Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts (12 page)

I wasn’t a big Kevin fan. To begin with, he had his own very specific criteria for dating women, which Jennifer and I referred to as “The List.”

She couldn’t live in Los Angeles.

She couldn’t be taller than he was.

She couldn’t drink—at all.

She couldn’t make any decision, even a minor decision such as “turn left here” in the relationship.

She couldn’t work in a job that he didn’t like—or at all—if he didn’t want her to work.

She couldn’t eat meat, cheese or carbs—carbs were for losers.

She couldn’t be a lawyer.

She couldn’t make more money than he did.

She couldn’t ever get to his money.

She couldn’t be more than five years older/‌younger than his age.

She couldn’t be religious, but had to be spiritual.

She couldn’t be concerned about her physical appearance.

She couldn’t wear makeup.

She couldn’t just be pretty—she had to be
naturally
beautiful.

Of course he ended up alone. But there was one other reason I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his friend… make that closest friend. Because that best friend was my ex-fiancé, Andre.

Andre was the most ambitious person that I had ever met. He had to be. He had never quite gotten over how promising his future looked from high school. Boy most likely to succeed. Eagle Scout. Editor of the school paper. Captain of the swim team. Recruited by Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, and Harvard. By the time I met him at law school, Andre had gone through four careers.

Film Critic.

Art instructor.

Commodities Broker.

Steel Manufacturer.

He was 32. He knew more about French Burgundy than anyone I had ever met and endlessly lectured everyone on the proper techniques for tasting wine: “Pour, look, swirl, sniff, taste.” He made the best veal meatloaf I had ever eaten. When I knocked on his door to get a class assignment, I noticed that his law school dormitory room was filled with the latest cookware from Williams-Sonoma. He was not gay. He was desperate.

Somewhere around 30, Andre discovered that the train to upper-middle-class heaven was pulling away and he was not on it. He was looking at a lifetime of creative odd jobs and a struggle just to pay the rent. All that high school promise and no pay off.

We were together for three years.

Six months before the wedding, Andre’s mother announced that she had bought a full-length white ballroom gown to wear to the wedding, and “Was that all right?” I told her, “Sylvia, there’s only one person at my wedding who’s going to be wearing white. If you’re not the bride, it’s not you.”

Four months before the wedding, Andre discovered my greatest flaws: I had said, “Congratulations” instead of “Best wishes” to the bride at a mutual friend’s wedding, I didn’t know how to screw bottle caps on correctly, and I couldn’t turn out the lights the right way. He was relentless in his campaign to correct my poor breeding and insisted on choosing my wedding dress for me.

Two months before the wedding, Andre announced that he had just entered therapy and discovered that he had never loved anyone, including me.

When he left, he took all of the furniture, bedding, and cooking utensils. He also wanted back the ring, and his mother wanted back the diamond chip stud earrings which she had given me as an engagement present.

After a small skirmish, I gave him the ring and studs back because I had no use for a low-grade miner-cut diamond with too many inclusions and some cheap diamond studs that were obviously bought off the Home Shopping Network. I figured Sylvia needed those studs to go with her full length white ballroom gown.

I was left with one gray futon, an armless chair, and a cat named Abyss.

But here we were again, looking at the opportunity to see each other for the first time in six years. I had heard that he had married a woman who, for Andre, had it where it counted: in the bank account. It was a great match for a guy whose daily mantra was, “You can marry in a day what you’d take a lifetime to earn.”

From the minute that I was picked up at the airport I was a kitchen slave.

“We need more music,” yelled Jennifer while attempting to clean up her condo. “And can you make some brownies?” she begged.

Kevin, a guy who could write software code, claimed that he was completely incapable of reading the instructions on the brownie box and mixing together the contents of two separately packaged plastic pouches.

Six hours after I decided that no one would notice if I didn’t make the brownies, the party started. It started raining and some buff-boys arrived: No chicken chests, no sagging butts, no sickly green-white complexions. I knew instantly. They weren’t lawyers.

“Byron” could be described in two words: Mr. Yum. His light brown hair had blond streaks in it from his hours of windsurfing in Santa Cruz. He had no fat on his body, because he was training for the Boston Marathon. His cheekbones were perfectly placed on his face and appeared to reflect the light. He had no visible means of support. He and his friend “Jessie” were the eye-candy of the evening. What better way to enjoy the party.

