Perfection (25 page)

Chloe gave me advice as I set up my online “profile.” I listened to her several horror stories about creepy men and weird bungled dates. I chose a photo of myself standing next to Tomas—taken on a day I’d been cheerful. I spent a bemused fifteen minutes Photoshopping him out of the photo—too bad it isn’t this easy to detach people in real life—but resisted doctoring the image in any other way before uploading it to the site.

I should say that I was completely ignorant
about dating. Dating wasn’t what we, or at any rate I, did in the New York City of the seventies. I went to an all-girls prep school, so any boys I met were on weekends at my then best friend Lucy’s house. She went to a different school, rollicking and progressive compared with mine. She lived in a dark and cavernous apartment on East
Ninety-sixth Street near Central Park. She had lots of friends and gave parties, or we went to other kids’ parties in exciting, less savory neighborhoods. We drank in bars that didn’t exactly observe the letter or spirit of the underage drinking laws. Later, I might find myself French-kissing some guy I’d met, perhaps on the floor alongside Lucy’s bed, my bare toenail caught awkwardly on the frayed hem of her Indian-patterned bedspread. Occasionally things progressed from that point, but usually I never saw the guy again.

During my college years, a man had taken me to Windows on the World (I am happy I ate there at least once) followed by the opera. That’s when I understood what a date was supposed to be. Except that I went home with him that night, when I should have asked him to send me home in a cab. So I still didn’t really understand what a date was supposed to be. Six years of misadventures later, I met Henry, who had taken me out for precisely the one restaurant meal before we slept together.

As I pondered the potential adventures awaiting me, I wished I’d grown up absorbing the dating concept along with my morning Wheaties and milk. Dating. Maybe if I said the word enough times, some understanding would penetrate.

October 2003–March 2004

“You are so sexy!
I’m coming again!”

Is anyone counting here?

I was in bed with a sex machine, and not happy about it. Tragicomically and now much too late, I realized that I would have been happier with a good warm hug. I had failed utterly at my first attempt at dating. This was now a pathetic bungle that would require a laundry load of sheets—perhaps boiled—at the rate this guy was going.

Rich was an intelligent, driven man. These qualities had seemed key a week earlier. I reasoned that, among other flaws, Henry’s despair over work success had contributed in some large part to his “crappy life choices,” as Christine in Oregon had described them.

Rich had seemed a bit overeager, but I was sympathetic when he told me he’d been single for a while. I knew, though I wasn’t
telling, that my own motives were utterly impure. I was a disaster area. All I cared about was getting laid, in a safe manner, perhaps just so that I could tell myself I was really moving beyond Tomas. Imperfect as that situation had been, I had felt connected to Tomas on a level that I knew would take time to find again. Tomas and I had been friends before we became lovers; we had always liked each other as people, and I had loved him genuinely.

A few weeks before meeting Rich, I began a frank talk with Liza one afternoon after school. I told her that I was lonely and that I wanted to find a boyfriend.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Do I get to choose?”

“Well, if I meet anyone I like enough, I’ll bring him home and you can decide if you like him. I’ll be going out a bit more than I used to, but I’ll make sure you get to go someplace fun. Also, I’ve found you a nice babysitter. I think you’ll like her. She goes to college. She says she likes to play games.”

“Will she play Attack? How come Tomas doesn’t come here anymore? He’s good at that.”

“I don’t know if this babysitter will play Attack, sweetie, but maybe I’ll meet someone who likes that game.”

Rich lived in a town south of mine. When he contacted me from my online profile, the convenience was undeniably appealing, as child care was always my predicament, even with the new babysitter. Rich and I went for a walk one evening after our initial meeting at a local bar. He drove to and parked his car at a town park area I’d never seen before, and knew I’d never in a million years find again. He took my hand as we walked up a hillside path. I wasn’t ready to be holding his hand, and as we approached a steep
area, I withdrew my hand to leverage the incline. He remarked that his birthday was coming soon. I took his hand. It is not so great to be anticipating spending your birthday alone.

“What are your plans, then?” I asked pleasantly.

“I never plan anything, because terrible things always happen on my birthday.”
Oh, for chrissake. Now we’ll have a sob story.
I had, actually, tried to minimize my own sob story at dinner.

“Such as?” I continued, trying for an upbeat tone, now feeling very wretched about having to hold his hand, some creeping anxiety growing about being alone in this nighttime park with a man who was potentially troubled about the upcoming birthday.

Women always chose this day to leave him, he said.

Shit. This was some big, bad baggage—almost as heavy as my baggage. Naïvely, I had hoped to meet someone with much less baggage than I had. I was pretty sure that whatever happened between us wasn’t going to work out the way he hoped and that in fact it might all go down quickly, ending before dawn on the dreaded birthday.

