The Girlfriend Curse

by Valerie Frankel

  Peg removed his hands from her face. She leaned away from him on the couch, and stood up.

  He said, “You’re leaving.”

  “I’m not leaving,” she said, laughing. “I’ve been thinking about this moment for weeks. I have to stand up to take off my clothes.”

  “So do it,” said Linus, smiling. “I’ll watch.”

  “One warning, having just seen Gloria nearly naked. I might disappoint in comparison.” She took off her shorts.

  “I have no idea what Gloria’s body looks like,” he said.

  “She undressed two minutes ago, right in this spot. Didn’t you notice?” asked Peg.

  He shook his head. “I was looking at you.”

  Peg said, “You’re still testing my gullibility.”

  “I might have peeked a little.”

  “One other warning,” said Peg. “I’ve been running.” She removed her sports bar.

  He said, “So you’ll taste like a salt lick.” Linus pulled her toward him. She straddled him on the couch.

  “A salt lick?” she asked.

  “Candy for horses,” he said. “But I can think of a salt lick that would be like candy for you.”

  They kissed. For all the heat that generated, Peg appreciated the warmth, too. Their kiss had a backstory, it’d been delayed by circumstance. And since they already had a past, it stood to reason that she and Linus would have a future. She pressed herself into him, melting all the way inward. He groaned and shifted under her.

  He said, “As your therapist, I recommend that we do this once quickly, and then slowly for the rest of the week.”

  She unzipped his shorts, gripped him tightly, then pushed her panties aside to slip him in.

  And then, blammo. It happened again.

  He came fast after her. Both breathing hard, they stayed just as they were, holding on tight.

  Peg said, “Now that we’re a couple…we are a couple, yes?”

  He kissed her on the neck, along the collarbone. “A couple of what?”

  “That’s my line,” she said. “Now that we’re a couple—of what, we don’t know—be aware that within eighteen months, you will be married. Not to me. To someone else. The entire town of Manshire will rejoice. In their gratitude, they may elect me to replace you.”

  Linus said, “Why should I buy some other cow when I get milk for free from you?”

  “If I’m going to be your cow, you should give me a name. Like the newborn calfs at Billings Farm.”

  He said, “How about Rare?”

  “As in, ‘raw’?” she asked.

  “As in, ‘a unique specimen,’ ” he said, and carried her to his bedroom.

  Chapter 34

  “Taste,” said Peg Silver, thirty-three, as she filled a ladle with rhubarb brandy and poured the liquid into a cup.

  Linus Bester, her boyfriend and co-director of Couples Inward Bound, a monthlong adult education program in Man-shire, Vermont, for romantic partners who wished to deepen their relationship, said, “You followed my recipe?”

  She handed him the cup, the brandy steaming and thick, hot on the tongue, yet somehow cooling, even in July. “I tweaked it,” she said.

  “It’s a thirty-year-old recipe,” he said.

  “If people can change after thirty, so can recipes.”

  Linus blew on his brandy, and sipped. “Different,” he said. “And better.”

  He could have said the same about her, but he wouldn’t dare. Nor would she about him. But everyone knew, especially Peg and Linus, that their relationship of one year had been evolutionary for both.

  “Tracy and Ben are doing great,” said Peg about one of the couples attending the program this month. “Just like Wilma always said, ‘You can convince a friend to marry you three times as easily as a boyfriend.”’

  “Is that what she said?” asked Linus.

  “Not in those words.”

  He said, “Jack and Nina present an interesting problem.”

  “How to live three hundred miles apart, and still have a committed relationship. Although, Nina told me yesterday on the dock that she’s going to ask Gloria if she can relocate to Vermont. Martin Pharmacies has gotten the best PR in its history this year, thanks to Nina. I don’t think Gloria would dare fire her.”

  Linus said, “One more drink?”

  “You need to ask?” Peg ladled one more for him, and one for herself. “We have to conduct a meditation session this afternoon. We can’t get too drunk.”

  “I canceled it,” he said. “I told everyone to contemplate their partner’s navel instead.”

