I waved my hand and smiled as though her recollections of my teen modus operandi had no bearing on today’s pursuit of Adam Ziegler.
“Mona, I don’t mean to sound patronizing, but could it be that it’s easier to focus on someone other than yourself?”
“Why don’t you do all of us a favor and write a self-help book and get all this out of your system? Frankly, it’s boring the life out of me.”
I looked through a thick wool blanket hanging over a patio screen and noticed that a man in the apartment building next door was turning on his shower. What do people do that they can take showers at nearly noon? I’d soon find out. I smiled. Perhaps Greta had a point. Maybe I should spend this time trying to figure out who I am, instead of who Adam Ziegler might want me to be. But if who I want to be happens to overlap with who Adam wants me to be, then so be it. That was a good compromise, I figured.
“Listen, maybe you’re right,” I reluctantly conceded.
“There is a God in heaven!” she rejoiced, dramatically gesturing above.
“If there is, He’ll spare me any further analysis from you.” I smiled. “I’m not giving up on Adam, but I’ll reinvent myself to become somebody you’ll like, too.”
“I already like you, Mona. Go through with the little makeover if you need to, but be sure the person who loves the new you is the real you. For the record, I think you’re perfect already. Misguided for sure, but I do love you. You’re my oldest friend in the world, do you know that?”
You’re my only friend
, I didn’t say.
* * *
On the drive back to Coronado, I stopped at a newsstand that sells every glossy from
Good Housekeeping
to barely legal porn.
Good Housekeeping
promised tips on how to keep my husband hooked. A little too soon for this, I decided. I navigated my way around the store until I found the section with fresh-faced fifteen-year-old vamps on the covers
—
the single women’s mags. The cover stories barked at me, beckoning like restaurant hosts in Athens and Rome who promise the ultimate culinary satisfaction. If love had a library, this was it.
WIN HIS HEART IN 30 DAYS! leapt off the stand and into my arms.
YOUR GUY, YOUR WAY! GETTING WHAT YOU WANT FROM HIM NOW! seemed a bit aggressive, but I needed to be a student of dating, and these smoky-eyed women seemed to really know their stuff.
BUILD A BETTER MAN TRAP! seemed cute, though I hated the idea of capturing Adam. My plan was to help him see what I already knew
—
that we were a perfect match. Once he saw this, he’d pursue me. The idea of rigging a contraption of head games was unappealing, but I was curious what the article would advise. After all, knowledge is power and I needed a healthy portion of both.
TEN THINGS THAT FREAK GUYS OUT! I hadn’t considered this, but if I was serious about being a scholar of seduction, I had to learn about potential mistakes before I made them.
DRIVE HIM CRAZY IN BED! Okay.
MAKE HIM BEG FOR MORE! Please, please!
REAL GIRL MAKEOVERS! Jackpot!
TURN HIS HEAD WITH YOUR FABULOUS ASS! Surely the editor was fired for that one.
I loved the verve. The exclamation points alone sent me into a wild magazine-hoarding tizzy until I had to set my pile onto the counter while I continued browsing.
SEX IN ONE DATE OR LESS, another cover blurb boasted. Oh, the men’s section.
BE THE GUY SHE TELLS HER FRIENDS ABOUT
—
THEN DO THEM, TOO, chest-thumped
Y Chromosome
.
WHAT I WISH CHICKS KNEW, offered another. These men’s magazines intrigued me. They sounded like the raw facts, not some processed, feminized version of the truth. I needed to know what a Neanderthal of a guy really, truly felt about women
—
and what this guy wished we knew. The kind of stuff he talked about with his buddies after a rugby game, when he’s sweat-drenched and pumped with testosterone. I wanted to hear from the worst of the dogs, not some freshly showered pansy in a pastel combed cotton sweater that
Glamour
found nibbling a scone in a coffee shop. I didn’t want tips from guys who are being interviewed for a women’s magazine because they are most likely completely and thoroughly full of shit. Nonetheless, I would read the women’s mags and see what they had to say. These writers certainly knew more than I did, so there was absolutely nothing to be lost reading what the pouty lip brigade had to say about men.
