“I admit it. I have a problem.”
“Thank you,” Dr. D. says.
I am successfully changing Lance. I have taken things that were cool about him and sterilized them. I have made him into a straight version of Stan. But somehow I know that deep down, Lance is not Stan. Lance at thirty-four is going to be hot, smart, sensitive, and wow, I will be like …mid-forty-something, taking care of him and the kids while he has sex with college girls.
For now, I am still obsessed with the training and validation. I have noticed little nuances that need fine-tuning beyond the apparent hair trimming and new clothing, things like Lance’s eating habits. Maybe it is a guy thing, maybe it’s a young thing, but why is it that when a man holds utensils he holds them like a sandbox toy? I’ve seen Lance eat soup, ice cream, and cereal, all with that damn shovel.
“Hey, nice shovel,” I murmur as Lance slurps Cap’n Crunch at 6:30 P.M. into his very stoned body.
“Ssssorrryyy,” he says, awkwardly embarrassed with his mouth full of milk. He changes spoon position and continues.
This is not a good sign. There are definitely things that I do to make my man the way I want. A fair amount of house-training needs to take place before one says, “I do.” But I have become passive-aggressive in my obedience school training. I have become the dominant alpha she-wolf. Which is fine at work, but doesn’t work for me at home.
Rule #6: I don’t want to be the boss at home.
To dress one’s boyfriend the way I like him and then school him on table manners has got to be a reason. A penalty somewhere in the Emily dating handbook. Some women want to be the boss, I mean, really, we are the bosses. But at home I just want my man to be the man. And I have a man-child.
But at that moment, while contemplating breaking up with Lance and sending him home … he puts down his cereal bowl and makes his way to the sofa, on his knees. He lifts my flowy skirt and kisses my inner thigh with his cool, milky mouth. I lay my head back and lightly moan. All of the buzzers and whistles stop and I am reminded why …young is good. Young is nice. Young is … oh, God, yes!
11:15 A.M. the next morning. Pop home from the office between a meeting over the hill in the Valley and heading back to the office. I have been up since 5:00 A.M., taken Sam to see another specialist, did yoga, made seventeen calls, one conference call, showered, dressed, and am back home.
I open the door of my bedroom and look at Lance, still sleeping. I smile a sort of GET THE FUCK out of my bed smile. The door creaks shut and his sleepy eyes open and he says…
“Babe, can you leave me five bucks for a sandwich at Subway?”
I smile a weird little awkward grin, squint, and close the door.
I am pretty sure that I am not supposed to leave my boyfriend LUNCH MONEY.
Rule #7: Leaving lunch money for your boyfriend is a no-no.
Two weeks later: Lance still has not gone home. I’m torn by the fear of sending him off to be alone versus keeping him here to waste time, as we know he is not the right guy.
I truly do love spending time with Lance.
We’ve successfully visited Banana Republic, the Gap, Hugo Boss, Kenneth Cole, and various restaurants, bars, and day spas. I sit at the kitchen table and balance my checkbook. In exactly thirty-two days I have spent $4,822.42.
“Holy SHIT!”
Rule #8: Too much paying will end a relationship.
As I close my checkbook and look up, Lance stands in my doorway in a towel. Wet, ripped, and willing. I look at him and for the first time he isn’t hot anymore, he’s just young.
Rule #9: You’ll always pay as he hasn’t had an adult job… as he isn’t an adult.
He holds up a black cashmere sweater.
“Can I wear this?”
Did he just say, “Can?”
Rule #9 1/2 (God, he’s so hot I don’t want to get to TEN): Your boyfriend shouldn’t have to ask permission.
I nod yeah, but a what-have-I-done nod. He smiles and walks into the bathroom to have a shower.
What’s next? He asks if he can stay up late tonight. Really, what have I done? I have taken my boyfriend’s balls. But he let me. He let me pick the clothes and buy the dinners and he licked me for hours. He liked that I took care of every detail and he took care of my “needs.”
I open my computer to pay my bills online. Ugh!
INSTANT MESSAGE POPS UP ON MY SCREEN.
Callahan26
Em, What’s new? How’s my favorite L.A. girl?
