That
always
works! Because time goes backward, not forward—right?
He thought about it and later agreed that the plan made sense, over pulled-pork sandwiches at a shoreside BBQ joint, the mascot of which was a cartoon pig wearing a chef’s hat, jollily searing the flesh of one of its own.
A month later, Patrick and his stuff were gone from my apartment. And not long after that, I began exchanging daily e-mails with a Broadway actor I didn’t know, on whom I developed an obsessive crush. I was handling the not-breakup very well, or the Irish Catholic way of “not at all.” Who said the Irish were the only group immune to psychotherapy? Was it Freud, or Freud via Martin Scorsese in that ham- handed movie
The Departed
? I’ve always found the Irish really attractive—they make wonderful writers and sexy firefighters, and if they didn’t like the Red Sox they’d be perfect. But their “not dealing with stuff” thing may have been contagious, because I handled the dissolution of my living situation with Patrick by not handling it, and instead decided to pour all my energies into corresponding with an Equity actor I had only met once; and at the
stage door
, for Christ’s sake.
I SAW
a production of
Sweeney Todd
right after Patrick moved out, and fell for the guy in the lead role, all right? And I wasn’t critically appreciative from a safe blogging distance; I was bludgeoned and ravaged into crazytown by this seemingly random performer who shook me into fandom at an age closer to thirty than twenty. It was embarrassing: I hadn’t written love letters to a celebrity since I put purple ballpoint to pink legal pad to tell the actor who played Wesley how cute I thought he was in the very special AIDS episode of
Mr. Belvedere
. And then there were those humiliating incidents of me being way too into sketch comedians in high school, confusing what I wanted to be one day with who it might be fun to have sex with. If Dana Carvey, whom I am certain is a fan of female-author-helmed dating memoirs, is reading this one, I just want to say, “I hope you weren’t too freaked out by the birthday card I sent you when I was fourteen, or allergic to the Opium brand perfume it was marinated in,” and also, while I’m at it, “I really liked your performance as Pistachio Disguisey in the motion picture
Master of Disguises
.”
Only today, in the cool, Catskills-crisp air of retrospect, can I now see that my fantasy-fueled correspondence with a Tony Award-winning triple-threat Demon Barber of Fleet Street had its roots in a few different pots of batty soil.
People who love theater are often cynical, despite or maybe because they know they’re capable of being so moved by the experience of watching a play that it feels better than real life. But it wasn’t enough for me to enjoy that guy’s performance the night I saw his show. For some reason, I had to read his bio, find his website, get his e- mail, send him a note that dropped the names of friends we had in common, and then, upon receiving a personal response, pore over every last word, intention, and emoticon until I had whipped my lady parts into a meringue-like frenzy pie. What was I, Kathy Bates in
Misery
? Or
About Schmidt
? Which was the one in which she was naked, and which was the one in which she bludgeoned James Caan? She lives out the fantasies of so many women, that Kathy Bates. God bless and keep her!
Our e-mails weren’t just an isolated incident of fan mail, either. I had a good month or so of back-and-forthing with my Broadway beau. Note—this is a legal concern to add this, per the request of the actor I’m writing about. He’d keep writing back and I’d keep putting myself out there: sending photos, inviting him to rock shows, to coffee, stopping short of asking him to shave and eat me.
[Broadway Joke Alert!]
I acted like a retard tween, and this after two years of bitching about being with a guy not as mature as I was.
But Sweeney kept hitting Reply, and he was as flirty as a pleated skirt every time he wrote back. It’s a no-brainer that actors have to flirt with everybody to maintain a level of success. When your product is your own face, voice, and body, you need to maintain a sense of charm and fuckability to make yourself special beyond the sum of your parts in order to remain employed, even at the expense of the otherwise attractive assets you might be lacking, like smarts or good jokes. But my critical filter was as broken as the one on the humidifier I don’t clean as I pored over Sweeney’s correspondences each morning, enlisting a team of my most sympathetic friends on e-mail forward patrol, designated to tell me things I wanted to hear, like “He wants to get together with you, it’s just that his schedule is crazy,” and “He signed it with an ‘x’; that means he wants to kiss you.” I’d think about him every night before sleeping, and wake up every morning before peeing to run over to the computer and check my inbox for the latest from Sweeney.
