The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (13 page)

“Me, too,” Thursday said, raising her own glass.

“Me three,” Risa said, bringing her glass straight up into the air above her head.

“To 2011, our Best. Year. Ever,” Tammy said.

“Our Best Year Ever!” they all repeated, clinking glasses.

Yes, Los Angeles was a strange and magical place, casting its optimistic spell anew over its inhabitants year after year. When these four women clinked their glasses together, they all truly believed that this would be their Best Year Ever. Little did they know that when the next New Year’s Eve rolled around, one of them would describe 2011 as her Worst Year Ever, one of them would describe it as The Year That Everything Changed, one of them would describe it as The Year My Dream Finally Came True, and one of them would describe it as The Year I Learned To Live.

But not one of them would describe 2011 as her Best Year Ever.

A lot of women waste a lot of time worrying about what men want from them, when they should really be figuring out what they want from a man. If you want to be a girlfriend and he just wants to be friends forever and a day, don’t bend over backwards to accommodate him. Dump him and get with somebody who’s looking for the kind of girlfriend you want to be.

—
The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
by Davie Farrell

THURSDAY

T
he morning of my birthday dawned bright and clear. I turned and looked at the alarm-slash-weather clock that Sharita had given me for Christmas 2009—Sharita always gave Risa and me the exact same gift as if we were siblings who would resent each other if we suspected any favoritism on her part. The gift clock declared in bright-orange numbers a low of sixty-three degrees and a high of seventy-five. In other words, it would be a perfect California winter day.

As if to confirm this, Caleb tugged on my arm and pulled me to him for a kiss, morning breath and all. That was another thing I loved about white guys. They didn’t expect you to maintain absurd standards of hygiene. Sharita had been keeping a travel-sized bottle of Scope in her nightstand’s drawer ever since one of her exes told her that morning breath turned him off.

I would have answered, “Your ridiculousness turns me off.” But of course, Sharita had bought mouthwash and, to this day, faithfully took a swig before kissing any overnight guests, even though Mouthwash Guy had dumped her less than two weeks after she made that concession for him.

“Happy birthday,” Caleb said, nuzzling my ear.

“Yes, it is,” I agreed, cupping his balls in my hand.

He deepened the kiss, and inside my hand his soldier let me know that he was ready for some birthday sex. Caleb was a good kisser, which, to tell you the truth, wasn’t that big of a superlative in L.A. I didn’t think there was anything such as a big-city dweller over the age of thirty who wasn’t a good kisser. The residual effect of so much dating.

Usually I was a pretty amazing kisser in my own right. But that morning my mind wandered away. I had so much to do. I hadn’t picked up any food for my birthday party yet, and it being Friday, I still had to go to work.
I could call in sick, since the new year had delivered with it a fresh batch of sick days, but my office always ordered a cake and decorated your cubicle on birthdays. It was the only day of the year that I didn’t want to kill myself while working there and, seriously, was there anything better than sheet cake? I didn’t think so. I could ask my boss for an extra-long lunch break, but then I’d have to say why and my boss might be hurt that I hadn’t invited her to the party, even though she’s, like, fifty and, moreover, my boss. So maybe I should lie and say that I had a doctor’s appointment, but who scheduled doctor’s appointments on their birthday, unless they were really sick … ?

“Are you still awake?” Caleb asked, his voice muffled against my lips.

“Yes, of course,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”

“Your hips stopped moving all of a sudden.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

He nestled his dick between my thighs. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“No, I just …” I searched for an excuse. “Do you mind a quickie? I’m really horny.”

I congratulated myself on this phrasing. It sounded so much better than “My mind’s somewhere else and I don’t have the energy for a long session of sex.” I came off as saucy and sexy, as opposed to lazy and easily distracted.

Caleb rolled on top of me and guided his dick inside me, no questions asked. I bore down on my thoughts and moved my hips against his rhythm, concentrating on my own orgasm, which I had learned over the years was the only way I could ever come with penetration.

Back in my early twenties, I had just laid there, hoping that the guy moving on top of me would spark something off, but letting the guy do all the work most often left him satisfied and me just getting started. So now I put everything I had into making sure I had a good time during sex, too. And as a consequence, I’d garnered a reputation for being good in bed. This wasn’t a hard feat to achieve. Despite what women’s magazines try to tell
you, it only takes two qualities for most guys to label you as good in bed: that you come hard and that you come loud.

And I excelled at both. So with a certain determination, I worked my hips against Caleb’s dick, and I could feel myself building up to something good, when—

“Do you think I care if it’s a bleeding bargain? There were dodgy rats running round the place.” Abigail’s English accent came through the thin wall, her voice loud and clear.

Benny yelled something back in Scottish.

Caleb and I stopped rocking, our need to eavesdrop supplanting our need to climax.

“What did he say?” I asked Caleb. He was a lot better at translating Scottish than I was.

But before Caleb could answer, Abigail cried, “Wanting a decent flat doesn’t make me a princess. It just means I want a decent flat.”

Benny said something else in Scottish. It was like listening to a Charlie Brown cartoon, where the adults spoke jibber-jabber and you could only understand what the children said.

“I don’t care if North Hollywood is cheaper. I want to live in Los Feliz, and before you go accusing me of being a sodding princess again, might I remind you that we agreed to Los Feliz when we decided to move in together?”

