Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Definition of 51/50
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Date One: First Impressions
Chapter 2 - Date Two: The Prince and the Talker
Chapter 3 - Date Three: Normies
Chapter 4 - Date Four: God and Herpes
Chapter 5 - Date Five: Dreaming in the Land of CHA
Chapter 6 - Date Six: Desperado
Chapter 7 - Date Seven: Pie Crust Promises
Chapter 8 - Date Eight: The Way We Are
Chapter 9 - Date Nine: Cowboys and Peter Pan
Chapter 10 - Date Ten: And the RAD Played On
Chapter 11 - Date Eleven: Finding Faith in Chatsworth
Chapter 12 - Date Twelve: Love Is a Lot like Basketball
Chapter 13 - Date Thirteen: New Beginnings
Chapter 14 - Date Fourteen: Gay Uncles Give Good Heart
Chapter 15 - Date Fifteen: Arrow
Chapter 16 - Date Sixteen: Jakes of All Trades
Chapter 17 - Date Seventeen: Cadillacs and the Two-Headed Snake
Chapter 18 - Date Eighteen: The Well
Chapter 19 - Date Nineteen: Ladies Angeles
Chapter 20 - Date Twenty: If It Fits
Chapter 21 - Date Twenty-One: The Sparkling Ribbon of Time, Act I
Chapter 22 - Date Twenty-Two: The Schmoos
Chapter 23 - Date Twenty-Three: That Old Dylan Song
Chapter 24 - Date Twenty-Four: The Lies of Coco Van Dyne
Chapter 25 - Date Twenty-Five: Otorongo
Chapter 26 - Date Twenty-Six: My Momma’s Still My Biggest Fan
Chapter 27 - Date Twenty-Seven: Revelations
Chapter 28 - Date Twenty-Eight: California Country
Chapter 29 - Date Twenty-Nine: Cinderella Does Not Smoke Marlboros
Chapter 30 - Date Thirty: The Perfect Date
Chapter 31 - Date Thirty-One: The Council of Butterfly Ancestors
Chapter 32 - Date Thirty-Two: Nana
Chapter 33 - Date Thirty-Three: The Chores of Romance
Chapter 34 - Date Thirty-Four: Being Reese Witherspoon
Chapter 35 - Date Thirty-Five: Fake Cannoli and Pixie Dust
Chapter 36 - Date Thirty-Six: This Brother of My Mother
Chapter 37 - Date Thirty-Seven: High Fidelity
Chapter 38 - Date Thirty-Eight: Sober and the City
Chapter 39 - Date Thirty-Nine: The Condors of La Cañada
Chapter 40 - Date Forty: Archetypes Away
Chapter 41 - Date Forty-One: All-American Dates
Chapter 42 - Date Forty-Two: Beautiful People
Chapter 43 - Date Forty-Three: Love Will Tear Us Apart
Chapter 44 - Date Forty-Four: The Magic of Growing Up
Chapter 45 - Date Forty-Five: The Sparkling Ribbon of Time, Act II
Chapter 46 - Date Forty-Six: Same Story, Different People
Chapter 47 - Date Forty-Seven: I Win
Chapter 48 - Date Forty-Eight: The Comedy Show of Errors
Chapter 49 - Date Forty-Nine: The Stars and the Moon
Chapter 50 - Date Fifty: La Cosa Nostra
Chapter 51 - Date Fifty-One: The Sparkling Ribbon of Time, Act III
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
To mi famiglia
Definition of 51/50
5150 is a section of the California Welfare and Institutions Code which allows a qualified officer or clinician to involuntarily confine a person deemed to have a mental disorder that makes the person a danger to himself or herself, and/or others.
It is also the name of a Van Halen album.
Introduction
I am single.
I am thirty.
I am an alcoholic.
And this was not supposed to be my life.
I admit to being an alcoholic once a day, on average. But I am much more than that.
