by Liz Tuccillo
“I’m so sorry, I must have turned the ringer off instead of the machine, this is so rude…” She went to the phone and fiddled with some more buttons.
“It’s off now. It’s completely off,” Georgia said sheepishly. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. No problem,” Sam said. Georgia noticed that Sam was truly flustered at this point. He didn’t even comment on this particular man’s message, and Georgia chose not to explain it. She thought it was best to let the other man’s desire hang in the air.
“So what did his kid say?” she asked sweetly.
Sam looked at Georgia and then back down at the counter. “Nothing. It was nothing.”
“Well, dinner’s ready anyway.”
They began eating, but everything was different. For one thing, Sam was now really looking at her. Women spend so much time wondering how the men they’re with feel about them; they’ll analyze emails, replay phone messages. But the simple fact is that all you have to do is watch how he looks at you. If he looks at you as if he doesn’t want to take his eyes off you for fear that you might disappear, then you are with a man who really likes you. And now, that was how Sam was looking at Georgia. At the pub he barely made eye contact. Now he was staring at her, hard.
Georgia had pulled off a feat that Wall Street brokers and economists would be in awe of. In just one hour, she had raised her stock by manufacturing “demand” out of thin air, and it looked like there might be a bidding war. She made herself seem to be the one thing that everything in our culture wants her to believe she is not: valuable. And all it took was a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of flowers and phone calls from the gay couple down the hall. She watched Sam try to impress her with his jokes, nervously running his fingers through his hair. She smiled to herself when he touched her arm to make a point or she felt his eyes follow her as she went to get more wine. At the end of the date he only stopped kissing her when Georgia told him it was time to go.
Now, you may ask, did Georgia feel badly that it was all a lie? That she had to create an entire reality in order to feel good about herself? Did she feel badly that none of this was true? That she actually sent herself flowers to get some midwestern cornhead’s attention? No. All she felt in this moment was proud. She saw reality and she refused to kid herself about it. With clearheadedness and foresight, she’d understood the power shift that had occurred with Sam and his new view of the world and then did something about it. She made herself into a “catch” and she felt that someone should give her a medal for it. Women are fucked, the numbers are against them, time is against them, and if their only recourse is to completely fabricate a personal life in order to jump up a notch in the brutal dating pecking order, then that’s just fine.
Sam called her the next day. His voice sounded nervous, probably wondering if hot, sought-after Georgia would even take his call.
“Hey, Georgia. It’s Sam.”
“Hi, Sam!” Georgia said, warmly. “How are you?”
“Great, great,” Sam said, trying to sound cheerful, but not too eager. “Listen, I just wanted to let you know that I had a really great time last night and I was hoping I could see you again soon.”
Georgia had already decided what she was going to do when this call came (which she knew it would). “Listen, Sam, I had a great time, too. But I just got off the phone with Hal, and we’ve decided to see each other exclusively.”
Sam cleared his throat. “Oh. Okay. Wow. Well, I’m really disappointed, I’m not going to lie, but I appreciate you telling me.”
She knew her decision was a risky one. She had cut off the only dating prospect she had. And, as I’ve made clear, we love the dating prospects. But at the end of the day, Georgia wanted to be with someone who didn’t have anything to prove to himself, who didn’t need to play the field, and didn’t need competition to notice how valuable Georgia was. Besides, flowers are really expensive.
Unfortunately, Serena had let go of her apartment, something no one in New York should ever do, whether for a relocation, a marriage, or a baby. Only if you’re dead, then maybe you can give it up. Even then, try not to.
But Serena did. So now she was hairless and homeless. As I had sublet my apartment, and Serena didn’t have money for a hotel, she didn’t really know what to do. So she called up the one person who would understand the depression into which she was about to plunge. She called Ruby and asked if she could crash at her house. Ruby, being Ruby, immediately agreed.
When I heard what happened, via a text message, I thought it might be best to do a conference call. I even asked Georgia to come by to make sure the two of them were going to be okay together. I worry sometimes.
