51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

by Kristen McGuiness

  After our tackle buying trip, I drive Jimmy home, and he tells me about his own trials of online dating. He jokes, “I just get tired of sitting down with women who tell me, ‘I drink an enormous of water.’ I mean what am I supposed to say to that?”

  “Oh, believe me, I get it,” I tell him. “There is a point in every single one of my dates where it’s just like ‘Insert Obama conversation’ here, and then we get in their Prius, and everyone’s all smart and witty and aware.”

  “Except it’s fake,” he says. And I realize that Jimmy Voltage gets it a lot more than I’ve ever given him credit for.

  I smile as I say, “Yes, it is.”

  We look at each other, and it’s not fake—this energy sitting between us in the front seat of my car. Jimmy grabs me in a tight embrace, and I can feel us exhale, and I know that this is something we have both been missing.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” he asks, holding onto my arm.

  “A couple of things, but I have some time,” I answer. He touches my face because we have been here before. And yet we haven’t.

  “How about I call you up and ask you out on a real date? I want to do it right this time,” he says.

  I don’t hide my enthusiasm because I don’t have to hide anything anymore. “I would love that.”

  “Good. Last year I don’t know what happened. I know that there was something really strong between us physically, chemistry I guess, but...” he begins, but I don’t let him. I don’t know what to say either. Just that in this moment we are exactly where we are supposed to be. We are right on time.

  He kisses me but just a nice soft kiss on the lips. Nothing sexual, just romantic. And he gets out of my car, and I drive off. Surprised that in one week I won thirty-three dollars at a Dodger game, but more than that, I won a date to find out who exactly this Jimmy Voltage guy is.

  48

  Date Forty-Eight: The Comedy Show of Errors

  The last time I was at Lidia’s house she joked as I was walking out, “You’re gonna end up being friends with all of them.” Though I laughed at the time, I secretly hoped she was wrong. I have enough friends.

  Jimmy Voltage and I almost don’t make it on what becomes the most highly anticipated date of the year. After our wonderful afternoon together, I wake up the next day, thrilled, excited, overjoyed. I keep checking my cell, waiting for the call, a text message, the red blinking light. But there is nothing. Jimmy had asked me what I was doing that weekend, so I figured he would want to call me by Friday. But he doesn’t, and when Saturday rolls around, and I have made other plans, and my phone still hasn’t rung, I am in shock. I have never been stood up before. Not like that. I leave Jimmy a message, giving him an opportunity to explain just in case there had been some confusion. And I hear nothing in return. That night I go to Sunset Junction, the annual street festival in our neighborhood. I walk around with friends; I watch a band; I eat a Philly Cheese Steak; we gather at Pazzo for gelato. And then I walk home alone. And I cry. I cry like I haven’t in a long time. Because though I have been so happy recently, though I have been so at peace in being single, the reintroduction of Jimmy Voltage jump-started my heart. And now it hurts.

  The streets are dark, so I don’t hold back. People pass me as I walk, and I can tell they think I’ve been drinking. Because really, who cries like that so publicly without being drunk? I get home and stare up at the watercolor cheetah on my wall, the one that reminds so much of that magical Otorongo. I pray to that cat for the ability to see the truth in this one, and for the strength to follow it.

  Two days later, Jimmy calls me back, filled with confusion and apologies. He says he never got my message; he had never planned for us to go out that weekend; he feels terrible. I don’t think Jimmy Voltage is a bad man. I just think he is rather confused. And I think I am better off without him.

  The next week I go to dinner with Ben again, and we talk about our books, and I feel pretty good that I have dropped the whole Jimmy Voltage thing. And then I go on the three-day, horseback-riding trip into the mountains, and I fuck it all up. Because while I am riding across desolate landscapes and lush meadows and up snarled mountaintops, while I sit on my mule, Dodger, and survey the beauty of this amazing earth, I realize that some of the most magnificent views are made not because of the world’s perfection, but by its imperfections. It is not the pristine glass of the lakes that makes my heart lurch, but the burnt-out trees, the sliding rocks. The disproportionate jags of the cliffs, and my mule, who is the oldest steed in the bunch, and yet the most sure-footed. And then I sleep in near-freezing weather, and I wake up cold the next day, and I want for no one’s arms but those of Jimmy Voltage.

  So, I call him. Again. The night before my thirty-first birthday. I have just come home from the magical trip into the Sierras; I have just spent the day at work with my four-year-old Princess club; and I am soaring. My life is so perfect in this moment. I call Jimmy with an honesty I have never before expressed.

  “I like you, Jimmy. I do. I don’t know why. And I don’t know if maybe all we’re supposed to be is friends here, but I am willing to go on a date to find out,” I explain.

  There is silence for a moment, which is terrifying, and then he tells me, “I feel the exact same way.”

  I smile—what a great birthday present.

  “Have you been to the Observatory lately?” he asks.

  The next night is my birthday, and I go to the gun club with Mimi and Ivan and John and Nat and even my non-date Adam. It is such a gathering of characters that I feel like I am in a movie.

