by Jane Green
‘Married?!’ Sophie shouted indignantly. ‘That fucker.’
‘Since when?!’ Gwen gasped. ‘Doug’s dated Kiki, Meredith, and Mimi.’
‘Since nineteen ninety-four,’ I said.
Gwen was practically in tears, as if it were she who’d been unwittingly roped into the affair. ‘Are you absolutely certain? You know how gossipy people can be.’
‘I heard it straight from the whore’s mouth,’ I said. Or at least that’s what my lunch mates claimed I said. ‘Gwen Weinstein, why are you sitting there agape?’
‘It’s just that I’ve never heard you use that type of language. The whore’s mouth?’
‘I said the horse’s mouth,’ I claimed.
‘No you didn’t,’ Sophie chimed in. ‘You called that fucker a whore. And you know what, you’re right. He never mentioned being married. There are a lot of women who’d go out with a married man, but at least they should have the right to give their informed consent.’
‘Informed consent?’ I slammed my hands on the table. This season was going to be the end of my soft palms. ‘Sophie, we’re not talking about a medical procedure. This is adultery. And lying. This guy is a whore. And a … a complete fucker.’
‘Well, don’t get me wrong; I’m pissed as hell at the guy, but let’s face it, lying and adultery, well, the two usually go hand in hand,’ Sophie said, with a shrug.
‘So Doug’s off the list,’ Gwen said, hoping to move us along to bachelor number two, or in this case, bachelor number one.
‘I’m not done!’ I said. ‘I think we should buy some billboards and plaster his face all over town to let people know what a fucker this guy is.’
‘And I think it’s time to cut Sarah off,’ Gwen said, giggling. ‘It’s nice to see you cut loose, but I think you’re going to have a dreadful hangover from this.’
‘I am not that drunk, ladies.’ I shook my head like a dog drying off after a bath. It was a wonderful sensation watching the light from bulbs trail themselves, like little comets of green and red. ‘I’m serious, we need to buy billboards all over downtown and warn women against this jerk.’
‘I think the Jesus is the Reason for the Season people have bought up all the space for December,’ Gwen said. ‘Then they do the every season follow-up after that.’
‘We could do a Christmas theme,’ I slurred. ‘We could go religious even, like Jesus died for our sins, but one fucker is using up all of our sinning credit’ – I waved my arm like a game show hostess revealing prizes – ‘then there’s Doug big face.’
‘Waiter, we need some coffee please,’ Sophie said. ‘I don’t know why you’re so upset, Sarah. It’s not like you dated him or anything.’
‘And why aren’t you more upset, Sophie?!’
‘Because I expect nothing more from men,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘They lie, they cheat, they gamble, they drink,’ she said, in a tone like she was bored reciting the list. ‘Expect nothing, and you’ll never be disappointed.’
‘How about Isaac Franklin?’ Gwen said, again hoping to switch gears. ‘He’s definitely available. I was at his wife’s funeral months ago.’
Sophie rolled her eyes. ‘That’s uplifting. What’s he like?’
Gwen described Isaac as a ‘little older’ than Prudence. A ‘young’ sixty-three, she later admitted. ‘Don’t let the age fool you. He’s very active. Isaac bikes one hundred miles a week, runs in marathons, and is a squash champ.’
‘Gwen, have you ever met Prudence?’ Sophie asked. Gwen shook her head. ‘She’s not interested in this gray lightning of yours. She hates sports and she doesn’t want another guy pressuring her to try new outdoor activities.’
‘That’s right,’ I recalled, ‘Reilly told me about Prudence going skiing with her boyfriend and how she wound up on crutches for weeks.’
Gwen perked up immediately, which seemed an odd reaction to the story. She wrote herself a note with the name ‘Esther Finley,’ a widow who lives in her building.
Sophie said Prudence was looking for someone exciting and sophisticated, ‘Someone who she’ll have a lot of sexual chemistry with,’ she said.
