Love Sick Read online

  I hang up and call Will again. He acts all put out at my pestering, but his answer is almost the same. Brian Schwarz was a cutie-pie nonentity in the class of ’75, but Will squeals when he talks about him. “The. Cutest. Boy. Who. Ever. Lived.”

  So it turns out that, in a way, my two best friends, one of whom I wanted to have children with, have the same template as I. We were silently, hopelessly, distantly in love with a boy in high school and learned to date later (much later, in my case). Dar is someone who knows how to walk up to a girl he sees around campus and marry her.

  I email my agent the next day to tell her the Santa Fe trip was a disaster and I want to write about looking for love and coffee among the wreckage of late middle age.

  And then I click on craigslist.

  Three

  A snail’s reproductive organs are in its head.

  “I am bored,” I posted. I was hoping some polycentric or film studies professor would catch my reference to George Sanders’s suicide note. I added a photo and confirmed my ad.

  Two hours later I had forty-four responses. Like I said, craigslist never disappoints. It had not only brought Dar but two other sporadic love affairs and one epic phone sex boyfriend, one of the few men who’s walked me up to and through an orgasm.

  Unlike the so-called real dating websites, craigslist’s losers are up front and hold no promise of a caffeine buzz. There were dozen of boys requesting fellatio,* offerings of massage* and stating interest.*

  It was, however, an opportunity to expand my repertoire. I could now, by tapping a few keys in reply to this message, be a cougar and have a butler: “I’m a handsome, 21-year-old guy who works out. Do you need things done around your apt, home or office? I do those chores! I will accompany you shopping, drive you to an appointment? Draw you a bath? A date for brunch, lunch, dinner, weddings, any events, parties, movies, coffee, drinks, any type of night out . . . or laid back evenings in! Anytime of DAY!! . . . AVAILABLE MORNINGS AND AFTERNOONS!! Get what you want . . . the first time!”*

  I don’t “do” peppy. I was exhausted just from reading his email.

  • • •

  I may go out with men, but I date my friends.

  I forwarded the following conundrum to Will in a storm of glee. His boyfriend, Rico, is an over-the-top romantic and I was sure he’d have a reaction. “‘I am a caucasian [sic] thus a very touchy feely and romantic man which some women may not want.’ Since when are Caucasians noted for their affectionate behavior?” I asked.

  “If he were French or Italian, he’d say so,” he said. “He might be South American.”

  “Or he’s from those mountains, the whatcha-call-ems—?”

  “The Caucasus? Maybe it’s so cold there you have to snuggle in order to survive.”

  My friend Bette was more direct. “Allow me to translate. ‘I am caucasian’ = ‘I’m a white guy with little education and I don’t wanna date no smart black women.’ ‘Very touchy feely’ = ‘I’m a groper and I treat nipples like radio knobs.’ ‘Romantic man which some women may not like’ means ‘I hide the fact that I’m a misogynist by buying flowers—cheap ones—controlling where and when we eat dinner—which means cheap—and I drive a late-model truck that I drive as if it were a penis.’”

  I relayed all of this to Kevin. I knew he was shaking his head as he wrote back. “Don’t let this get around, Frances, but I’m about to break the Code of Silence from the Captain Midnight Society. He is an insecure white dude who cries when he doesn’t get his way and threatens suicide when you break up with him. And by the way? I drive my truck like a penis. Some things are male even if you have chintz curtains.”

  • • •

  At least the Caucasian cuddler was, well, taking note of the craigslist heading “Woman Looking for Man.”

  “What’s the most expensive pair of shoes you have and what color is your favorite in shoes?” another man wrote. “Do you wear heels?”

  For a giggle, I replied with a picture of my most gorgeous Cydwoqs, which could be described as Dolly Parton cowboy boots meet one of the elven princesses from Lord of the Rings. His response was a chagrined admission of a fetish. Would that scare me away?

  I yawned. Amid so many photos of willies green from camera flashes in bathrooms, a guy into Jimmy Choos was a Dobie Gillis of normality.

  Who knew how fascinated men could be with women’s fashion? I certainly hadn’t imagined we’d be comparing clothes until I read, “I would like to meet for a fun nite [sic] of me getting all dressed up for you, nothing else. I am a regular guy [and I] have all my own clothes, make-up, etc. [I] do have a picture.”*

  As I continued deleting, I amassed some maybe-obvious rules of courtship that, abetted by the decoder ring a couple of Ovaltine proof-of-purchase seals will get you, should save time.

  Delete all emails accompanied by photos of a man’s weenie—especially if he has taken it himself, and especially if he took it in the bathroom mirror.

  Delete all emails cribbed from bad pop songs (“hi really I wanna know you”).

  Delete all emails written in textese (“why u so board [sic]? do u want 2 talk on the phone?”).

  These deletions are called for because they break the first Rule of Courtship:

  If a guy is too lazy to spell or punctuate, your relationship is already over.

  I kept digging. Finally, a responder named Sol asked what kind of man would dispel my boredom. I took Daisy for a walk while I thought about that and ended up writing back, “Someone literate, with an imagination who follows through; someone who will be patient in coaxing me out of a self-imposed isolation I’m finding hard to break. Someone amusing.”

