by Sarah Fuller
“Some women date, but you never do,” she observed. “You go out with one guy. He locks you down, and then the next six to ten years of your life are spent folding their laundry.”
Fuck, she’s right.
It was that conversation that triggered me to pick up the phone and call Connor. I was going to be bold and break up with him. It had taken me five years to break up with Skyler. I spent another five years trying to sever ties with George. It’s not that I didn’t like Connor, it’s that I didn’t want another serious relationship yet. His phone went to voicemail.
I thought about leaving him a message, but what was I going to say? “Hey, I’m an asshole. Call me back when you get a chance”?
I ended the call and opened the front door, headed for Trader Joe’s.
I stopped abruptly. Looked at my doorstep with a gaping mouth.
“No! Fuck no!” I yelled, nearly stomping my feet.
There, sitting on the doorstep, was a giant bouquet of flowers. With absolute certainty, I knew who they were from. I picked up the bouquet and carried them to my neighbor’s house. She’d been sick with a cold for a week.
When she opened the door to find me holding a beautiful arrangement of flowers, she burst into tears.
“Oh, my God, Sarah,” she wailed. “You didn’t have to do this.”
I shook my head, which was hardly visible behind the lilies. “I didn’t, Nancy. Truthfully, I’m an asshole and just need you to take these off my hands.”
It might have taken me another month after that, but I finally ended things with Connor.
For the first time in all my teenage and adult life, I’ve been single for more than six months. It’s not lonely, like I would have feared. I’m not struggling to pay the bills, like my mother always feared. I don’t need the constant affection of a man, like many of my soul sisters have feared.
Yes, I’m still dating. I enjoy spending time with men. However, here’s the key which has taken me over half my life to figure out: I don’t need a man, but I do want one. That’s a big difference.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’ll Have a Salad with Flaxseeds and a Side of Fuck My Life
My friends think I’m starving to death.
Before you all assume that I’m some model in Santa Monica, depriving myself for a Prada photoshoot, think again. I don’t starve myself for glamour reasons; I’m just extremely lazy when it comes to eating.
“Sarah, let me stock your refrigerator,” Samar texted me one day.
She and her family had stayed at my place for an afternoon while their house was being shown. I’d offered them anything in my refrigerator, which I had soon realized wasn’t much.
“You really don’t have to do that, although I love your chicken curry,” I responded.
“I don’t mind. And you don’t have any food in your refrigerator. What do you eat?” she texted.
“I have food! There are carrots and cheese sticks in my icebox!”
Side note: I thought I was being good, eating carrots all the time. Turns out, according to the keto diet, they are just sticks of sugar and carbs. Which reminds me, one time when I was poor, my boss bet me twenty dollars to down a giant pixie stick in under a minute. Best twenty dollars I’ve ever earned. Anyway, pixie sticks are pretty much carrots but without the beta-carotene.
“You need real food,” Samar continued.
Her refrigerator, in contrast, was full of leftover meals. I’m pretty sure she always has a rack of lamb in the back, just in case.
“I eat real food when I’m with Eleanor,” I explained to Samar. I couldn’t have her thinking I was starving my child.
“What about you?” she asked.
I shrugged at the phone, which I realized didn’t answer her question. When Eleanor was with her father and I was working, I sort of forgot to eat. I’ve tried doing those fancy meal kits, where a box arrives with all the ingredients and instructions on how to prepare it, but that shit just goes bad sitting in my refrigerator.
After I finish working at nine o’clock at night, the last thing I want to do is mince garlic and sauté some okra.
Another side note: Samar told me the other day she bought me some okra. When I asked her why she would do such a thing, she said, “You’re from the south. Everyone in the south loves okra.”
Everyone but me. What’s up with that furry vegetable? I’m pretty certain it’s not actually edible, but batter and fry it, and no one can tell.