While discussing the intricacies of windsurfing with “Byron,” I saw Kevin standing with a small, dark-haired woman who was pointing at me. Who had the bad breeding to point and obviously speak about me? And then I found out. That wasn’t just anyone with bad breeding: That was Andre’s wife, Karen. He was here.

I went downstairs to Kevin’s condo where a secretary from his firm was wearing gold lamé bicycle shorts and teaching everyone how to do a “Latin Love Dance.”

Charming.

And there he was again. Andre had never been thin. In fact, he had the metabolism of a girl. If he even looked at food, his butt and thighs exploded. Lord, the years had not been kind.

He looked like he had gained ten pounds for every one of the six years we had been apart. His hairline had disappeared, recreating itself as the “Before” picture for a Rogaine advertisement. And by the tone of his voice he sounded… well… bitter. Make that bitter and grumpy. Imagine. What happened to the boy most likely to succeed?

From the back of the room I could hear him lecturing to the same group of dope-dealing losers who had idolized him during law school, droning on about the Burgundy he had brought to the party as a present and the proper techniques for drinking it.

“Pour, look, swirl, smell, taste,” he said. “That Cab—the one they’re serving—is so… immature.”

Nothing, except his waist, hairline, and bank account had changed.

Andre was the type of person who had to be the center of attention at all affairs. On one occasion, we all trooped out to the brown shag carpet track-condo that one of our law school buddies, Joe, had let his parents buy for him and his live-in girlfriend, Barb. Like many misguided people, Barb had made
the deal
: in exchange for financially and emotionally supporting Joe during law school, Joe was expected to marry her when he received his first tangible job offer.

On this particular occasion—which I later came to understand was really for the purpose of splitting up the hash which Joe had recently scored—Barb was attempting to make leg of lamb. Andre was beside himself, wondering if she was going to overcook the lamb. He left the hot tub—where he and the boys were sampling the hash—and took over the kitchen under the guise of “giving Barb a hand.” When I walked into the kitchen I found him lecturing Barb on the correct technique for preparing lamb, making a gravy, whipping the potatoes, and writing down the wines he felt were appropriate to accompany the meal. He then sent Barb to the store to get the wines while he set out the place settings and served her dinner.

Then he taught her how to pour the wines. “Pour, look, swirl, smell, taste,” he said in front of eight very high classmates.

During law school, I joined a gym to discourage the inevitable big-butt that would develop once I graduated. Andre stopped by my class one day and then began taking the class on a regular basis. Before the first week of sessions ended, I heard him lecturing our aerobics instructor with ways to improve the class.

Even on the evening that we were breaking up, Andre couldn’t control his relentless need to be the center of everything. It so happened that my mother, Julia, had made arrangements for us to have dinner with her and some house guests at the Copper Pan on the very day that Andre had told me he didn’t love me. Ever fearful of Julia, he insisted on coming to dinner with us, despite the fact that he had pronounced our engagement “over” two hours before the dinner. During dinner, he took it upon himself to instruct Julia’s French house guests on the proper techniques of drinking wine.

“Pour, swirl, smell, taste,” he said to Julia’s shocked guests.

“Thank God. I always despised that pretentious ass,” said Julia, when I told her that Andre and I had broken up. “And besides, I worried desperately about what your children would look like. How could you ever date him?”

That, of course, was the question of the decade.

Dating Andre had been the beginning of an experiment.

I called this experiment “Dating the Others.”

It was an experiment based on dating people to whom you were not physically attracted.

The origin of the period came from dating the last musician whom I would ever date, a trumpet player from Alabama named Lucius. Lucius was so hot that Julia, a woman who was never at a loss for male companionship, actually started dating him behind my back.

Lucius was also so selfish that he never once paid for a meal, called gift-giving on holidays “bourgeois,” and acknowledged giving me nothing on four consecutive birthdays with the comment, “Why should I spend my hard-earned money on you?” With any other guy with his looks, I probably would have rationalized his behavior by calling it “bohemian” and letting it go, even though I had basically supported him from the first night we were together and he moved in with me. But when he took my car to Canada for four months without telling me and then refused to return it, I grew weary. After months of negotiating, he returned my car with a flat, broke up with me, and then called me every night for 17 days to tell me, “I’m an artist and you’re nothing.”