  Peg raised her eyebrows suggestively. “So we’re alone? Want milk? I’m giving it away.”

  Linus smiled (the sight of which continued to thrill Peg, even after waking up to that face for three hundred and sixty-four mornings in a row). He said, “It’s our anniversary.”

  She said, “Is it really?”

  “I’m supposed to break up with you today. You told me, one year ago, that I’d buckle under your marriage pressure, dump you, and call it an act of sacrificial love.”

  “I haven’t pressured you,” she said. “I haven’t made demands. I’ve been happy with how things are. Ecstatically happy, as you fucking well know. I haven’t even thought about marriage.”

  “Well, I have,” he said. “I want to buy the cow.”

  Peg inhaled deeply. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

  “I am,” he said. “But if you’re ecstatic with the way things are, then maybe I shouldn’t put that kind of pressure on you.

  “Not so fast,” she said. “You can’t unring a cow bell.”

  Linus said, “So how about it? Want to be the First Lady of Manshire?” He grabbed her around the waist.

  “Love to,” said Peg. “Do I get business cards?” She put her arms around his neck.

  “Nah,” he said. “You do get to be loved and cherished for the rest of your life.”

  “Finally,” said Peg. “The cows have come home.”

  Valerie Frankel’s Little Black Book

  A few quick things:

  1. Several weeks ago, I turned forty.

  2. Several months ago, I got married.

  3. I wrote a new book.

  I’ll start at the top. I am forty now. Until this year, I was less than forty, and had thoroughly enjoyed the comfort of being what anyone over eighty would call “young.” I have transitioned from the dewy glint of said youth, straight into “the prime of life.” I must say, from where I sit, with the lofty perspective of a craggy, wizened old woman who has seen two-score summers and four-times-ten winters (and five-times-eight springs), forty is not nearly as frightening or depressing as I’d anticipated. It’s a lot easier than thirty, actually, for the following reasons (not necessarily in order of importance):

  My life has shrunk to the size of a walnut. I’ve always been amused by the meager character count in contemporary novels, by necessity. You can’t tell a tight story that accurately mirrors the vastness of one’s true-life acquaintance. However, as I’ve gotten older, life is imitating art. My true-life character count seems to have winnowed down significantly—and happily. How few? Let’s just say that my Christmas shopping list would not cover a Post-it note. Naturally, one must stay in touch, or get back in touch, or touch base whenever possible with the people you’ve lost touch with. And I don’t allow longtime friendships and work relationships to fly into space. That said, the social pressures, the hanging weight of responsibility, the constriction of guilt about keeping up are gone. I’m not sure when they dissolved or where they went, but the relief is great. Handling the day-to-day with my two daughters, husband, best friend, sister and parents is a full plate. I like a full plate. For now, one will do just fine.

  A low-fat, low-sugar diet and regular exercise improves sex. I made this discovery, having been forced over the last few years to revise my previously high-fat, high-sugar slothful lifestyle. I say “forced” (self-imposed) because if I hadn’
t changed my ways, I’d be too ashamed to put my author photo on the back cover of this book. Amazing to learn at such an advanced age, having spent decades on mental and creative pursuits, that 90 percent of life’s pleasures are derived from the body (as opposed to the mind). Orgasms, endorphins, a mouthful of eel sushi. What more can a girl want? To paraphrase Jonathan Franzen in The Corrections, at the end of the day (or one’s fourth decade), the only things that really matter are food and sex. I’d even revise that to say only sex matters, and therefore, one must make healthy food choices to avoid bloating, constipation, gas, indigestion, etc., so that during sex, you won’t be embarrassed or distracted by unwelcome and unattractive bodily functions.

