R
emember how your mother told you to always wear clean underwear in case you were in an accident? Well, good little girls the world over grew into otherwise rational women who insisted that we could apply the same principle in reverse. If clean underwear somehow made it okay to get into a car accident, since you wouldn’t risk losing the respect of the paramedics who were trying to resuscitate you, then unshaven legs were industrial-strength protection against the possibility of a regrettable sexcapade. Because even in the heat of the perfect romantic moment, no girl would let a guy get anywhere near a pair of legs au naturel.
At about seven on Saturday night I was making my way to a French-Ethiopian fusion restaurant to meet Nick. My makeup was f lawless, my perfume was tasteful and my legs were a veritable jungle. Damn his inviting smile. Since I was an emotional basket case and Nick was just the kind of man-mountain I would love to plant my f lag on, I decided I wasn’t taking any chances.
To be fair, I didn’t know him very well, and maybe that was part of the attraction. When the evening began, he embodied the entire idea of my putting myself out there and feeling desired again. That was dangerously tempting. I arrived early so that he couldn’t watch my entrance. As I crossed Lexington Avenue with the restaurant in sight, I adjusted and readjusted everything from my hairdo to my bra straps, in an attempt to convince myself more than anyone else that I was sexy and charming, despite the knowledge that I was in fact hairy and already unnecessarily smitten with this man.
My eggs were in an uproar the moment Nick came through the door and it almost made me drop my glass of Merlot. I don’t know if it was because he could crush every other man in the restaurant like an empty beer can, or because every time I met him he was coming to somebody’s rescue or because the cartoon birds previously circling the bump on my head had since flown in through my ears, set up camp and started playing a bluegrass rendition of “Sexual Healing.” What I did know was that I had to thank God Cristina had come over while I was getting ready and made absolutely sure I didn’t shave my legs that night.
With Nick sitting directly across from me, I couldn’t help but let my mind wander. He had a heavy Brooklyn accent, a decidedly non-Upper-East-Side gait and a smile that made me want to give him more reasons to smile. His hands were like meat cleavers and he laughed from the pit of his belly. I was silently wishing I
was
the slab of Siga Wot beef on the plate before him when he derailed my runaway train of thought….
“Vina, you seem distracted. Are you listening to me?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, of course. I seem a little out of it probably because I’m still reeling from that bump I got on my noggin.”
I hadn’t heard one word he had uttered in the prior five minutes, but I had imagined myself biting him in at least three places.
When did I turn into such a frat boy? And did I just say “noggin”?
“Clumsy me!” I added, as if this would make me seem like any less of a geek.
“Right.” He challenged me with eyes that could barely mask his mounting amusement. “Then what was I talking about?”
“Um…right now?” I blushed and batted my eyes in the hopes of flirting my way out of it. Apparently, I wasn’t as cute as I thought.
“Yes. Right now.” He crossed his chiseled arms across his chest, further adding to my confusion. It was like a woman waving her breasts in a man’s face and then expecting him to think clearly. Completely unfair.
“I’m sorry, Nick. I guess I’m the one who’s a little off tonight.”
“Look, I understand.” He leaned halfway across the table with his neck, as if he were about to let me in on when the prison-break was going down. “I read all about your company’s problems in the
New York Times,
and Chris and Prakash filled me in on the fact that you’ve had a rough couple of months.”
Now I felt like a predatory and insensitive man. A cad. The sleazy, well-coiffed British playboy in every movie. I had to admit that the fantasy of a muscle-bound personal trainer better suited for a test of physical, rather than mental stamina, had me feeling like a newly minted twenty something Internet millionaire in a roomful of aspiring models.
Like I could have my way with him, order him up like a stack of pancakes, grease him up with butter, drench him in syrup and let the party begin.
But now he had gone and said something sweet and understanding, and I felt as though I deserved to be whacked on the hand with a ruler. That sexy, wonderful jerk.
“Anyway,” he continued, “like I said, I thought it was impressive that you did that meditation retreat. I would love to hear more about it. I admit I still have trouble believing that someone with such an active imagination could manage to stay quiet for so long. I’m very interested in different cultures and traditions. Basically, I’m fascinated by everything out there. I probably sound like a scatterbrained kid.”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. It’s refreshing, actually. A pleasant surprise.”
“Why is that?” he asked, while motioning to the waiter for more wine.
“No reason. I mean, I think it’s great but to be honest with you, most typical
American
men from New York who are living this lifestyle are not open to things like that.”
“Oh, so you already think I’m typical.”
“I don’t know that much about you, other than the inside of your bedroom and what you do for a living, so I don’t want to categorize you.”
“No, no. It’s fine. I get that all the time—because I work out I must be a big, dumb lug, right? That, and this Brooklyn accent means all I know is pizza and beer?”
You poor, misunderstood man.
Let Vina make it better.
“So now you know that I’m more than meets the eye. What else do you want to know?”
“Okay.” I stalled for time, trying to come up with a question that would make him feel a bit less objectified. “Tell me more about your family. Your parents. Where did you grow up?”
“Cleveland. We moved to Brooklyn when I was about seven after my mother passed away. I’m the youngest of four, and my dad decided to raise us closer to his family, who were in New York. That’s why family’s so important to me, I guess.”
“I’m sorry to hear about your mom,” I said. “How did it happen?”
“Cancer, and my parents were together for, like, fifteen years. So my father never remarried. He decided to focus on the kids instead. I was lucky, though. We grew up with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles and everything. And God knows there were enough women in the house telling me what to do all the time. Besides that, I think the biggest thing I learned from having three sisters and no brother is to pick and choose my battles. Women win, most of the time.”
