Target Underwear and a Vera Wang Gown (13 page)

hen you’re in the dating world, there is so much work in order to fake perfection. If you’re not careful, you might miss something crucial along the way. Gone is the idea of not putting on a little lipstick, even if you’re going to the 7-Eleven to pick up some Doritos for a late-night munch fest. Back is mascara at midnight. Gone is wearing the oversized sweats that don’t show off your body when you’re going to the gym. Back are the tight, uncomfortable leggings that make your butt look sexy (albeit giving you a wedgie) while gliding on the elliptical machine. Gone are the easy cotton Calvin Klein pullover sports bras for everyday use. Back are the lace bras with the underwire, which have a strong possibility of stabbing you in the boob should the protective covering fray. Gone are the days of wearing your glasses when you drive. Back is the inability to see the pedestrian crossing the street so the cute guy in the Porsche next to you will caution you with a beep, causing you to stop, smile a thank-you, get a number, get married, have kids, and get a dog and name him “ ‘Stigmatism” (Stiggy for short)—your little joke, of course, referencing the first time you met.

Felicia had fixed me up with this guy Mick. We had gone on a few dates and had a great time. When we went for sushi and he confessed his inability to use chopsticks, I claimed it was “adorable,” thus leading us into a comfortable zone.

One Sunday, Mick needed a fold-up card table and chairs, so we decided to head to the Target in the San Fernando Valley. We stopped at Krispy Kreme, contemplated a Wendy’s hamburger, but settled on fries and a Frosty. As our sugar highs deepened to schizoid proportions, we raced through the parking lot toward the Target store like wild boars stoned on crystal meth.

“Oh, remind me to get some underwear,” I casually requested.

Mick halted in mid-sugar freakout.

“Hold on. You buy your underwear at Target?” Mick rhetorically chided.

I stopped, shuddered, and tried to cover it—badly. “No, of course not. What, are you nuts? I was just kidding. All this sugar is making me say crazy things.”

We cruised the fold-up table section, contemplated an oak one, settled for plastic, but my mind was someplace else. It was a few yards away, in the Target lingerie section. My true bliss was hanging on a rack, albeit somewhat haphazardly, by the lucky ladies who had gotten there before me. So close and yet so far. My secret cheap thrill—Gilligan &r O‘Malley brand to be exact, 100% cotton, low-cut bikini with a full seat—comes in a pack of three. I’m wearing a pair right now (though 1 didn’t get them that day).

Later that week, Mick and I went on a double date with Felicia and her boyfriend, Hal.

“I wish Felicia would wear sexier underwear,” Hal thought out loud so Felicia would hear.

“How’s this for sexy,” Mick sarcastically commented. “Adena gets her underwear from Target!”

“No, I don‘t!” I cried, shocked and ashamed.

Later that night, I told Mick it was over. Mick had crossed the line. Now everyone would know. Felicia was always a big talker.

Heidi called me at eight the next morning.

“Felicia says you got this great underwear from Target. Which one is it?”

“Gilligan & O‘Malley brand, 100% cotton, low-cut bikini with a full seat. Comes in a pack of three.”

Later that week at a dinner party, Susan mouthed these words: “They are so comfortable.” Next to her was her husband, Robert. “Thanks a lot,” he deadpanned.

I had started a revolution.

A month later, Mick came to my house.

“You are a special person,” he said. “Last night I took this girl out. We went back to her place Things started to heat up. When she took off her skirt and I saw her underwear, I started to think, ‘Why mess around with a knockoff when you might be lucky enough to be able to have the original?’ I left right then and there.”

“Was it Gilligan & O‘Malley brand, 100% cotton?” I asked him.

“Low-cut bikini with a full seat. Comes in a pack of three,” Mick said, adding, “do you think we could give it another try?”

“Why not,” I told him.

A week later he showed up at my house for a date wearing a leather vest with no shirt on underneath.

I said nothing, claimed pneumonia, and stopped taking his calls.

had decided to wear my beige shift dress with my six-inch-heeled snakeskin slingbacks on my blind date with Evan in early August 1998. I was fast approaching my thirtieth birthday, and the thought of not having anyone permanent in my life was starting to jolt the countdown on my spinster clock. The bigger problem was, there was no one who I really liked. I was fortunate enough to have been asked out on a lot of dates and had an active enough social life to have met all different kinds of guys. Still, there was no one. So when my friend Ian called and said that he wanted to fix me up with Evan, I was more than keyed up to go.