And all the while, I lived in the acupunctural tingle of anticipation, hoping that one day we would go on a date in real life, and that it would be as fantastic as it was when I saw that show. Meanwhile, I did not go out on any actual dates.
Then, one day, I woke up, and there was no e-mail from Sweeney. He stopped responding.
AS I
mentioned before, I don’t usually spiral into extended periods of delusional quasi-stalkery. So in an effort to map my madness, I should mention another variable, besides Patrick’s moving out, that, at the time, didn’t seem to have any connection to the blossoming romance in my mind.
The day after I saw
Sweeney Todd,
and a week after Patrick moved out, my father’s mother, Adele, to whom I genetically credit my inability to reasonably function anywhere besides New York City, my exaggerated sense of stubborn self-sufficiency, and my love of ’70s clothing—particularly the cowl neck-medallion pairing—passed away, at home, after suffering from a long illness.
The week after my grandmother’s death, Patrick didn’t call me, visit my home, or write me to express his condolences, because, as he would later explain, he knew my family was sitting shiva, and didn’t know whether reaching out was in line with the Jewish rite of mourning. (It is, in fact, sort of the point.) Another culture gap was accumulated between me and ol’ Patrick, and this time, it was a bigger deal than ham on a paper plate in a basement.
Eventually, I forgave him for sending a card to my parents after the fruit baskets had rotted and the veils on the mirrors were lifted. He would tell me later that he was sorry that he didn’t know what to do and that he didn’t err on the side of kindness and generosity. I acknowledged that the timing of our discovery that “moving out but staying together” was a veritable Fudgie the Whale of a lie that we pretended was a real possibility at the time of our transition-easing. But our rift stung as it revealed itself in the face of a loss of a family member I’d looked up to for as long as I was alive. And I don’t look up to people just because I share a last name with them: Adele Klausner was the kind of person you identify with so totally that you see what you like about yourself in them, and it makes you think you’re all right by association.
Adele was the one who would take me to the New York Public Library and make me walk five blocks to Ray Bari pizza afterward, which felt like the Trail of Tears to a suburban creampuff used to riding five minutes to get to Italian Village. She survived breast cancer before it was a cause you wore a ribbon for, worked for the Nurses’ Labor Union until retirement demoted her to commie volunteer, and taught the aerobics class she took at the 92nd Street Y when the teacher was sick. She’d bake her own pies from scratch and wouldn’t let me win at cards. She lived alone in a high-rise apartment building and walked three miles every day, even if it was shitting sleet. And when she said she loved me, she smiled with all her big teeth.
Then, one day, she was gone. And so was Patrick. I lived alone, and I was trying to get used to it. As I moved furniture around and threw things away, I thought about the advice my grandmother had given me a year earlier, when I told her I was moving in with my then-boyfriend. Patrick and I had been looking at apartments in the East Village together, and considered pooling our rents for a bigger place instead of making room in my one-bedroom for his stuff. And Adele said to me, with the authority of a woman who had lived alone in Manhattan since her husband left her a widow at forty-two, “Don’t give up your apartment.” It was the best kind of advice—prescient and blunt.
I missed her and Patrick like crazy, but I didn’t like thinking about it. My mind was far more content to spin sultry yarns about an actor I hoped would ravish me with the same conviction he funneled into his bloody stage performances. It’s unwise to underestimate the macabre fascinations of a grieving mind or the sexual fantasies of the recently heartbroken.
SINCE OUR
one-way obsession-fueled exchange, I’ve met Sweeney a couple of times. He’s always been extremely kind to me and has never mentioned the e-mails, which I appreciate. Read from top to bottom, I’m sure they make a clumsy bit of fan fiction, collaboratively penned by two people well-versed in theatrics. But at the time, they kept me, if not sane, at least more human. And I see Patrick all the time, since he quit that job he hated to do more of what he loves. We’re not friends, but I still like him.