Back to the meal plans. They don’t work for me. At nine o’clock on a Tuesday after I’ve been working all day, I’d rather eat a bowl of pickles and cheese while watching Netflix. I’m only going to lose couch time if I cook one of those ready-to-prepare meals, and, let’s be honest, I’m going to fuck up the recipe and be disappointed in the results, and I’ll just end up eating cheese and pickles anyway.
“What are you doing tonight?” Pelé asked me one Saturday evening.
I’m not very good at lying, but my instinct was to tell her I was busy. It’s not that I didn’t want to hang out with my friend, I just wanted to hang out with myself and my Sims. They need me.
“Why?” I asked, drawing out the word tentatively.
“Kelly has a reservation at Bavel for four people, and one of the girls just dropped out,” Pelé said. “She invited you.”
I opened my refrigerator. I had forgotten to shop, which plainly meant I was out of pickles and wine. Fuck my life, I thought, scrambling for an answer. A lot of my friends use DoorDash, but I think that just makes them lazier than me. I can go out and get my own salad, thank you very much. That way, when the order is all fucked up and they didn’t cut the corn salsa, I’m the only one to blame.
“Bavel?” I asked Pelé. “Should I know that place?”
“Sarah, it’s totally trending right now,” Pelé explained. “It takes months to get a reservation.”
“You’re making it sound like I should go,” I said, my mind spinning to the next problem. “Do I have to put on pants?”
“No, you should wear a dress,” Pelé stated. “Something LA trendy. This is the place to be.”
“I don’t even know what ‘LA trendy’ is,” I admitted. “Does that mean I can’t wear a muumuu?”
She laughed because she thought I was kidding.
Pelé is responsible for turning me onto much of the LA food scene, which can be intimidating, to say the least. She was also the person to make me try In and Out Burger for the first time. She totally jacked up the experience for me. It was my fault for telling her to get me whatever she was ordering.
“Where’s the bun?” I asked, pointing to the burger wrapped in lettuce.
“I got it protein style, extra lettuce, no sauce, and no salt on the fries,” she explained, having picked up our order and brought it to my house.
“What’s the point, then?” I asked.
“It’s healthier that way.”
“Why didn’t you say you were going to fuck up my dinner?”
“Sarah, In and Out Burger is a staple in California. I couldn’t believe you hadn’t tried it yet.”
Pelé had wanted to be the one who took my In and Out virginity. I told her later that she ruined the experience for me.
“I broke my Keto diet for this, and the special sauce isn’t even on the burger.”
I had a dream the other day that I popped a tortilla chip into my mouth. Then I remembered I was on the keto diet and I didn’t eat corn, flour or potatoes. I spat out the bits of the chewed chip onto the floor and raked my hand over my tongue like I feared that any morsel might throw me out of ketosis. I worked too hard for that to happen, I thought.
When I woke up, I realized that my nightmares were about eating carbs. That’s pretty fucked up.
“Okay, I’ll go to this Bavel place, but the waiter had better not have a handlebar mustache and tell me how to eat,” I said to Pelé.
“They won’t,” she said. “It will be great.”
My friend is a tota
l liar.
The restaurant was in the art district downtown and had giant plants hanging from the ceiling. We sat on the patio next to a couple. She was thirty years younger than him, Asian and hot. He kept passing gas when his model girlfriend got up to powder her nose—way too many times, by the way.
“Wow, the ambiance here is enough to make me puke,” I said to Pelé, holding my nose.
We ended up getting several entrees to share, which is how all the cool kids eat in LA. They hadn’t been raised the way I was, where you weren’t supposed to eat off other people’s plates.
“What’s malawach?” I asked the waiter, who was pretty much done with us from the beginning when we asked to try six different wines. When we didn’t like any of them, we concocted a cocktail idea that wasn’t on the menu.
Danny DeVito’s character in Get Shorty was spot-on when he said that LA people never order from the menu. It’s an art form. It gets sort of difficult at places that have big menus, but I’ve figured out how to do it. I usually tell them I’m gluten-free, vegan, and doing the keto diet. That always stumps them.
