Graduates in Wonderland

by Jessica Pan

  Also, you don’t deserve this, because you were far too flippant toward Oprah and her wisdom, but she had some advice that I think you should know about.

  You can make your own potpourri and turn it into sachets!

  Just kidding.

  ACTUALLY, her advice was: Stop looking for The One, but before you do, think hard about what you really want. You’re supposed to write a list of everything you want in someone, and you should be very specific, even down to eye color, height, weight, etc., and then you just let it go. So of course I did it. Thinking, I’ll never be able to let it go.

  Okay, and yes, this might be embarrassing, but here is the list (you make one too):

  1.Must be very sensitive and yet strong and decisive about everyday life

  2.Hilarious but in the throw-­off sort of way (not trying to make everyone laugh all of the time)

  3.Must kind of sort of want children but be willing to wait a very long time

  4.Pretty eyes

  5.Foreign is ideal. I like making fun of accents.

  6.Medium build, slim but fit

  7.Athletic but not obnoxiously so

  8.Interested in the arts, especially books

  9.Must think that I am delightful and endearing, always

  10.Must never fight with me, or be very satisfying to fight with (as in, I can always convince him that I am right)

  11.Loves dogs

  12.Speaks more than one language

  13.Has interesting family, so we are not bored over the holidays and I am reassured about our children’s genetics

  14.Charm too is most important but must not flirt with other women

  15.Between five ten and six feet

  16.Interesting career, must not work too much (no more than ten hours a day usually)

  17.Love to travel, desire to live abroad

  18.Calm, deep, pensive

  19.Should smoke some of the time, socially, but not too much; be willing to quit eventually

  20.Have interesting group of friends, much like mine: very smart but also charming

  21.Must be intelligent about obscure topics

  22.Should appreciate my writing

  23.Should always over-­respond to my text messages and e-mails and initiate contact much of the time

  24.Should be adept at hunting, playing polo, and other terribly aristocratic activities

  25.Should be wonderful in bed

  STOP JUDGING ME.

  Oh: The point of that list being (and this is important) that you write it, you let it go, and then you get him! The universe just sends him your way. Like custom-­ordering stationery or a monogrammed pillowcase. That is the magic of it. And apparently it totally happened to all of these women in O magazine.

  You have to remember, though: You can’t go out looking for it. And you can’t live your life eliminating guys off your list because you think they don’t have these qualities. You just do this exercise once, give it to the universe, and then completely forget about it.

  Okay. There’s your daily dose of my self-­absorption. Now, yours.

  Love!

  Rach

  DECEMBER 30

  Two hours later

  Jess to Rachel

  “Wonderful in bed” is a little vague to me. I imagine him performing magic tricks for you while you sit up in bed wearing a silk robe, clapping your hands, delighted. “It’s just wonderful!” Also, hunting and polo? Seriously? Well, at least someone will love those guys.

  For mine, I had to remember everyone I have ever dated or tried but failed to get.

  I took this pretty seriously with the mantra “Be careful what you wish for!” running through my head. What if I met the perfect guy who fit everything on my list, except he was a Scientologist who likes talking about motorcycles? What then? The universe would just reply, “Look, you gave me a list and I delivered. I gave you a man who has no body odor who likes Fleetwood Mac and now you want me to tweak him? Deal with it.”

  This is what I came up with:

  1.Very funny in my particular taste

  2.Adores me and only me

  3.Dark hair

  4.Beautiful hands

  5.Gorgeous smile

  6.Has close friends he confides in (If a guy doesn’t share his feelings with anyone, he doesn’t have any. Friends or feelings. Period. I’m not going to be the one to fix him.)

  7.I must find him very sexy. (Don’t care if the world thinks he’s gross as long as I don’t.)

  8.Secure enough to dance in public and be silly with me

  9.Will carry a conversation when I am being too awkward

  10.Intuitive

  11.Open-­minded and intelligent, but never condescending

  12.Nonreligious

  13.Taste in music is 80 percent like mine—­I couldn’t bear to resign myself to long drives listening to heavy metal or classic rock for the rest of my life.

  14.Gets excited about life and new experiences

  15.Polite to strangers

  16.Ambitious but not so much that he neglects me, finds me very lazy

  17.His presence must emanate safety, fun, and sexiness (like a firefighter).

  18.Capacity for deep feelings

  19.My singing, irrational habits, and snoring are endearing to him (this is a wish list, right?)

  20.Healthy

  21.Must not be a father yet

  22.Can be serious

  23.Loyal

  24.Provokes a racing heart

  25.Reads fiction and history

  26.Unpretentious

  27.Must have been looking for someone exactly like me, give or take fifteen pounds and a social smoking habit

  28.Deep voice

  29.Not too hairy

  30.Never smells bad (Unless stranded without access to soap—­then it is forgiven. I’m not a monster.)

  31.Spontaneous but not in the “Look at the new face tattoo I just got!” way

  32.Does not easily sunburn

  33.Really good at sex and acts that precede it

  34.Infinitely interesting, but not so much so that I feel infinitely boring in comparison

  35.Not self-­righteous

  36.Excellent memory (I feel like I’ve met so many guys who just can’t remember shit. What’s the point if they can’t remember?)