I am a secretary with a fancy college degree and more books in my kitchen than cooking ability. I am the only child of an incarcerated drug smuggler and a woman who won’t even steal pens from the office. I am the granddaughter of a woman who regularly insists I should just marry rich. I am the niece to two adoring uncles who never had children themselves. I am a transplanted Los Angeleno with a questioning belief in the great powers above and an awful sense that I have more solo Saturday night trips to Trader Joe’s and Blockbuster in store.
Back when I still participated in drugs and alcohol, my need for a boyfriend had been fleeting. Cocaine was my boyfriend, and he was all I ever needed. Like Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, I would cut my coke on some bathroom sink, roll up my dollar bill, blow the line, and exhale, “Goddamn. God. Damn.” I would watch the blacks of my eyes expand, feel that deep breath, the warm drip sliding down the back of my throat, and know that I was home. And though, at times, there were real men too, I would always end up back with cocaine.
Things had changed since then. Because long gone were the days when I saw that 115 pound wreck staring back at me in the mirror. I was now sober. I was now sane. I was now a most unfortunate twenty pounds heavier. And I thought it would all be different—that men would see me as an excellent candidate to be their wife, and love would come easy.
But it didn’t.
It had been five years since a man told me he loved me. Three years since there was anyone close to a boyfriend. A year and a half since I last had sex. And after going on only three dates in the last two years, I knew something had to change. Because at a certain point, it stops being strange to be the last single woman on the block. It just begins to hurt.
So I figured it was time for a new kind of 51/50. I would go on 51 dates over the course of 50 weeks, and I would write about it, and I would finally get the life I thought was supposed to be mine. Because more than anything—more than a different job or a dashing boyfriend—I just want to be in love again. I want to hold someone’s hand in the movie theater. I want to put their name down as my emergency contact at the doctor’s office. I want to slow dance and cook dinner and have someone pull me deep into their chest after sex and tell me that I am beautiful.
I didn’t get sober to watch myself shut down, stop waxing, and retire to eating ice cream sandwiches by myself. So I decided I would give the middle finger to fate. I would go out and find him myself, because I had very little faith that the universe was going to figure this one out for me. I had given it plenty of chances. I prayed and I meditated, and I did all the things we’re supposed to do in order to let go of loneliness and fear. And all I found was more loneliness and fear.
They say that if you want to hear God laugh, tell Him your plan. But I am willing to risk it. I think this plan might be much better than the one destiny has been offering.
Because at the end of the day, though I might always be an alcoholic, I’m going to get me a shot of being someone’s girl.
1
Date One: First Impressions
“Do you want a cookie?” Richard points to one of the delicious, decadent pieces of heaven sitting safely behind the glass case. I do want a cookie. Desperately. But I am playing someone else tonight. I am playing the girl who doesn’t want a cookie, who doesn’t gorge herself on sweets, who smiles instead, and says, “No, just tea for me, please.”
Bullshit. I try to be normal. I try to be the type of woman I think Richard would like. And I have to say, I’m pretty good at it. I didn’t think I was going to want Richard’s attentions prior to going on the date with him. In fact, I had planned on getting a pretty massive piece of cake at the café where we had agreed to meet. It’s outdoors. It serves coffee and wine.
It also serves cakes, and cookies, and brownies, and I like those things. It’s kind of romantic without being obtusely so. It’s where white people with decent jobs and Priuses go on their first date.
Historically, I am not a dater. I went on my first date when I was twenty-six and only because my boss at the time set me up with a friend of hers, and I had no other choice. High-pitched Marcus was surprised by the fact that I had made it that long without a date, but I wasn’t. At one point in my life, finding a boyfriend had been easy. I would just get drunk, have a one-night stand with one of my friends, and then never leave. In some instances, I would stay in their beds for a good year or two. Sure, there were fights and fun and family vacations, and all the conventional things that come with a relationship, but none of them had actually started conventionally. I took breaks in between, and though I worried about when the next guy would appear, within eighteen months, he invariably would. That is the beauty of one’s early twenties. There are so many of us who are single and looking for the starter romance that it seems as though love is always around the corner. But then people start getting married, or they come out as gay, or they settle into a bachelorhood that becomes far more interesting than any relationship, and the numbers grow slimmer as the streets between this love and the next grow farther apart.