To tell him … hmmm, to ask his advice? Favorite L.A. girl. Is there a favorite New York girl, Atlanta girl, Houston girl?
RC,
Not much, just working hard and paying too much. How goes the game?
Em,
Good-we’re coming to L.A. and …
Lance sneaks up behind me and kisses me on the neck. He’s naked, fresh as a daisy out of the shower. His towel falls to the floor. I push my laptop screen down. He leans down to kiss me. I roll back in my chair, push down hard with my heels, and the chair falls over backward, sending me crashing onto the hardwood floor.
“Isn’t this how we met?” he says as he tries to pick me up.
I squirm and move out of his reach, as his touch is enough to change my mind—which is already made up—and just for the record was made up before the IM from Reese.
I crawl onto my feet and realize that my elbow is trickling blood. Lance looks concerned and tries to help but …
“I got it!” I snap at him as I push past into the bathroom.
Maybe it was my tone. Maybe it was my words, but at that moment Lance wasn’t acting young anymore.
Before I could put peroxide, Neosporin, and a Band-Aid on my elbow, he was dressed in his tan khakis, thongs and his old Hawaiian shirt.
That afternoon he grabs his backpack and longboard and says he is going surfing. I knew he wasn’t coming back.
“Don’t you want to take some of your clothes? I mean, in case you want to change.” I look into his brown eyes.
“Nope, I got my clothes. Those are your clothes for me.” And with that, he smiled and walked out the door.
I stood in my picture window with Sam at my side and watched his white Malibu rumble to a start and rattle away down the tree-lined street as the dead leaves fell and drifted from the maple trees.
Rule #10: When you’re not sad he is not the one, maybe it isn’t a bad thing.
There was a sense of relief. A sense of sadness, but mainly a growing sense of my bladder infection, so maybe it was good that it was over. I needed the sleep.
After Lance left I lifted the computer screen and saw the last IM from Callahan26.
Em
Em …
Hello ….
Hello …
Okay, well, I’ll call you.
Callahan26 signed off at 7:32 P.M.
In bed that night at 9:00 P.M. I turned the light off and for the first time in thirty-six days sighed, and fell fast asleep.
Lance’s words came back to me. Words from our favorite poet. “Lord, it is time, the summer was too long. Lay now thy hand upon the sundial and on the meadows let the winds blow strong.”
“You seem,” says Dr. D., as I sit on the couch noticing the firmness in my triceps from hours and hours of bracing myself on my knees, “healthier.”
“I am,” I say.
“Are you ready, then … to try for what you want?”
“I hope so. I really hope so.”
Reason #10: When you’re not sad he is not the one, maybe it isn’t a bad thing.
Reason #9 1/2 Your boyfriend shouldn’t have to ask permission.
Reason #9: You’ll always pay as he hasn’t had an adult job… as he isn’t an adult.
Reason #8: Too much paying will end a relationship.
Reason #7: Leaving lunch money for your boyfriend is a no-no.
Reason #6: I don’t want to be the boss at home.
Reason #5: If you want to dress up your boyfriend, buy a Ken doll.
Reason #4: He lives with his parents.
Reason #3: When your therapist flat-out tells you that the guy you’re dating is wrong for you, he probably is.
Reason #2: Male or female, dating someone in college is too young if you’re in your thirties.
Reason #1: Monetary gaps in the bridge over the river of a relationship are unsteady.
Chapter seven
Never, Never, Never … Go Back
Rounding the corner with a limping Sam, I drop the leash as my speed-walk with arm weights turns into a jog that turns into a sprint up the steps to my porch panting harder than my pooch, unlock the door, rip off the button-up sides of my Adidas sweats and bolt to the bathroom. Where I … Ahhhh …
Nothing is better than that instant relief when you REALLY, really need to peeeehhhh. After rebuttoning, I wash my hands and find myself studying a stranger’s face in the bathroom mirror. To be gentle, she looks …well… scary. I can see that a few wrinkles on the sides of her eyes have escaped the Laksy Clinic and Dr. Stevens and Mekelbergs’ Botox treatments. JESUS, how many cc’s of nerve-numbing poison must a woman shoot into her face to defy the aging process?