Evan was an investment banker. Ian said that he was exactly the kind of guy I would like—smart, confident, Jewish, funny, and most important, had the one quality I’ve always been attracted to: He could really wear a suit. If I stop to really ask myself why this has always been a plus for me, I know it can be attributed to the early mornings I’d watch my dad go off to the hospital in one of his gray, blue, or chocolate brown suits. It was six in the morning, and my father was headed off to perform one of his early morning surgeries, but he always wore a suit to work—gray or blue or chocolate brown with a white or blue oxford dress shirt and one of his many blue ties with varied prints of tiny polka dots or plaids. He’d come into my room while I was still sleeping; I could smell his hair spray—the Dry Look for Men—a scent I remain fond of for this reason. He’d lean over my bed, give me a kiss, and wish me a good day, and I’d find the energy to open my eyes just as he walked into my brothers’ room, wishing them good days. There I’d see my daddy for the first time that day—crisp, clean, and more handsome than I’d ever see him at any other time in my life.

The same goes for my grandfather Frank when I would go to visit him at his accounting firm. I would run into his office to find my “Pop-pop” Frank, whose suits and dress shirts he had tailor-made in the finest fabrics, and there he was. The only thing about him that wasn’t dapper and elegant was the wonderfully ecstatic smile on his face and his arms flailing at me just waiting to get his hands on me for a hug. I’d jump into his arms, and he hugged me tight as I’d play with the handkerchief neatly folded in his breast pocket. He’d carry me from office to office, proudly showing off his “littlest princess,” as he called me.

So call it a daddy thing, call it what you will. I’m a huge sucker for a guy in a suit.

I thought the beige shift dress was a really good idea. Evan told me he’d be coming from his office and to please excuse his suit. I felt incredibly comfortable talking to him on the phone, and that in turn made me feel a little negligent in sexy attire. Also, I figured we’d match well if I wore something more conservative. After all, he did claim on the phone to be a “Democrat in Republican’s clothing.” Would a conservative investment banker appreciate my usual date look—tight cigarette pants, a flimsy halter top, and six-inch heels? Maybe if I was a gift some client had sent him as a thank-you. He’d want a woman to be as traditional- and sophisticated-looking as he was. That, and my usual conservative black-cigarette-pants-with-pearls outfit had a loose cuff on one of the legs, and I had sworn off my own sewing since prom night years before.

At eight o‘clock that evening, Evan rang my doorbell. I undid the locks and began my ritual in opening the door for a blind date—asking God, Allah, Mother Nature, and Santa Claus,
“Please let this he someone I might like.”
Everything was happening in slow motion as I opened the door and saw the arm of his gray suit, then his jacket lapel, his blue tie, his blue dress shirt, his deep green eyes. With the door pulled open, seeing him in full view, my very first thought was “a hot Democrat in Republican’s clothing!” I didn’t let on, though, as I gave him a warm smile. It was what he did next that, in all honesty, opened my bottle of crush. The guy gasped at me like he had never seen a vision of beauty so true and so meant to be.

And I knew he was full of crap.

And I loved that he was so full of crap.

Lets face the facts. Yes, I will admit that I looked attractive ... for a job interview. My hair was slicked hack into a severe ponytail. The beige shift did nothing for my figure Why I didn’t spend a little more time perfecting my makeup with the addition of even a dab of lipstick is still beyond me. To put it harshly, I was not gasp worthy

So I outwardly ignored it.

“I actually just got home from work,” I lied, knowing full well that told him I was home already when he called on my cell two hours before. “Would you mind if I put on something more comfortable?” I asked him as I mentally surveyed my closet and quickly decided on my black Theory stretch cigarette pants and red ribbed tank.