Richard came to me by way of former co-worker Katie, which takes us back to 2006. I relapsed in 2006. It was a short three-week jaunt into what I thought was my old party life, except the old life had once been kind of fun. Instead, my relapse felt more like a bunch of naps caught between boring lines of cocaine and me vomiting in a toilet. After three weeks I was done, and I went back to being sober, and looking for a new job. The temp agency called me with my first assignment on a Friday afternoon. It was one of those moments that never leave you. The sun burns brighter, sound becomes clearer, and everything slows down because life is about to change. I would be sent to a nonprofit downtown which, from what I could tell, helped low-income kids of Latino descent. I would be someone’s secretary, and it would pay me enough to eat.
I met Katie on my first day. We were the same age, but Katie was a manager, and I was a temporary assistant. I normally would have hated her for this. But Katie was a good egg, which is why when we recently got together to catch up, and she asked me how the love life was going, I told her the truth.
Over the last year, I had gotten rather good at posturing to the question. Bragging about my adventures and experiences and all the things that filled my life because I didn’t have a boyfriend. Generally, people ignored my buoyant optimism only to respond with a handful of platitudes that annoyed me. Things like, “All in good time,” “The right man will come along,” and my favorite, “It happens when you least expect it.” This is why I had begun acting like I was choosing singlehood in the first place. I didn’t want their condescension, their suggestions, their strange, sad smiles. Because really, I can’t be told I should read The Secret one more time without wanting to hit someone. But Katie didn’t respond with any such nonsense because Katie’s a smart girl.
“I know the perfect man for you,” she told me. Alas, Richard.
People should be more careful about the photos they use to introduce themselves. Because in the photo Richard sends me, he clearly has man boobs. This was disturbing. Enough so, that after showing it to a few friends in the office, his nickname became the incredibly original and possibly trademarked “Man boob.” Not a good start.
So when I walk up to the Christmas light-strewn café, I’m not sure if the relatively good-looking guy waiting there is the man in question. I don’t even move to say his name just in case.
“Kristen?” he asks. I quietly exhale my sigh of relief.
Richard looks nothing like his picture. With a decent head of brown hair, and the educated style of a Northeastern boy come west, he stands a strong few inches taller than me, and I like that. For some unexplained reason, and with great Napoleon effect, there are a lot of short guys who live in L.A. It’s always nice when I meet someone with whom I can wear heels.
Richard and I get our respective teas, coffees, and sweet treats (for the sir, not the lady) and sit down. We talk about writing projects and poets and yoga and where we’ve lived and what we want to be. Richard is half Italian, half Irish. I’m half Italian, a quarter Irish, and a quarter Hungarian, which is where we differ. Because Gypsy blood is dangerous, and Irish/Italian just makes for a good appetite. I figure this is probably why he knows of the Hungarian restaurant in the Valley I have always wanted to try, and where he invites me for a second date. I say yes, and actually am beginning to feel like that normal woman I was trying so hard to be. The type who simply hungers and does not crave.
I feel quite comfortable sitting across from this man. It’s been so long since I did this—since I got to know someone a bit, got to settle into the easy banter of a nice first date. I have only been on three dates since I first got sober, and all of them were with sober men who already knew my life story.
Recovered alcoholics are a funny bunch. We very rarely respond to the question “How are you?” with “Fine.” It’s more like a therapy session than small talk, which is why going out on dates with them isn’t always this casual. There’s a joke that we tell that goes, “How do you know when a first date between two alcoholics went well?” The punch line: “They move in with each other.” I have barely even used a swear word, let alone told some dirty sex story, because Richard and I are keeping up our most honest, personable, and pleasant personas. Maybe that’s all he has, but either way, I am appreciating it.
