51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

by Kristen McGuiness

  We keep moving through the store, up the stairs to Hip Hop because I want the Kanye West CD. I keep thinking that if I buy a CD, it will make Jeff feel better. He has explained to me how the record industry is on its last leg, and how he represents many clients from it. I figure if I can’t like him romantically, the least I can do is support him professionally.

  We hit Hip Hop as I explain to him, “I’m just trying to decide, okay? All I am asking for is the physical space for me to do that. Oh, God. I guess what I am trying to say is that it’s not necessarily a no yet.”

  Jeff stops with his hand on a Rihanna CD.

  “Yet?” he asks.

  “Uh...” maybe that was the wrong answer.

  “That’s like in High Fidelity when the girlfriend tells John Cusack that she hasn’t slept with the new guy. Yet. We all know what yet means.”

  I cringe. Jeff is quoting Nick Hornby at me in the middle of a record store, in the middle of the crowded hip hop aisle nonetheless, and it’s a little embarrassing for us both. He realizes this and asks, “Can we get out this section? Let’s go to foreign film or something.”

  We end up in the used VHS area as I try to weave some sort of web of compassion and honesty. I decide not to buy Kanye because I can tell by the look in Jeff’s eyes that it won’t make any difference to him whether I purchase a studio album or not. We go to the movie instead.

  Jeff drives me home, and we agree to speak in a few days, which is when I tell him, “I promise you, Jeff, you will find a lovely, beautiful, amazing girl someday, and it won’t be long because I can feel it. She’s coming soon. But I just see us as friends.”

  He tells me he doesn’t see that happening, and I understand. I know I am breaking his heart a little bit, and since I have had the same done to me recently, I am pretty cognizant of how it feels. And I know it sucks. But I also know that Jeff will find a lovely, beautiful, amazing girl someday. It’s just not me.

  38

  Date Thirty-Eight: Sober and the City

  My mother moved to New York City my freshman year of college. But that was not my first experience with the town I once loved so much. When I was fourteen years old, I went up to Connecticut to visit family friends. We took one afternoon to go into the City, and that was when it happened. When I fell dramatically in love with the place. I remember going to Saks, and the Plaza, and seeing Tony Bennett eating next to us at Planet Hollywood, and getting to do all the things that people do when they are tourists in New York and don’t know better. I also remember getting on the train back to Connecticut and crying for the better part of the trip because I didn’t want to leave.

  On Thursday, I fly into New York City on the red-eye, and the next morning I get on the subway from JFK and begin to make my way to my mom’s apartment. I love riding into Manhattan on the subway. There is no better way to feel immediately a part of the city, not as the tourist I was when I was fourteen, but as the resident I still like to consider myself as being. As I ride in, I remember the day that was the catalyst for why I left six years ago.

  September has always been my favorite month: it’s the one in which I was born; it has the most beautiful weather; and Neil Diamond sang a song about it. It has a lot of great qualities. And that morning when I woke up, got ready for a my job in book publishing, and headed out the door at twenty-two, thinking I had it all together, despite the terrible hangover I was rocking, I had no clue that it was about to end. For all of us.

  I was getting ready to go into the first big meeting of my career when the news came in. Planes, falling buildings, we know the drill. I waited for my best friend Liz to arrive; our friend Courtney joined us. We picked up a couple cases of beer, some wine and whiskey, went over to my friend Ally’s and began to drink. Sure, we watched the news, sure, the bars were filled all over, but when four o’clock hit, and we were out of weed and couldn’t get any blow, Ally and I decided we would go downtown for some nitrous.

  I lived in the East Village, so we were able to get past the blockade to make it to the bodega on St. Mark’s that sold cartridges. We picked up a few boxes and were so desperate to get home and get high, we decided to take the bus. And that’s when it hit me. I was an atrocious human being. I remember swaying on the bus, giggling with Ally about our nitrous score, while people stood around us, some covered in dust, all in a state of shock and terror. We were obviously drunk, people were giving us dirty looks, and I remember thinking, “This is not how I should be.” Nine months later I moved to Los Angeles, and I was never able to love that city the same way again. And I think, in many ways, it couldn’t love me.

  But as I get on the 6 train and make my final leg up to Mom’s apartment on the Upper East Side, I feel that New York state of mind that I haven’t felt in a long time. The advertisements for dermatologists, the poetry sponsored by Barnes & Noble, the warnings about walking between the cars, this is my New York City. This will always be my New York City. Because there is something about the place—the honking horns, the shining steel, the lurch of my subway car—that makes me feel like anything is possible. I get to Mom’s house except for it’s not my mom’s house anymore because, as of the month prior, my mom is now living in Raymond’s apartment, even though it is in the same building. But despite the fact that I might miss the comfortable couches I have known from her place, and the floral calendar in her kitchen, and the picture of sailboats I would wake up to every morning in her bedroom, I am happy for her. And for them.

  Because my mom has just moved, she still has a bunch of photo albums that I haven’t seen in years. Siren is coming from Philadelphia to meet me in New York, and my mom needs to go to work, so I lie down on her couch and fall asleep looking at these photos of my childhood—of me with my mom and dad—memories that have been lost, like my love for New York City for so, so long.

