I've Got Sand In All the Wrong Places

by Lisa Scottoline

  The next time I’m “just not that into” him, I won’t feel guilty about declining date number two.

  Which leads me to our next lesson.

  Lesson 3: It’s okay to be a little superficial.

  Straight or gay, men understand this. A big part, but not all, of sexual attraction is undeniably physical. Men don’t apologize for that, and no one expects them to.

  “Men are visual” is the common phrase.

  But women have eyes, too.

  They’re up here.

  Some men get angry at women who have the gall to be turned off by something. Catcallers and Internet trolls alike can spend hours evaluating women’s bodies, but the minute that attraction isn’t reciprocated, she’s a “stuck-up bitch.”

  It’s the Beauty and the Beast model. If the guy likes you, the only nice thing to do is like him back.

  I’ve internalized the idea that virtuous women aren’t supposed to care about looks. I feel so guilty when I’m not attracted to an otherwise-nice guy. I usually give him three dates and pray he’ll grow on me.

  But would Beast have loved Belle if she didn’t look drop-dead gorgeous in a yellow dress? I don’t remember anyone suggesting Beast just aim lower and find true love with another beast.

  Women have to stop indulging these double standards and punishing ourselves for human nature if we’re going to find love outside of a fairytale.

  So I’m learning. With each set-up attempt, I feel I’m getting closer and closer to finding a partner wonderful enough for the best man I know.

  And without meaning to, I might figure out how to better find one for myself.

  Empty Nesting for Experts

  Lisa

  Before I continue, let me make one thing clear.

  I love my daughter Francesca.

  This is, by now, a matter of record.

  I’ve said it about a million times and written essays about it.

  I give this very obvious preamble because I don’t want you to misconstrue the following.

  Which is that I really love being an empty-nester.

  I wasn’t sure I would feel this way. I was worried about Francesca’s moving out, especially because I was a single mother most of my life, and so it’s just been the two of us in the house, with way too many dogs, cats, fish, and guinea pigs.

  And that’s just the animals we kept in the house.

  I was worried about how I would deal with the change in my life when I was on my own, and wrote about that in one of our earlier volumes, which was titled My Nest Isn’t Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space.

  That was published when Francesca was just about to fly the coop, and I will tell you secretly that the title was aspirational. I was cheering myself up, unsure about how I was going to face the future.

  I think you might be familiar with doing that.

  Women are terrific at putting a brave face on things.

  We turn that frown upside down like nobody’s business.

  Not that we hide our feelings, but we try to be strong for everybody, and that’s part of our job as mothers.

  If your bond with your children is strong, which I suspect it is because you’re reading this, then you may have done the same thing.

  We’re the leaders of the family, though we don’t always put it that way. I always thought of it that way. We set the tone for the family and the house exactly the same way that a CEO sets a corporate culture. Your house can feel happy and stable or miserable and dramatic, depending not on events but on how a mother reacts to the events.

  You cannot keep adversity from your life or protect your children from hardship. These things will come, and they should, because how you handle them will teach your child how to handle them. A child will always take a cue from its mother.

  I lived that, so I know.

  But that was then, and this is now.

  I love my daughter, but I absolutely love being an empty-nester.

  It’s been over five years since she moved to Manhattan, and I can’t tell you how great it is to have complete and total freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I please.

  In fact, I’ve gotten dangerously used to it.

  My days are still busy, writing and doing whatever business things that are associated with my books, as well as answering emails and going online to post on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, usually about my books, but more often about my dogs.

  They love publicity.

  I take videos of them, and also the horses and chickens, having the time of my life. Sometimes I realize that I’m doing these things to reach out to people, to let them into my life because I like that connection, but even that is on my terms. It’s not as if I have to pick anybody up after play practice, run to the store to make sure there’s food for dinner, or bang on the door at Staples after closing time, so I can buy whatever supplies we need for some last-minute school project.

  I don’t have to get up early to make anybody’s lunch.

  I can put the TV on whatever channel I want to, at whatever volume I want to.

  I can watch TV late at night, having a little party with James Corden, who’s terrific.

  I can ride my pony whenever I want to, and the same with walking the dogs.

  There are a million little things that every day keep me busy and active, and I never worry about filling the time, because I need so much more of it than a mere twenty-four hours.

  But in a good way.

  And when I reflect upon my happiness of late, I don’t think it has to do with any of those quotidian freedoms, as joyful as they are.

  I think it has to do with something bigger, which is that now I no longer have responsibility for another human being under my roof.

  I don’t have to lead anybody anymore.

  I’m CEO in a company of exactly one.

  I have only myself to take care of these days.

  And that is glorious.

  A child is a beloved responsibility.

  But a responsibility just the same.

  When I talk to my fellow empty-nesters, I find that we are generally deliriously happy, and I hear them expressing the same general feeling.

  We used to be afraid that when that responsibility was lifted, there would be absence, a loss, or an empty hole, or a general lack thereof.