How the hell do all those Olympic runners look sexy and flushed after a race? I eye the Xanax in my medicine cabinet and wonder if my exercise did enough for my health to balance taking one now with two quick glasses of wine and an hour of mind-numbing A&E’s Biography while lying on the couch with the fan blowing directly onto my overheated body. Sounds like a slice of heaven on this Saturday afternoon.
In midcontemplation, the doorbell rings. Sam howls! “Hold on!” I yell from the back of the house, expecting a delivery from MGM of a press kit that Josh wanted me to proof. I dry my face but can’t seem to get the mascara out from under my eyes. Ding-dong. “Hold on a sec!” I stomp to the front door in my stinky, sweaty old Tom Petty T-shirt and wonder whether the messenger will get the humor in me telling him trick-or-treat. After rubbing Sam under the chin and looking into his eyes smiling back at me, I open the six-by-six-inch, swinging, eye-level, fifties security door and look out at …
REESE.
Reese standing before me, through the peep door, in black trousers and a green short-sleeved dress shirt. A double shot of “flutter, flutter” shoots up me with a wave of memories. Kissing him. Wanting him. The way he looked naked in bed. His perfect cleft chin. His dimples when they overcame his face after he told a joke. All of it rushes and confuses my body, overcoming me. I feel weak, almost faint, as I hold onto the doorknob for stability.
“Hi, Em,” he says.
For the record, I’m not a big fan of the showing-up-unannounced thing, as I don’t have proper slather and preparation time. Two thoughts explode through my head: (1) Is my face still beet-red with mascara under my eyes that makes me look like Ozzy Osbourne? and (2) What if I had a new boyfriend? Or better yet, what if I were in the throes of passion with my new boyfriend? Unlikely, but it could happen.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I came to tell you I was sorry.” He just throws it out there like a perfect forgiveness pitch.
“Sorry?” I say, almost out of breath. “For what?”
I realize I am fiddling with the doorknob from the inside. Still safety-tucked indoors between two inches of solid oak. I am opening it. And there he is … towering over me. Sam howls again and jumps all over him, licking and brushing in and out of his legs, acting out my real-world fantasies. Reese bends and gives Sam some love. Sam gives him a good HOWL as if the wolf in Sam responds to Reese’s alpha-male scent or something, one dog to another. Reese gives him a full belly howl back and they’re bonded. For me, all I can think is … this is the first time they’ve met. After all that Reese and I have been through, at least in my mind …the movie, Pittsburgh, the relationship, San Diego, the e-mails, the friendship …the wanting … the reality is … he’s never even met my dog. What kind of crap is that?
I want him out.
He is definitely not coming into my house. My house is somehow the safe haven to my heart. He is not stepping one big toe inside. No way. My mind is made up. My resolve is hardening.
“You look hot,” he says. Then it strikes me that I reek of sweat, my face is redder than a lobster in a boiling tub, and Mr. All-American Baseball himself is in my doorway.
“Can I come in?”
“No.”
My nosy neighbor, Beverly, an angry would-be starlet from the thirties, who is now a sucked-tight, hat-wearing, bitter, horrible, rude, vacuuming-at-4:00 A.M., someone’s mean old grandma-on-acid type, spies on us.
Reese looks over and gives her his boyish, howdy ma’am smile with a … “How are you doing today?”
Beverly starts in with a voice that curls Sam’s tail under. “I was fine until that vicious wolf started howling …again… for the fifth time today. Why don’t you go inside?”
“Why don’t you?” I shoot back at her. “I saw you steal my garbage cans.”
Beverly glares back from behind her glasses. “I can’t even carry the cans!”
“You may play this whole ninety-year-old, can’t-carry-up-my-groceries, gotta-have-Jason from-upstairs-do-it, but I saw you steal my garbage cans, one under each arm. I’ve got your number, Beverly!”
Beverly SLAMS her door and I yell, “I want my garbage cans back!”
I look up at Reese. “I’m moving.”
“I can see why. Do you wanna get a cup of coffee?”
“Sure,” I hear myself say, as if one simple cup of coffee means nothing. As if one cup of coffee at Starbucks down the street might give me a better chance of keeping him out of my house.
He starts to step through the doorway and I grab his big, rock-solid arm.
