Scribbling Women & the Real-Life Romance Heroes Who Love Them

by Hope Tarr

  I knew I adored the man who took me to that kind of movie on a first date. Adored him enough to change my behavior and not run away.

  A lot more happened to get us to marriage. There were ups and downs to our relationship, and a lot of us learning to find common ground (he’s a mad reader now, and we have an extensive library of books; I regularly go to, and enjoy, sporting events). In fact, after almost twelve years of marriage, two kids, and two countries, there continue to be ups and downs. But we still find a way to stay strong together. We talk. We’ve learned to like each other’s interests, and at a base level, it turns out we had a lot in common. We take each other as we are with no unreasonable expectations. And we’re still in love.

  At our wedding dinner, his best man got up and regaled the audience—including my parents!—with the story of how we met and how we got together. I was a little embarrassed, but how could I regret any of it? I’d somehow stumbled onto the man of my dreams without realizing it, expecting it, or even knowing it at the time. That taxi driver was right. Who knew? An Irishman did marry me.

  All thanks to a bottle of whiskey and that big Georgian house in Dun Laoghaire.

  Kat Simons earned her PhD in animal behavior, and then brought her knowledge to her paranormal romances, where she delights in taking nature and turning it on its ear. After traveling the world, she now lives in New York City with her family. For more on Kat’s books, visit her at www.katsimons.com.

  Speeding Down the Relationship Super Highway*

  By Hope Tarr

  When you meet Mr. Right, or Ms. Right as the case may be, odds are it will be nowhere near the movie magical moment you’ve pictured. You will not be wearing the good underwear. The matching bra and panties from Victoria’s Secret with the snap crotch and the underwire yet lacy cups will be not on your body but back at home, either in the dirty laundry or tucked inside a drawer. Nor will you be wearing makeup, perfume, or perhaps even deodorant. Your hair will not be styled; you will be lucky if it is even washed. The Universe being the jokester It is, when you finally meet this seemingly perfect-for-you person, the first thought that will pop into your head will be, Damn, I can look so much better than this!

  So goes my first meeting with Raj. It is a Sunday evening, September 2009. I am at Pop Burger in Manhattan’s trendy Meatpacking District, doing something I have sworn never to do.

  Speed dating.

  In the eighties, love was a battlefield. In the (almost) 2010s, it is apparently a raceway.

  Before today, I have never been speed dating. I say this with no small amount of pride. When I left my apartment that afternoon to meet my new friend, Nya, for a guided walking tour of the Lower East Side, I never imagined our outing would lead to…this.

  Among Nya’s plurality of part-time jobs—Martha Graham dancer, Gray Line tour guide, singer and actor—is speed-dating hostess. The latter is earlier revealed as we descend the steps of the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street, our fallback when the walking tour doesn’t take off.

  “Want to get a glass of wine somewhere?” I ask, loath to end the beautiful fall weekend by going home and doing laundry.

  She shakes her head, looking regretful. “I wish I could, but I have to go to work.”

  “On a Sunday night?”

  The question comes not from me but from Max, the winsome twenty-eight-year-old docent-cum-filmmaker who has followed us out. In the course of the forty-five-minute tour, he and I traded flirtatious badinage, lingering looks—and more than a few sparks.

  Nya nods. “I’m hosting a speed-dating event tonight in Meatpacking.” She divides her gaze between us, and a smile suffuses her face. “Hey, you two should come!”

  Max and I exchange glances. “I don’t think so,” we say, almost in unison.

  “C’mon,” she coaxes. “I’m short two people. Admission’s twenty dollars, but I’ll comp you both.”

  Max’s gaze veers back to me. “I’ll go if you go.”

  “Deal.” It won’t really be speed dating if I have a pre-arranged date, or so I rationalize.

  I reach the restaurant ten minutes before the “dating” is due to start. The bare-bones takeout storefront is deliberately deceptive. The event takes place in the clubby backroom. Walking inside, I note a long bar and more than a dozen white cloth-covered two-tops with numbered table tents.