  The voice in my head has shut up. Not the voice that told me to take a midnight stroll with a shotgun. Never had that. I mean the nagging little whiner who harped on the negatives. The one who insisted I was a fraud and about to be exposed for complete incompetence. Call her “the voice of doubt.” She has been replaced by “the voice of reason.” Which isn’t to say I am suddenly bursting with confidence and grace, and that any criticism or defeat slides off my back like mud. Even at forty, I am human. The events that used to ruin me for a week, however, are now processed and disposed of within a few hours. This pertains largely to work. A bad book review, a magazine article that requires a massive revision. I used to take such things personally. The matters I take personally these days are related only to my personal life, not the professional one. Consequentially, professional ambition has dropped way down the priority list. I have stopped taking what I used to call “bread-and-butter work,” and now accept only the assignments that inflame my curiosity. Subsequentially, I make less money now. I’m working my way down the ladder of success. But I never said enlightenment was lucrative.

  My ten-year plan has been downgraded to ten minutes. Can’t tell you how many magazine articles I wrote in my twenties and thirties about the importance of proper planning and setting goals. I will never write an article about planning again, unless I can describe it as a colossal waste of time. Ten years ago, I was married and had a great job at Mademoiselle. My future plans depended on those two legs, the ones I stood on solidly, every day. Six years later, my husband was dead and Mademoiselle had been put out of business. Any extant long-term agenda had been rendered useless. Future planning, other than “get through the day,” was beyond comprehension. “Plan” is just another four-letter word to me now, the only one I don’t use regularly. Instead, I prefer to float. From one day to the next, one book to the next, one love to the next.

  Which brings up major life event number two: my new marriage. Whenever I tell people about Steve, the first question they ask is, “Where did you meet him?” Indeed, where would a working widowed mother meet a childless commitment-ready man? Unabashedly, I say, “On the Internet.” Invariably, the response is, “Really?” And then, “Tell me more.”

  Here goes: About a year after my husband died, I decided the time had come to get myself some dates. Initially, I floated my desire to friends and family, many of whom questioned my “readiness.” I insisted, “Oh, I’m ready. I could not be more ready. With God as my witness, I am beyond ready.” I mustn’t have been convincing; no one fixed me up. Thirty-six is perhaps the most unfortunate age to be single. My friends were either married parents (pre-divorce) or perpetually single, in need of dates themselves. Any unattached men in our circles were deemed unworthy (I heard this often: “There’s a reason he’s still single.”) or unwilling to take on me and my baggage (dead husband, two small daughters). I would have to widen my circles of acquaintance, and saw only one way, given my time constraints, to do it.

  I had a few friends who cruised online. These women were sane. Smart. Normal. Just alone. I was all that—and much, much more! They claimed to get a dozen emails a day, to secure two or three dates a week (“net” indeed). The numbers were huge. The opportunity ripe.

  I browsed match.com for the entire month of April 2001. A quick search on their database yielded hundreds of men within ten miles of my zip code who were decent-looking, had jobs, could write a coherent sentence. Yet I held off on posting, asking myself, “Isn’t advertising for dates a sign of desperation?”

  That shouldn’t have mattered. In mid-2001, desperation was downright chic. The plight of the proactive single woman had become a revered, heroic quest (e.g., Sex and the City, chick lit). At the time, I was writing The Accidental Virgin, a novel about misadventures in dating that included a chapter about match.com. I had to post, I told myself, for research. Even without this helpful justification, the desire to put up an ad increased daily—or nightly, I should say, since after I put the kids to bed, I made an evening ritual of reading personal ads, visiting and revisiting some good ones, obsessively checking to see when these men had last visited the site. This started to feel ridiculous, emotionally questionable. Browsing wasn’t buying. I was not a chickenshit. We shop for everything online, why not love? Technology touches every aspect of our lives, why not the most personal?

  “Why not?” in fact, should be the tagline for online dating. Undeniably, the system works. Who among us can’t name at least two couples that met online? The convenience and immediacy are in perfect sync with our hyper-speed culture. Or one could see it this way: Online dating succeeds merely because it exists, having opened a new, major artery of opportunity. Those who do well recognize the pioneering spirit of cyberdating, writing ads that are brief, earnest and funny, along the lines of, “You’re lonely? Me, too. Since we’re sitting in the same miserable boat, we might as well introduce ourselves.”

