Romance Is My Day Job (3 page)

One wouldn't call him a ladies' man, though he is fiendishly cute. The class clown doesn't usually attract a flock of females, not until later. At the same time, it's hard not to go dreamy-eyed over his fearlessness, how he hurls himself at bigger men in football. Just recently, for good luck, our stern headmaster asked Sam to rub his bald head in order break their football team's losing streak—in front of the entire school. This is the power of Sam.

I'm thrilled he's paying attention to me. Delirious but preparing myself for the bucket of blood falling from the ceiling like in the movie
Carrie
. The night has mostly been a disaster . . . except for now.

Sam twirls me on the dance floor, encouraging me to break free of myself. I like how he feels in my arms. He's a little sweaty, but that endears him to me even more. Could he be nervous or is it just that he sweats a lot when he moves? He's holding me as if I were a delicate creature—and then leads me into a fast-and-furious square dance from hell. The more I look at his face, the more I like it. I didn't notice before just how gorgeous he is with his sparkling eyes, that wide smile. I'm a little breathless.

Though I can't move too much in my tight dress, I do my best. Most of all, I have fun and take in this special moment. A real dance with a school legend.

Any guy who rescues a newly dateless girl at a dance has to be the nicest person ever. He's that hero who swoops in after a miserable night. I had no idea anything like this could happen to me, that I could be the target of such a person. It dawns on me now how sexy he is, how he might be that romance-novel hero. The key element is the unexpected.

When the music ends, I make as if to leave, but Sam has other plans and takes my hand. Faun would never argue over such a bold gesture, and I won't either. He brings me along to chat with his friends, the big stars of the senior class. One of them is the vice president's nephew. Vice president of the United States, the one who became president later. They are extremely nice to me, as if I've been hanging with them for years.

“Let's take a picture,” Sam says insistently, shepherding me to the photographer and pulling me into the frame with him. While he's not affectionate with me, he's attentive in a way that brightens my night. I know that he has another date at the dance and is just being a nice guy. It doesn't even occur to me to be jealous of the girl he's with. How could I when this night was deemed a downer? He could have seen my suffering on the dance floor and wanted to make me feel better. Mission accomplished.

I'm so dazed over Sam's request that my jaw drops just as the bulb flashes. This is the official picture, the one I should have taken with Kent. For a few minutes, I feel cherished, like someone's princess, like I had a real date experience.

 • • • 

All too soon, the lights come on. Sam folds back into his super-pack and Kent finds me at the end to say good night. I prepare myself for the inevitable kiss-off and because I can smell rejection from far away, I explain to Kent that no-no-no, I don't have unreal fantasies of our dating since that would upset my boyfriend, Jason from Cape Cod. All is well. I am secretly grateful Kent said yes to me in the first place. I return to my room, let go of the night, and keep one precious memory of the popular boy sweeping me off my feet.

We all move on from this dance. Kent continues being cute and friendly—but out of my social sphere, and never again masquerading as Devlin. Despite the lack of romance with Kent, I'm grateful that he inspired me to be audacious, really go after what I want. Everyone should ask out their Kent. He might say yes, and if he says no, you'll get over it.

Nici and I keep dreaming about the perfect guy, reading our romance novels. My soul mate is someone else—possibly John Taylor, who finally learns of my existence for about thirty seconds when a classmate of mine meets him at a party years later. “I like her name,” he says, though this entire story could be a vicious lie. I write a fifty-page term paper on Duran Duran for sophomore English class, which brings me no closer to attracting a boyfriend at Taft. The paper does cement my legend as Taft's number one Duran Duran fan. I thoroughly investigate the band's roots in funk, its goal to create danceable, happy music, its meteoric rise due to those sultry MTV videos, and then I do a thorough analysis of Simon Le Bon's lyrics and how they compare to T. S. Eliot's poetry (not that I've read any Eliot or know who he is).