  Siren gets into town, and I go and meet her at the Chelsea Hotel, where I have reserved a room for her birthday. I had always wanted to stay at the Chelsea, and just like in Big Sur, my time had finally come. We luck out when we get there because Stanley, the famed manager of the Chelsea, is the one who checks us in. I decide to go bold.

  “So when I called before, I requested a special room,” I tell him.

  Stanley looks at my reservation, “Well, then, why aren’t you paying a special price?” I am in an economy room, the least expensive possible.

  “Because I’m cheap,” I offer.

  Stanley likes that, and so he gives us Janis’s old apartment. As in Joplin. The room where she famously gave Leonard Cohen head. Siren and I go up and channel all the crazy energy in the room because we can feel it. That shit is heavy, man.

  That night I take Siren to my mom and Raymond’s apartment, and I show her the pictures I found earlier in the day.

  “You have got to be kidding me,” Siren says, laughing at a picture of me she is holding in her hand. I am wearing my grandmother’s panty hose and nothing else. It is the time in my life when my dad is still a kingpin, and we have cars and houses and cash. And it shows. Because that little girl is not wondering if she is the prettiest in the room—she knows she is. That little girl is not afraid to ask because she demands. Because that little girl has yet to lose her daddy, she channels him and that shit is heavy, man. I am posing and posturing and pimping in front of the camera. And already at the age of three, you can tell, this kid’s gonna be an asshole.

  Later, Siren tells me how her own father has been trying to get back in touch with her. She tells me how he has been living with his mother in Bucks County, drinking all day while his mother slowly dies in the back room.

  “Have you talked to him?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “He just leaves messages. Sometimes I can tell he’s really drunk. Sometimes he cries.”

  My dad doesn’t leave those kinds of messages because he too is posing and posturing and pimping in front of the camera, trying to project who he thinks he is supposed to be. But I know he feels just like Siren’s dad. He is old and tired
and drunk, and he just wants love from that little girl he left behind so many years before. And I understand why Siren can’t call her dad back, but in that moment, I see in her father what I often refuse to see in mine. That they are now broken men, and though we might hate them for who they have been, it wouldn’t hurt us to try to love them now. Because they need us.

  My father has been asking me to visit him down on that South Texas farm. And I keep telling him to get settled there, and I will come. But as I listen to Siren tell me about how she cannot call her father back, that she just isn’t ready, it hits me that we might never be ready. And if I want a chance to love my dad, this might be the only chance I’ve got. I know I will call him when I get back. I will make the reservation.

  I take Siren to an old jazz club, and as we settle into our seats I realize what a perfect night this is. Siren and I walk through the West Village afterward. Down the empty, cobblestoned streets, laughing and holding hands. There is so much magic in the air that I love the city as though for the first time.

  We go back to our historical apartment and wander the halls of the Chelsea Hotel. Some say we’re born alcoholics. Others think we become them. I think it all comes down to The Shining. When Stephen King wrote his famous book, he was in the grips of addiction. And in the story, the Jack Nicholson character decides to take the job at the hotel because he is running from his own drinking problem. And I think that in a way, the Shining is alcoholism. It can kill us. It can brutalize the people who love us. It can turn otherwise lovely, charming people into monsters bent on destruction.

  And so as we sneak around the hallways that comprise the Chelsea Hotel, I am not surprised when we stumble upon a photo of Jack Nicholson on the shoot of The Shining. It is the scene where he sits at the bar talking to the phantom bartender. And in that instance, my own chimeras call out to me. The ones that tell me that I too can have a drink.

  But I don’t. Because that night in New York, I get to cross the cobblestoned streets with my friend. I get to have dinner with my mom. And I get to appreciate every moment of this city I left after that fateful September day years ago.

  39

  Date Thirty-Nine: The Condors of La Cañada

  Last Thursday my wheels fell off again.

  It all started when I went to a new meeting in Pasadena. Noelle had asked me if I would house sit, and since I have adopted her golden retriever Rocky, I quickly agreed. Plus, Noelle’s house is exactly the house I want to have one day when I grow up. Noelle lives in the now-suburban enclave called La Cañada. Back in the day, La Cañada was known for its sprawling farms and rather staunch conservative ranch folk. It was a bit like Texas, but to the west of Pasadena. Since that time, new money with newer Priuses have moved in, but there is still an independent air to the town and horse crossing signs at nearly every intersection.

  Noelle’s house is nestled into one of the foothills of La Cañada. It is an old Spanish-style hacienda with brightly painted walls, a large backyard with a swimming pool, and books upon books about mysticism.

  I figure that my extended stay in La Cañada also gives me a great opportunity to try some new meetings, and maybe even meet some new men. And that’s when the shit hits the proverbial fan. Because as I am sitting in one of those new meetings, the secretary gets up to make announcements and I feel like I have been hit by a lightning bolt. I have been waiting years to feel that full body tingle again, that time-space continuum of Who is that?, that great, big, powerful glimpse of love at first sight. I see this man whom I do not know and because I am so mesmerized I do not even hear his name.