  That was a fair answer except for the line about following through, which means, from too much experience on my part, that phone sex* is all very well, but living it is better than imagining it.

  “Let’s meet for coffee on Saturday at 4,” Sol wrote back. “Meet me in Bleecker Street Park.”

  One of my perversions is that whenever someone sets up a date with me, I automatically want to cancel or change it.

  “I don’t feel like going into the city,” I told my therapist, Dr. A-Cigar-Is-Not-a-Cigar.

  “Just do it,” he advised. “You need to get out and meet new people.”

  “Can we make it five?” I emailed Sol.

  “No,” he wrote back.

  So I put on four o’clock coffee date clothes, reassured Daisy I’d be home soon and set off for the Village.

  It had been years since I’d been this far west of Seventh Avenue, or maybe it was the glittering May light and almost-summer heat that made the walk from Christopher Street, through a street fair among the fashionable shoppers, kaleidoscopic. I began to get excited for a walk-and-talk with window shopping and making up stories about people. I hoped Sol would have sized up this gem of a day exactly as I had. I sat on a bench and looked at my watch. I had ten minutes before I could expect him to show up, so I turned my attention to a Big Red Bus disgorging a load of women who giggled their way over to Magnolia Bakery. They wore fragile shoes and screeched that they were already full after one bite of dessert and that they should get a picture of all of us eating our cupcakes.

  On the edges of the gaggles of girls with their cupcakes were the chubby girls, dressed in clothes too tight, trying too hard to twist themselves into the Good Girlfriend image of Charlotte or Miranda.

  Ah, my sisters, the wannabes. I know you well, although it is part of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that no two wannabes can inhabit the same space. Age and distance give me compassion. I’ve been a wannabe longer than you’ve been alive. In the deep shade of the brick and iron park, I watch how the Carries desperately need their plump pals in order to make their fantasy—and their prettiness—come alive. If only the plumpies knew they complete the story. If only the plumpies would simply take their cupcakes
and go. The Carries would melt like frosting on a manhole cover.

  • • •

  I was feeling more Annie Hall than Sex in the City. This Sol-guy, now five minutes late, had sounded smart and I was feeling decidedly that the day was rare and should not be wasted in Starbucks.

  After ten minutes I strolled around, looking for a solo guy also scanning the crowd. I recircled the park and noticed a thin man with a straggly gray braid reading on a bench. He looked up and said, “Fran—” as I said, “Sol—”

  He kissed me hello and we exchanged the patter we should have exchanged in email or on the phone. I told him I was a writer and he told me he had recently produced a movie, had published several books and had been a food writer for a magazine I didn’t recognize. “I live two blocks away. Do you want to have a glass of wine in my garden?”

  If we weren’t going to make fun of people or finger the cheap Indian shirts at the street fair, sitting in a West Village garden was second best.

  It became third best when he put his arm around my waist and began caressing my butt.

  “Is this a one-off?” I asked as we crossed Bank Street.

  “I don’t know.”

  The building shared the garden. He didn’t offer to go up and get the wine but he did lean over and begin kissing me. After three minutes of being a spectacle for everyone whose windows faced east, he said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

  How many things had happened in the last eight minutes that were telling me this was a b-a-a-d idea?

  Why did I allow him to point me up the stairs, pushing me gently on my buttocks?

  Dr. A-Cigar-Is-Not-a-Cigar would have said I wanted to fuck my father in the guise of this man who looked older than me and had done so much more professionally than I had. My friend Jean would have said, with regretful triumph, that I had wanted it, and her husband, Ben, would have said it was the sort of thing he used to do before Jean but that I deserved better. Bette and Will were a fifty-fifty bet on either, “Go for it!” or “Call a cab. Now.” As for me, I was mostly feeling thirsty. A diet 7UP would have been perfect on that hot afternoon. Or maybe a Fresca.

  After hitting my head on the braces of his loft bed in the ensuing gymnastics, I pushed him off and out, sat up and began looking for my clothes.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Did you enjoy any of it?”

  “You’re fine,” I said as I pulled on my blouse and looked around for my tank top and prepared to leave without it if necessary. “But we have stuff in common. We could go out. This is ruining it. You have my number—call me.” I found my tank top and squished it into my bag.

  • • •

  My answering machine was flashing when I got home.

  “Sorry, girl,” it played back. “I guess it’s just too soon after the breakup.”

  “Ya think he coulda maybe mentioned the breakup before now?” I asked Daisy, as she pressed her head against my hard rubbing, her plainspoken way of telling me she needs love and reassurance when I’ve been away. “What Burt Bacharach song d’ya think he thinks he’s acting out?” Daisy licked my hand and collapsed for a quick belly rub before I went in to run a very hot bath of Crabtree & Evelyn Nantucket Briar. As the bubbles piled reassuringly up, I called Kevin.

  “I walked out on a guy in the middle of sex!” I crowed. I had decided this was a victory, not going any further than I felt like.

  “You what?”

  “I met this guy, supposedly for coffee. He only wanted sex. In the middle of it I realized I was bored so I stopped and left.”