My winter formal savior, Sam, and I don't interact after our dance, except for a few smiles in the hall. He has his own troubles. Not only does he fall short in his quest to break a world record by eating the most ravioli squares in an hour, but in a failed mooning attempt, he puts his butt through a glass window and needs thirty-seven stitches in his ass. He has to stand for the rest of his classes that semester.

He is way too cool for me, the unattainable hero I don't even try to dream about.

Maybe somewhere, someone is out there for me.

Summer 1987

It's a mistake for me to read
The Thorn Birds,
years after everyone else went crazy over the televised miniseries and book. It's not even about birds. It's about forbidden, holy love. The thorn bird is a metaphor for people who impale themselves on one burst of awesomeness, e.g. Meggie and Father Ralph finally boinking their brains out because they love each other so much (maybe I'm oversimplifying). By this time, I'm over my fear of sex but not my love of romance. In fact, it's gotten worse. Who needs Faun and Devlin when you have that tortured passion between ardent Catholics Meggie and Ralph? These two make me yearn for my own burning love that transcends religion and time. It's bad that I love to read so much. There's nothing else to do over a long, sticky summer, waiting for sophomore year of college to start.

My first year at Oberlin was very enlightening—a warm-up to the ecstasy I will soon experience, I just know it. And what better place than the compact intimacy of Oberlin? There's not a whole lot to do in this small Ohio town, so one must stay hyperfocused on classes and social activities. The campus itself is a hive of majestic buildings and dorms—both old and new—and hosts as diverse a student body as you'll find with its hippies, conservatives, serious musicians, loud people, quiet people, activists, pacifists, nudists, fashion plates, goths, theater people, intellectuals, and, yes, jocks. Since prep school prepared me to live away from my parents, I take to college life quickly, shrewdly scouting out my bliss.

There were a few items, though, that I had to take care of my freshman year, some necessary rituals before True Love could descend: losing my virginity and getting drunk. For the first, I chose a sweet guy, Danny, who'd been in love with my roommate. After he cried on my shoulder for a week (psychiatry is an effective tool of seduction, if you just wait it out), our relationship shifted into romance. A double major in music and science, he had this soft sensuality—sleepy brown eyes and a quiet disposition, i.e., the perfect man with whom I could share that all-important, potentially embarrassing, once-in-a-lifetime penetration event. After this, I wanted to spread my wings elsewhere, and in an act of utter
Dynasty
recklessness, I hooked up with his best friend. Danny then hooked up with another girlfriend of mine. Then our friends, the ones we'd each hooked up with, fell in love with each other. During this dramatic cycle, I discovered beer. It could have been beer goggles and the roller coaster of my
Dynasty
emotions, but I ended the year by falling for Ben the Buddhist, then a junior.

Now that it's summer, I am isolated in my mother's house in Rochester, New York, with my large room in the very back and the most important piece of furniture: a television. One might call it an opportunity for reflection, which I do over a glass or two of Mom's dry sherry. At the end of the day, she and I have gotten into the habit of sitting on the porch and having a few nips of Tio Pepe mixed with girl talk. Who knew a parent could be so much fun? All I had to do was grow up a little before we could enjoy supreme Jane Austen sister moments.

When Mom's not around, though, I snoop around the house for paperbacks, the more decadent, the better. I'm not sure where I find
The Thorn Birds
—I suspect it belongs my stepfather, Don, a fellow academic who secretly reads bestsellers.

My reading begins on my bed until I fall back to sleep. Once my mother and Don leave for work at the University of Rochester, I throw myself on their bed because it's bigger and there's more light streaming through the window. Plus, it feels a little forbidden to read on their bed—like, nasty. By evening, I read on the couch in the living room, which is close to the kitchen. My mother wakes me up for dinner.

But Mom, Don, books, and sherry can only do so much to entertain a nineteen-year-old in the house, especially one who can't contribute to a discussion of “intellectual history” or “early modernism.” They are hard-core historians and, as such, don't take many breaks to do Jane Fonda's workout or watch MTV with me, or discuss John Travolta movies, though they do recommend classics that I might enjoy.

