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Authors: Kristen McGuiness

51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life (18 page)

BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

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“Really, that’s awesome! What will you be doing?”

We slip apart as I tell him, “I’m gonna be asking rich people for money.”

His face falls, and he looks a little sad as he says, “You’ll be good at that.”

It’s a strange response, and I can’t help but feel that he thinks I’m some fast-talking grifter, just a sassy and sophisticated con whom he couldn’t figure out so he turned to the nearest schmoo. He asks me if I’m hungry, and if I want to join him and John for dinner. Before I can confirm, I am in a conversation with someone else, and I see him and John walking off.

I know it’s for the best because just those few seconds in his arms scrambles me up again. The next morning, I am sitting in another meeting, and I begin to fantasize that Jimmy and I never ended in the first place. That we have been dating now for three months and that we’re hitting that place in a relationship where new challenges might be showing up, but the excitement that this is really happening makes the little bickers and nags fairly invisible. I imagine that he had come to my work’s holiday party and that we had spent New Year’s together and that when my mother visits in two weeks, we would have been in the place where he would have spent some quality time with her. I imagine as I am sitting in the meeting that he would have come in a little late and put his hand on my neck as he sat down behind me. I would have turned around and shot a sleepy glance in his direction. People would at this point know us as a couple and comment on what a great pair we were. And I would have gotten the boyfriend who, for a moment, looked like mine.

Date Twenty-Three: That Old Dylan Song

I meet Marcus at Philippe’s French Dip in Chinatown. Marcus is an art designer for movies and TV. He is tall and skinny and looks his forty-four years of age. He’s also dressed incredibly cute and has an easy laugh and asks an enormous amount of questions. Though I wasn’t entirely smitten from our e-mails, he resembled a boy I once loved in high school and that was enough for us to set a date over roast beef sandwiches on a Tuesday night.

I’ve got half a French dip in my mouth when Marcus asks me how my parents met. I talk through my sandwich. “That’s a good question.”

And the reason why my existence was decided by a single nanosecond of fate. I would have said that latter part too, except this is why dating is hard. So much eating and talking at once.

“My mom was actually vacationing by herself in Florida. The weird thing is she can’t quite remember why she was there. It was to visit a friend or something. She had just graduated high school, and I guess was killing time while she tried to figure out what to do with her life.”

“Where did she go to high school?” Marcus should be a reporter.

“Dallas. That’s why we ended up moving back there when my parents divorced. Anyway, she was there in Ft. Lauderdale and was standing at a stoplight when a man walked up next to her with this big Irish setter. Red Dog.”

To this day my family cannot mention Red’s name without saying, “What a good dog.” Because Red was special and was, until me, probably the love of my father’s life. I tell Marcus how my mom commented, “What a beautiful dog.” Even today the story confuses me. Because my mom doesn’t talk to strangers on street corners. And she certainly doesn’t talk to random men. But I guess that’s just the simple twist of fate. Seconds and words and street corners lining up just right so that our windows of opportunity become clear. Clear enough for my dad to look over and see my mom and know that he had to meet this naive, little redhead complimenting his Irish setter. “So are you,” my dad replied. And though my Mom might have been nervous that he had just called her a dog, she couldn’t help but feel the excitement that flows when you stand on the edge of your life and slip right over.

Marcus listens intently as I continue, “My dad followed my mom into the juice bar where she was headed, insisted on buying her a juice, and well, here we are.”

A little over a year later they were married. Another year later I was born, and in 1981 my father was sentenced and went away for the next twenty-five years. They got divorced when I was six, and at the age of eight my mother took me to my favorite park and sat me down to have what would be a very serious conversation. I knew something was up. I knew my parents were divorced, so it wasn’t that. Our white poodle Gigi had already died the year before, leaving us with no surviving pets, so I checked that one off the list too. Maybe she found out I had stolen the colored chalk from my second-grade teacher. I prepared myself for the stern lecture and shaking head and narrowed eyes that would come to haunt my ill-behaved life. But it had been over a year since the theft, and by the swell of tears in her eyes, the way her mouth fell soft and open, she looked far too sad to be on the verge of punishing me. She slowly explained, “Daddy is in what they call a correctional facility.” Not jail, not prison—a correctional facility. And so we began a lifetime of glossing over the truth of who my father is.

I don’t tell Marcus all of this, of course, because I don’t air my dirty laundry as easily as I used to. Marcus is put in the awkward position of airing his, however, when I ask, “So how long have you lived in Chinatown?”

He looks down, “Well, I guess now I get to tell you the long, sordid story.” My interest is piqued but Marcus’s telling of it is neither long nor sordid. In fact, I can tell I am getting the much-shortened, guarded version of the tale. He is divorced and has a four-year-old son, and it seems they all once had a house together up the street. When it came to a tragic end, however, Marcus was forced to move into an apartment in the area, and has been there since. I can tell some serious shit went down when he says that he and his ex are finally on friendly terms and that she now has a boyfriend.

“I’ve pretty much been out of work since, which sucks, for obvious reasons, but I do get to help out a lot with my son, so it has its perks. I just wish I lived in Germany or Italy where the birthrates are low, so they actually pay you to take care of your children.”

“Really? They pay you for having kids in Italy?” I ask.

“They do.”