‘Oh, how ’bout Boris?!’ Gwen suggested. Filling Sophie in, she explained that we knew Boris Zelkind from high school. His claim to fame was his allegedly corn-on-the-cob-sized penis. Three girls who had sex with him all swore up and down that it was the thickest thing they’d ever seen and named him ‘Wonder Cock,’ or as it was printed in the yearbook, W.C. Boris sells commercial real estate and is rumored to once have been engaged to a heroin-chic supermodel known only as Udon, like the noodle. His sense of humor was sharp and dry, but delivered with such bite, it often sent the girls in our school scurrying off to the bathroom in tears. As I was deliberating whether or not Prudence would have finally met her match with Boris, Sophie weighed in.
‘Prudence doesn’t want some guy with a big dick,’ Sophie said. ‘Well, that wouldn’t be her sole criterion.’
‘He’s very funny,’ I defended Boris. ‘And he likes skinny women. Udon was even thinner than Prudence.’
‘I think the problem here is that you two don’t really know Prudence,’ Sophie said. ‘She wants somebody exciting and sexy, yes, but not a married prick or this Wonder Cock friend of yours. And she certainly doesn’t need the captain of the Viagra biking team. Prudence is an artist now, and to some degree she always has been.’
As Sophie continued with her characterization of Prudence, I drifted off into thought. I needed to absorb what Sophie had just said about Prudence having always been an artist, and only now starting to come into that part of herself. I wondered if there was part of me that I wasn’t realizing. I was terrified to consider that perhaps I was really a musician, only I had never taken a crack at it. Maybe I was a natural athlete but had never tried sports. I took some comfort in the realization that if I truly were an artist, I would have felt drawn to it at some point in my life. Some force would have pulled me in the right direction. But I was unsettled by the feeling that, like Prudence, perhaps I too was resisting who I really was for the sake of propriety, expectation – and fear. Sure, I was making a good living writing newspaper and magazine articles. My bylines appeared in the best financial journals in the country, often the world. But I also remembered that up until college I wrote a great deal of poetry. My teachers all said I had a gift for it, but both my parents discouraged it, noting that all poets wound up depressed and poor. They tolerated it. When I was finished with my homework and assigned reading, I was allowed to write. When I was in high school my father got me a summer internship at a brokerage house, which he insisted I take instead of accepting a seat at the Young Poets Workshop at Hampshire College. The final straw was when I brought home a B- in poetry in my junior year of college. What my parents didn’t realize is that this was actually a good grade in that class. We had a borderline insane visiting poet from Nicaragua who thought everything American students wrote was superficial nonsense. Ava Pelotta’s was the most intense, electrifying, and unpredictable class I’d ever taken. She would come in to class with an old worn-out shoe, throw it on the conference table, and say, ‘In my country, a young boy was killed wearing this one shoe. He was shot while you were complaining that you didn’t want the Mayor MocCheese toy in your Happy Meal! Write.’ She’d bury her head in her hands and weep for the entire hour and a half. She’d write comments like, ‘Crap!’ or ‘Utter bullshit’ on our assignments, and frankly, most of the time she was right. I worked harder in that class than I ever had and, although B- was the lowest grade I’d ever received in my entire academic career, was quite proud that I hadn’t ranked a D like the majority of my class.
Once I wrote a poem about two leaves in autumn. They were friends and had frolicked about together all summer. When September rolled around, one leaf fell to the ground. The friends were heartbroken to be separated. The leaf on the ground relentlessly tried to return to his familiar limb. His efforts were always fruitless. After weeks of trying to return to
his branch, he saw something miraculous. His friend, along with several other leaves, fell to the ground. He never could defy gravity to return home, but if he was patient, the leaf would be with his friend once again. The teacher’s comment: ‘Trite.’ All of my life, teachers told my parents what a bright student I was. Such a hard worker. So respectful of teachers. Ava hadn’t received the memo that I was perfect. I worked harder than I’d ever imagined I could in her class. Not by studying hard or memorizing the works of great poets, but by digging two layers deeper than I’d known existed within me to write poetry she wouldn’t dismiss as childish nonsense. By the end of the semester, she wrote ‘Nice’ on three of my poems and gave me the highest grade in the class.