“My coffeepot’s broken.” I snap the leash on Sam and we stroll down the street past fascinated neighbors. I can almost see the smoke puffing out of their ears as their minds try to process what this gorgeous male specimen is doing with the woman they see solo walking down their block morning after morning, midday after midday, month after year, with only her faithful pup.
The wrong kind of silent nonsingle pride gives me confidence, and there is something nice about not walking alone today. Sam continues to subtly rub his snout underneath Reese’s swinging arm. Reese runs his hand across Sam’s fur as he arches his back to get a full in-motion body scratch.
When we get to Starbucks, Reese steps to the front of the line past a couple of guys who are reading the sports section. They look up and I can tell they recognize him. One of them whispers something under his breath. I step closer to Reese as he orders in that voice that soothed me to sleep so many nights on the phone, “Triple-venti, nonfat, no-foam, latte with three Sweet’n Lows.”
Reese passes go and collects his two hundred dollars. Holy crap! He remembers my coffee. Ali Baba, the magic word is spoken. The key turns. My heart is unlocking. I’m easy. No, I’m not. He cannot win his way back into my life with a cup of coffee that he remembers from over a year ago. I am stronger than that.
We step outside Starbucks. Sam is tied to a lamppost on the corner, ten feet away from the patrons of Noah’s bagels sitting at sidewalk tables so my gentle giant doesn’t scare them. They are all laughing, except for the Hasidic Jewish family, because Sam is slowly making his way around the pole in a circle, dry-humping the air.
Should have had him neutered.
His head is wrapped tight against the pole and his hips are shooting back and forth as if he is giving his best lovin’ to a giant imaginary poodle who just won first place at the Westminster Dog Show.
Reese and I stop in our tracks and I am instantly horrified, but we can’t help but laugh. “SAM! STOP IT!” I say under my breath through clenched teeth. But he doesn’t and at the moment I make my move to get him he freezes, HOWLS at the sky, and has a giant orgasm on the sidewalk. Reese doubles over laughing.
Sam lays down in exhaustion, which I also find amusing, as do the other people eating breakfast—until he eats his own sperm off
the sidewalk. At which point the laughter dies out and a dozen half-eaten bagels hit their plates. I am dying a slow, embarrassed death.
“He did not learn that from me.”
Reese goes to Sam, unleashing him, to save me from any further humiliation and looks at the people, all gagging with astonishment. He smiles with pride and looks back at me as if signaling to catch up …
Buzzing on caffeine and high on the laughter endorphins, we walk back to my place and there it is. Out of my mouth it pours, “Do you want to come inside?”
Of course he does. I can see it in his eyes. He wants in …to my house, to my life, to my heart. I mean, why wouldn’t he? After a year and a half of therapy, two potential new boyfriends, becoming a successful executive, and taking a gourmet cooking class, I have become the healthy catch of the day. I gave him my heart and he did what? Pissed all over it. Took my love and broke it like a wooden bat on an inside fastball, only to get another bat. It wasn’t the first time he had to switch wood. In his book, I probably wasn’t even a hit, just a long foul ball. Hey, bat boy, grab me another. The show must go on. I probably never even made his own personal Sports Center highlights.
He walks to the kitchen sink to wash his hands and I remember the nights I spent alone wondering if I was just insecure or he was a total pig. Nights spent wanting to kill him, wanting to see him, wanting to torture him! Wanting to have him back. Wondering, why? Why didn’t it work? More important, was it me?
Now I am two promotions into getting my ass out of corporate America. I am finally at a place in my life, with $34,000 saved, when I may actually be able to buy my own home. I have paid off my Sallie Mae student loan, stopped putting 51-40 oil into the Mustang only to watch it leak out onto the driveway, became a functioning adult, and upgraded to the Land Rover.
I have driven the curvy road of relationships past men, boys, and a nongender. I have grown. Grown as a person, grown as a professional, grown as a woman. I am stronger and smarter and able to see right from wrong. Then why? Why can’t I walk away from this one guy? Is there always one bad boy in our lives that we just can’t say no to? Is this the ultimate test? Let’s see how much Emily has really grown? This is a test of my character to stay strong and flex my self-preservation skills. Or is it a test to forgive?
Emily's Reasons Why Not Page 14