My mother—a rising star in her field, European history and women's studies—toils in front of her typewriter, notepads, and piles of library books. Her office is a disaster area. My stepfather is the same way, only he looks the part of a historian: scruffy, grumpy, clothes from another decade, and bad haircut (my mother cuts it). Mom is glamorous, with her perfect face, warm brown eyes, nice cheekbones, dark trendy hair, and fashionable clothes. The two are like Beauty and the Beast. Love is crazy.

My brother, Patrick, and Don's son, John, who's been in my life sporadically for almost ten years, are off living adult lives. Patrick is in New York City, pursuing his dream of being an actor. A handsome redhead, Patrick has done theater his entire life, was even a runner-up for Timothy Hutton's part in
Ordinary People
. John is busy as a musician and getting his degree in Miami. A few years ago, Patrick and John and I lived in the house for a summer. While our parents were in Europe, we were total wastebags but supported one another through a season of demeaning jobs. Patrick went through a brief fat phase, which was the optimum time for him to get a perm. John giggled at him for weeks, but he chose to wear this skanky black leather vest as a shirt like he was Bret Michaels. I loved watching the two of them, felt blanketed in brotherly affection, which is lacking this summer.

My friends are scattered across the country, and for me to survive at Oberlin—without financial aid and without a job—I need to work like a dog, not pine over absent people. This is how people grow up—by themselves. During the day I sweat out twelve-hour shifts at the dry cleaner's down the street. I've been alone before, so at night I retreat into my secret world of Dagwood sandwiches, MTV, juicy paperbacks, and many hours dreaming of my future boyfriend.

Romance shouldn't be on my mind, especially since there are no prospects in Rochester. Ben, the soon-to-be-senior boy I'm in love with—my Father Ralph, his holy hotness—is a Buddhist. It isn't so unique to be a Westerner ensconced in Eastern philosophy at Oberlin, but Ben lives the part. He even went to India and came back all swaddled in sheets, smoking funky cigarettes. Love isn't foremost on his mind, which makes him an even hotter stud to me. We've never come close to being a couple, but that will change once the summer ends.

Because of him, I immerse myself in Buddhist literature, a.k.a. the greatest love stories of our time, because they involve the welfare of all sentient beings. Do-gooders deserve love, so I try to be nicer to people without keeping a scorecard (though I do anyway—like if the chain-smoking, toothless drunk I work with at the dry cleaner's makes one more mistake with the clothes and blames it on me, I'm dumping her omnipresent vodka Tang cocktail all over her).

Buddhism helps me endure the dry-cleaning job: Vodka Tang's endless coughing, the mean customers, and the jungle-hot store itself. All day long, wrapping and pinning clothes, I think,
Ben the Buddhist will love this, my burying myself in manual labor, chopping wood, carrying water
. I'm building character, even as Rochester's local weatherman—a total jerk—screams at me for losing a button on his precious shirt, the one his mommy gave him. So my blubbering in the bathroom isn't Buddhist, but I'm releasing emotion.

And then my detour with
The Thorn Birds
really messes me up. Did I think I could go a whole three months denying myself desire and ego? Buddhism never considered the majesty of Richard Chamberlain shirtless. I can't wait to see my priest again. Sure, he's never expressed any desire to date me, but now he'll take one look at me, transformed by enlightenment, and declare his love.

The day finally arrives when I return to Oberlin. I'm settled in my dorm with my same roommate from last year, Laura. We are so chill together, even look like each other, that we decide to continue our winning hand by getting another small divided double in the same dorm, the ideal setup. It is essentially two rooms linked by an adjoining door and with one entrance. Though we have no common area, we have privacy. If Laura or I brings someone home, there are no traumatic sounds and images to deal with.