My friend who ran a successful café told me that a famous child actor came in one day and ordered a cucumber. They didn’t have cucumbers, but were they going to tell him that? Hell nah.
The waiter cleared his throat. “Malawach is an ancient grained flatbread, with grated tomato, dill crème fraiche, and a soft-boiled egg alongside a spicy strawberry zhoug sauce.”
I looked at my friends. “Can we get a waiter who speaks English?”
Because my friends have much more class than me, they ordered for us, getting a plate of roasted lamb neck shawarma and foie gras halva and other things I couldn’t pronounce. After paying my end of the bill, which was a small fortune, I left the restaurant completely starving.
When Pelé and I first dined together, it was at one of those gastropubs with frilly foods, and she got the avocado toast. I don’t know when this became a thing, but you can’t go anywhere without being hit in the face with avocado this or that. And apparently putting the vegetable on a piece of dry toast is simply divine. If these are people’s standards, there might be hope for my culinary skills after all. Although, cutting into an avocado and pitting it scares the fuck out of me. I don’t want to wind up like Meryl Streep and stab myself. Otherwise, I want to end up exactly like Meryl Streep.
“Are you vegan?” I asked Pelé.
She took a bite of her toast. “I am right now.”
“And later?” I asked.
She shrugged. “It depends.”
“You know you’re going to vegan hell, right?”
She nodded. “Probably.”
“There’s only veal and roasted goat in vegan hell,” I stated. “Only assholes and the French eat goats.”
“Isn’t that repetitive? ‘Assholes and the French’?”
Just as popular as avocados and restaurants that serve food I can’t pronounce are the food trucks. Now, I have never eaten a fish taco out of a food truck, because I have standards. Oh, and I don’t eat fish. However, because I’m an asshole, I do take fish oil so I can get all the great benefits without all the fishy tastes.
“I don’t eat from food trucks, either,” Zoe told me when I explained my snobbish behavior.
“Because you don’t want to eat food a surfer prepared from his shag wagon?” I asked.
She shook her head. “No, fancy food truck food has ruined my daughter. Now when I make a grilled cheese at home, she always rejects it, telling me she can’t eat a sandwich with only one type of cheese.”
Yes, the gourmet grilled cheese trend has swept through LA, leaving hipsters everywhere talking about the nutty notes they tasted in their rye bread sandwich. Don’t even get me started on mac and cheese, which usually has shavings of saffron and gold sprinkled on it. And if I come across another place that wants to toss truffle oil on my fries, I’m going to scream. I want ranch and regular ketchup with my fries—and not the organic kind, either, that doesn’t have sugar.
It was Zoe who told me about Barton G’s restaurant. “We have to go sometime. The food is horrible, but it’s an amazing experience.”
“Did you hear what you just said?” I asked.
She nodded. “Yeah, but you don’t go for the taste of the food. You go for the dinnertainment.”
Barton G, named for its founding chef, is a restaurant where the food is transformed to take on the appearance of something that should be in a museum. For instance, the salads are served in small wheelbarrows or with a metal octopus over it. There’s a lot that comes on a plate, and most of it is not edible. It’s more about the presentation than it is about the taste.
The popcorn shrimp is made to look like a fast food to-go order that fell down in the backseat of a car and then loosely thrown back together. If that sounds delicious to you, then line right up and pay twenty-seven dollars for the “experience.” Yes, you can go to Popeye’s Chicken and get popcorn shrimp for four dollars, but you can’t Instagram that shit. Not like you can at Barton G’s.
“So do you want to go to Barton G’s with me?” Zoe asked.
“Maybe…” I said, meaning ‘fuck no.’ She hadn’t really sold me on it when she stated the food was horrible.
“What if we checked out that soft serve place that makes their ice cream out of activated charcoal?” she asked.
“You do remember that I’m on keto?” I asked. “One lick of that stuff and I might go into a sugar coma. I haven’t had a carb in a fortnight.”
