I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (15 page)

First-Date Butterflies

Salt

2 cups (about 4 ounces) farfalle

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ medium onion, chopped

Pinch red hot pepper flakes

1 (6-ounce) can tuna packed in olive oil (essential!): Progresso or any brand imported from Italy will do nicely, but I even
use Bumble Bee’s version, and it’s fine!

1 tablespoon capers

¼ teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons dry white wine

Splash olive oil

2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley

Freshly ground pepper

Bring a large pot of water to boil over high heat. This sauce is so quick and easy, you can make it while the pasta is cooking.
When the water is boiling rapidly, add a large dose of salt and the pasta, then cover the pot until the water is boiling rapidly
again. Uncover the pot and give it a few good stirs.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a medium skillet over medium heat, add the onion and hot pepper, and sauté until translucent,
about 2 minutes. Open the can of tuna and drain as much of the oil as possible (I do this by pressing the disengaged top of
the can against the tuna over the sink with as much force as I can muster). Add the tuna to the onions, then the capers, the
salt, and the wine. Lower heat and cook until the pasta is ready.

Drain the pasta and add it to the skillet with the tuna, add a splash of olive oil, the chopped parsley, and a few grindings
of black pepper.

Serves 2, or 1, with enough for lunch the next day.

I ate the pasta while watching a telethon to raise money for families of 9/11 victims. The theme of this one was a John Lennon
tribute. Sean Lennon performed, and Yoko, too. When Kevin Spacey took the stage to do a pretty impressive cover of “Mind Games,”
it felt way too appropriate. I couldn’t wait a minute longer to call Ginia and tell her about how it went with Mitch.

There is no one like Ginia to ratchet up my excitement about a date. She indulges in flights of fancy I wouldn’t dare entertain,
which is precisely why I always call her first. By the end of the conversation, she is sure to have me as good as married,
with two kids, a steadily growing college fund, and money saved for retirement. This can get me worked up in ways that are
detrimental to my better judgment, but tonight I needed the fantasy, and Ginia was there, as always, to provide it. She was
happy for me, especially in light of the fact that she’d had a front-row seat to all my sadness that summer.

We had rented a house on Shelter Island for August, which I wasn’t inclined to do because of all the memories of Ethan there,
but Ginia convinced me to do it, and it turned out to be the right thing. She, too, was single at the time. We borrowed my
brother Matthew’s old white Volkswagen Beetle, a convertible with leopard-skin seat covers, to drive around the island—where
we couldn’t get enough of looking at rich people’s houses and imagining the gracious living going on behind the gorgeous facades—and
take to parties in the Hamptons. In between long conversations on the front porch about what in the world Ethan could be thinking
and what he might be doing, which always concluded with the revelation that he wasn’t good enough for me anyway, usually followed
by a crying jag, we managed to enjoy the summer.

I needed all the help in the universe to cope with my despair; I even called upon God. On Sunday mornings, I rode my lonely
twin Raleigh (now divorced from its partner at Ethan’s) to Our Lady of the Isle Roman Catholic Church on Shelter Island. I
cried during most of the Mass. Sometimes I sang along to songs I remembered from my Catholic school days, led by a geriatric
choir accompanied by a Hammond organ. I felt a little hope when I noticed a couple of attractive men who regularly attended
Mass alone. The one who wore a madras blazer and drove a Mercedes convertible from the early seventies had to be gay, but
another, whom I often ended up sitting next to, probably wasn’t. He had an English accent and drove a silver BMW convertible.
How lovely that he maintained his faith, and the Catholic one at that. So exotic for a Brit! During Paul’s Second Letter to
the Thessalonians, I filled out his story in my head. He was a banker sent over to the New York office of a British firm,
Barclays, perhaps. While the choir plodded through a particularly flat rendition of “Were You There When They Crucified My
Lord?” I fantasized about approaching this man, whom Ginia and I had come to call “Nigel,” and inviting him to our house for
dinner. But I never mustered the courage to speak to him, apart from saying, “Peace be with you,” when it came to that part
of the Mass, so I was free to focus all my dating anxieties on Mitch.

