I Can't Complain (14 page)

Later that week, as phony retroactive research for my character, I went to the personals section of the
New York Review of Books.
One ad caught my eye: a male; the age was in the right range; a professional, a man of intellectual interests and high accomplishment. Should I write to that box number? Dare I? But there were overlapping bio snippets with the previous fellow—his profession, his “Southern gentleman,” his “Hamptons,” his cultivation of heirloom tomatoes. I called the friend who fixed me up and read the ad to her. “Don’t answer! It’s him!” she cried. “He cut a decade off his age, but they all do that.”

What are the odds, I asked, that the first time in my life I nearly respond to a personal ad, its author is the one man I training-dated? It was all I needed to retreat from social outreach of the coed variety.

The novel expanded, but Gwen’s social circle did not. It was May 2011. I sent my narrator to a fictional seminar called “Fine, I’ll Go Online.”

What’s a verisimilitude-conscious author to do but join herself? I did. I also joined JDate and OkCupid, figuring
in for a penny, in for a pound.
A few responses trickled in. The highlights (meaning anecdotal as opposed to romantic): There was the man, fresh from a yearly checkup with his internist, who announced over lunch that his doctor told him he didn’t drink enough water.

“How does
he
know?” I asked.

After only a slight pause he said, “Because my stool is hard.”

There was one who stuck his Nicorette gum under the chair . . . another who laughed at every single thing he or I uttered and who texted his girlfriend in New Jersey while sitting next to me at
The Help
. . . the man who asked me nothing about
my
life but went into so much detail about his that I came away knowing that his daughter was transferring from one college to another because the current school required its cheerleaders to perform backflips, whereas the future institution did not.

There was the astrologically inclined one whose second wife had the same birthday as I. And there was the actor who’d been the sixth husband of one of the stars of
The Golden Girls.

Soon afterward, I quit every service before my membership expired. Then with my index finger literally on Match.com’s Remove button, I remembered that I was mining some sentences for fictional use. (For example: “I wish to meet a woman as engaged in their own project: writing, performing, Visual Artist or yet to be classified—but not a Mime, as I am.”)

For the first time in weeks, I looked at that morning’s daily matches. There was one fellow who caught my eye: he looked smart and nice and normal. I clicked on him and reached his profile page. There I read about his marital status (divorced) and then his answers to the boilerplate questions about education, profession, pets, exercise, favorite places, favorite entertainment, and so forth down the list to last book read. His answer: “Elinor Lipman’s
The Family Man.
”

I was stunned. Do I write back and reveal myself as a woman accomplished enough to publish novels yet trolling for dates on Match.com? After a few minutes, I clicked on “Send him an e-mail” and wrote, “That was lovely to see. Thank you. Elinor L.”

He answered that night. He wrote very well, explaining how he’d become a fan of my books. He had an interesting job and a master’s degree. He knew how to use a semicolon. After another exchange of e-mails, we made a plan, which turned into a three-hour dinner. A great date, in my opinion.

Here is where you mustn’t get your hopes up. At this writing, eleven months have passed and we are what I can only call friends. Of course behind his back I call him “my insignificant other,” my “friend without benefits,” and “my imaginary boyfriend.” I refer to what we have as “a nomance.” He is excellent company, and our outings are, while not romantic, datelike, in that we are two straight people of different genders who often share an appetizer and have lively conversations.

But the following is what happens when you have close girlfriends who want to be bridesmaids at your future wedding: They hate your nonboyfriend, despite never having met him. They think he should be (their words) thanking his lucky stars and/or madly in love, declaring himself, and having advanced to a stage requiring new undergarments. What is wrong with him? they demand. Diagnoses follow, ranging from asexual to homosexual. It is all, in its own way, adorable—their loyalty and their high opinion of the widow Lipman. I call these women my pit crew. I’ll call him John Doe.

Coitus nonexistus is hard on one’s women friends. When we gather, the topic of my non–love life almost always comes up. When I count how many friends and correspondents weigh in on the nomance, I come up with approximately two dozen, including my agent, my brother-in-law, and my day doorman. I tell them that you shouldn’t judge or hate someone you’ve never met.

I also ask this: If I continue to “see” him in unsentimental but fond fashion—museums, movies, and dinners mostly—why do they have to weigh in? Once, over a solo dinner with Ben, when I thought the nomance might be taking a turn toward the mildly romantic, my otherwise self-assured and rarely self-conscious son averted his eyes and asked, as if in pain, “Does he kiss you good night?”

I said yes.

Pause. Then, barely audible, “On the lips?”

I said yes.

So how am I taking all this? I seem to be enjoying myself. I held a contest for my most fiercely oppositional friends, who happen all to be writers. I told them I was signing a book for John Doe, the only one of mine he hadn’t read, so please send me their suggestions on how I should inscribe it, adding, “I’m laughing already,” lest they take the assignment seriously.

The winner, Liz (again, never met him), wrote:

Dear Douchebag,

Next time, BUY THE BOOK.

Love,

No, sorry, Like,

Oops, sorry sorry I mean, Your FRIEND,

Elinor.

p.s. you’re gay.

I wrote to the other contestants, “We have a winner!” and to Liz: “FOTFL” (fall on the floor laughing). I can’t explain my own merriment in this matter, except to say that I appreciate funny writing and that, as another friend observed, my default setting is cheerful. Most of the pit crew say things like, “We just don’t want you to be hurt,” to which I answer, “Bob had a terrible fatal disease, and then he died. Did I fall apart?”

