
“I told you guys I had a feeling if I saw him last night I wouldn’t tonight! Why don’t I ever listen to my gut? It’s so much smarter than my vagina.”
We didn’t come up with much; they admitted I had been right, which was at least one saving grace, and encouraged me to go to the hotel bar, have some fun, and make the most of it. After all, I had come there to have sex with a Major League Baseball player and I had, they reminded me.
“Yeah, what a conquest,” I said sarcastically, thanked them for being so supportive while I cried into the phone, and hung up.
I tried to shake off my humiliation and went down to the hotel bar. I ordered a giant hamburger and fries, no longer concerned about what I looked like naked, and drank five martinis. I then went back up to my room to watch TV and feel sorry for myself. At about ten p.m., I got a text.
“WTF! I just woke up!” Baseball Player wrote.
My embarrassment suddenly turned to rage, which is a much more fun place to come from. “Whatever,” I replied. Fuck it; he wasn’t exactly a wordsmith either.
“I’m serious! Look!” he wrote, and attached was a photo of him in his hotel bed.
God, he is so cute, I thought. Then I spotted the gold chain in the photo and got annoyed again.
“I don’t have time for this,” I wrote back.
“What do u mean? [frowny face]”
I didn’t respond. I was over it. He knew I’d flown up there to see him; that was the whole plan in the first place. I also knew he was telling the truth; he’d fallen asleep. But if someone really wants to see you, they probably will put more effort into staying awake. I know; I aim high.
Quite frankly, based on our correspondence thus far, I had determined he probably wasn’t even smart enough to be mean. He was just tired and worse . . . thoughtless. Or that’s what I decided, anyway. I don’t even know if it’s fair to call him thoughtless; for all he knew I was fine and dandy, out having a lovely night with another one of my fake friends.
I fell asleep, woke up the next day, and hauled my bloated ass back to L.A. Maybe he wasn’t at fault; after all, I had set myself up for this. My communication with him was just a bunch of text messages. I flew to San Francisco to have sex with him. I couldn’t really expect him to garner a bunch of respect for my time or m
e. We both wanted to do it with each other and we had. How was he supposed to know that along the way, I had spent thousands of dollars?
When I landed back in L.A., the first e-mail I saw was from 1800Flowers.com. “Send something nice to someone you care about today,” it read.
“How many fucking times do I have to unsubscribe from this? ” I yelled, louder than expected. I looked up to see a plane full of people staring at me. Oh well, at least it wasn’t a hotel elevator . . .
Weekend Get-Away from Me
After the Baseball Player incident, I attempted to move forward in my dating life with more realistic goals—like not dating a baseball player or anyone I met on a social networking site.
I met a guy, Alex, via Facebook (oh, I only hit one of those goals, but at least it’s progress), who worked in the business side of sports. I’d like to clarify what I mean by that, but I can’t—not because I’m trying to protect anybody, but because I have no idea. I knew his name, I knew he was successful, and I knew he worked in sports, but that’s all the information I was ever able to come up with, even after we met. And after you’ve been talking to someone for a certain length of time, asking them what they do for a living is just awkward. I have this same issue with my sister. I know she has a job, I know where it is, and I know that she’s really, really good at it. But if a nuclear bomb were about to go off and the only way to stop it was for me to tell the guy with his finger on the button my sister’s job title, we’d all be fucked.
Alex and I started a little dialogue that, much like my conversations with Baseball Player, eventually led to an exchange of each other’s phone numbers. Our initial chatting was something along the lines of: “Oh hey, cool that you are so into sports, so am I,” and “I’ve seen you on TV, you’re funny” (always bonus points for a guy who notes that I’m hilarious), then gradually progressed from there. It wasn’t a quick cut to flirting or talking about shirts ending up on the floor like my previous social networking affair. In fact, I wasn’t even sure that he was flirting with me at all. I just thought maybe he thought I was cool and wanted to make a new friend. This is an issue I have had my entire life. I always assume a guy is not flirting with me and just wants a new BFF, then all of a sudden their penis is inside me and I’m like, “Oh, you didn’t want to just go to the mall?” Which is always a relief, because I hate malls.
Has Anyone Seen My Pants? Page 7