  Checking in the registrants, Nya hands me a sticker badge, a rating card, and a Sharpie. “Have fun,” she says, her gaze going to the person in line behind me.

  I stick on my name tag and head over to the bar. Other attendees mill about. Armed with a glass of chardonnay, I size up the scene. The men are friendly, the women not so much. Tricked out in slinky, strappy dresses and stilettos, they greet my bright hellos with curt nods and cautionary glances. With my jeans, scoop-neck T-shirt and boots, minimal makeup, and air-dried hair, no one can accuse me of trying too hard or even at all. For a brief moment, I wish I’d taken time to go home and change. Then again, I’m not here looking for love or even a date, speedy or otherwise. I have a date, or at least a dating prospect, en route. Until he arrives, I am a social ethnographer on par with Margaret Mead.

  Raj and I meet before the speed dating starts. (He asks that I make that very clear.) The sea of our fellow registrants suddenly parts, and a cute young Indian man approaches.

  “Hi, I’m Raj.”

  The first feature that strikes me is his eyes, velvety black-brown orbs exuding kindness, if a bit of uncertainty.

  “Hope.” I extend my hand, and he encloses it briefly in his.

  The second thing I notice about him is his hair—wavy and thick, collar-length ebony shot with significant amounts of silver. In his mid-thirties, I think, and then remind myself to stop doing math and just have fun.

  We slip into a conversation that feels surprisingly easy and, well, real. Raj tells me about his volunteerism with the city’s Arts & Business Council and how moving it was to participate in reading the names of the fallen at the recent 9/11 Memorial. Ending the story, he asks, “How did you find out about tonight?”

  I glance back to the check-in. “The event hostess is a friend. Actually, she’s a friend-of-a friend. We hung out today, and she invited me here. Actually, she said she was short on people and needed bodies,” I add, as though my being here is all about helping out Nya, as though I’m some kind of a Sex and the City Mother Teresa. “I’ve never done anything like this before. Actually, I’m not really doing this,” I tack on, because it’s suddenly really important that he not think I’m lame. Or a loser. “I’m a writer. I’m going to write a freelance article about the whole experience.” I stop, realizing I’m rambling—and acting like an asshole.

  Raj looks impressed. “You’re a writer. That’s cool.”

  I scan his face for signs he might be putting me on, but fortunately I find nothing but obvious sincerity. “I’ve never done this before either,” he says. “A client told me about it. I almost didn’t come.” He hesitates. “Now I’m really glad I did.” He smiles broadly, revealing an endearing glimpse of gum line.

  By now, Max has arrived, but beyond a brief nod in his direction, I have as good as forgotten him. My sudden disinterest is apparently mutual. He takes up talking to a petite blonde in a spaghetti-strap dress, and we go our separate ways.

  A recorded gong summons us to our places—quelle cheesy. Raj and I reluctantly part. “I’ll see you later,” he says.

  “See you later,” I answer, and head off to find my table.

  There are thirty of us in all, equally divided between men and women. We settle in, the women at our tables, the men in line while Nya goes over the rules. Each date will last three minutes. When the gong sounds, the man must move on to the next table, no exceptions. There will be a mid-event break during which a snack will be served. Once everyone has met, the evening will end. Attendees go home where, from their—our—computers, they—we—can use the log-in and password printed on the rating card to go online and record their—our— selec
tions. The service will notify each attendee of his/her matches, and then individuals are responsible for exchanging information and setting up an actual date. In other words, we are expected to be grown-ups.

  Nya ends with, “Good luck, have fun,” and then the gong goes off again.

  The men file forward one at a time, sit at each table for three minutes, and make their pitches. “I express my creativity through…” has been pre-selected as the conversation icebreaker. We have been given rating cards to keep track of potential candidates for matches, but I leave mine lying on the seat. I don’t make a love connection, but I do talk to several seemingly nice men. Everyone is perfectly polite. No one comes off as a loser.

  Seven dates in, Nya announces the break. Trays of sliders are carried in. I scan the area for Raj, aka Cute Indian Guy, but he’s nowhere in sight. Instead, one of my so far “dates,” a handsome Japanese American with matching dimples, beats a path to my table and invites me to the bar for a glass of wine. I accept. We strike up a conversation, and I realize I’m having a pretty decent time.

