51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

by Kristen McGuiness

  Later as we were getting ready to leave, I got up the gusto and asked Ben, “You wanna be one of my 51 dates?”

  “Naw, I don’t want to be fodder for one of your stories.”

  I walked up ahead of him to the bowling ball counter with my shoes, trying to fight back the tears because I suffer rejection like a ten- year-old.

  “Hey,” I heard behind me. I turned around, and Ben was right there. Eye to eye. He stared in. And I felt it. Heat.

  “I’d like to be your 51st date.”

  I laughed, “That’s in like a year from now.”

  “So,” he said, “I want to be the last one. I want to see what you found out.”

  I slip back into the booth across from Richard and ask, “You want to get gelato?”

  “Sure,” Richard says. He mentioned being slightly lactose intolerant before, but I really can’t tolerate that. I told him I think I am too, but I love dairy too damn much to ever let it stop me. So we go to my favorite gelato place in Silver Lake. It is also the Supreme Court for all my final dates. Maybe it’s the lighting. Or the general bonhomie of my neighborhood. Or my date’s choice in gelato. But it is an amazing primary for one’s personality, and my final judgment of it.

  Richard and I go in, and though I find myself in conversation with the couple next to us, Richard stands silent. And while I sample four gelatos, Richard gets two scoops of the same flavor without even trying them out. We go outside and sit down under the lighting that acts like a chemistry thermometer, but the temperature’s not reading.

  I know I am not better than Richard. I am not brighter than Richard. I am not even that much more attractive than Richard. But I can find my own way in this world. I can take risks that might make me sick, might make my heart break like a bad Cher song, but I enjoy every second of it. I like eating the entire cake and having dairy even when it makes my stomach cramp. And I want someone who gets lost for fun and sits down under the lighting and beams. Beams so brightly, there’s heat.

  4

  Date Four: God and Herpes

  I hit bottom in 2005 when I was twenty-seven years old. I didn’t plan on doing it. I never thought I was wild enough to have to enter a plea of alcoholism and call it quits. Even with all the attempts at controlled drinking, and the mornings spent wishing I could get at least ten minutes of sleep before going to work, I just figured I was a young, single-ish party girl living in L.A. I thought sobriety was for rock stars, junkies, and old men in trench coats with Vietnam-vet toenails. I, at least, had a day job.

  After three years of trying to quit the party on my own, and the acceleration past heavy drinking into downright embarrassment, I moved home to Dallas to live with Uncle Tom. People generally move home when shit hits the fan, and my shit was all over the place. I started going to meetings where I was told that I needed to find this thing called God. I had believed in God before. I was raised Catholic and went to an all-girl parochial school. I even attempted to be confirmed, but my best friend Maggie and I spent most of our catechism classes smoking cigarettes and eating candy outside the 7-Eleven across the street from church. By the time my rampant sexuality and drug use were in full swing, God had been relegated to a few foxhole prayers made over a toilet bowl, and a lot more drunken rants against His existence.

  Going home to Texas and finding a God of my own understanding was not how I had intended to live out the end of my twenties. As I knelt by my bed in my uncle’s house, grasping desperately to the six weeks of sobriety I had somehow found, I knew I had no choice. I had no idea what God was, but somehow I was going to find a way to believe. I cried, and I begged, and I said aloud, “If you’re there, please show me. Show me.” Oh, the sign. How many times have we asked for it, for the clear, broad stroke in the sky that spells out, “I am here?” I called for it, and I waited. My uncle traveled most of that year, so it was just me in the house. And the silence that responded made me cry even more.

  I got up and went into the bathroom. My uncle lives in one of the most sterile neighborhoods in Dallas. There is no brush, there is no humidity, there are no dark, dank corners for creepy little crawlies to hide in. Never had I seen anything close to a cockroach in his house or gated community. But when I snapped on the light to the bathroom, there He sat. The cockroach was glued to the wall. He didn’t even move. He just waited. Waited for me to see that He was there in all forms. The oldest living creature on earth, the hardiest beast, and there He sat to remind me that something is here indeed. And if I were willing to call it God, I might just find some relief. I began to cry even harder because all my life I had wished for a sign. And now, here I stood with the closest vision of the infinite I had yet to see. I had found my God. And then I calmly took off my flip flop and I killed Him.

  For the most part, that is about as sophisticated or organized as my belief has been since then. I asked for a sign, God gave me a cockroach. And from there was born some messy little thing called faith. I can’t say that I can articulate it much more than that, and I certainly don’t expect my random date with a man named Nic to show me anymore than I think I already know, but that’s the funny thing about God, He sure does like to show up in surprising forms.

  Saturday night, I went out with my friend Mimi to try to pick up a guy. Mimi is a hip fashion designer, and I always feel cooler just being with her. She’s been sober for over five years and is about the closest thing to a married friend that I have. Her boyfriend Carty is a low-key Southern boy with about the same amount of sober time, extensive tattoos covering nearly every inch of him, and the best set of social graces I have seen in a man since I moved back from Texas. And I can’t help but want for a man who would make the perfect fourth to our friendship. Mimi decided that since she doesn’t have any men to set me up with, she would help me find one herself. So we sauntered sober into a bar where we both used to drink. We did a half-circle, and stopped. There were available men, lots of them. Mimi asked, “Do you see anything that you want here?”