For some reason (Ben), I'm giddier than usual over the start of this year. Now that I've had a few boyfriends—and have finally found my dream man in Ben—I know there are more exciting aspects to college than getting an education. While I easily fulfill the credits to be a Latin major and consider adding French, the idea that I'm here to study doesn't even occur to me. Bigger issues are at stake, like pitchers of beer and long walks through the quad with someone I adore. Grades are not that important. What is a grade, anyway, compared to that connection with a human being? I can't share this with my mother, who is footing 95 percent of the bill for my college education. She wouldn't understand.

I spritz myself with my latest perfume,
Femme
, and psych myself up to go reunite with Ben at the Tap House, the dive where Oberlin's coolest people drink. I am ready emotionally, physically, and spiritually for Ben. Plus, my hair is finally long enough.

Love at last!

This is like when adult, doelike Meggie comes down the stairs and Father Ralph sees her all grown up. He is tormented by how beautiful she's become. Ben will sense how I've risen in the ranks of Buddha consciousness.

In my gut, though, I know that my constant thoughts about him couldn't possibly lead to happily-ever-after. We've never even kissed. Or anything. In those books I still grab from supermarket racks, there is no heroine obsessing about her man like this. Sure, our dear Faun is mostly baffled by Devlin's strange behavior, how he keeps showing up wherever she goes. But Ben never shows up purposely to see me. I seem to be the one to follow him around, which is so not Harlequin-esque. Why is my gray matter focused on Ben and not my own ambitions? That can't be healthy. I try not to be negative since letting go of emotional attachment is an important tenet of Eastern philosophy. Ben has so much to teach me. I am eager to learn (and tangle in his bedsheets, though I'm not sure if he even does this).

My heart palpitates as he walks through the door. His herd of friends follows him, including a new girl who resembles Stevie Nicks. Stevie has this mellow look about her, with long, flowing hair and sweet brown eyes. We shake hands. I get a strange feeling but ignore it and do the standard pretending I don't see Ben yet even though he's right in front of me. A romantic heroine is always taken unawares by the hero's presence. Men practically have SEAL training and can creep into a room unnoticed. Of course, I've had SEAL training, too, along with years of experience reading and studying romance in books and on television. I'm fake-oblivious, delighted by everything I see. Sure, Ben and I acknowledge each other, but I try to focus on everything
but
Ben.

My friends and his rejoice over the beginning of a new year and we drink and talk for hours. When Ben asks to walk me home at the end of the night, I'm hopeful. Maybe my boy is a little shy and really does care.

We walk, the balmy air caressing us on this perfect evening. This is where my doubts are defied by true love's insistence. He secretly loves me, though, like Father Ralph, he can't give in to that love.

“Did you get my letters over the summer?” I ask.

He nods. Silence.

Oh God. Maybe I shouldn't have sent him stacks and stacks of letters. What girl does that? Now I'm embarrassed. All those pages. Well, boys don't write letters anyway, unless they lived a hundred years ago. I had rationalized that Ben didn't write back because he wanted to show me how manly he is. The thoughts swirl in my head.

“I can't run with you,” he says as we reach my dorm.

Even his rejection is poetic, like we're horses galloping across a field. “I know you can't.” I mean, duh. But my heart is still breaking.

“Do you?” He stares at me, his eyes sparkling. I'm not sure what color they are, even in daylight.

“I knew all along.”

“Then you're a witch,” he says, hands on my cheeks. He means it in the nicest way. Just how affectionate he is makes me want to cry. Usually guys reject you and search for the nearest hiding space. They treat you like you have the plague. Ben is loving, knowing full well that he hurt me.

“It's okay,” I say, trying hard to be strong. There is a volcano of emotion that I push down. He's saying that he doesn't want to make out with me on our conjoined meditation cushions (though I can't fit my ass on one and he has no problem, which I find suspect), and it really hurts.

Ben kisses me, promises eternal friendship, and leaves. It's a little like when Meggie and Father Ralph make out for the first time—except in my case, there is no passion involved. I don't feel hope that Ben will change his mind. In fact, this is nothing like the vortex of lust that consumes Meggie and Father Ralph in their first joining of lips.