I brought my final selection to the counter.
Maximum for Him
. Translation: minimum for her. Opposition research. I could barely contain my grin at the thought of delving into this colossal pile of information. I felt like a spy about to cross the border of another country. I felt alive.
I always drive the same route home. I cross the blue vein of the Coronado Bridge, head straight through town until I hit Alameda Avenue, then drive it all the way down toward the ocean. Every day, I pass the North Island Naval Station and see the same uniformed guys out front, waving in their comrades. For the first two years I lived here, I never understood how the navy guys knew who was military. I assumed that they just had great memories and recognized the faces of all North Island personnel. Grammy laughed when I told her this. “You little goose! They have stickers on their windows. See?” She pointed at the car ahead of us, and sure enough, there was a small navy decal on the corner of the windshield. I never actually wanted to go onto the naval base. If I had, it would have been easy enough to arrange through Grammy. What I longed for was the guy in uniform giving me the official wave. “Come on in, Mona. You’re welcome at our private little club. Please, come in. We want you here.”
In fact, my fondest sexual fantasies take place behind the walls of the naval base. It wasn’t the guys in uniform. I know some women go for that, but I’d just as easily fall for a guy in a suit and tie, which I suppose is a uniform, too. But I could very easily be attracted to a man in a soft black sweater and khaki pants. It wasn’t even so much the location. It was, I suppose, getting behind those walls. Some nights, the fantasy would start with the guy at the gate waving in my car; other nights I’d imagine scaling the walls and jumping over the fence until I landed on the other side with scraped knees and twigs in my hair.
When I arrived home with my new magazines, I poured a glass of iced tea and carried it out to the backyard. Our yard is spacious by any standard, but humongous by Southern California’s measure. Every year without fail, a housing developer wants to purchase three quarters of my yard to build another home. He always assures me that I’ll still have plenty of yard left, tells me how “classy” his projects are, and then leaves me with the tired old line about oceanfront property
—
“they ain’t making any more of it.”
Grammy always said that when a developer tells you that he builds elegant homes, it’s because he almost always throws together half-baked cookie cutter models of what twenty-five-year-old trophy brides deem tasteful. “Always consider it a tremendous service when a person tells you how honest he is,” she also said. “It’s a warning round. When they start talking about how honest they are, run. If you’re honest, you don’t need to talk about it. When you build elegant homes, you most certainly do not need to tout their elegance. If someone makes a point of telling you who he is, rather than showing you with his actions, you can bank on the truth being quite the opposite.” Whenever we shopped together, we spoke a secret language of facial expressions. At the Mercedes dealership, the owner carried on about how he created a “second home” for his employees and how they all loved working there. Grammy gave me a look, which I knew meant, “Where is
this
coming from? Did we inquire about the job satisfaction level of his staff?” We left that day without a car, but instead with Grammy’s pregnancy-like craving for information about this dealership. After a half hour of pounding away at the computer keyboard, Grammy shouted “I knew it!” from her office. “Get in here, Mona. Are my instincts keen, or are they keen?”
“Well,” I stretched the word to tease. “If they’re so keen, why do you need to talk about them?”
“Oh pish posh, get your rump over here and see what I’ve found on the Internet.” When I arrived, she continued, “Sexual harassment charges. Hmpf! He sees two women walk into the dealership and immediately starts talking about the big happy family, the low turnover, and how happy, happy, happy everyone is there. Silly fool might have had my money in his pocket today if he would have simply focused on the car. I don’t care about what kind of place he’s ‘created’ for his second family of car salesmen.”
“Grammy!” I chided. “You don’t care if this man sexually harasses his employees?”
“Not in the least,” she replied, astounded that I could even consider it. “Why should that matter to me?”
* * *
I set down my iced tea and began reading the women’s magazines first. “Learn How to Give the Perfect Massage,” one suggested. “Learn to Listen.” Hmmm. Let’s see what the men’s mag has to say. I turned to the table of contents and the cover story I was looking for was a guy’s monthly column called
The Dog
House. How perfect! Mike Dougherty, the Dog.