“Is that why you became a lawyer? To learn how to argue better so you could win the occasional family argument?”
“That would make sense. But no. My dad’s big thing was that he promised my mom that at least one of us would become a lawyer, like she had wanted to do. She never did, because she got pregnant right after they got married and I think she was twenty years old. She always planned to go back later, but I guess with three kids it’s not so easy. In the end, three of us did become lawyers. I never really wanted to do it, honestly, but I saw how disappointed my father was when my second-oldest sister chose not to. So I took out all those loans, went to law school and found out that I enjoyed it.”
“So then how did you wind up in this line of work? The fitness industry, I mean.”
“Practicing law, as I sort of told you, wasn’t as gratifying as I had expected it to be. In fact, I ended up defending some people I didn’t feel very good about defending, and I had what you might call a ‘crisis of conscience.’ I decided to take some time off from the law. Fitness was always a part of my life, and then the director of fitness position became open at my gym, so I tried it out for a while before deciding what else to do. I had some money saved up, and I wasn’t happy, so I figured it was now or never. I finally let myself stop feeling guilty about what my mom would want. But anyway, I loved fitness, so I stayed. It was hard initially to make the decision to stop focusing on what everyone else thought made sense for me. Sure, I make less money, but I’m so much happier now than when I was a lawyer. And what’s the point of a job that you’re not excited about, right?”
“I guess so.” I was floored, and for the first time since I could remember, speechless.
“You don’t agree? I would have thought you’d be on the same page as me with something like this.”
“I think I am, in theory. But practice is something else entirely.”
A waiter interrupted us to present a warm chocolate cake dripping in fresh whipped cream and strawberries.
“I hope you don’t mind that I preordered this. I just followed my instincts,” he explained, while gathering a heaping spoonful and lifting it toward my mouth. “Now don’t tell me that you’re one of those women who doesn’t eat dessert.”
“I like your instincts,” I replied through a mouthful of chocolatey nirvana. “So when did all of this happen? The career change?”
“About two years ago,” he answered, helping himself to the next spoonful. “But to be honest with you the ambition-bug is back in me already. I’m researching the possibility of opening up a gym of my own that I could eventually turn into a chain across the country. The concept is different from anything else out there because people would be working with top celebrity trainers exclusively. Nobody would enter the gym without an appointment with their trainer. We would also have limited membership, like a country club, so there would be a waiting list to make it exclusive. I know it’s a long shot, but so was Starbucks, right? Besides, I can always go back to the law. But I might never take a chance like this again. So recently I’ve been looking into financing for our first location.”
I think if I had moved at all, I would have had an orgasm right then and there.
“Okay, I take it back. You’re definitely not typical.”
In fact, he had morphed into the perfect guy. This posed a problem because it was easy to dismiss a hyper-attractive yet unintelligent man, but for a woman who’s got her act together, ambition is the
ultimate
turn-on. And I was pretty sure that I couldn’t handle anything more romantically serious at the moment than a f ling. Chocolate-covered or otherwise.
“I try to make unconventional choices from time to time. I’ve got to do
some
thing to distinguish myself, right? How
else
am I gonna get the attention of a gorgeous woman like you?”
“Oh, I’ll bet you say that to all the girls.” I struggled to steady my trembling hand as it lifted the glass of water to my mouth.
“No, I really don’t. You know, it’s hard to find a woman with real versatility. Anyone who can take the chances you do, and manage to hold her own with these Wall Street tight-asses, must be something special.”
“You’re sweet.”
“And you’re gorgeous.” He smiled with a hint of boyish nervousness which made me want to give him a big hug. “Has anybody ever told you that you look Sicilian?”
“Once or twice,” I said, and wondered to myself what his mother must have looked like.
“Seriously, you’re not typical by any stretch of the imagination, either. It’s obvious from your writing. I don’t know how passionate you are about your job, but you seem like you’ve got some things to say. Come to think of it, have you ever thought about pursuing it professionally?”
Maybe I could just climb out of the ladies’ room window, run across the street to the drugstore, buy a razor, shave in the bathroom stall and make it back before the check arrived?
The benefit of seeing your life as a movie is that along the way, you get to pick your own soundtrack. The drawback is the overwhelming sense of directorial indignation you’ll feel whenever someone fails to take their cue. It was one of those warm New York summer evenings tailor-made for strolling hand-in-hand, lingering in street corner embraces and kissing gently for the first time under the soft glow of the lights from the lobbies of high-rises. As we turned the corner onto my block, Nick and I slowed down a bit, presumably in order to prolong the conversation and heighten our anticipation of the impending good-night kiss.
All was going according to plan. Five hours of engaging conversation had passed us by. It must have been some sort of a first-date record. He had expressed interest in the feelings behind my feelings about the death of my childhood goldfish. I had laughed appropriately at his spring break story, which ended in him waking up alone on the bathroom floor of a Mexican gas station with a tattoo of a cheeseburger on his butt. I was so distracted, in fact, that I completely failed to notice the subway grate. I lost my balance when my favorite red, three-inch, snakeskin Versace heel plunged directly between the metal crosshairs. Eagle-eyed and attentive, Nick must have seen it coming. He swooped in at exactly the right moment, throwing an arm around my waist and scooping me gingerly out of harm’s way before I could fall. Disappointingly, he didn’t sweep me up into a passionate lip-lock. Nick placed me back onto my own two feet and continued walking toward my door. There were only two possible explanations: either there were a few pages missing from his copy of the script, or he had decided that I was fat.