Alice and I were still in Sydney, packing to take our trip to Tasmania. Ruby was sitting at her dining room table with Serena and Georgia. They were all on speakerphone and I shouted my disbelief.
“A guy who’s not supposed to be having sex with anyone was having sex with at least five different women!?”
“Who were all more than happy to share him. THEY WERE ALL MORE THAN HAPPY TO SHARE HIM,” Serena shouted back.
Georgia just shook her head. “Wow. Now celibate guys are having harems. It’s the end of the world.”
“Maybe they should just start euthanizing us all,” Ruby said, almost to herself.
Everyone gasped, even me, on the phone.
“What?!” I said, hoping that my connection had made me misunderstand.
“I mean it,” Ruby said matter-of-factly. “Just like with the dogs. Maybe the mayor’s office should just start killing off all women who are ill-tempered, not in perfect health, have bad teeth, or whatever. To give the good candidates a better chance at finding a suitable home.”
We were all stunned into silence. Clearly things at the animal shelter had started to get to Ruby.
Serena finally asked, “You’re the one I’ve decided to live with to cheer me up?”
Georgia said, “Ruby, I don’t know you very well, so please forgive me if this comes out wrong, but if you don’t pick up the phone and quit that volunteer job right this minute I will have to punch you in the face.”
“Seriously, Ruby, that was the worst thing I have ever heard anyone say in my entire life,” I added.
Georgia started to laugh. “I can’t believe you actually said that.”
Serena started to giggle. “You actually suggested that the city start gassing us.”
Ruby threw her head down on the table and started laughing, starting to see how far she’d fallen. “Oh my God, and I still kind of believe it. I’m losing my mind!”
Alice and I were in our hotel in Australia, listening to them all scream with laughter.
Georgia took out her cell phone. “Gimme the number. Of the shelter. Now.”
Ruby did as she was told. Georgia dialed her cell phone and handed the phone to Ruby. Ruby began to speak.
“Hello? This is Ruby Carson. I’m a volunteer there. I wanted to let you know that I won’t be coming in again. It’s very bad for my mental health, thank you.” She quickly hung up as Ruby and Georgia burst into applause.
“I couldn’t hear—did Ruby just quit her volunteer job?” I asked from the other side of the world.
“Yes. Yes, she did,” Georgia said. “Now we just have to get Serena a job and our mission for tonight will be accomplished.”
“Can you go back to your old job? With the movie star?” Alice asked.
Serena shrugged. “I’m sure they hired someone else.”
I piped in on my end. “But Serena, from everything you told me about them, they sounded really nice. You seemed to really like them.”
“It’s true,” Serena said into the phone. “I’ve actually missed them a little. Joanna really was sweet to me. And Robert was really fun to be around.”
Georgia got out her phone. “Call them and find out. What’s their number?”
Serena hesitated.
“Please, I’m not going to sell it to People magazine. I’m just t
rying to get you a job.”
Serena gave Georgia the number. Georgia dialed and handed the phone to Serena.
“Hello, Joanna? This is Serena.” Everyone watched as Serena listened to the voice on the other end. Serena’s eyes began to light up.
“Well, actually, it’s funny you ask. It didn’t really work out for me at the yoga center. So I was wondering if you were…really? Oh. Wow. Great. Yeah, I’ll come by tomorrow and we can talk about it. Okay. See you then.”
Serena closed Georgia’s phone, looking puzzled. “They don’t have anyone.”
Georgia clapped and said, “That’s amazing!”
“Yeah,” Serena said. “But I don’t know…she sort of sounded sad.”
“What?” I said, the sound having dipped out for a minute.
Serena leaned into the phone and said again, louder, “She sounded sad.”
Back to Australia
The flight to Tasmania was only an hour and a half long. I imagined it would be an island wilderness with kangaroos hopping around, and aboriginal tribespeople greeting us with their didgeridoos. But Hobart, the capital of Tasmania, is quite civilized. It’s a quaint, colonial-feeling town on a picturesque harbor. Short sandstone buildings line the streets, renovated into pubs and shops. Sadly, I even saw a Subway sandwich shop there.