What I Wish Chicks Knew
—
Mike “the Dog” Dougherty
My ex-girlfriend is pulling out of the driveway in a U-Haul truck. Up until a few minutes ago, I got the feeling she would have stayed if I asked. She was shuffling, hemming and hawing and talking about our problems like there’s still an “our.”
If I didn’t want to talk about these so-called issues when we were together, why would I want to talk about them now? I could see what she was doing. She was waiting for me to tell her what she wanted to hear: Believe me when I tell you, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out what that was. One night, during one of our interminable festivals of feelings (hers) she told me exactly what I was supposed to say to make her feel “special.” Stop now and grab a bag. It gets worse.
When my latest ex realized that screaming at me wasn’t working, she actually wrote a script for me. She shouted, “Do I need to write a script for you?” I said no, but she did it anyway. (And I have the communication problem?!) I kid you not, she handed me a piece of paper with things she’d like me to say. So, you’re wondering, my friends, what did these crib notes say?
“I love you.”
“I wish we could spend more time together.”
“I think about you all the time.”
“I am so lucky to be with you.”
In the interest of enhanced male-female relationships (hey, they’ve got all the pussy, what are we going to do, guys, right?), I’d like to offer a little free advice to my female readers. I hope you both enjoy it.
First, let’s start with the obvious. If we’re with you, we’re into you. We either like you or we love you. ʼNuff said.
Second, if I wished we could spend more time together, we would. Sorry, ladies, but it’s the truth. What we want to do, we do. There are exceptions that keep us from doing things we really enjoy, but as a general rule, if we’re not spending a whole heck of a lot of time with you, it’s because we don’t want to. It’s not because we’re jerks. It’s because every one
—
women included
—
makes time to do what they enjoy. Bottom line, if we’re not spending time with you, it’s probably because you’re a huge pain in the ass, no fun, or look like hell these days.
Third, we don’t think about you all the time. In order of importance, here’s what we think about: sex, sports, sex, food, sex, work, sex, gadgets, sex, going bald, sex, getting fat. Yeah, we think about you, too, but here’s a tip: The yapping and scripting is not sexy, and if you’re not fitting into our time for thinking about sex, you’re slipping down to the “work” slot. You should not be work. You should be sex.
There are a handful of guys out there who are lucky enough to have found truly cool women to share their lives with. Hey, my hat’s off to you, man, ʼcause a brother knows it ain’t easy. But, ladies, if you are scripting, demanding, complaining all the time, we aren’t so lucky to be with you.
Finally, stop writing these mental scripts of what we would say if we “really cared.” Don’t expect any man to start reading lines you find in a romance novel. Women write these; women read them. Harlequin is a language guys don’t speak and don’t want to. Spare us the United Nations headset for translation. We’d rather learn Japanese
—
it’s easier and will get us further ahead in the world.
In the end, ladies, we resent the shit out of your telling us what to say and do. If you
—
let me repeat
—
if you are scripting your boyfriend, you have control issues. (See, we’ve picked up some of your psychobabble terminology. And you thought we weren’t listening.)
Trust me when I tell you I never said any of this to my latest ex-girlfriend despite her many pleas to be “totally honest.” Women say they want to communicate, but that’s code for “I’m talking and you’re listening.” Men get the illusion of a chance to talk, too, but it damn well better be what women want to hear or we’re “withholding emotionally.” What happened to honesty?
Until next month, my friends, don’t let the bitches get you down.
I stared agape at the column long after I read the final words. What offensive, tired old stereotypes about women! What was the point? What trite, uninspired, unoriginal horseshit. Or was it?
Maximum for Him
was the number-one rated men’s magazine in the country and
The Dog House
was a monthly column that, according to the letters to the editor section, really resonated with guys. This was all so confusing. There was a certain beauty and simplicity to my life of virtual hermitage. I wasn’t sure I was ready for this. But one thing was certain. If I was going to venture out in to this brave new world, I needed a guide. A guide dog, so to speak.
I would hire Mike as a guy coach. A male consultant. I would run all ideas to impress Adam by The Dog for the sniff test. The Dog would be the harshest, toughest, meanest, most revolting critic I could find. If I could train with him, I’d be a champion.