My parents insisted that I not take any more poetry classes because it would ‘tank my GPA.’ My father said it would be impossible to get into a decent journalism program if I had a low grade in writing classes. Plus they were paying the bills so there really was no refuting their decision. ‘You’ll thank me for this someday, Sarah,’ my father said. ‘Take it from someone who knows how the world works. You can’t let some crazy lady mess up your future because she has a political agenda.’ To add insult to injury, my father called the dean of the English department and got her to change the B- to a ‘pass’ on my transcript. The day I feel grateful for this has yet to arrive.
Sophie’s voice returned me to the present. ‘So you have to think about a man who’s going to be sophisticated and exciting. Well read but not academic. Fun but not an idiot who thinks tickling a woman shows how playful and cute he is. And if he has a big dick, I’m sure we won’t hear any complaints.’ She sat upright with a spark. ‘Hey, why don’t we do this? Prudence and I are going out tonight. Why doesn’t Gwen come along and get to know her and what she likes. Sarah, you should Google her and get to know her that way. And while you’re online, check out Single in the City and see if you can find a few good men there.’
That afternoon, Hunter threw a snowball at me. We built a fortress in front of our home and tossed snowballs at passersby. They were so softly packed, they broke open like fireworks immediately after we launched them. As we watched Freaky Friday that evening, I wondered what it would be like to switch bodies with Prudence Malone.
After Hunter went to bed, Reilly lit a fire as I placed peppermint tea bags in mugs with candy cane handles. ‘When do you want to set our New Year’s goals?’ Reilly asked, as I returned to the couch. When we were dating, Reilly and I talked about how we were the only two people we knew of who set their New Year’s resolutions in mid-December so they could hit the ground running in January. We both agreed that it was rather silly how people wrote down all of these grand ideas without an action plan to achieve them. We agreed that the holiday season was the perfect time to devise a strategy for realizing our New Year’s goals. But this evening, as I enjoyed the warmth of the fire and tea, I wanted nothing to do with setting goals for the New Year. I wanted to enjoy the present with my new husband.
Reilly went to sleep at 11 P.M., as he always does, and I went online to troll for men, as I never do.
I filled out my personality profile as Prudence Malone after scanning her photo into the Single in the City site. After answering the basics about my general interests, the site wanted me to write a series of short essays. ‘My idea of a perfect date,’ I said aloud, repeating the question on the questionnaire. I’m not even sure of my idea of the perfect date, much less Prudence’s. ‘My ideal date would happen spontaneously,’ I wrote, without thinking. ‘Once a guy took me to an absolutely horrible play and at intermission he asked how I liked it. I knew I couldn’t bear another moment of the awful play and decided I’d come clean. I knew that his reaction to my candor would determine the rest of our night. I told him I hated the play and wanted to skip the second act. He said he was relieved because he thought it was awful too. We walked through Central Park talking (though if any man ever suggested we “take a walk and have a long chat,” I would consider him contrived, clichéd, and unforgivably cheap) about whatever popped into our heads. We ended up playing a vicious couple of rounds of air hockey (again, invite me out for air hockey and I’d make you swallow the puck), then found this horrendously “laid-back” coffee shop where it took thirty minutes to get our drinks, and we played Scrabble till 3 A.M.’ I sighed nostalgically recalling this date – until I realized it never happened.
‘I’m an artist,’ I continued, when asked about my lifestyle. ‘I suppose I’ve always been one, but it wasn’t until last year that I realized this was what I was meant to do. Rather, this was who I was meant to be. I was an accountant, which is a fine way to make a living if you enjoy it, but when you start wondering if you could actually slit your throat with triplicate forms, you know it’s time to get out.’ I deleted that last sentence, fearing that my suicidal references might not come off as whimsical and artsy, as I was hoping to portray Prudence. ‘Life is fun,’ I continued. ‘And I like living!’ I deleted that part too. If you like living, you don’t really need to say it. And something about stating it on a general questionnaire seemed too weird. I revised. ‘I was an accountant, which is a fine way to make a living, but if you get creative on the job, it’ll land you in federal prison.’
‘What do I do for fun?’ I read aloud. I sat silently for a few moments before I was relieved to remember that the question was directed to Prudence, not me. ‘Biggest heartbreak?’ I read aloud. ‘Discovering that I married a bottle of gin,’ I deleted as soon as I wrote. I thought of Sophie and how she walked out on her marriage, and how Prudence had recently become the person she was always meant to be, and felt a sinking sense of inadequacy. Of cowardice.