There wasn’t a long courtship. While I would have liked to have had more time to consider what I wanted from him, we reached a “Ma’am, this ain’t a library, are you gonna buy that magazine?” situation within a week’s time. I felt nothing much for him physically apart from a kind of curiosity. But I let him stay one night, after feeding him a good roast chicken dinner.

And now I was trapped in bed with a yeller. I’d heard about these types, though I had never met one till now. I might as well have stepped out of my body and gone to the kitchen for a drink of water, as my actual presence did not seem to be required at all. It had devolved into a theatrical performance, one that had stupefied me into embarrassed silence.

I believe he very much hoped to please me. I muffled a snigger, thinking how I would describe this night for Anna—offering her a good girlie guffaw being perhaps the only way to salvage anything positive from this evening. Anticipating her explosive laughter brought me back to a self that could endure the mess I’d made. He had five orgasms without ever going soft, which was certainly impressive, but numbing.

I had to gratify him, if only to make him stop by faking it, a depressing but effective skulduggery. But at last he moaned, “I have to sleep now…,” and snapped off, unconscious in an instant. I watched him as he slept for a few minutes, then tiptoed out of bed to the bathroom, where I sat quietly on the toilet. I was going to dump him—soon—on or just before his birthday. Which was too bad, really, because he was a nice guy, and if I hadn’t been idiotic enough to have sex with him, he might have become a friend. I could have used a friend who was a guy, in addition to an actual boyfriend. Now he’d just have more baggage. And I would feel like shit, being too much of a coward to tell him just why I was dumping him. I hoped he’d find a woman who, unlike me, would be happy to be with a guy who could come five times in a row.

He said he was leaving for a business trip to Los Angeles the next day and promised he’d call me. He did call me, and I chatted friendly-like. And then I did the slimy deed via e-mail.

I promised myself that the next time I would offer myself more time to make a decision I would not regret in the morning.

Who can resist the promise
of that English accent? Eliot was Oxford educated, with a stylish scruffy Vandyke. His Match.com
profile said he was six foot three, too tall for me. Five foot one and a half, the measurement on my driver’s license, was possibly overstating the case. I had never liked feeling so dwarfed by a man. And he lived in Connecticut, about two hours away.

When we talked on the phone, Eliot had a self-deprecating, saucy, and irreverent sense of humor. Lying on my red velvet couch, cordless phone cradled on a cushion against my ear, I laughed and laughed. He was a big, naughty flirt, and that was a tonic. While it was hard for me to speak about Henry’s betrayal to a man who was still a stranger, when I did tell him the condensed version of what had happened, he was comforting and kind. Another tonic.

We made a plan for dinner in a week’s time, having chosen a spot in the middle—Danbury, Connecticut, a small city I knew only as a string of highway exits featuring malls and gas stations on I-84, the route I took to visit my parents at their weekend house in Litchfield County.

I liked Eliot. Right away he seemed like a truly okay guy. I enjoyed his raunchy humor, which might have offended me in an earlier time but now was a relief.
So this is what men really think about.
I could tell he knew all about dating. Maybe he would teach me.

I couldn’t see myself dating or living in Connecticut—suburban New York State was already such a definitive personal disaster. Driving to Connecticut for dinner dates was not going to work in the universe where I lived. If things proceeded further, I might find myself waking up startled in a bedroom two hours away from my child. I wasn’t ready for that kind of separation at all. I knew this as I hung up the phone and climbed the stairs to get ready for bed.

Liza was already asleep in what we now referred to as “our”
bed, clutching a ragged stuffed lion, one that had belonged to my brother and had somehow been entrusted to me. Eliot might be horrified to discover these not very grown-up facts of my domestic life—that I cherished the stuffed lion, and that my daughter still spent most nights in my bed, because she and I, ignoring my therapist’s well-intentioned advice, both wanted it that way.

Eliot called me the next day. Not to give me driving directions but to cancel dinner.

“I’m pretty sure you aren’t ready for anything serious yet,” he said sincerely. “I am ready. I don’t want to be your, you know, ‘transitional man.’” Eliot had it so right. A smart fellow he was. Relief flooded my chest. I liked him even more.

Could we still be friends? I wrote back the next day. Why yes, he would like that. We agreed to stay in touch. And I thought that would be the end of that.

Several weeks later, missing his lighthearted humor, I sent him an e-mail. By then I’d met another man—Daniel—and Eliot had met another woman.

Daniel was smart and funny,
in a quiet, mordant sort of way—a quiet way I hoped would not become boring. His profile indicated that he was divorced with a son. I thought that he’d understand the parenting issues in my life.