  37.Willing to live in a different country but also willing to settle down somewhere in America

  DECEMBER 30

  Ten minutes later

  Jess to Rachel

  38.cuddly

  THE END

  P.S. Cuddly is not code for fat.

  DECEMBER 30

  One minute later

  Jess to Rachel

  Shit. I forgot SUCH an important one:

  39. Asks questions and listens to the answers

  THE END!!! I GIVE YOU THIS LIST, UNIVERSE!

  P.S. As I write this, Bruno is still snoring and taking up the entire bed. He fits nothing on the list except that he is brunette and sexy. That’s like going to a grocery store to shop for Thanksgiving dinner and coming back with a frozen turkey and a bottle of Diet Coke. Good enough for now.

  JANUARY 15

  Rachel to Jess

  Well, it’s the New Year, and I’m back in New York. On my final night at home, I was packing and found a bunch of empty Southern Comfort bottles under my bed—­in high school, my friend Emily asked me to take them home after a party at her house. Years ago, I had shoved them behind my sleeping bag and forgotten about them entirely until I was searching for a backpack and found them ten minutes before leaving for the airport.

  So guess where they still are? My parents are planning on redoing my old room, and I’m hoping they don’t find them and think I’ve
taken to drinking an entire bottle of SoCo...alone...in bed...every night for the past week. Little do they know, after they went to bed I was actually smoking a half a pack of cigarettes behind the garage in a parka and fingerless gloves.

  Now that I’m back at the nonprofit and assuming my adult persona again, I am surreptitiously writing this e-mail while supposedly writing board minutes. Bored minutes—­ha. Gets me every time.

  Being at work is such a harsh shift. At home, I was curling up in front of the fire, I’m in a city full of dirty snow, getting up at dawn (this is always the hardest part for me), and walking through the cold to the office, where there are about two hundred irate messages from artists all somehow pissed that we took two weeks off at Christmas.

  The other big difference about being back in New York is seeing my therapist again. It was freeing, in a way, not to have to “report back” to Claudia during my Christmas break about self-­destructive behavior (smoking behind the house, sleeping eleven hours a night). She always asks the questions I don’t want to answer. I know that she’ll just want to talk about whether my dream of Paris will be any different from the realities of New York, once I’m there. I don’t know that it will be, but I do know that Paris is more beautiful. It’s so hard to make myself go to our appointments. I guess it’s kind of like going to a dentist: You know it’s beneficial for you, but in the moment you’re paying so much money for someone to poke painfully at your gums.

  This was Claudia’s favorite topic for my first session back: “Did you apply to creative writing grad school?” No. “Why not?” I felt like I wasn’t ready, and I’m not sure I want to teach creative writing. “What does this have to do with your self-­esteem?” Okay, Claudia, you got me! I am terrified of being exposed as a fraud. Also, I have a fear of an imagined group of tweed-­jacket-­wearing assholes pointing at sentences I’ve written, reading them out loud to one another, and laughing hysterically. Claudia thinks that I have a tendency to dramatically catastrophize things, but I think she just SECRETLY HATES ME.

  I’m getting so antsy thinking about all of the many, many possible futures that could still happen. I’m still waiting to hear back from the Fulbright. It’s all about waiting.

  My back-­up was the master’s program in Cinematographic Studies at the Sorbonne. I just want to be in Paris. It costs almost nothing in tuition, and health care is included! It is, however, taught in French. The application included a six-­hour-­long French test last week and a two-­hour-­long conversation with a French professor. These things are so strange, because you end up having conversations about things you would never talk about in your native language.

  Professor: So, what is the national origin of your name?

  Me: German and English.

  Professor: Okay...

  Me: Oh, did you mean Rachel? I think it’s Jewish.

  Pause.

  Me: But I’m not Jewish.

  [I remember the Vichy government and the complicated French history with the Jews.]

  Me: But they have a wonderful culture! Such a rich...cultural...history.

  Pause.

  Me: Au revoir les enfants was such a sad movie.

  Professor: Yes.

  Me: Very, VERY sad.

  I blame this total catastrophe on my faulty preparation. The only thing I did was watch the French news every day, but I kind of hate watching the news. Probably because this is what it sounds like to me: asdjkhf FIRE asdkjfhkj DEAD askdjh THE SOMETHING asdkhjfkj EITHER IRAN OR IRAQ.

  Rosabelle’s Fulbright application also made it to the next stage for Argentina and I am relieved that we both made it. Selfishly, because it is less awkward around the apartment; nonselfishly, because I really love her and think that she deserves it. There have been so many nights when I’ve come home distraught and she drops everything, sends Buster into their room, and pours me a glass of wine. And as much as he drives me crazy by eating all of my food and accidentally using my toothbrush, Buster has brought out a lot of the best parts of Rosabelle, while also proving that people are really strange. Once, as a joke, Buster wore Rosabelle’s pink pajama bottoms that have a cupcake pattern. But now, he has taken to wearing them all the time and it’s just getting weird.