  The gong sounds, signaling the beginning of the second half of the session. I have eight more dates to go. Hopefully, one of them will be Raj.

  My next guy up is mid-thirties, buzz cut, and a scary-bad dresser. His glittery T-shirt reveals thick tattooed forearms. He is carrying an actual clipboard and wearing a look that says he is approaching our “date” as serious business.

  “I’m Jerry from Queens, and I express my creativity through sexual deviancy,” he states, plunking down into the empty seat.

  Wow, okay. I snatch my hand out of his bear paw and draw back. “I’m uh…Hope.”

  “I have twelve tattoos and multiple piercings,” he announces with obvious pride. “Wanna know where they all are?”

  Wow, again. I answer with an emphatic head shake. “Thanks, but I absolutely do not.”

  I’ll pause here to say I totally get that I’m in New York City. It’s not like I’ve never before encountered an alternative life-styler. Here, you don’t have to venture much beyond your building entrance to encounter people engaged in sexual scenes so codified and specific they must rent storage space in New Jersey just to accommodate the gear. Still, this is Pop Burger in Meatpacking, not a fetish club in Alphabet City. And it is but six o’clock on a Sunday night. Shouldn’t we at the very least…pace ourselves?

  Jerry from Queens jerks his bullet-shaped head over to a numberless table set just outside our event periphery occupied by two women wearing heavy makeup, big hair, and skin-tight clothing. They meet my gaze and smirk.

  “See those two over there? They’re my slaves. I own them.” He searches my face for a reaction. I guess I’m supposed to be really impressed or really freaked out or both.

  Instead, I battle my twitching lips and choke back a chuckle. “Then why are you speed dating?”

  The question draws a snort. He leans in closer, and I brace myself not to retreat. “Unlike these losers, I have an agenda.” He gives the clipboard a purposive tap.

  Small surprise, Jerry’s agenda is to add a third “slave” to his merry ménage.

  “Well, I have to tell you, Jerry, that person is so not me. I’m a straight arrow.” I reach out to the rating card affixed to his clipboard. “In fact, you write ‘straight arrow’ right there next to my name.”

  I hadn’t intentionally used a dominatrix voice, but Jerry from Queens cottons to my command with the docility of a pet poodle. He dutifully writes the words “straight arrow” beside my name, his silently moving lips keeping pace with the pencil.

  The canned gong signals the end of our interlude. “Have a nice rest of the evening,” I say, relieved for Jerry to haul himself up and away.

  As soon as his back is turned, I grab my purse and dig inside for my travel-size bottle of hand sanitizer. “Thank God,” I say aloud, finally finding it. I squeeze a generous dollop onto my palm and rub my hands briskly together. The feeling of being watched has me looking up. “Oh, I am so sorry.”

  Cute Indian Man—Raj—has quietly slipped into the cushioned booth seat across from me, so quietly I might have missed he was even there.

  I extend a freshly sanitized hand. “I don’t want to come off as a germaphobe, but you wouldn’t believe the uh…conversation I had with that guy who just left.”

  Slim brown fingers wrap briefly about my palm, a firm but gentle grip. “That’s okay,” he says with a smile, giving me back my hand.

  I share the interchange with Jerry from Queens, which suddenly strikes me as seriously funny. Shaking my head, I realize I’m laughing aloud—belly laughing—and that Raj is laughing with me.

  “But I shouldn’t be taking up our time talking about someone else,” I say, contrite. Our three-minute “date” is sailing by—I sense it is almost up—and so far I have spent it recapping his predecessor.

  He sends me a sympathetic look. “I’m just sorry you had to go through that.”

  I shrug, though his apparent compassion is refreshing—really refreshing. “When you’re a writer, pretty much everything is material.”

  The glib words slip out before I can recall them. Once they do, I mentally kick myself. I like this guy, or at least I like what I’ve so far seen. The last thing I want is for him to think I’m mining him for “material.”