  And I did. Braden. I don’t know him, but I know who he is. I met Braden over a year ago at a meeting. I had just come in off my three-week relapse, and he had sixty days sober and was in love with recovery. He looked a little dangerous, and I like that. I stopped going to that meeting, and so I had also stopped fantasizing about Braden. But suddenly I looked up, and there he was pouring some drunk little hipster girl a whiskey and coke, and I wished desperately that I could have one too.

  Mimi practically had to shove me up to the bar, but once I got there, I found out that Braden is still sober and still a little dangerous. As the bar began to wind down at last call, I knew that I might not have the liquid courage of years past, but I still had an offer up my sleeve. I slipped him my number with the note, “Call me when you get off work,” and I rushed home to clean my apartment, just in case he was on his way.

  Three days later, I’m on my date with Nic. Braden still hasn’t called. My friend Latoya set me up with Nic with the caveat, “I’ll give you his number, but I doubt that you’ll fall in love.”

  Nic is a jive-talking black dude from South Central who works as a medical orderly at Cedars-Sinai. He slopes when he walks like some kind of a baller, and when he pulls out his iPod to show me pictures, they’re all of him dressed in brightly colored suits singing with his church choir. I really don’t think we’re going to have much to talk about, and I can tell he knows as much as I do that the romantic potential is lost on us.

  When I called Nic to set up the date, he told me, “There is only one thing you can’t make up for in this life, baby girl. See, you can go to Vegas. You can lose twenty grand, you can mortgage the house, but one day, one day, you’ll fix all that shit. The one thing you can’t get back is time…baby…time.” So I explained to him my dating experiment because I certainly didn’t want to waste his.

  “Hmmm…51 dates, huh?” he snorted.

  “That’s right.”

  “Which one am I?”

  “Four.”

  “Hmm…
four. Okay.”

  Because talking about work or childhood or books or movies or music all seems out of the question, Nic leads the conversation to sex. Nic likes sex. He tells me that he spent his youth in India and learned the ways of Tantric before he was twelve. If he thinks I am going to fall for that, he picked the wrong white girl. I don’t, and Nic sees I’m not going to, so he starts bitching about women these days. He tells me about the last five girls he tried to date.

  “It’s a pain in the ass, baby girl.” Nic keeps calling me this, which makes me think he can’t remember my name. But Nic continues, “First woman I was into, and she was hot, on the third date, she tells me, ‘Herpes.’ And then I move on to girl number two, ‘Herpes.’ Girl #3 got ’em. Girl #4. By the time Girl #5 tell me, I’m done.”

  It’s set up for me. I point to myself, “Herpes.”

  It’s true. Unfortunate, but true. And here is where Nic and I find a common denominator: STDs. I have one, he has none, but he’s pissed and a little paranoid that everyone else seems to. I explain to Nic that I’m not psyched that I have it, but that maybe in protecting someone else from getting it, I’ve protected myself from getting something far worse.

  I didn’t get herpes from a one-night stand. I got it from a boyfriend, and though perhaps it sounds better that way when I am explaining it to a potential romantic partner, the truth is it took me many years not to be devastated by its occurrence. I got it the last time I had sex with my crackhead ex-boyfriend, who later went on to become a regular in San Quentin. But no matter that he was my boyfriend at the time, or that I loved him, it didn’t make its discovery any easier. I will never forget driving home from the doctor’s office the night I found out and thinking that no one would love me again because of it. I tell Nic this, and I am not quite sure how he’ll respond. He just smiles.

  “God’s will,” he says, so matter of fact that I don’t know what to say, even if I agree.

  “That’s the thing, baby girl,” Nic leans forward, “God knows what the chessboard looks like.”

  Holy shit. I nod blankly because he has just put my entire outlook on God into one statement.

  “You don’t know why the rook isn’t being moved yet,” Nic smiles. “Only God knows it’s to protect the queen.”

  And I forget that I don’t want to be on this date. I almost start to cry as I find myself telling Nic about Braden, about being single, about believing in something, but still feeling horribly, horribly alone. I tell Nic how no guys hit on me. How they will talk to the friend on my left and the friend on the right, but I get ignored. Nic narrows his eyes and leans forward. He pulls back the hair from behind my ear as though to picture me at my sexiest.

  “It because you’re too much, baby girl. For most guys, you’re just too much.”

  I understand what he means. I can be that girl, but only part of the time. Because as much as I can be the ballsy blonde with courage to spare, I can also be the scared little girl kneeling by her bed with snot on her face and an STD that smacks of damaged goods. And I am not quite sure which one is going to come out at any given moment.

  “I don’t know, Nic.” I look down because I am really afraid I might start sobbing right there.

  “Baby, it’s the chessboard. You know it. You can’t always see what’s happening six moves out, but you gotta have faith.”