“Shit, that’s perfect.” I tell him how my friends and I have made a pact that should we not get married and pregnant by a certain age, we plan to move in together, have children, and raise them in a multi-parent household. I nearly gush, “But if we do it in Italy, we can also make some cash. And we’ll be close to the Prada outlet.”

“Sure,” I can sense Marcus is not as enthusiastic about my revelation.

“Marcus. I think I might have found the great solution,” I say, and I am not kidding. Because when he tells me his ex isn’t angry anymore, I know the divorce was Marcus’s fault. And I wonder whether it’s worth it. Whether you finally meet the guy, have the kid, and he ends up fucking it up anyway. And sure he might be good for child care but that’s only when he’s unemployed and living tenuously off the profits of the dream house you bought and renovated together before having to sell it amidst pain and tears and betrayal. I want to ask Marcus if he cheated on his ex, but I don’t. Instead, I tell him the world turns on the backs of women. He laughs, but only a little, and I know he can’t help but admit that it’s true.

I think about John’s fear that I will hate men by the end of this. And once again, I decide that I won’t. Because whatever mistakes Marcus has made, I have made them too, and I sit there across the table just as single and confused and slightly jaded as he is. We get up to go, and Marcus stops.

“So should we go out again?”

I have begun to realize that my easy banter and tendency to laugh is often mistaken by men as romantic interest. And I am not interested in Marcus. I am too young and vibrant yet to end up in someone’s Chinatown apartment, taking care of their four-year-old son, pretending I am happy when I never even felt a spark in the first place.

But what else can you say when you’re standing in a historical restaurant filled with roast beef and slaw, and you’ve already shared quite a bit of your own histories, and you feel bad for how much this guy standing there, looking at you, has gone through, and you know he would take it all back if he could.

“Sure.”

I get in my car and call my father. Two weeks ago, he sent me roses and chocolates and a little teddy bear that has managed to go to bed with me every night since. He has called me numerous times over the last two days, begging me to return his call, telling me that he decided not to pursue his old career. He says he is living with a friend and is writing the book about his life instead. I talk to Nana earlier in the day, and we agree that I should return the call but only to ask him for some more time apart. That he needs to focus on what he is doing and show me that his change is in action and not just word.

I call him, and I think he might be drinking. His voice is heavy as he tells me that he is staying on a farm in Tennessee. “Look, K. I just want to say that the last conversation we had, it’s dead, okay? It’s dead and buried.”

I would disagree as it is still very much alive for me, but I have begun a new template with my father where he talks and I remain quiet, and then I say what I have to say and try my best to prevent his frequent interruptions with the phrase, “Please, let me speak.”

“Dad, believe me, I know that you love me, but sometimes we don’t know how to love people the right way.”

“Aw, Jeez, Kris, you sound like you’re from L.A. Come on, we don’t know how much time we have on this earth.”

“I agree, and I respect that. It’s because of that, because we only get one shot at this, that I want to do it right. That’s why…”

“Kris…”

“Please, let me speak. That’s why I need time to decide how I want to progress, to see whether I want to even participate in this relationship.”

He falls silent and then says, “Oh, so, is that how it is?”

He sounds like so many of the men I have dated. I stay calm as he tells me that he needs my help getting his book published. “I’m not calling you just because you’re my daughter, you know. I want you to be a part of this. We could make some good money here. With my stories and your connections.”

I ignore this. Ignore the fact that my father is in essence telling me he is using me. I ask him to give me a month. He feels bad and says that he wants me to visit, that he will pay for it, that he wants to see me. But I remain strong. “Look, Dad, call me in a month. We can see where we’re at then.”

I hang up the phone and choke back the tears. I am trying to create boundaries, but I also can’t help but wonder whether I am punishing the guy. I have it in my head that if only I could be healthy and strong in my relationship with my dad, then I could be healthy and strong in my relationships with men in general. Rob, my date from the sex shop, said he hates feeling like he is being punished for another guy’s mistakes. And I wonder whether I am now punishing my father for all the mistakes the guys I have dated have made. Or if I have punished all the guys for the mistakes of my father.

On my last visit to the shaman, she told me that some people get to do all their work within the space of a relationship, but some of us must do the work before we can even get into one. I am beginning to think that all the work in the world will not bring me a mate any faster. In fact, maybe it does just come down to those seconds and words and street corners lining up just right so that our windows of opportunity become clear. Like the ones that brought me here, to this night, where I see the flaws of two fathers: the one that just bought me a roast beef sandwich, and the one that bought my mother a juice over thirty years before.

Date Twenty-Four: The Lies of Coco Van Dyne

I’m beginning to have trouble keeping track of all these dates. I am talking to Ivan, on my way to meet yet another man I met on
The Onion
, when I explain to him, “I feel like I need a cheat sheet to keep them straight. And I’m not sure who I’ve told what and whether I am repeating myself over and over.”

“I put it all in my Outlook,” Ivan tells me.

“Really?”

“Yeah, just some basic facts. Then I check my iPhone before going in, and I know who’s who.”

“Well, I don’t have an iPhone.”

“Sucks for you.”

“Anyway, I don’t think I want to know Alan,” I explain to him. “I don’t think I want Alan to know me.”

“Then don’t tell him anything about you,” Ivan suggests.

BOOK: 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

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