  Ladies, I assure you, that isn’t the case.

  Nature abhors a vacuum, and so do empty-nesters.

  Your time will get filled up with everything, at the same time that your interests expand, your obligations narrow to just one thing.

  You.

  Enjoy.

  Empty Nesting for Experts, Part Two

  Lisa

  I’m skipping the preamble because you just read it, but remember I love my daughter Francesca when you read the following:

  I love when she comes home to visit, but it is not without incident.

  In other words, after you become an experienced empty-nester, you get used to the complete freedom you have and the many preferences you develop, which will be disturbed when your beloved daughter reenters your Mom Orbit.

  Star Wars will not result, but there may be minor interplanetary skirmishes for which you should be prepared.

  Like, for example, the fact that I like to watch CNN, twenty-four/seven.

  Let me explain.

  I don’t actually watch TV because I’m working, but I like it on in the background during the daytime, and it is not easy to find daytime television that’s not a soap opera, which would distract me with semi-nudity, or talk shows with celebrity interviews, which could distract me with Bradley Cooper.

  Don’t get me started.

  And I admit with presidential politics in the air of late, I’ve gotten very interested in the news, so I like to stay tuned to a relatively neutral station like CNN.

  I don’t know your particular political orientation, but I keep an open mind and have voted both Republican and Democratic in my day. So if we assume that FOX is for Republicans and MSNBC is fo
r Democrats, the only acronym we’re left with is CNN.

  Also I admit that since events in the Middle East have heated up, I’ve become more alarmed about the violence and war in the world, so I like to keep informed.

  Just in case somebody drops a bomb on me.

  I want to know it first.

  “Why are you watching CNN?” Francesca asks, home for a visit.

  I generally answer with the above.

  Francesca frowns, not angrily, but out of concern for her extremely naïve mother. “They’re just scaring you.”

  “No, they’re informing me about scary things.”

  “Mom. They’re exaggerating all of the threats, so you stay tuned. That’s what they do.” Francesca sits down at the kitchen island, and I stand on the opposite side where I always do, as if I am defending hearth, home, and The Way I Do Things Now That I’m an Empty-Nester.

  “The threats are real. The Russians are flying planes into Syria. That could lead to a world war.”

  Francesca half-smiles. “That’s just what they want you to think.”

  “Honey, at my age, nobody tells me what to think. I know what I think, I just like to stay informed.”

  “Okay, I get it.” Francesca backs off, because she knows this is not worth getting into a fight over, but after dinner, which we eat at the kitchen island with CNN on, she starts frowning at the TV again. “Didn’t we just see this show?”

  “No, it’s not the same show. This is live.”

  “But it’s the same people. I recognize them from fifteen minutes ago.”

  “I know, it’s the same people, but it’s a different show. See in the corner, it says LIVE.” I point to the screen, but even I know what she means. CNN spends all day talking with the same talking heads but shifting them in the chairs, like a shell game with political pundits.

  “So it’s the same people, saying the same things.”

  Still I defend my news station. I’m a loyal girl. “No, they’re saying different things, and as new news comes in, they analyze it.”

  “But there is no new news. They’re just massaging the old news, to keep you watching.”

  “Okay, maybe they are, but what if something new happens? I want to stay tuned.”

  Francesca rolls her eyes. “Nothing new is going to happen.”

  “You never know, with Syria.”

  I have a lot of opinions about Syria.

  I’m all over Syria.

  Syria doesn’t make a move without my knowing.

  I tell Francesca as much, and she laughs, but when we clear the dishes she starts frowning at the TV yet again.

  “Mom, what’s with the closed captioning?”

  “I like it. I always keep it on.”

  “Why? Are you having trouble hearing?” Francesca’s blue eyes narrow in a worried way. Exactly the way mine used to when Mother Mary showed signs of aging, and then, horribly, cancer.

  The Flying Scottolines are nothing if not dramatic. If the TV is on closed captioning, somebody might have cancer.

  Ear cancer.

  I shrug. “I can hear fine, I just like the closed captioning. Then I can just glance at the TV, or mute it, if I get a phone call.”

  “But the way you have it set up, the closed captioning takes up half the screen.”

  “True,” I have to admit, “but there’s nothing on the screen. Just the same people talking.”

  “Exactly!” Francesca says, as if she’s won an argument we weren’t having.

  But I know who won.

  Wolf Blitzer.

  Undefined

  Francesca

  Labels have gotten a bad reputation. Labels lead to bullying, stifling a sense of self, inducing basic-ness. Labels in romantic relationships are deemed onerous by men, and the women who want them deemed needy and insecure. Cool girls don’t need labels.

  I had been seeing the European for several months, and I still had no idea what we were. However, this fit into his European profile. Only a lame American would want to know if we were Boyfriend & Girlfriend™. So I rolled with it.

  Or tried to. I couldn’t help but evaluate where we were headed. I analyzed the data as it came.