I had emailed Fiona before we left Sydney, telling her that we’d be coming. She kindly offered to meet us at the local pub to talk. I was still suspecting she had an agenda—being a New Yorker, I had to assume she couldn’t be doing this just to be nice.
I have to admit, my mood was not very good. It’s one thing to read the lousy statistics, it’s another to watch them played out with above-the-head-staring men, women who feel over the hill at thirty-five, and young men who are dividing by two and adding four. In New York, there’s not much difference between the way a twenty-five-year-old behaves and a thirty-five-year-old. In New York, if you’re pushing forty, you can be so busy having a good time it doesn’t even faze you when you get an invitation to your twentieth high school reunion. But in Sydney, my bubble of self-delusion officially burst. For the first time in my life, I felt old.
We met at a harborside Irish pub with a long wooden bar and a giant sign that said “Fishmonger.”
As soon as we walked in, we heard, “Now these must be my New York girls!” A woman walked toward us with her arms outstretched and a big smile on her face. She was exactly as I imagined, with a round, open face and pale Britishy skin. She had thin, light brown hair that was pulled back in a ponytail. She was absolutely pleasant to look at—appealing, innocuous, and a bit bland. She looked us over. “Why you’re absolutely gorgeous!” I immediately felt guilty for thinking she looked bland. She ushered us to the bar. “Come on now, if you’re here in Hobart, you’re going to have to have a pint. Have you tried the James Boag’s?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t really drink beer.”
“Me neither,” Alice said.
“But you must try just a bit. You’re at the docks. We can’t have you sipping wine down here, now can we?” Both Alice and I were thinking, Why yes, yes you can, when Fiona went to the bar and ordered beers for us. She waited until they came, paid for them, and gave them to us.
“Now tell me, do you think I’m an absolute idiot for the things I write? Are you here to tell me off? Come on, let’s have it then.” She was so warm and open, I didn’t have the heart to get all combative with her.
“I didn’t come here to yell at you, it’s just…”
“I seem too much all sunshine and lollies, is that it?”
“It’s just that you telling women to love themselves and they’ll find love seems, I don’t know…”
“Like a lie,” Alice jumped in to say. “It’s statistically impossible. Even if we all started marrying gay men, the numbers still wouldn’t work out.”
Fiona took the criticism in stride. “The statistics are very compelling. Did you hear that someone suggested we give our blokes tax incentives just to stay in Australia? What kind of rubbish is that? They already think they’re God’s gifts, the men here.” Fiona waved at some women walking into the bar. “Katie! Jane! We’re over here!” She looked back at Alice and me. “Just try and get a man to take you out on a proper date; it’s like trying to make a koala run.” Katie and Jane came over and Fiona kissed them both on the cheeks and introduced us all.
“I’m just telling them dating in Tasmania doesn’t exist.”
Jane and Katie nodded knowingly.
“Well, what do you do instead?” Alice asked, curious.
Fiona took a gulp of beer and laughed. “Well, we go down to the pub, get drunk, fall on top of each other, and hope for the best. It’s a frightful situation, really.”
We all laughed. Fiona kept waving and kissing people hello. She greeted each person with something flattering, and with each person she really seemed to mean it.
I realized that we were in the presence of one of those people God has blessed with an abundance of serotonin and a joyful disposition. You know. A happy person.
“And it’s true. I do tell my readers that if you just love your life and are filled with that, then you’re going to be irresistible—and the men are just going to come out of the woodwork.”
I couldn’t help but become insistent. “But that’s simply not true. I know dozens of single women who are fantastic and ready and charming and shining and they can’t find boyfriends.”
“And they’re not too picky. They don’t have unrealistic expectations,” Alice chimed in. She knew a loophole when she saw one.
It was starting to get crowded and the music was up loud, so Fiona practically shouted at us. “Yet!”
“What?” I asked.
