I Know What I'm Doing (9 page)

After ordering some kind of vodka drink that was so full of sugar I couldn’t taste the earwax—I was a goner. I ordered a few more. I was self-aware enough to know that I was having a secret conversation with myself in my head wherein I was bullshitting myself. I was looking for any reason to continue talking to someone I was so attracted to—something to justify sitting so close. I remember thinking that Ryder was pretty smart for his age and I should take in some of his savvy in order to better get to know the very demographic that every television show targets. Maybe I would one day write a hit Ryder-inspired TV show and make millions of dollars and send him a brand-new pair of expensive Ray-Bans as a thank-you. Other points in Ryder’s favor: He was facing the proper way at the table. He could hold his glass without dropping it. And when he drank and swallowed he didn’t choke because the liquid went down the wrong tube. I was Dorothy Parker to his Alexander Woollcott. It was a regular Algonquin fucking Round Table.

The girl who I referred to in my head as Some Chick Named Something-Or-Other Who Was Just Staring At Her Phone came to life, lifted her head, and joined the conversation. Ryder put his arm around her.

“There she is.”

“Sorry, baby,” she said. “I was texting with my sister. Ugh. So much drama.”

My heart dropped. “Baby?” Then again, she was wearing a floppy hat, a faded sundress, and lots of string bracelets. Maybe she was just a friendly nonsexual child groupie. What kind of old lady was I being, assuming that “baby” meant that she was Ryder’s girlfriend? That’s how young people talk! It’s a seventies revival! Everybody is baby, and cat, man. And maybe even cat-man.

“That’s okay, Daisy. Just let her cool off.”

Ryder ran his fingers through her hair and gently swept her long bangs out of her face, tucking them behind her multiply pierced ears. That intimate move could mean only one thing. He’s her stylist! Sigh. I know, I know. At that point I had to admit to myself that Daisy was probably his girlfriend. I sat with my boring clunker of a name. “Jen” short for “Jennifer”—the most popular name in 1974. The year I was born. The year that Ryder and Daisy were still orbs in some outlying universe—they weren’t even sperm and egg yet. They did not exist. I wished one of them didn’t exist in this moment.

My heart slumped. I reminded myself that not only was I married—I was a good sixteen years older than these people. I had already lived my youth. I had my fun. I went to bars when I was underaged too. There was an underground drag queen bar in Boston that just wanted to make a buck before the drag shows started and if you were willing to start drinking at six p.m., they would serve just about anyone. So, yeah, I’ve lived, Daisy! I’ve split a bottle of champagne with my friend Wendy served to us by a man with dazzling French-tipped nails. This was way before
RuPaul’s Drag Race
was a TV show. So watch it, young lady. I’m the Madonna to your Miley Cyrus. People my age paved the way for you to sit in a bar illegally.

Ryder leaned over to me. He put his arm around both of his girls. Oh. What was this? Some kind of subtle threesome offer? Is this what the kids were into? It reminded me of the scene in
Cabaret
where Liza Minnelli is crocked on champagne, smoking a cigarette out of a long holder, dancing for her boyfriend (played by Michael York) and their new friend the baron. Eventually the three of them end up swaying together in a circle to old-timey trumpet music on the phonograph. Their noses touch and it’s clear—everybody who can stay awake is totally going to bone.

Ryder interrupted the classic film in my head and whispered in my ear, “Jen?”

Just that murmur—the sound of some other man saying my name in a hushed tone—or let’s face it, any man saying my name—sent my stomach into another free fall and it conked out somewhere in my underwear. I looked at him with searching eyes, just like Liza Minnelli’s Sally Bowles. Every second an adventure. What could be coming next?

“Yes, Ryder?”

He whispered, “Can you go and buy Daisy a drink? I’ll totally pay but she forgot her fake ID and I don’t want to go up there again with mine because I think I should lay low too.”

First of all, how was I going to stand up and walk away with my intestines in my granny panties? And next—what am I? Some middle-aged guy who lurks outside of a liquor store in his hometown that he never left hoping some fledgling foxy high school girl will ask him to buy her some wine coolers? I looked over at Daisy. I figured now was a good time to introduce myself.

“Hi, I’m Jen.”

“Daisy. Hi.”

“How old are you?”

She smiled, “Nineteen?”

“Is that a question?”