  And then I get the message from Jimmy: “So I saw there’s this comedy show for Obama on Wednesday night, and I really want to go to it, so let’s do that instead of the Observatory.”

  I flip my phone closed and shake my head. Someone’s been thinking. And he’s not alone. Because I spent the better part of the weekend working on that script which I have suddenly become so sure of. The romantic points, the serious conversations, the jokes, the clothes, the setting, the choreography, the lighting, the cinematography. It was going to be perfect.

  Jimmy was apparently doing his own future thinking, but his was more about how the Observatory was not such a good location after all. So in the space of one week, we go from a romantic night looking at the stars to a bad comedy show on Wilshire where the only redeeming factor is that we donate twenty bucks to Obama. Not what I had in mind.

  Jimmy Voltage comes to pick me up, and I walk out my back door to find him standing by his truck, waiting to greet me, because he does have that part down. I expect some starstruck embrace that will make all the work that it took us to get on this date worth it. I expect some loving look that will make us ditch the comedy show and run off together. I expect some soft hand on my face and some loving compliment that washes away the last ten months and puts me firmly into his life.

  Instead, I walk out to find my new neighbor flirting with him. When she sees me, I can tell she is embarrassed, and Jimmy and I hug briefly before we get in his truck. I ask Jimmy if he wants to hear one of the chapters about him because I am not very good with coming up with new tricks, and I figured if it were able to put Oliver and me in such an honest place, it might also do the same here. Jimmy crinkles up his face. “Really?”

  “Why not? There’s nothing bad. You’re a good character, Jimmy.”

  “I know that.” His confidence on the matter throws me. “But don’t you think it will spoil the salad?” he adds.

  I shrug and say, “It’s no big deal. You don’t have to read it.”

  I look over at him, and somehow he looks older. He is about to turn forty, and he is still smoking, and his face looks grayish, and his sideburns are too long, and in a quick flash, I realize: I might not actually be attracted to this man.

  Jimmy just stares straight ahead. “Man, look at this traffic.” And that’s the end of that.

  We go to the comedy show, which sucks. So we leave the comedy show and go to dinner instead. We
talk about politics and our childhoods and the renovations recently completed at the Mexican restaurant where we are eating. Oddly enough, we go to the same place we did back when we were dating and thought we might be falling in love. That night we looked at each other all starry-eyed over the table, and Jimmy came and sat next to me at the end so we could continue kissing. This time we are both just a little bored. Halfway through my meal, I find myself desperately fighting off a number of yawns because here is what I always knew and forgot: though Jimmy and I have some amazing chemistry, though our bodies fit very nicely next to one another’s, though our lives are similar and our passions not altogether different, we severely lack the ability to make easy conversation. It’s like we’re both working from the same symphony; we’re both playing the same chords, but in completely different notes, with completely different tempos. And we just don’t harmonize. And I don’t know why. I wish I did. I couldn’t tell you if you paid me a million dollars.

  Jimmy drops me off, and though we have a tender, romantic moment with soft kisses and big hugs, I know as he says, “See you later, Kristen,” that we won’t try this again. It doesn’t make sense to try this again. We have tried it enough, and we always ended up feeling the same way—that there is something missing.

  The next night I go to the stables to work, and as I lean against Arrow, staring out at the amazing view, at the world’s perfections and imperfections, I realize that because there is no man in my life, I have had to find new things to do to keep the loneliness at bay. And just like in high school, when the goal of meeting boys got me on the swim team and track team and debate club, now, not meeting boys has gotten me to the stables and into the Sierra Nevadas and on this intense, magical adventure I sent myself on almost a year ago when I decided that my life had to change.

  49

  Date Forty-Nine: The Stars and the Moon

  The morning light guides me along the highway, through the city of Chatsworth, home of porn stars and horse farms, and then through Santa Susanna, where the rocks are stacked like children’s toys, and the mountains overshadow the strip malls in their midst. I drive up through Box Canyon, and though there is a long, terrifying drop to the right of my car, I can’t help but slow down and admire the great breathtaking golden bowl that is this Valley. With its weeping willows and isolated air, I love it immediately. As I drive up the rustic dirt road that leads to my shaman’s new home my eyes fill with tears at the beautiful Spanish-tiled cottage that she now shares with Charles. Charles is not Lidia’s husband. Charles is the shaman whom she met last January at a sweat lodge. Charles is the railroad switch and the catalyst for Lidia’s divorce.

  Two weeks ago, I drove up to the Ojai Valley to meet both Lidia and Charles at the sweat lodge they conduct together. I saw them talking, and I knew immediately that this was the man for whom she had been waiting. Charles went to stoke the fire, and Lidia walked up. She put her arm around me as we watched this grizzled, smoking man labor over the hot stones which were to make that day so special.

  “So that’s your bear?” I asked.

  We both looked at Charles, so large and dark and beautiful. “Yes, he is.”