  And I think Nic might be right. Though I might be sad that the one I want isn’t calling, I have to remember that I am no good at chess. I can’t tell you what it’s going to look like six moves out, and other than a cockroach and a guy named Nic, I can’t even say much by the way of God. Either way, I am interested in finding out.

  5

  Date Five: Dreaming in the Land of CHA

  People always say what a big city Los Angeles is, but I think that’s a misnomer. To me, L.A. is a collection of seventeen small towns, all working quietly next to one another. Each town is its own universe, with its own language and culture and people. Years ago, I lived in the town of Hollywood. There, I went to cool parties, met celebrities, and made out with Quentin Tarantino, all between bumps in the bathroom.

  About six months before I moved home to Dallas to get sober, I left Hollywood and moved into another universe called Silver Lake. The West Coast Williamsburg had its fair share of kids with bangs and skinny jeans, but it also had an older group of liberal professionals with their Audi station wagons and later, in 2008, their ubiquitous Obama stickers. As much as streets like Sunset and Cahuenga and hotspots like the Standard and Chateau once called my name, I had begun to stay away from those places. I would disregard them as gross Hollywood hangouts infiltrated by the CHAs. Cheesy. Hollywood. Actors. If I could trademark that nickname I would. I have always felt that my mere invention of it should have destined me for greatness. I am still waiting.

  Needless to say, Hollywood is filled with CHAs. They all have skinny bodies and big heads and probably none of them were into high school theater. Those kids are geeks who actually read Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams and know all the words to Mame. No, the CHAs were sluts and football players and small town playboys before they came out here to work in some shitty bar near Vine and pray for that big break as the stepson on some CBS sitcom that never makes it past Season One. They do shorts, and thank You Tube, and wait until the day that their hair-gelled good looks fade into the hopes of becoming a character actor. Or they go home and get real jobs. Maybe some parlay that bit role on King of Queens into some part on CSI. Most of them never make it past head shots. And God bless them.

  I expect that my date tonight will be such a CHA. From what I have been briefed, Doug is a forty-year-old bar manager who lives in the Valley, and already I can sense the failed attempt at the big time. Doug was sent to me by my friend Rachel. When I met Rachel, she was in the middle of a divorce, but now she is in love with someone else, and his best friend just happens to be Doug. I am used to this. In the time that I have been single, I have watched people meet, fall in love, marry, have children, divorce, fall in love again. And then they all try to set me up with their new boyfriend’s best friend.

  Doug and I meet in Silver Lake. It doesn’t take long for us to start discussing who we are and where we have been. Doug explains that he started out as an actor but then he began managing a bar ten years ago.

  “It’s weird,” he tells me. “I just started doing it, and I realized a few years ago that I loved it. I love taking care of people. So why stop?”

  There is something so refreshing in that statement that Doug becomes more attractive by the confession. And Doug is relatively attractive. Although he is in the transition stage of going from a thin-haired man in his thirties to a bald man in his forties, he looks a bit like many of the soap opera stars on whom I had a crush when I was a kid. I can imagine being eight, watching daytime TV during summer vacation, and drooling over the likes of a young Doug.

  Doug tells me that he was born and raised in L.A. He laughs, “I know. There are only a few of us.”

  People from L.A. always tell that to transplants like me. Mimi once told me that she and a guy named Phil Bower are the only native Los Angelenos in the city. But that is another Los Angeles myth because there is an enormous number of people who are born, raised, and never leave here. And I understand. When you have seventeen different universes all within the space of one city, why bother?

  But the one thing we all ultimately do is leave Hollywood. The big dream. The song and the dance. The famous hookups and the belief that we could have been a star. Whether you were raised here or not, this might be a town of broken dreams, but at one point, we all had one that was alive and well.

  I find out that acting isn’t the only dream Doug has lost. As he gets quiet and explains that he is still taking care of the cats he ended up with from a divorce a few years back, I sense another stalled hope in Doug’s story. I can see why giving up acting might not have seemed like such a sacrifice set against a happy marriage, and why now, in its failure, there is the
feeling that much more was lost than just a relationship. Doug doesn’t go into details, refers to the whole thing as back story, but I know what back story is. Back story is when the wife leaves you and the pets, and then you’re a single dude with three cats.

  He smiles sadly and says, “As much as I love them, I have to say, they’re getting old. And I’m kinda looking forward to traveling freely without always having to find someone to take care of them.”

  I am sure in their passing, those cats will give him more than just physical freedom. I can see that it takes a long time for the wounds of divorce to heal, and even longer for the scar to fade. And though I might have watched women fall in love, marry, go through divorce, and fall in love again, maybe I’ve been lucky that I have been spared that pain. I so often think of marriage as the ultimate prize that I forget it’s not necessarily permanent. And might not actually be the dream to which I have pinned so many hopes.

  Doug and I have a nice enough dinner. It’s a little loud in the restaurant, and he’s kind of a low talker, and I am kind of a little deaf, this makes me nod and smile a lot. But maybe that’s better. I tell him how one day I hope to be a writer—that I have loved books since before I could read.