Ryder answered, “She’s shy about her age. She doesn’t think people will take her seriously. But she’s an old soul.”

Said the twenty-three-year-old.

“Old soul.” What a meaningless expression. If Daisy were such an old soul she would be at home watching
Jeopardy!
repeats and then dying alone in her bed. I had no choice but to decide to be a good sport and get up from the table to get this brunette olive-skinned goddess her drink—mostly because the hot tears were starting to brew in the back of my eyes and I didn’t want Daisy to see me cry. It didn’t take a lot for me to cry in those days—a few drinks, feeling my extra forty pounds as I tried to cross my legs under a table, and the presence of young people who have their whole lives ahead of them. At the bar I ordered Daisy her vodka/soda. Maybe she
was
an old soul. She could handle the hard stuff better than I could.

After my third glass of vodka, burnt sugar, and mint leaves I wanted to smoke a cigarette. Not just any cigarette. The one in Ryder’s mouth. I watched his lips around the cigarette the way us women think that guys are watching us when we eat a banana. I wanted to eat him. I wanted to open my jaw and swallow him inside of me until all that was left as evidence were his cheap sunglasses on the ground in front of me, and if Daisy later approached me and asked, “Where is my boyfriend?”—I’d wipe my paw over my mouth and burp. I took the American Spirit from his hand, pretending to be a free American spirit myself. I put the cigarette that had been on his lips to mine.

“Damn, girl. I would have given you your own.”

Ryder opened his pack and pulled out another. He lit up and started over.

He said to me, “You’re aggressive.”

I decided to act like my aggression was something that he was too young to understand—make it his shortcoming, not mine.

“Ha, that’s just what women my age are like. You’ll see someday.”

He stared at me. Daisy was back to texting on her phone.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, man. I just don’t like when someone seems like they could be mean.”

I backpedaled, stubbed out my cigarette, and dropped the older-woman-with-bravado thing. “Oh, I’m not mean,” I cooed. “I’m just a comedian.”

“Well, I guess I’m just a musician. We’re sensitive.”

Daisy tossed her phone down in frustration and burrowed her head into Ryder’s arm like a toddler who had missed her nap. There was some more burrowing, a hushed-tones consultation, and once again I was asked to move over—this time so that Daisy and Ryder could take their measly two-hundred pounds of combined body weight and breeze out of there like sexy shadows.

“Nice meeting you, Jen.”

“Yeah, thanks for the drink, Jen,” Daisy whispered.

Sharon was already socializing around the bar. I remained at the table with Armen the Producer. He leaned in.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“No. I have to go back home to my husband.”

He said lasciviously, “I’ve seen you hanging out all night. You don’t want to go home.”

Ewwww. I sobered right up.

“Yes. I do.”

There are never cabs to be found roaming Los Angeles but I walked outside as one was at the stoplight. I hailed it down and yelled, “Taxi!” When I got in, the cab driver said, “You didn’t have to wave and yell. I could tell exactly what you wanted.”
Why couldn’t I?
I thought.

I got home to find my husband sprawled out on the bed. I climbed under his arm and managed to sleep for about an hour before waking up with a racing heart. Two drags of a cigarette and a few sugary alcoholic drinks and my aging, agitated liver lectured me.

“Hey. Lady. That kid was right. You’re aggressive. I had to wake you up to let you know what you put me through tonight. I can’t even begin to process all of this before morning.”

“I used to be able to smoke half a pack of Camel Lights every night and drink way more than this.”

“Yeah. It wasn’t fun then either but at least I had the strength to get it done. What you just did tonight is the equivalent of me putting stacks of to-do files on someone’s desk at five p.m. just as they are going for their car keys.”

“I’m sorry. I know. This hurts me too. It’s not like I do this all of the time.”

“At your age, you better do it none of the time. Treat me right and we can have a pleasant albeit less fun rest of your life together.”

I tiptoed out and headed to my laptop in our home office. I returned e-mails and then just happened to wander over to Facebook. I put in a friend request to Ryder. I don’t know what I wanted from that. I pictured him and Daisy holding each other under what I assumed were very low-thread-count sheets. I went to the bathroom to pee. I apologized to my kidneys for what they had to filter. I returned to the computer and Ryder had already accepted my friend request and sent me a private message. “Nice meeting you tonight. Come see my band sometime. You’re funny.” I wrote back, “I will definitely come and see your band sometime. Thanks for liking my comedy.” That was it. We never wrote each other again until ten months later.