  Lidia told me that it wasn’t easy. That she had been married to her husband for twenty years, and that in many ways, that man she just left was her best friend. She told me Charles was in a relationship too. But then she told me that once they knew they were in love with each other, there just weren’t too many other options than to live that truth.

  “You took the bold path,” I said.

  “Yes we did, honey. Sometimes life demands that we jump right in.”

  As I sit across from Lidia in her new home I know that as much as the choice was difficult, as much as it was bold, it was also right. Her home feels right. We sit in a different room now, but the couch is the same, and her chair is the same. The tea cups are also the same, and so it feels as comfortable as ever. She asks me if I liked the sweat.

  “I did. It was a little hard. The first time doing this work, I think it’s always a little removed. You have to get past the part where you think you’re crazy.”

  “The hokeyness?” she asks.

  And I love that she can see that, even in her life’s work. I explain to her that I went in with the intention to let go of perfection and fantasy. To move past these concepts of movie-star love and scripted romances and what men are supposed to be in order to have a new experience in this world. I know that I cannot be open to my Charles if I am not willing to see him.

  “Ho,” Lidia says. I find out at the retreat that “ho” means a sort of “Right on” in the Native American culture.

  And so I tell her. I tell her about Oliver. About Jimmy. About my father. And ultimately, about Ben.

  I tell Lidia how the night before, I knew I was going to run into Ben at a meeting, and I knew that most likely we would hang out afterward to talk about our writing. We have been doing that more and more lately. Three times in the last week. We bring our work, sit down at coffee, and edit for each other. Last night, we were doing just that. Ben was talking about the chapter where I visit my dad in prison.

  “I just don’t think you’re showing enough of you,” he told me.

  “Really, I feel like it’s pretty honest.”

  “It’s honest, but it’s not the full story. I want to know all of you, Kristen, not just pieces.”

  “Okay,” I said. And I tried to ignore that the comment on my work is the one thing I have been waiting years for a man to say.

  I still can’t figure out his intentions, but perhaps even more confusing, I can’t figure out mine. I often ask my friends when they start dating someone, if they like the guy because they like the guy, or if they like him because they think he likes them. I am not sure if I want Ben in my life, or if I just want someone. But then I remember about giving up on these fantasies and these demands for romantic perfection. Maybe I just need be open to Ben—open to who he can be, open to what we might be. But that is also terrifying.

  I explain to Lidia that I had wanted to invite Ben over to my house to work instead of going to a coffee shop, but then at the last minute, I just couldn’t spit out the invitation.

  “Why not?” Lidia asks me.

  “Because I was worried he’d say no.”

  “What if he said yes?”

  “Then I was worried he would be too hot. My apartment gets hot. I don’t have air conditioning.”

  Lidia just looks at me. I am in the most honest room in my world, and I am trying to tell her that my fear of rejection comes down to AC.

  “I think it’s more than that, Kristen.”

  “It’s the little girl.”

  When I don’t invite Ben to my place, we get tea at a café up the street. We go over some of my work, and we talk about his, and we begin to ease into this new thing we’re doing called flirting. But I am not entirely there, and I know it, and because Ben knows me rather well by now, he knows it too. By not speaking up and asking him over, I have in my own way checked out, and insecurity has shown up in the void.

  Lidia and I stand up to begin the work. We stand with our arms raised as Lidia opens with a prayer, “Great mountains, great sky. Stars and moon and sun and the gravity which keeps us rooted in sweet mother earth, thank you for being the truth. You are the evidence of the Great Spirit. You are bigger than our fantasies. You are bigger than my sister’s dreams. Please help her to have faith in the work of our ancestors. To believe in her own life, her paths, her truth.”

  We kneel down, and Lidia brings out her stones. She asks, “So tell me about the little girl? How old is she?”

  I don’t hesitate to say, “Ten.”

  “And what was happening when you were ten?”

  I remember being that confused little girl, playing teacher by myself in our garage with the colored chalk I had stolen years before. I remember stinging from some insult my grandmother had just tossed at me—some question about why I wasn’t more like Melanie, Missy, Sonia, or
Sarah. And all I remember is thinking, “I wish I was someone else.” I explain to Lidia that I used to fantasize about getting abducted. We would go to the mall, and I would try to wander off in the hopes that some man would steal me and take me away.

  “Well, you were missing your dad,” Lidia offers.

  It’s funny how it can takes decades to connect the obvious.

  She smiles at me. “You’re still missing your dad, Kristen.”

  And though I wish she was wrong, I know she is right. I am still missing my dad. Because after he moved back to Connecticut, it became clear that he is back in his old business. He has been running drugs in and out of Nogales, Mexico, and it doesn’t take me long to figure out that he was doing that the whole time he was in Texas. That the farm and the Blue Tick hounds was all a front. That had I gone to visit him, I would have been going to visit a pot farm as much as a citrus one. And it hurts. It hurts that this man I was assigned as a father could be so untrustworthy.