“The charcoal is supposed to be a detoxifier and could potentially whiten your teeth,” she stated, continuing to make her case since she’s a jerk who doesn’t respect my lifestyle choices.
I flashed her a smile. “I don’t need charcoal for a white smile. I gargle with hydrogen peroxide in the morning.”
“Which is completely disgusting,” she stated.
One time, my dentist commented on how incredibly white my teeth were.
Apparently too loudly, I announced, “I gargle with hydrogen peroxide!”
He shushed me and leaned down low. “And it obviously works, but would you mind not sharing that?”
I realized then that he offered expensive services to whiten teeth, and I was over there giving people a solution that cost only a couple of dollars. I agreed that I wouldn’t tell anyone else…and then I wrote this book and mentioned it. Oops.
In all honesty, I think that my hydrogen peroxide regimen is responsible for my good health. I mean, how better to stay healthy than to disinfect your mouth upon waking up? True, it is disgusting, and in the beginning, I couldn’t handle the foaming liquid for long…but now I’m a pro with white teeth.
“Doesn’t charcoal compete for absorption of other nutrients?” I asked Zoe.
She gave me a surprised look. “How do you know that?”
“I’m sort of a scientist,” I stated. “Well, I write science fictions novels, which is pretty much the same thing.”
“Well, you have to do something with me,” Zoe stated. “Will you go to drag queen bingo with me at Hamburger Mary’s? You can get the burger wrapped in lettuce.”
I grimaced, thinking of my virgin experience with In and Out Burger. I consoled myself, thinking that no one’s first experience is good. I wasn’t sure if I was referring to sex or In and Out Burger, though.
“Come on, Sarah,” Zoe urged. “There are so many culinary experiences to be had in LA. You’ve got to get out and try them.”
I thought for a moment. Zoe was right; I shouldn’t spend another night at home eating a salad sprinkled with flaxseeds, and a side of fuck my life.
“Okay, fine,” I stated. “But I’m not ordering from the menu. I’m going to get un-battered, fried mozzarella sticks and cauliflower fries and Brussels spout nachos.”
Zoe agreed, not deterred by my high-maintenance behavior. “Which, surprisingly, might make you the biggest diva in the place.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Your Instagram
Doesn’t Qualify You To Date Me
Our parents definitely had it easier, dating before the dawning age of social media. It changes everything when we have constant access to each other’s profiles and status updates. I have a girlfriend who goes off Facebook every few months, telling me she’s tired of seeing her ex-boyfriends’ updates.
“Block them,” I told Anna. “That’s what I do. It’s a part of the breakup regimen.”
“I do, but then their comments show up in my friend’s feed, and I notice he’s alongside some new honey with a brand new car in his profile picture,” she said.
“And then you start stalking him because you can’t resist, don’t you?” I asked.
“Oh, are you going to tell me you don’t stalk your exes online?” she challenged.
I can honestly say that I don’t, but as we’ve previously discussed, it’s because I’m thoroughly done with them by that point.
“I try to limit my time with my exes,” I stated. “There is no way I’m going to waste my time checking up on them on social media.”
“But don’t you want to know what they are up to?” Anna asked.
I get that it’s common nature to be curious about an ex. Are they doing better since I dumped them? Do they have a girlfriend? Did they finally shave that revolting beard?
But what if I look at their profile and realize they are ten times happier than they were with me? What if I look at it and realize they got fat? What exactly is going to make me feel better? Neither scenario feels okay, so I just try and wash my hands of the whole thing.
“My problem is that I know all too well what George is up to, since he tells me regularly,” I stated. “I get enough of the guy, believe me.”
When we first divorced, George offered to get Eleanor piano lessons.
Awesome! Do it, I thought.
Then he comes back and tells me he bought a piano.
“Wait! What the fuck? The piano lessons are at your house?” I asked, not having expected this misdirection.
“Well, naturally,” he stated. “You don’t mind bringing her over to my house each week for lessons, do you?”