I figured he would call the day after our date, but he waited until the day after that. By then, the Saturday night movie
he’d suggested had been traded for an excursion to Williamsburg with a bunch of his friends to see a band.

“Sounds fun,” I lied.

“Okay, I’ll call you Saturday afternoon to shore up plans,” said Mitch.

I was disappointed, not only because I was looking forward to being alone with Mitch, but also because this meant I would
have to come up with Williamsburg-appropriate attire. Williamsburg, the hipster capital of New York City, if not the entire
world, was not my scene, even if I might be attracted to the sort of man who lived there. I spent all of Saturday morning
shopping for an outfit while waiting for the “shore up” call on my cell phone. The call finally came; the outfit did not.
(One doesn’t shop in Boerum Hill boutiques for Williamsburg date wear, I was to learn; one goes to the Salvation Army.) I
became more optimistic about our date when Mitch said he would swing by my place to pick me up so we could have dinner in
my neighborhood. I pulled a Tocca dress from a few seasons back (homegrown vintage!) from my closet: a scoop-necked, cap-sleeved,
purple wool tweed minidress. I wore it with brown leather high-heeled boots.

I was glad that Mitch would see my apartment. I was fond of the place where I had, at that point, been living for ten years;
I believed it revealed likable things about me. The records, for instance: There on chrome shelves—assembled by Ethan to replace
a hand-painted leaning tower I rather liked but he believed to be dangerous—sat every one I ever purchased dating back to
1978, a collection of more than two hundred, including a twelve-inch extended dance mix of Men Without Hats’ “The Safety Dance,”
which, come to think of it, could have been tossed a few years earlier. I imagined inviting Mitch to “come up and see my vinyl”
when he arrived at the door. I’m always looking for witty openers for awkward encounters like therapy appointments or second
dates.

When the blaring doorbell signaled Mitch’s arrival, my heart pounded as I tried to make my way slowly to the door. When I
opened it, I greeted him with a peck on the lips. I did not use the vinyl comment, thank God. But the kiss wasn’t such a great
idea, either. Mitch seemed distant and uncomfortable. He came in and nestled into a corner of the couch. I offered him one
of the nonalcoholic beverages I had purchased while on my fruitless search for a dress. I brought two Cokes over to the sofa
and sat opposite him. It wasn’t long before, without my even having to bring up Kurt Cobain, or Hole, or drug abuse, or even
the city of Seattle, he mentioned that he had once been friends with Courtney Love.

“Did you sleep with her?” I asked.

Mitch was coy, though bringing up the subject was plainly designed to elicit that very question. I was inexplicably intrigued.

I took Mitch down Smith Street, the now revitalized Brooklyn boulevard that had transformed—despite Ethan’s negative pronouncement
during that Valentine’s Day date three years earlier—from a desolate stretch of bodegas and old-lady underwear stores into
an impressive row of restaurants and boutiques. While I tried to figure out where we should eat, Mitch talked about some band
he had seen on Conan O’Brien called At the Drive-In that was destined to be the hottest thing. Mitch didn’t strike me as the
fine dining type, and I had no idea what he could afford among the pricey options. In lieu of the Polish or Greek diner I
assumed Mitch was accustomed to, I settled on a simple Italian café, Paninoteca; they specialized in pressed sandwiches of
melted cheeses and cured hams. I could have a much needed glass of wine, and it wouldn’t be too expensive
.

I was fond of my neighborhood, I even considered it hip, but walking through it with Mitch gave me the impression that what
registered as hip to me did not for him. Mitch was posthip. “Emo” was the thing, he explained as he ate a salad, though he
wasn’t so good at defining what seemed to be a philosophy that covered both music and fashion. After a twenty-minute conversation,
all I knew was that it had something to do with looking, or acting, or sounding, like a librarian. Was that all it took to
turn on Mitch Smith? I could certainly opt for my glasses, instead of my usual contact lenses, for our next date—if there
was one.