I could feel Caleb’s dick going soft as we listened to Benny’s angry, unintelligible response. I couldn’t believe that my two roommates were having this argument yet again.

True to their word, they had started looking for apartments as soon as Abigail got back, and more than three months later they still hadn’t been able to find anything they both liked. According to Abigail, Benny would want to go see studios in the shadier, ungentrified neighborhoods to the east of Los Feliz, because they were cheaper. Abigail would answer (quite reasonably, in Abigail’s opinion) that she didn’t want to move in
anywhere that didn’t have at least two bedrooms or where she didn’t feel safe. “Shouldn’t we live within our means?” he would ask (according to Abigail). And Abigail would say that they had two very different definitions of living within their means. A few times I had gotten up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and had found Benny snoring quietly on the couch, wrapped up in the fleece guest blanket, which made me feel bad for both of them.

“Why can’t we sleep over at your place again?” I asked Caleb after he settled back down beside me, completely out of the mood. The now-constant bickering between Abigail and Benny reminded me of how my parents used to yell at each other, the volume of their fights getting louder and louder, until one day they started going in reverse, my mother’s voice getting quieter, and my father’s answers growing shorter.

Caleb lived in what I imagined to be a fantastic loft in one the revitalized areas of downtown Los Angeles. But I could only imagine it, because he had yet to invite me over.

“That’s where I work and I need to keep it clear of sexual energy.”

During his time in L.A. Caleb had definitely picked up the Californian tendency to answer practical questions with spiritual answers. For example, when I asked him to go see a movie he didn’t want to see, he’d say something like, “I had a bad experience with that director once, and I don’t want to invite negative energy.” Or if I wanted us to go to brunch at a time that conflicted with his Saturday morning yoga class, he’d say something like, “I’m dealing with an editor who doesn’t know what she wants, and I’m afraid if I don’t hit yoga first, I’m going to bring angry energy to our meal.”

Caleb was very concerned with energy.

But today with William Wallace and King Edward having it out all over again on the other side of the wall, and the failed birthday sex, I found his usual answer unsettling. “Look,” I said. “I don’t want to press you or anything. I know we haven’t had the girlfriend-boyfriend conversation. But I have to ask if you’re hiding another woman back at your place.”

He gave me a reassuring smile. “No, I’m not hiding anyone in my apartment.”

And again that lovely calm came over me. I realized then why people put so much stock in being in relationships for more than a month. Sharita was right—deciding to seek out a life partner had been one of the best decisions I’d made since I moved to L.A.

Then, as if to prove my conclusion, he turned to face me in bed and said, “And maybe we should have that conversation. Mind if I start referring to you as my girlfriend?”

I smiled. “Yeah, you can totally call me your girlfriend,” I said.

Then we kissed again, and it all would have been very romantic—if Abigail hadn’t chosen that moment to yell, “I’m dead sick of having the same row over and over again. I don’t want to see any more flats with you. Let’s just call off the search.”

RISA

I
t’s official, I was fucked. And of course, by “fucked” I meant “stumped,” which in the world of music is totally and utterly fucked.

Gravestone loved my demo, they just loved it. They loved it so much, they sent in a sparkly producer named David Gall. David Gall worked on many of Gravestone’s other hit albums. He was twenty-five, but he looked like a thirteen-year-old going through puberty with his gangly limbs, sparse beard, and tight jeans worn under a steady stream of T-shirts with misspelled and/or bizarre words on them.

When we met for the first time at the Aroma Café in Los Feliz, he showed up wearing a T-shirt with a shadow-figure stripper swinging around a pole. It said “SLIPPER PORE MISS” in block letters above the image.

“I got it in Japan,” he said with studied nonchalance. “I get all my T-shirts in Japan.”

Anyway, David Gall (who I assumed changed his name to David Gall like I changed my name from Lisa Amoakohene to Risa Merriweather) was supposed to be wildly original. The only thing was, every time I tried to do my own thing in the studio, he said something like, “Well, when I was producing the Homer & Marge album, we did it like this,” or “Yeah, the lead singer of Ipso! Facto! wanted to do that, too, but I convinced him to do this,” and so on.

Homer & Marge and Ipso! Facto! were Gravestone’s two biggest bands. And it was beginning to feel like David Gall, who told me at the Aroma Café meeting that he loved how different Supa Dupa’s music was, wanted me to sound exactly like them, even though they were boy bands in their early twenties, and if I may say so myself, their singers’ thin, whiny voices didn’t kick nearly as much ass as mine.

I tried not to get angry. My birthday was in June. I would turn thirty. And thirty meant I would officially be old as far as the music business was concerned. Young people didn’t like working with old people for a lot of good reasons. Old people complained. Old people didn’t move albums, unless they started out when they were young. Old people didn’t listen to young people, because they always thought they knew better. The music industry hated old people. They wouldn’t even let someone of my advanced years audition for
American Idol.
Not that I wanted to audition for
American Idol
, but still … working with David Gall made me feel old.

I shook off this feeling in the studio because I had hopes and dreams and rent riding on getting this album delivered. So I said, “Cool,” every time he told me to “try to sound more English” or “let’s do it the Ipso! Facto! way here” or Auto-Tuned my voice.