  There is a smoke break and since I don’t smoke anymore, I could easily go up and talk to him. I could ask him any number of questions. I could ask his name. I could at least act as though I notice him when he is standing five feet away from me talking to someone else from the meeting, but I don’t. I am terrified. And even though he is by no means the hottest guy in the room, all I can think is that he will not be attracted to me, and so I freeze. I freeze. And I hate myself all the more for it.

  That weekend Mimi comes out to La Cañada for a hike, and while we are walking through the neighborhood, I tell her about my issues with talking to Mr. Pasadena.

  Later that night, Mimi and I go out again because she is determined that I practice my flirting skills. She tells me that once I see someone I like, I just need “to keep my eye on the prize.” We go to a bar up the street from my apartment in Silver Lake, the one with the sober bartender I think is hot. Braden is still there, but he’s not sober anymore. I explain to him my flirting problems.

  “You know,” he says as he leans across the bar, looking pretty darn sexy, even for a relapsed alcoholic, “it’s as much what’s behind the eyes, as how you look at people.”

  I look up, and Braden is staring at me, and we lock gazes. We’re incredibly close, and I try desperately to bring it forth. To show him what’s in there, but I can’t, because for all the fire and feeling and passion I have in me, I cannot expose it in this moment with him. So I drop my eyes, and for the rest of our time there, he flirts with Mimi. And I know why. Because Braden is wrong—it’s as much how you look at people. What good is it if I got all this behind my eyes, and I won’t share it?

  I wake up the next morning more depressed than ever. Because I am thirty and single and now, apparently, don’t even know how to flirt. Not good. Not good at all. I feel like getting some rope and finding a sturdy limb. Depression takes over with a heavy hand, and all I can see or feel is my loneliness and rejection and the fear that there is something very wrong with me. I get into a huge fight with both my mom (who tells me, “Well, sometimes you do talk too much, and when you start telling a joke, you just can’t stop. It’s like, K, enough!”) and my grandmother (who tells me, “Well, you can be gorgeous.”), and herein lies the problem. Because as much as I can intellectually state that I am smart and kind and funny and attractive, when you put me in front of someone I like, I think I am having one of those days where I am not gorgeous and that if I open my mouth, I will talk too much and go on for too long. So I shudder a smile and shuffle away. Like some strange combination of Pat from Saturday Night Live and Shrek—one part androgynous misfit, one part ogre.

  I explain this to Lidia when I see her the following week. The night before had been my second chance to talk to the Pasadena man. At the break I saw him go outside, and I sensed my opportunity, but I got nervous and decided to go to the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror instead. I left the bathroom and confidently walked down the stairs. So confidently, I even smacked the ceiling in the place where it was low enough for me to reach it. That’s right, I got it. I hit the landing, looked up, and Mr. Pasadena was right there. He was staring at me. He was also in the middle of talking to an attractive girl who was around my age. I could have smiled. I could have stood up tall and said hello. I could have kept my eye on that prize as Mimi had tried to train me to do, but I didn’t. I think there might have been a small spasm around my mouth, but before it could resemble anything like a smile, I put my head down and hurried past.

  “What are you thinking in that moment?” Lidia asks. God love her for recognizing these experiences as real challenges to wholeness, and not just some dumb girl complaining about some dumb dude. And I remember the moment clearly, remember my thought in it, “She is skinnier than me.” That girl to whom Mr. Pasadena is talking, and she is skinnier than me.

  Lidia and I go through what age this all comes from, and it’s pretty clear to both of us that this sounds like preadolescent anxiety. The middle school years, where I was undeveloped and unpopular. Also, the years where my grandmother and I really went at it. Where whatever chance I had to feel good about myself was always undercut with the sense that I could be “better,” “cooler,” “more gorgeous,” but that I just couldn’t make the cut.

  These wounds are old. I wish I was done with them, but when I can’t even lift my head and smile at someone I like, they’re obviously still getting t
o me. I go to choose a stone before lying down, when Lidia begins telling me a story. Years before, she had been in Peru, hiking as part of her training with the Shamans. She was on a three-day vision quest and between the small amount of food she had, the torturous climb she was doing, and the altitude, she had begun to feel that she couldn’t make it back to the camp.

  “I was petrified, Kristen. I couldn’t move. I just stood there, clutching the wall of the cliff I was climbing down. Terrified that I didn’t have it in me to take the next step. And then a miracle happened. A condor came flying out from the side of the cliff. And he flew around me three times. Back and forth in front of me. So close that had I reached out, I would have been able to touch him. Do you know what we pray to the condor for?”

  And I do know because I have been doing this for long enough with Lidia to have begun adopting her prayers as my own. “The big picture,” I answer.

  “Exactly,” she says, smiling at me. “In that moment, it was as though I could see the world through a bird’s-eye view. Our struggles, our fears, they’re only as big as we make them. And we can let these little things stop us from reaching our potential, or we can see them for what they are and keep walking.”