“No,” they say.

I ask, “Do you think I’m going to fall apart if John Doe doesn’t want to see me ever again?”

“As long as you’re not holding out any hope,” they say.

“As long as he’s not taking up too much of your time,” say my son and several others.

“Name the things you like about him,” Liz demanded over dinner one night. I told her that we’d watched the returns of the 2012 New Hampshire primary together. “What other Democrat is as interested in Republican primaries and debates as he is? No one. So I’d say the political stuff is right up there on my list. Who else is going to watch those with me?”

Liz protested, “All of your friends are! Every single one of us.”

I said, “But I asked you to come over and watch the returns with me, and you didn’t answer.”

“Oh,” she said. “Sorry.”

Of course when they ask what is the latest with the nomance, I could say, “No comment” or “None of your business” or “I’d rather not talk about Mr. Doe.” But I don’t want to be rude. I love my friends. I’ve made it their vicarious business and given them their front-row seats. When I told my BFF early one evening that Doe was coming over to watch the next set of primary returns in approximately an hour, she said I must never be afraid of telling her anything. That she wants to know all. That she supports me and would never judge.

I laughed because what she kindly and supportively and generously wouldn’t ever judge was my seeing a man approximately once a week in a state of declared platonicism.

Three years after Bob died, I’ve discovered this about myself: that I don’t like too much attention. I canceled a second date with an online fellow because he called; e-mailed; bought me cookies, bagels, and cream cheese; downloaded samples of six of my novels between our introductory telephone conversation and our lunch date; and e-mailed me the morning of the lunch date to say it was cold out and I should bundle up.

Upon hearing how such thoughtfulness was off-putting, BFF asked me if Bob used to bring me flowers and that sort of thing. I said hardly ever—just the first Valentine’s Day of our courtship in 1972 and then again in 2006.

“See,” she said. “You’re not used to it. And I don’t think you even like it.”

When I ran this by my sister, she agreed. Then added rather confidently, “And you’re not sentimental.”

Oh, dear. I countered with, “Except over Ben?”

She granted me that. She is an organizational consultant and is good at analyzing human dynamics. After spending a weekend with me and witnessing some antiplatonicism, she dubbed the naysayers “The Mean Girls” (average age, fifty-two). She says my self-esteem is higher than theirs. Unlike me, they would need attention, reinforcement, and real dates as opposed to appointments.

It’s my own fault, my own big mouth. Too much sharing. Consequently, my friends are divided into what I call the Yes Team and the No Team. One friend, an otherwise very nice woman, likes to say, “He’s playing you! He’s a player!”

I say, “There’s only one thing missing—the playing.”

The cocaptains of the No Team—their station and rank unknown to them—earned their title this way: One said that the roses John Doe once brought me were the wrong color. I didn’t even ask what the right color would have been. The other often tells me that I must not ever turn down an invitation (she means from her) because I’m waiting for John Doe to call. The last time she said this (for at least the fourth time), I leaned forward in my chair and said, “That’s a good lesson for teenage girls in high school who are waiting around for a boy to call. But I’m sixty-one years old. I’m a widow. If I goddamn want to wait for someone to get back to me about an invitation I issued, I will.”

I am learning how judgmental and outspoken people are, more than I had occasion to experience in earlier social and marital chapters of my life. No one took much interest in the tone and frequency of Bob’s romancing me—not about where we went, how often, and who paid. But now, as a single woman who’s been a little too free with the paper trail of e-vites and thank-yous, out comes the microscope, the advice, and the heckling. I was indulgent up to a point, then the friendships suffered. Another lesson learned: pessimism and mistrust lie with their conveyors. “We don’t see things as they are,” Anaïs Nin once said. “We see them as
we
are.”

The Yes Team members earned their place by saying things such as, “Having a real friend and intellectual soulmate is a wonder, especially in a town where many relationships are shallow and/or fleeting.” Another wrote, “You say ‘friends without benefits’? Oh I think you two are friends with many benefits.”

I said to my BFF, “Think of it this way: It’s as if he sits behind me in algebra class. He likes me and I like him. We go out. We have fun.”

“And once in a while he pulls your pigtail?” she asked.

“And once in a while he pulls my pigtail.”

He has told me in word and in deed that we are not a romance. I take it too well because he is such good company. He is smart. I tease him, and I learn a lot from him.

My cousin Laura (Yes Team), who believes in all things airy-fairy, religious, and imaginary, asked me if I’ve heard of the law of attractions. I said, “Sure.” She continued: “You are a classic example. You weren’t looking for a boyfriend. You don’t want a real romance. You’ve always said you don’t want to get married again. You’re not ready. And you know what? How can you complain? The signal you were putting out into the universe very clearly was
friend.
I know you don’t believe in this stuff, but you got exactly what you were asking for.”

I thought about this. Finally, I asked, “Chaste Dates?”

“Chaste Dates,” she said.

Back in make-believe, my protagonist did find love and did get laid. Farther along on the social/widow continuum than I, Gwen-Laura Schmidt’s time had come.

E
LINOR
L
IPMAN
is the author of ten novels, including
The View from Penthouse B, Then She Found Me,
and
The Inn at Lake Devine. Tweet Land of Liberty: Irreverent Rhymes from the Political Circus
was published in 2012. She lives in Massachusetts and New York City.