“They haven’t found boyfriends yet. It’s not over for them, is it?”
“No. But, that’s their reality now.”
“And tomorrow everything could change. That’s what I think about. Tomorrow everything could change!” As if on cue, a guy in a t-shirt and long cargo shorts walked over to Fiona and said hello to her. She greeted him warmly and kissed him on the cheek. “This is Errol. We fell on each other last summer and were together for three whole weeks, isn’t that right?” Errol smiled sheepishly. She playfully pinched his ear. “He was a real wanker to me. Weren’t you, Errol?”
“I was an asshole. It’s true.” Then he walked away.
“So tell me, Julie. What do you think I should tell people? What do you think we should believe?” Fiona asked, good-naturedly.
There it is, that question again. What do I believe in? I looked around the bar. It was a sea of men and women, predominantly women. And the women looked as if they were trying a lot harder than the men.
“That maybe life isn’t fair,” I said. “That just as not everyone is guaranteed to win the lottery or have perfect health or get along with their family, not everyone is guaranteed to have someone love them.” I was on a roll now. “Maybe then we can start a new way to think about life. One that doesn’t make it so tragic if love happens to be the thing you end up not getting.”
Fiona thought about it for a moment. “I’m sorry, ladies. If I told my readers that, I’d be responsible for the first mass suicide in the history of Australia. There would be hundreds of girls floating facedown in the Tasman Sea.”
Alice and I looked at each other. It did sound pretty dark, even to us. “Besides, I think it goes against human nature,” Fiona said. “We all want to love and be loved. That’s just the way it is.”
“Is that human nature, or is that Hollywood?” Alice asked.
A band started to play on a tiny stage set up in the back of the room. They were a lively Irish band, and soon the dance floor was full of drunken white people jumping up and down.
I thought out loud. “Maybe our true human nature is to be in a community. That’s the only thing that seems to endure. Much more than marriage, that’s for sure.”
Fiona got very serious. She stood up and placed a ha
nd on each of our shoulders, looking squarely at us. “I have to say this, and I really mean it from the bottom of my heart. You both are gorgeous women. You are smart and funny and hot. To think that you would end up with no love in your lives is absolutely bullcrap. It’s just not possible. You two are goddesses. I know you don’t want to believe me, but it’s true. Beautiful, sexy goddesses. And you shouldn’t consider, even for a moment, that you won’t have as much happiness in your life as you can possibly stand.” With that, Fiona turned to get another beer.
My eyes started to water up. Alice turned to me, her eyes a little teary as well. She was good, this one.
The music and the dancing became even more raucous and Alice grabbed my hand and dragged me onto the dance floor to jump up and down. Fiona came with us, along with about ten of her closest girlfriends. I watched her, laughing and twirling and singing along to some lyrics I couldn’t understand. No matter what I say, no matter how smart I am, I could clearly see that Fiona was happier than me. She had inoculated herself against the poison of the statistics that had weighed me down all week. As I watched the sweat start forming on her cheeks, and her face lit up with laughter, I had to admit it. She was one of those people that everyone wants to be around, and at the end of the day, people who are positive and optimistic are simply more attractive than people who are negative and pessimistic. Alice put her arm around me and pretended to sing a song that we couldn’t understand the words to. “Fly into my flah flah baby baba ba…yeah.” Fiona was dancing with Errol and Jane and Katie, making them laugh by trying to do a hip-hop step. Alice said loudly into my ear, “I like her. She’s cool.”
A handsome, rugged-looking guy then walked onto the dance floor, making his way through the crowd and right toward Fiona. When she saw him, she threw her arms around him and he gave her a big kiss on the lips. They spoke for a few moments together, their arms wrapped around each other. He went up to the bar, and Fiona saw the curious expressions on our faces and came up to us to explain.
“We just met a few weeks ago. His name is George. I’m absolutely mad about him. He’s lived in Hobart his entire life, but we’d never laid eyes on each other till last month. Isn’t that the strangest thing?”