“You look gorgeous!” he lied. “We’re late for our reservation anyway. ”

I grabbed my mini backpack purse (as if I wasn’t pathetic enough) and locked the door to my apartment. Evan and I walked to his car, a beat-up green Saab convertible, which looked exactly like my beat-up Saab, only mine had a hard top—an obvious sign if I ever saw one. I suddenly knew why I loved that he fake gasped. It was something that I would have done myself at the time had I been the guy at the door. He was the male Adena. And for that very reason, even though I had only known him for about five minutes tops, he was a potential finalist in the Mr. Adena Halpern contest.

He told me that he was taking me to the hot new sushi restaurant, the one I was dying to go to, the one he couldn’t wait to try. As we drove over to the restaurant and the wind from the open top blew my severe ponytail into a spunkier up-do, Evan took moments throughout the five-minute drive to reenact his gasp, never saying anything, like he was stunned speechless from my splendor. Again, I worked feverishly to outwardly ignore it, but the more he fake gasped, the more my crush deepened and the more insecure I got.

What I really should have been doing all this time was telling him that I had already been to the hot new sushi restaurant and maybe we could think of another place. As we entered the restaurant, I had suddenly remembered the main attraction of hot new restaurants: hot young babes—model babes, babes in cigarette pants, flimsy halter tops, and long flowing hair. As the six-foot model/hostess with the black leather miniskirt and flawless body showed us to our table, my shift dress got baggier, my six-inch heels got shorter. When the gorgeous redhead at the table next to ours dropped her chopsticks and went to pick them up, both Evan and I took the opportunity to look down her V-neck shirt, which was giving way to her perfectly sculpted (only by genetics and not by a plastic surgeon) breasts, I could feel my own breasts bobbing against my knees.

“There are some really pretty women in here,” I casually remarked to try to make him think I was the one woman in the entire world who didn’t have a problem with other women who were better-looking than me.

“But I’m sitting with the prettiest,” he said and smiled.

The ultimate bullshit artist. This was the man of my dreams!

I watched Evan pay the bill for our edamame appetizer, tuna roll, and eel sushi, and I thanked him with a kiss on the cheek. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me in to him as we left the restaurant.

“Do you think we could do this again?” he slightly begged, leaning in as we pulled up to my apartment.

“I think that’s possible,” I said as I leaned in too.

The two “conservative” Jews kissed passionately, then got out of the beat-up green Saab convertible, his hand in hers.

“Good night,” she said as she took her keys out to open her apartment door.

“Good night,” he sighed as though he might have buttoned up his suit jacket, thrown on a fedora, and gone singing in the rain had there even been a slight drizzle when she shut the door.

And as I closed the door to my apartment, I contemplated the next move while throwing off the beige monstrosity, taking my hair out of the ponytail, and figuring out the sexiest outfit I had for the next date. If I had used my brain, I could have figured out that I didn’t have to contemplate anything so fast. Knowing who I was at that time in my life, and he being the male Adena, I should have known it was going to take Evan six months before he finally called me for a second date.

o matter what I ever do in my life as an occupation, there will never be a job better than the one I had from 1999-2001 with the Web site
Shopright.com
.

Here was the job:
Shopright.com
hired me to be their Los Angeles editor, which sounded super cool to those I wanted to impress. My “editing” job was to shop at every single upscale retail department store or boutique in all of Los Angeles and report on three designer items on sale in the store. For example:

Every time I reported on three sale items at a particular store,
Shopright.com
paid me $12.50. Think about it. Go to a sales rack in your favorite upscale retail store and write down everything that’s on sale. Sometimes, I’d write down twenty pieces of clothing from one store, reporting it on
Shopright.com
, thus making $250 from one store. That’s a half hour of work. Go to the next store, report on another ten pieces of clothing, and that was another $125. While the rule at
Shopright.com
was that we could only post three sales from one store per week on the site, it wasn’t like the sale items were going away, and it wasn’t our job to report if the item was purchased. Therefore, if you reported on twenty sales items, three would go up one week, followed by three the next, etc. I was making more money than you could imagine for doing something that took absolutely no effort, brain power, or skill. Because I worked from home, I had no one to report to and only worked about two hours a day, taking Fridays off entirely simply because I could. I almost felt like I was gypping the good folks at
Shopright.com
, but that was what they wanted. While I would have handled the business differently, that was not my problem. I was hired to shop and report, and $12.50 was what they offered for three sales items.