THE BEAT GOES ON—RYDER PART II

It was May 2011. Matt and I had split up a week earlier and we agreed we could see other people. I had lost so much weight in the past year—most of it from stress, nerves, and adrenaline. I have no weight-loss secrets for anyone. You know those people who we all hate who say, “I just forgot to eat,” and you ask yourself,
How the hell do you forget about cheese plates and pumpkin-stuffed ravioli and ice cream and fun-sized Snickers and organic
cacao-flavored “healthy” cereal that instantly becomes unhealthy when you eat the entire box in one sitting?
I know. I know. But when you’re going through a divorce you actually do forget to eat. For some reason the biological mechanism in our bodies that is supposed to signal hunger shuts down. Perhaps it’s nature’s way of saying,
“You may lose a lot of money getting unmarried, so, just like a contestant on
Survivor
, you might want to learn how to live on less.”

Walking through the door of my place on this first Friday as a separated woman, I didn’t know what to do with myself—which was weird because Friday night used to be my “alone” night until my then husband got home from work. I would get in my pajamas, order in, and usually indulge in some classic DVDs of
Maude
—a divorcée heroine. But now—knowing that nobody was coming home—it suddenly didn’t feel that decadent to have an alone night. (This is an attitude that would take a few months to go away . . . but eventually I settled back into a routine of making Friday nights my recovery night because I’m a grown-ass woman and I do what I want.) Maude’s “God will get you for that, Walter” wasn’t keeping me company. Sharon sent me a text. “Remember that guy Ryder? I saw him and his gang tonight at a party. His band is playing next Tuesday night.”

“That’s a school night. I work early Wednesday mornings.”

“Jen, you should come. Don’t just stay home all the time like you’re married.”

I walked into my home office to get my laptop. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored closets I always hated because they’re cheesy and scream “rented apartment,” but I didn’t cringe this time. Whoa. Who was that in the mirror? I was thin and back to my God-given brunette hair. No more Courtney Love blond or bloat. I wasn’t too bad for a thirty-eight-year-old divorcée. Hell, I wasn’t bad for a twenty-eight-year-old divorcée. Sharon was right. I couldn’t just stay home. Matt said I could see other people and I was incredibly horny. It was time I started seeing people. Maybe I would meet someone at Ryder’s show. Maybe I would meet some thirty-eight-year-old divorced man who also liked alt-folk-country-rock in a bar setting?

I logged on to Facebook as a surrogate Friday-night hangout with people. While scrolling through pictures of my friend’s kids losing teeth and smearing food, I saw a notice in my Facebook in-box. It was Ryder. I considered seeing a gastroenterologist because that old stomach dropped again. What did Ryder want? Did he finally find the courage to tell me that I was a mean old lady who had no business contacting him on Facebook almost a year earlier?

I thought about how stupid I felt around Ryder that night at the vodka bar and how I had always regretted sending that friend request at two in the morning. What kind of married loser contacts a young, hot musician on Facebook when she knows he’s at home with his also-young, also-hot girlfriend? I felt I couldn’t face him at his concert. I clicked on his message and braced myself. It simply said, “Jen. I hope you can come to my show next week! I will put you on the list! I can’t wait to see you again! How are you?”

Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Why was Ryder insisting that I come to this show? He has that beautiful girl—wait a minute. Let me do some Internet “research.” Click. Ryder’s home page. Relationship status: “It’s Complicated.”
Oh, it’s not that complicated, Ryder. I’ll show you how easy it is.
Uh-oh. There I went again. The old—I mean young—feelings rushed back to every nerve center in my body. I might finally have my chance. I wrote back. “Hey, Ryder. I’m great. I mean, sort of great, I’m single again and it’s weird! How are you? Oh, I may not be able to come to the show Tuesday night because it’s hard for me to commit to plans in advance but please put me on the list anyway?” That last part was my attempt at playing it cool even though I wrote back in a record 2.5 seconds. Then without even taking a breath I wrote ANOTHER very un-cool Facebook message. “Let me give you my e-mail address. I hate messaging on Facebook—sometimes they disappear for no reason.” (I completely made that up. In fact, I have messages from 2007 that I swear I’ve deleted and they show up again and again in my in-box.)