  I signed up in early May. I filled out the form about vital stats, age, looks, income, interests, religion, marital and parental status, etc. I sent in a black-and-white photo, the same one that has appeared in magazines and on book covers. It looked just like me. Despite this, one of the first emails I received through match.com was from a friend of a friend. Out of context, he didn’t recognize me, and sent a clever but generic note. I chose not to reply to avoid embarrassing him. Incidentally, this guy is now married happily to someone he met online.

  In the weeks to come, I got emails from scores of men. The solicitors were too old, bad spellers, unattractive, from Canada. One widower thought we could share our pain—the polar opposite of what I was looking for. Another man sent me a graphically erotic poem. Another stated that he’d been on Prozac for many years, still struggled with depression but thought a “lady love” could cure him. A twenty-two-year-old wrote that it’d be “cool” to “hang” with a single mom.

  I decided to break form and be the aggressor, sending out a dozen first-contact emails to men I liked. The response rate was dismal. A couple wrote back that my life was too complicated for them. Most didn’t write back at all.

  Of the few who did, I dated two of them. I met the first man for lunch in downtown Manhattan after a couple of weeks of nightly emailing and a few phone conversations. I’ll never forget the shock of coming face-to-face. At that moment, I learned a crucial caveat about online dating: People use deceptive pictures. In the years since his had been taken, he’d gained thirty pounds and gone bald. The lunch was awkward. He was talkative, seemingly oblivious to how his fraud had affected me. I was reminded of author Mary T. Browne’s observation about the enterprise: Typing is not dating.

  My second match.com date is recorded faithfully in The Accidental Virgin (at least I got some material out of it). Another disaster. Another man who’d posted a grossly outdated (or doctored) photo. He planted a stealth kiss on me, too. I was so irritated by that, I called him on the lies in his ad and the deception of his photo. He stormed out of the bar, leaving me with the tab.

  By all accounts, successful Internet daters endure initial failure. One friend claims to have gone on forty dates via matchmaker.com before she found the man who is now her husband. I decided to expand my territory, as it were. Go to other venues.

  Full disclosure hadn’t worked. My ad seemed to terrify, not tit
illate. I needed mystery. AOL used to let you search their personals database and reply directly to an email address instead of through the site (not so anymore; nowadays, aol.com has a partnership with match.com). I liked the idea of reading an ad and sending an email without the recipient knowing my vitals first. So I started shopping the AOL personals. By then it was late June. I was leaving Brooklyn in a few weeks to go to Vermont for July and part of August. Since I was interested in New Yorkers only, I didn’t see the point of starting something with one foot out of state. But it couldn’t hurt to look.

  That second day reading AOL personals, I saw a posting with the subject line “This ad is not stupid!” Made me laugh. So did the entire page. The man, adorable in the photo (although I was, by then, skeptical), had written a charming ad about wanting to find a woman who “isn’t career or religion obsessed, doesn’t play games and has friends, i.e., isn’t a lonely crybaby.” He listened to introspective classical music, was “in show business,” described himself as short but “beautifully proportioned.” Most importantly, he didn’t object to women with children. I decided to email him, even though I was leaving town soon.

  Of course, the writer was Steve, the man who is now my husband. In the years we’ve been together, we have yet to discover any social or professional overlap in our lives. We existed in different universes. If it weren’t for the Internet, I am certain beyond doubt that we would have never met. And now we are legally bound, my children call him Dad, and we are ingrained in each other’s thoughts. Turned out, he’d written his ad only a couple of weeks before I came across it, for a site I’d only just started to explore. And naysayers believe there’s no romantic serendipity in online dating.

  Our early emails were funny but superficial. We exchanged daily. He sent me two more photos right away. I was relieved to see he looked the same in both, and that one, he said, had been taken the month before. I sent him my usual black-and-white picture, which, for some reason, arrived at his computer twenty times the normal size (he wrote, “Your excellent photo came through in drive-in movie theater grandiosity. Your pores are among the best I’ve ever seen.”). We wrote about New York, experiences in online dating, where we were from, our backgrounds. Not a word about our jobs (he hadn’t wanted a career-obsessed woman, after all).