People forget in the moment that breaking up isn’t an action; it’s a process. Not a deus ex machina, but a whole show, and a big one too—the kind with time elapsed and flash-forwards, and sometimes a stage manager has to put talcum powder on your head to age your wig. It’s not just a click of the mouse to change “In a Relationship” to “Single,” or the command “Send,” when you’re trying to tell Sweeney Todd you think it would be fun to have coffee sometime. It takes a long time for relationships to shift their contents, and then change their very makeup. Before Patrick and I had that conversation on the beach, I’d been quietly packing up the stuff that belonged to him, in my head. And not just his dresser. I was picturing what it would be like to come home to just the cat, cook for myself, date other guys. By the time we talked about him moving out, I had some of my feelings in boxes already. It wasn’t easy, but it got better. Not every breakup is scored by Tina Turner and ends with you wiping your hands, “That’s that.” Adult relationships, even with guys you think are immature, dignify more gradual separations. And mine from Patrick took a long time, even after Sweeney and Adele were gone.
YEARS LATER,
Tim Burton’s film version of
Sweeney Todd
came out, starring Johnny Depp. I liked it, though I’ll never understand the goth inclination to erase all humor when adapting to film what is technically a musical comedy—as though jokes and tan skin together are responsible for everything that’s offensive to people who like The Cure. But it was awesome to see that story told on the big screen, and it was a pleasure to hear those soaring, familiar melodies in surround sound while throats spurted and roaches scurried into pies. I also realized, watching Depp do his best “Bowie Todd,” that I was super-attracted to him in a way I’d never been before. I guess I’m one of the rare girls who never had a thing for Johnny Depp—weird, I know: Even lesbians like that guy. But I had a crush on Dana Carvey
,
remember?
But Depp as Todd did it for me, and when I figured out why, I had the kind of moment that makes you actually surprise yourself with how nerdy you are. I realized when I saw that movie that I, in fact, have a crush on Sweeney Todd. The character. It sort of made that whole mystery of “Why me, why then, why him,” when it came to that actor, a cold case. Because “him” could have been anybody in that role, to some extent. A ton of guys like Catwoman, whether she’s Eartha Kitt or Julie Newmar, right? I guess I just like Sweeney. Is that the worst thing in the world?
As I watched Depp croon to his razors and waltz with his conspirator, I thought of the guy kind enough to e-mail a lonely girl who liked hearing him sing. And then, I thought of Patrick, and remembered, as I do every day, my grandmother—the one who made her own pies from scratch.
the critic
A
lex and I met online Christmas Day, because the only thing more festive than rallying around a tree with loved ones is frying your eyes by the glare of a laptop screen alone in a dark room, because all your friends are out of town, and you’re bored to tears in the house you grew up in, and the loneliness of not having somebody to love during the holidays rapes your face every quarter hour, on the hour.
This was my first Christmas alone for a couple of years. The year before I’d gone home with my then-boyfriend to listen to his mother read a “letter from Santa” to her full-grown kids, citing their accomplishments of the past year. She/Santa referenced me to Patrick when it was his turn, adding, “Well, well, well!”—Santa always exclaimed in threes—“It looks like you have a special visitor here today!”
A year later, I was home with my own family and online in my brother’s old bedroom turned mom’s new office, looking for faces on what was at the time a gleaming new social networking site. There’s always a pathetic glint of “Now It’s Different”-based optimism when you get a new toy; as in “
Now
I’ll be able to find the career I always wanted,” or “
Now
I’ll be able to lose weight or find a guy to fall in love with” as soon as you get access to a new job counselor, exercise gadget, or website you hope will bring you closer to the dreams you’ve had since you were old enough to want things. They keep you from thinking you’re the same as you ever were and spare you from the responsibility of being at fault for not seizing the opportunity of your surroundings.
As it turns out, in fact, meeting Alex on MySpace was only one of the electronically conceived disappointments I’ve endured while embarking on the task of finding somebody to love me by typing into a box that plugs into a wall. If I ever meet you, I’ll tell you in person about the time I went on Match .com and met a chess enthusiast whose ability to bore adults to tears just by saying his own name (“Herb”) was eclipsed only by his racism toward Mexican busboys. The two of us will laugh, and then one of us will cry, and then I’ll go home and eat frozen waffles.