  For the moment, I shall have to settle for hugs from a hilarious man. That’s right. Saul’s back in my life; he called on New Year’s Eve. The last time I actually saw him was on a Monday after work and we were both in our office clothes and beaten down and bland compared to our upbeat college selves.

  This is my trip down memory lane—­one in which it feels like I can go back and take care of unfinished business for the years he and I flirted in college and never even kissed. Off to dinner with him soon. I will report back.

  Love,

  Rachel

  P.S. What’s going on with the Brazilian sex god in China??

  JANUARY 20

  Jess to Rachel

  FACT OF THE DAY: Gatinha is Brazilian Portuguese for “foxy lady.”

  I know because Bruno calls me this. I know that my brain has turned to absolute jelly as well, because I fucking love it when he calls me this.

  Where to begin, Rachel? Honestly. Honestly.

  Well, honestly? Bruno doesn’t speak the best English, which means that I can’t be sarcastic with him or even attempt to be funny with words—­he just doesn’t get it. After marathon conversations with Max­well that amounted to nothing, I take this as a good sign.

  Most nights with Bruno are spent in bars, shouting to be heard, not being understood even when heard, drinking alcohol, and wasting time until we can leave at a respectable hour and go back to my apartment and I get to have wild rainforest sex with my Brazilian lover.

  At college there was so much talking, talking, talking, but Bruno doesn’t talk—­he pulls me toward him and kisses me. Even though he remains mostly a mystery to me, we share little things, like our forays into Chinese grocery stores to pick up noodles or haggling together as we buy pirated DVDs from hidden shops (which he has to watch with English subtitles). But when he hands me my coat, pulls up my hood, and takes my hand, I feel happy even though our deepest conversations are limited to postsex basics that fade into him falling asleep and snoring softly.

  And because we can’t talk, I feel uninhibited. I like that he knows what he is doing, because God knows I don’t. It’s different from sleeping with American guys, at least the ones at Brown, where it always seemed to feel like there was a GOAL that must be met. With Bruno, it feels natural. I also feel uninhibited because he’s only in Beijing for a few more weeks. I’m not really sure where this is going, but I’m having fun, and it’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way.

  The biggest thing that I don’t like is his utter and complete lack of ambition. As in: He dropped out of his university Chinese class months ago, but didn’t tell his family, so he has been doing nothing for the past three months. Why should this matter? He’s not my boyfriend. And he’s moving back to Brazil in two weeks. But it bothers me.

  Anyway, we actually lost a little bit of time together because I got sick. It’s bitterly cold in Beijing, the air is dry, and I had a sore throat I couldn’t shake. My dad told me to go see a real doctor, but I’ve always wanted to try Traditional Chinese Medicine. Astrid came with me to a TCM clinic, where she asked for a massage and they suggested a “cupping” treatment to cure my ailments.

  Okay, I know you don’t know what this means, and neither did I. Cupping is like a massage, but instead of someone massaging you, they take empty glass cups, place a lit match in them to heat the air inside, then place the cups facedown on your back so that it forms a tight, painful suction. Then they drag the cups across your skin as they pull out toxins and leave you with circular purple bruises the size of tennis balls. It will also cause you to continually yelp the only Chinese word you will remember: Teng. Translation: Pain. Teng! Teng! TENG!

 
Meanwhile, Astrid was in the next room, getting a relaxing massage.

  Cupping is supposed to cure anything but cholera. Apparently I had cholera.

  I felt awful, maybe even more awful, after the treatment. But Chris, who was also sick and loves an excuse to get new drugs, went to a doctor who prescribed antibiotics, and was healed.

  He offered me some pills as I was heading over to Bruno’s. “Take two!” he yelled from the couch, as I put a sachet of pills in my purse and headed out.

  Later that night, as Bruno and I got ready for bed, I took the medicine. While we were lying in the darkness, talking softly (“What do you call this body part in Portuguese?”), I began to see the most beautiful images of things that don’t exist—­colors melding together, cars that drive on their sides, birds with feathers and fur, and it was all so beautiful. I wasn’t frightened at all, but completely in awe. I stared up at these incredible creatures and objects that appeared above us as I kept asking Bruno what he thought of them and if he liked them too.

  That’s pretty much the last thing I remember. And then—­a big blank.

  Ten hours later, I stirred slightly and I thought I was at home in Amarillo because I could sense the light on my face and it felt so much like the light from my childhood bedroom. I felt content to be at home. And then I rolled over onto a Brazilian. I froze BECAUSE THERE WAS A MAN NEXT TO ME IN MY BED. Thank God I figured out where I was and who he was before he woke up.

  Turns out I accidentally took two of Chris’s sleeping pills, which can cause hallucinations and slight amnesia. This is why I don’t do drugs. Bruno mentioned a movie we watched last night, and I remember nothing. Nothing but the fantastic images that appeared before me.

  Then I asked Bruno if I sounded insane when I was describing my hallucinations, and he didn’t know what I was talking about. He said I sounded like I always do.