  We would plan to see each other once a week without fail, often on prime weekend real estate. And each time, he took me on proper dates, with a meal and sometimes an activity.

  Boyfriend material.

  However, while we’d often have tentative plans for, say, Friday, he wouldn’t text me to confirm any details until the eleventh hour, often forcing me to text him the humiliating “Are we still on?” at 6 P.M.

  I hate the “Are we still on?” text.

  Non-boyfriend material. Boyfriend by-product.

  When we saw each other, he was attentive and engaged.

  Boyfriend.

  But in between our weekly dates, I hardly heard from him.

  Not.

  So, I was on the fence about him. But he was just handsome and accented enough for me to keep dating him from my fence.

  My cool-girl façade began to crack the night we went to a holiday party of a mutual friend together. I thought we were going together—together-together—since we’d been dating for four months, and he had suggested we get dinner alone beforehand. I thought it would be our couple-coming-out party.

  I mean, I got a blow-out for the occasion.

  But after dinner, he insisted on buying his own bottle of wine to bring instead of letting mine count for both of us. This is the way they do it in Europe, he said.

  Intimacy issues, imported.

  When we arrived at the party, he took so long putting his jacket away that he effectively hid the fact that we had arrived at the same time. And after I assume he’d folded and color-sorted every single guest’s coat, did he come to find me? No. Instead, he proceeded to make the rounds and talk to everyone but me.

  Lest you think his inattention was all in my head, he left me so glaringly available that the host of the party, my pseudo-boyfriend’s good pal, asked me out.

  Clearly, the European hadn’t mentioned he was seeing me.

  This didn’t feel Undefined.

  This felt Single.

  I tried to enjoy myself, but I was pissed. At the end of the night, I got my own coat to go.

  Euro Trash materialized at my side. “You’re leaving?”

  “Yes, I’m tired,” I answered as I said good-bye to other friends.

  Unbidden, he followed me out and caught up with me on the sidewalk, linking an arm through mine. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “Well, am I coming with you?” He smiled slyly.

  I stopped in my tracks. “Now you want to be with me? Because it didn’t feel that way up there.”

  He apologized and explained he wasn’t comfortable with PDA.

  “I’m not suggesting we make out in the kitchen, I’m suggesting you stop acting like you’re married.”

  Arguing on the street—trademark move of city romance.

  Maybe we were in a relationship.

  He vowed to be better at showing his feelings, and I forgave him. But it might have been that I didn’t want to waste the blow-out.

  We got through the holidays, largely because he was overseas visiting family. But come January, I had grown tired of not knowing. We’d been undefined for five months. And something about the new year made me crave resolution.

  Five months is too long for this basic American girl.

  “Look, this is the longest I’ve ever dated someone without knowing where I stand.”

  “I know, and I’m sorry. It takes me longer to evaluate whether or not I want to be in a serious relationship than it does you.”

  Who said anything about being done evaluating? Dude, I’ll be judging you all the way to the altar.

  But instead I said, “If you need more time, that’s okay. I’m not giving you an ultimatum.”

  Cool girl, see?

  Cool, but not a doormat: “But in the meantime, I
need you to show me that you care about me. I need to feel valued no matter what we are. And if you find yourself lukewarm, turn me loose. We can part ways with no hard feelings. Deal?”

  He assured me that he cared “very much,” that he wasn’t seeing anyone else, and that he could see a “real future” with me.

  One day at a time, bud.

  As if the gods of love were delivering a test, that very night, I came down with the worst fever I’ve had in my adult life. I was so sick, I had to have him take me home early from our date. He made me tea and put me to bed.

  Was this the new him showing me he cared? I wondered.

  Then I didn’t hear from him for two weeks.

  So I had my answer.

  When I’d regained my voice, I called him to break things off.

  He said he was “blindsided,” and that he’s not the “type to do this over the phone.”

  I don’t know what type he is, but I know my label for him.

  Ex.

  Everything Old Is Nude Again

  Lisa

  You may have heard the bad news.

  Playboy will no longer be publishing photos of nude women.

  What’s this world coming to?

  Is nothing sacred?

  Playboy has been around for as long as I’ve been alive, and I remember sneaking peeks at it when I went to babysit, because the people I babysat for kept theirs in the top drawer in their bedroom.

  Don’t ask me how I knew this.

  Just take it from me that your babysitter knows more about your dresser drawers than you do.

  By the way, I waited until the baby was asleep to start looking at pornography.

  The very definition of a great babysitter.

  This, back in the day when babysitters earned fifty cents an hour.

  Listen, you get what you pay for.

  Anyway, it should be obvious that a world without Playboy magazine is the worst thing that can happen to women.

  Without Playboy, how is a young girl going to learn that breasts should be at least a G cup?

  To match a G-string.

  It’s sort of like matching your bra and your underwear, only different.

  Not only that, but Playboy taught me that breasts are supposed to be completely devoid of moles, stretch marks, and nipple hair.