  “Actually, I’m thinking I may not write an article at all. I doubt the dating service would appreciate seeing my scenario with Jerry in print, and I wouldn’t want to uh…cause any problems for Nya,” I add, once again giving Mother Teresa stiff competition for that sainthood status.

  The gong goes off again, for once far too soon. For the second time, we part with reluctance. I have six more dates to slug through. Thankfully, there are no more Jerrys. The evening ends slightly before nine o’clock. I expect people to hang out afterward, but the room clears as though a rat has been released.

  Back home, I head over to my computer, log on to the dating site, and enter the IDs of my four possible matches: Max (for “old” time’s sake), the Japanese-American guy with the crazily symmetrical dimples, and a handsome real estate agent who’s admitted to recently ending a marriage. Saving the best for last, I put in Raj. My quick-beating heart tells me that my social ethnography research has stopped being “research” and morphed into something more, something…real. Drumming my nails on the computer cart, I wait. Less than a minute later, a message box flashes onto the screen. Raj and I are an instant match! A few minutes later, a short to-the-point e-mail lands in my in-box.

  It was nice meeting you this evening. Are you free for dinner on Saturday?

  Four years and many dinners later, we are happily together, cohabitating with cats and books and a bottomless hamper of dirty laundry. Underlying the age differences and the cultural differences are the differences-differences that demarcate any two people who not only come together as a couple but commit to remain that way. We are a classic case of opposites attracting—and our core values are the glue.

  Among my faults is a tendency toward worrying. Okay, forget “tendency,” my Anxiety Closet is pretty much the size of Versailles. When I’m in the throes of fretting, Raj will tease and even tickle me straight out of it. Sometimes, all it takes is for him to hoist his beautiful feathery black brows and cut me a look that so clearly says, Really, Hope? Seriously!?!

  Writer though I am, I am fundamentally an extrovert, a social creature who fills her creative well from real-life interaction. I could be perfectly happy going out five nights a week. I have been perfectly happy going out five nights a week. In contrast, Raj is a homebody. One night out a week is all he needs, and strictly speaking he doesn’t need that. Still, when we do go out, we have a great time. He doesn’t need to socialize as much as I do, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t really good at it. He is.

  Whereas a decent-weather day has me seizing on any excuse to be outside, he is happy to hibernate, surfing the Net or watching reruns of eighties sitcoms. No matter how brilliantly the sun is shining, no m
atter how dulcet the spring breeze or crisp the autumn air, he’s content to stay indoors. On balance, winter has me feeling moody and restless, but he remains sunnily disposed across the seasons.

  I’m a stickler for punctuality, while Raj is reliably an hour late for any non-work outing. If we are leaving town, his lateness comes closer to two hours, sometimes three. In lieu of starting out every road trip silently or not-so-silently seething, I have learned to bump up our official departure time by at least an hour. Imperfect, for sure, but it works.

  And so do we. Raj and I work. We just do. Amidst all the differences, our mutual respect, our core compatibility, our love steers us to safe harbor time and time again.

  Then again, we did lose our speed-dating virginity together. If that doesn’t bond you, what will?

  *Excerpted from Forty Three is Too Old for a Fifth Floor Walkup: A Coming of Middle Age Memoir © Hope Tarr

  Hope Tarr earned a Master’s Degree in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Education before coming to terms with the inconvenient truth: she didn’t want to analyze or teach people. What she wanted was to write about them! Twenty-five romance novels later, Hope is doing just that, sharing her Happily Ever After stories with readers—and finding a few HEAs of her own. Operation Cinderella, the launch to her Suddenly Cinderella Series, has been optioned as a feature film by Twentieth Century Fox. Hope is also a cofounder and current curator of Lady Jane’s Salon®, New York City’s first and only monthly romance series now in its sixth year with seven satellites nationwide. She lives in Manhattan with her real-life romance hero and their rescue cats. Visit her online at www.hopetarr.com, www.ladyjanesalonnyc.com, www.facebook.com/hopec.tarr, and www.twitter.com/hopetarr.