I know that there is no guy on the planet who would ever intentionally date someone to whom they were not attracted, unless it’s for money or a better place to live—it’s simply impossible for them to even conceive of the idea. But after Lucius, I thought, well, if the good-looking ones treat you terribly, maybe the non-attractive ones will be nice to you.

“Of course Lucius treated you terribly,” said Marcie after we broke up, “you violated the Eco-Chain of Dating.”

“How so?” I asked.

“You know what I’ve always told you. Don’t date above. Don’t date below. Only date people at your level. Lucius was much higher than you on the Eco-Chain,” said Marcie.

“Lucius was a raging alcoholic,” I said.

“Then you two should have been on the same level,” said Marcie.

The Eco-Chain of Dating was a system created by Marcie when we were twelve years old. Its purpose was to help us select our boyfriends. Back then, the criteria were whether our boyfriend was “cute” and popular. It was a mistake to follow her criteria; we missed out a lot of terrific, smart guys who would go on to have great lives.

But by the time we were in our twenties, Marcie had expanded the Eco-Chain to be the “L.A. Eco-Chain of Dating” to help us select our husbands such that we would, through appropriate self-selection, enhance our given gene pool and possibly become part of L.A.’s Royalty.

Marcie’s L.A. Eco-Chain of Dating

Marcie’s “L.A. Eco-Chain of Dating” was defined such that potential dates could be designated to the following Eco-Chain Levels:

I. (1) A Level – Entertainment Royalty (Top of the Food Chain)
First-generation money that had made it big in some aspect of the entertainment/‌sports industry. Very public. Very dangerous. If truth be told, this was always a recipe for a disaster and not marriage material unless you have an enormous trust fund and an army of lawyers at your disposal with which to prepare yourself for the most likely outcome: Divorce. Mercurial, flakey, philandering, subject to drugs, sporadic violence, immaturity, plastic surgery (on you), cult religions, bankruptcy, diets, therapies and always—the fad of the moment. This was a dangerous spouse to entertain for anything more than the 18 months necessary to obtain the material for a “tell all” book or a quick payout (especially if that prenup attempted to make you sign away child support, in addition to alimony and community property).
Physical Appearance Requirements:
The physical appearance of the entertainment royalty is not important as long as he/‌she is fantastically successful and wealthy and can find those individuals to whip him/‌her into shape if the need should arise. Many who marry these individuals find themselves publically making statements such as, “He/‌She is truly spiritual,” or “He/‌She is really quite sensitive,” or “He/‌She is so worldly,” to explain how they could marry a very successful troll. However, if you’re the person marrying the entertainment royalty, your physical appearance is very important and will continue to remain very, very important. But don’t worry: after a few years as an A Level entertainment spouse, your basic genetic material will be so altered that you won’t recognize yourself.

I. (2) A Level – Civilian Royalty (Top of the Food Chain)
Unless it was from high-tech, the A Level Civilian Royalty was usually second or third generation non-entertainment money from business, oil, or land. Although quietly running the city and its cultural institutions, this group is generally well-educated, but also mercurial, flakey, philandering and has a tendency to treat marriage like a pro sport. Not necessarily marriage material, unless you yourself have the enormous trust fund and an army of lawyers at your disposal, 51 percent of the stock, or have managed to land and stick in marriage (with kids) for more than ten years without a prenup.
Physical Appearance Requirements:
For Civilian Royalty, not important, unless you are a younger member of the Civilian Royalty Family whom the family is attempting to use (a la Ivanka Trump/‌Aerin Lauder/‌Andrew Firestone) to restore the image of the family business or a younger image of the family business. Of course, if the Civilian Royalty is marrying someone 40 years younger there can be issues, especially if the chosen spouse is 20 years or more younger than their children by their first, second, or third wife. If you are marrying the Civilian Royalty, then you will probably spend $$$ per month on “maintenance” issues and be on a diet forever as your job will be to look good on all occasions.