Our table is right next to the street, so we’re in full view of the foot traffic. And then I see my friend Ward. I call him my friend only because I lack a better word. Ward and I have hung out several times, but he still calls me Blair. Ward and I go to meetings together for said sober people. Ward is twitchy and sort of looks like Dave Navarro, if Dave Navarro were homeless. I think Ward might have a real case of Tourettes because he has a tendency to shout things out and talk to himself, but then again, so do I. At the end of the day, he can also be a really sweet guy, which is why when he recognizes me, I wave and say hello. Ward weaves and bobs his way over to our table.
“Hi. Blair.”
I introduce the two men and then tell Ward I’ll see him on Tuesday because that’s the night we both go to the same meeting. He just nods his head and walks off in mid-sentence, muttering to himself as he heads down the street. I get the feeling that the normal cover I was trying to front here just got blown. Because most upper-middle-class, private-school girls working in nonprofits with a Honda Civic don’t hang out with men like Ward. I know this, and Richard knows this.
He turns to me and asks, “What’s Tuesday?”
What’s Tuesday, Richard? Oh, just the place where me and my other mutant sober-hero friends get together and talk about what it was like, what happened, and what it’s like now. I am terrible with confidentiality clauses, and so I explain it to him in nice, friendly terms. But Richard does little more than shrug. And then it hits me. Maybe this means little to him. Maybe only I care about my past and my stories and my strange associates that I think would be such a flag to the different lives I am assuming Richard and I have led.
“Do you have a sponsor?” he asks.
I laugh, “Yes, I do. Everyone should.”
I like him more for that. I see how he has the sleeves of his button-down rolled up just right—how his arms are respectable, covered with a healthy amount of Italian hair. He could probably manage a grill, keep up a good conversation with the parents, and be the type of man I could trust. And I wonder whether I am at the point yet where I can be attracted to that kind of guy; whether it isn’t always me insisting I don’t go for the wrong ones while I continually do. Or rather that Gypsy blood is too wild for barbeque arms and a compassionate responsibility. Whether I am trustworthy when I meet someone who is willing to trust.
But at that moment, I don’t feel anything but happy
sitting there in the light-strewn garden with all the other Prius- and Civic-driving liberals, sipping tea and laughing about the New Yorker, and beginning to think that this might be what I was missing. Richard and I walk to our cars and hug. We confirm the next date. And though there is no kiss, no major (or even minor) overture of romance, I am giddy. Because I met someone with whom I rather enjoyed sharing a table—someone I look forward to seeing again, and who looks forward to seeing me. Someone without man boobs.
2
Date Two: The Prince and the Talker
I fell in love with a prince when I was nineteen. This had been a dream of mine ever since I was five and read my first book, The Donkey Prince. Same story as the Frog Prince, except starring a donkey. I figured my chances were better with the ass because girls like me don’t date real princes. Then again, my prince wasn’t a real prince, but he was French royalty. Years after we dated, I Googled him, only to discover that he was in line to a number of long-dead titles and possibly even a throne. So I’m gonna say he was about as close to a prince as I’m ever going to get.
We called him “Frenchie” because that’s what you call French people in college, and, I think, in general. I don’t know what arrow struck him the day he hung out of his dorm room window and called down to me as though we were old friends. I had just become a nervous and regularly stoned sophomore at Hamilton College in upstate New York. I grew up in the better parts of Dallas, Texas, so wealth didn’t necessarily intimidate me just because I didn’t have it. But the wealth at Hamilton was different. There were last names that you found on buildings. And international kids with diplomatic immunity. And there was Frenchie. I met him the year before when he was dating a quiet and beautiful Turkish girl with a strange name and lots of cashmere. She graduated and upon the first week of our new year at school, I found myself looking up into the sun and seeing Frenchie calling down to me. I invited him to my birthday party that week, and we began a love affair reserved for handwritten love notes and first edition books of poetry and a relationship that ultimately took me to his family’s castles in France and his mother’s rather cold disapproval of the American commoner her son had dragged in.
51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life Page 1