I felt decidedly square as Mitch rattled on about the many different cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Prague—he
had lived in over the past few years. Since 1991 I had lived in the same apartment, the one I’d moved into with Kit. Before
he got sober, Mitch took a lot of drugs and slept with strung-out punk girls. My brief dalliance with illegal substances never
led me down any road more perilous than the consumption of too many Hostess CupCakes. I slept with Jewish boys who had back
problems. Mitch didn’t ask me many questions, and when he did, they were the wrong ones. Like “Were you a lesbian in college?”
I didn’t have the requisite alternative answer to that.

The check totaled $21.95.

“Do you want some money?” I asked.

“If you want to,” Mitch replied.

I didn’t want to. Giving him that ten was humiliating, but I duly handed it over.

Back on Smith Street
we ran into Henry, who was amazed to see us out together.

“I can’t believe neither of you e-mailed me! How long have you been hanging out? Is this the first time?” he said.

“Actually, we’re engaged,” said Mitch.

Mitch’s sense of humor was mostly hidden until that moment. Instead he seemed intent on impressing me, or more likely alienating
me, with a litany of references designed to prove how cool he was. Not unlike a character from a novel written for teenagers,
only here there was no older, wiser person to advise him to just “be yourself.”

We took the G train—a mysterious line that stopped at Bergen Street, my regular subway stop, but I never had any occasion
to use—to Williamsburg. The G is the only line in the entire New York City transit system that does not go to Manhattan. This
underdog train took on a new sense of purpose as Williamsburg and its environs became a living destination for young hipsters.
It snakes through Brooklyn to Long Island City, which is actually in Queens. I marveled at the stops as we passed them: Fulton
Street, Clinton-Washington Avenues, Classon Avenue. Where in God’s name were we? But the question that was really burning
through my mind was: Why was I feeling so awful?

“Are you okay?” Mitch asked, noticing my discomfort. He took my hand and then, perhaps thinking that wasn’t the cool thing
to do, quickly withdrew it. Instead he soothed me by mocking himself: “You know you’re on a hot date with Mitch when it’s
eleven o’clock and you’re riding the G train,” he pronounced, and I laughed.

We exited at Metropolitan Avenue—which I’d seen hundreds of times from the vantage point of a car on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway—and
walked over to Pete’s Candy Store. The place was cute, like its name, with a bar up in the front, a middle room where bands
play, and a garden, which was where Mitch’s friends were assembled with pitchers of beer. I drank some; Mitch had a Coke.
We talked to them for a little while and then went to the other room to watch the band. Mitch put his arm around me as we
listened, then he gave me one of those little cheek kisses, as he had done on the street the previous Tuesday. It was two
in the morning when we left.

When we got to the subway, Mitch pointed me in the direction of the westbound platform and explained that the eastbound train
was the one that took him home.

“You’re not going to make me take the G alone at two in the morning,” I protested.

“How stupid of me, of course I can’t do that. I’m such a terrible date,” Mitch exclaimed.

“There are several areas in need of improvement,” I replied.

I wanted Mitch to come home with me not only because I was concerned for my safety, but also because I was still hoping I
could turn this date, and the way I felt about Mitch, and the way Mitch made me feel about myself, into something more akin
to our previous date.

“Well, since you came all the way here, you may as well come up and watch some TV,” I said, pretending not to care whether
he did or not, when we arrived at my door. We lay on the couch side by side, watching videos on MTV. Things got cozy, and
soon enough we were making out. This was when I discovered where Mitch really shines on a date. It was incredibly exciting
to kiss him and be touched by him, even though when he reached into my dress he couldn’t resist criticizing it.