In any event, I was dating. Dating meant going out with someone, getting to know him, eating some meals together, yak-king, not having sex right away. I’d settled on that much. No commitment, nothing I couldn’t walk away from in a hurry.

On my third date with Daniel—an autumn hike up a nearby mountain trail—he told me that he thought he was falling in love
with me. I cast an eye over his long, placid face, dad-looking red plaid shirt and jeans, sensible and sturdy brown leather walking shoes—garb Tomas never wore, of course, or Henry. I hadn’t expected such impulsive behavior from this man. I was completely bewildered, once again feeling blank and nonpresent, an observer watching myself act in a film. I was sitting in his lap when he told me this (and was regretting the kissing that had been good fun a moment earlier), and now I wanted to charge down the trail for home immediately. I had absolutely no idea what I thought about this man. I didn’t love him. I was still working on just liking him.

And there was also Tim, another man with whom I’d corresponded online, who was divorced with no children. We’d talked, but I’d thought maybe it was best to try out men one at a time. Plus, my amateur theorizing held that it would be better to date a man who had kids. But fuck if I knew anything about men.

And there was still Eliot, who was turning out to be a great pal. I called him on the phone to tell him that Daniel had confessed love on the third date. Did this mean I couldn’t wait for a few weeks before having sex?

“Are you joking, Jools?” Eliot snorted. “No real man will put up with that kind of nonsense, waiting a month to have sex.”

“Really, you’re sure about that? You’d never wait if a woman you really liked wanted you to?”

“Nope,” Eliot replied. “I’d figure she just had some weird sex hang-ups or wasn’t that into me. Doesn’t sound like you’re really that into this guy.”

And of course I didn’t know either.

“But, Jools, apart from the sex, the really important thing to remember is the three-month rule,” Eliot reminded me gently. His repeated advice did have the ring of truth and common sense
about it. The idea was to wait three months before bringing someone home to meet your kid. The reasoning was that it was difficult to mask the darker aspects of one’s real personality (ax murderer, run-of-the-mill cad, or control freak) for longer than three months. “Once you bring this guy home, your daughter will either get attached or maybe hate the guy. Then it’s going to be harder the next time to introduce a new person into her life.”

“Okay, yeah.”

“You didn’t listen to me, did you?”

“So don’t be mad at me, Eliot. I already let Daniel meet Liza last weekend. He doesn’t seem like a nut job, he seems nice enough. He might be a bit too old for me. Not his actual age. I think he’s just four years older than me.” Than I am, I remembered too late for Mr. Oxford-educated (who I hoped was used to American bastardized English). “But he seems older, maybe kind of quiet, but very kind. He brought his dog. Lizzie loved his dog—it’s a big friendly black Lab.”

I paused, waiting for Eliot to say something nice. “Eliot, you’re going to tell me that I screwed up. Did I screw up?”

“Yeah, Jools, I do think this is a mistake, it’s too soon. Do you care about this man?”

“I don’t know.” I laughed nervously. “I thought I’d let my kid decide.”

“I’m serious, Jools. You have to feel something. That’s not going to work.”

“Okay, okay. Shit. You’re right. I fucked it up.”

I did fuck it up, quite royally in fact.

Daniel was quiet and steady, a man of habits. He seemed to live nearly a hermit’s life, which saddened me—I’d hoped to have a bit of silly fun during this time of my life. Daniel had a proper
office job, just what I’d thought I wanted in a man. He owned the sensible-dad red plaid shirt, and a few more like that one. Sometimes khakis. No ragged T-shirts of any sort. Running shoes, and the sturdy leather walking shoes. I began to suspect that his politics might be more conservative than mine. As time passed, I worried that he might be an actual Republican but was too afraid to ask, as this would be an instant deal-killer.

But this man had told me he loved me with a quiet intensity that I believed and was curious to understand. What could he love about me, since he couldn’t know me yet, since I didn’t even know me? I wanted to know what was lovable about me. I wanted to feel loved.

We made plans to see each other on Saturdays, and I quickly felt trapped, unable to see other friends. Of course, it wasn’t like I’d been whooping it up on Saturday nights before meeting him. Plenty of weekend nights had been spent at home with Liza watching TV or a movie we’d both seen twenty times. It was the routine of it that speedily wore on me. Routine was already too much a part of my life. He was forty-eight and I was forty-four, but I felt and began to behave like a twenty-year-old having an affair with her English professor, who always remembered the correct use of the object pronoun in his letters.

It was Daniel’s daily e-mail letters that initially won me over and revealed a great and dark wit. I read them and laughed out loud—there was humor and the heady delight of being wooed by such a fearless and natural writer.