Chapter Five
I decided to finish my profile later and look at the guys’ photos. There was a forty-two-year-old man kneeling with a football. He wasn’t terrible looking, but I shuddered at the headline, ‘Strong and Silent Type.’ More like a lobotomized Goliath. I always hated guys who described themselves as ‘silent.’ Why not just say, ‘dumb’ or ‘antisocial’? Or better still, ‘Has nothing to say.’
A grainy headshot of a man tilting his head near a tabby cat read, ‘I like to cuddle.’ I rolled my eyes. At least he didn’t say he likes pussy. I giggled at my departure. I’d become such a bore this last month that it was nice to shock myself with an uncharacteristically crass remark.
One balding guy with a goatee and disturbing smirk was pictured leaning in to what was probably a computer keyboard out of the photo frame. Headline: ‘Sexy Ladies Apply Here.’ In capital letters he wrote, ‘I am a sexy, real man.’ Oh, to be that delusional.
Clyde offered in his headline that he was STD-free. If this was his greatest bragging right, I’d have to pass.
There was Todd, the word butcher. ‘I’m a celebral kind of guy whose analization of my last relationship is that it was a catapulist for change in my life.’ I suppose that means his girlfriend hurled his sorry ass out the door, along with his celery sticks.
Almost as bad as the Terminator of the English language were the wannabe intellectuals – those who try so hard to sound smart that they actually seem like blathering morons. ‘Insofar as the dynamic of interpersonal relationships, one must always maintain a fatalistic view of the options that disclose themselves,’ wrote Tim. What was that even supposed to mean?
One guy featured a photo of himself holding a cardboard sign that read, ‘Will work for love.’ Sweet sentiment. I almost would have gone for it if he weren’t completely naked behind the sign. Another implored, ‘Break glass in case of emergency.’ I guess he was trying to say that if you shattered your computer monitor, he’d be there behind the screen. I’m not sure. The only thing I knew with certainty was that his gimmick wasn’t working.
Steve said that looks weren’t very important and intelligence wasn’t important at all.
Martin said in the first paragraph that he was kind to animals. Shouldn’t this be a given?
Ron tried to show how quirky he was by reveali
ng that he liked to leave the windows open when it rained. His windows, my floors. Not a good combination. Oh, yes, this was about Prudence. I can’t imagine she’d have much tolerance for rain man either.
‘I was separated from average children when I was younger,’ I read from Kyle. You were probably a danger to them. Kyle was pale with a tense-looking neck and stringy moustache. Like the drivers on the New Jersey Turnpike probably couldn’t help craning their necks to see Rudy’s mangled car, I couldn’t help reading Kyle’s profile. ‘I wrote advanced poetry and sonnets that were beyond the comprehension of even my teachers,’ he continued. I laughed aloud. Poor misunderstood darling. ‘I hope my special someone is out there, wherever there may be for you.’ What?! My special someone? Oh, yes, Kyle is such a poet. And wherever there may be for you? Like the average children in his school, I do believe my best course of action is to separate myself from Kyle.
‘Wow me!’ a headline implored.
‘Fuck you,’ I said to the Donald Trump lookalike, posed leaning on his car. I loved the anonymity of life online. Through the two degrees of separation of our computer screens, I felt free to say exactly what I wanted to these single-digit IQ losers. Never had I been so harsh and judgmental of others. Never had I used such language. Never had I had so much fun.
‘Smokin’ hot firefighter looking to spark a flame with a spatial lady,’ said twenty-eight-year-old Manny. The man made time to pose in his uniform (bare chested) and yet couldn’t be bothered to check his spelling. And, I’m sorry, if you’re looking to spark a flame, that wouldn’t make you much of a firefighter. You’d be a pyromaniac. Just FYI, there are no flames in space, dip-shit.
Spewing out anger at these men was incredibly uplifting. I felt a tad guilty that in the season of comfort and joy, I was getting my jollies yelling at men who were simply looking for love. Then I got over it and went on to the next profile. Who needed Vilma Veeter? I was unleashing my inner bitch all by myself.