  “Uh . . . Good, I guess.”

  “Aren’t you proud of me? Usually I go through with it because I don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.”

  “Did you ever think about not starting it because it would hurt your feelings?”

  I splashed into the suds as carefully as I could to keep the phone dry. “What does the Big Book say? ‘Progress not perfection’?”

  “I’m HIV positive, Frances. On this subject I’ve learned perfection the hard way. I’m giving Grace a pedicure, Frances. Can I call you back?” There was mumbling on his end of the connection. “Or can Grace call you back? She has a few things she wants to say to you.”

  Later that night, Grace and Kevin scolded me into an admission of my wrongs. Yes, it was dangerous. Yes, I was spineless to follow him up Greenwich Street. And yes, the worst of it was he had a braid. I promised to be wiser.

  • • •

  I predicated the next date with a number of phone calls that turned into phone sex. When he came over, I got an orange rose and souvlaki in return for a jaw-numbing blowjob before the email saying, “I thought I was ready but I’m not.”

  I don’t know when women are ready to start paddling out to sea again, but men have the special problem of thinking they are able to shtup a snake if it stands up long enough. Another piece of unforgivably bad male thinking is their inability to weigh the sixty-four-million-dollar question everyone is hiding from each other—baggage.

  Quibble over the nuances as much as you want, but there are two kinds of romantic baggage: the kind we can abandon and start to walk away from, and the kind we heave into the nearest therapist’s office. This is not rocket science, guys! If you spend your dinner hours and weekends in existential angst, keep the woody you talked yourself into at home.

  Sol and Orange Rose Guy had the most dangerous kind of baggage: self-ignorance. I was barely a month away from crying on the empty Phoenix freeways on my way home from Dar’s, but at least I knew the chances of finding “another” Dar would be impossible, or a different piece to fit my puzzle would be slim. But practicality had already set in.

  Tip: The best way to get over a man is to start dating another man.

  Be prepared to settle, to be fond rather than ragingly in love, to share a couple of nights a week together instead of every minute, to lean on your girlfriends for fun as much as on the New Maybe—but go out and reassure yourself you’re wantable. We—men and women—are always ready to be wantable.

  Not being ready is a notion I defy. Ha!

  If either Sol or Orange Rose Guy were truly Not Ready, they wouldn’t have replied to the ad, so there are two excuses I can offer in their defense.

  The most reasonable is that they thought they had kicked the habit of at least the sexual side of life with the ex but found out that sex stirs all kinds of stuff up.

  The other explanation is that it was I. I am a deeply pessimistic person. My water glass isn’t half empty, it’s half empty and radioactive. It’s easy for me to go from thinking of myself as a Wrong Woman to the Wrong Woman to just plain Wrong.

  Dar, in rejecting me for not being into his music, rock climbing and scuba diving, could make me feel Wrong but I was fighting it, so far with guys who made me feel wiser if not smarter.

  Not that it’s any easier being a Right Woman when faced with a Wrong Man. I don’t have a lot of experience being the dumper, but I can see that it might be a good idea to have a patter for why there won’t be a second date. At least the too-soon shtick, a more substantial version of it’s not you, it’s me absolves everyone except the original heartbreaker.

  But really? Being ready to drop my jeans before coffee makes the original heartbreaker look better than ever. She at least had the self-respect to get rid of the guy.

  • • •

  One problem with dating in one’s fifties is that one or both suspects are likely to harbor the grief or disbelief of a broken, long relationship, usually a marriage, usually with children.

  Advancing middle age should be the first time since childhood that we can really indulge ourselves without feeling selfish. This means no unfair competition in our love lives.

  Tip: Beware the ex but carry garlic if he has a daughter.

  The man with a daughter over the age of about eleven is probably dating her, not you.
Sons are low maintenance for dads, possibly because they can take each other’s interests for granted. But the moment Daddy’s Little Pumpkin develops bumps on her chest, she becomes the treasure he must protect like a Kumari princess.

  “She’s in sixth grade and friends with everybody,” one date expounded. “She’s doing soccer and plays piano and flute.” He stops and smiles at his hands folded on the table between us. “For years, the only way we could get her to sleep was playing ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’ All seventeen minutes. Go figure.”

  That paternal bafflement? A shameless lie. In college she is the delight of holidays and summers, more dateable than any other woman.

  “What’s she like?” I had asked Orange Rose Guy of his daughter during the stiff dinner we shared after the blow job and before the not-ready email.

  “She’s beautiful and talented. She interned with the Wooster Group last summer and she’s interested in either going back or joining a company like Bond Street after she graduates from Sarah Lawrence.”

  “And your son?” He was tucking into the local diner’s meat loaf as though he needed, urgently, to kill it.

  “He went to art school to become a cartoonist. Still living with his mother, still . . . drawing, I guess. I need to take him out to dinner this week, see what’s going on.”

  At some point, the daughter falls in love with someone besides Daddy. Enter the ex, who is of practical value in fashioning the princess their princess has always wanted to be, but it’s Daddy who pays and whose approval adds that extra royal cachet.