The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (36 page)

“Windsor Hills. It’s near Leimert Park. But I’ve always thought Burbank might be a nice place to live.”

“I like it here,” he said. “The rents are quite reasonable, and where I am is within walking distance of the movie theater and only a short ride to the studio where our show tapes, so I don’t end up spending so much on petrol.”

“That’s very practical.”

“Well, ADs are a rather practical lot.”

“So are accountants, but back to the dating rules. You know, in America you’re supposed to wait two days before calling, then schedule a date for, like, a future day, right?”

“I’ll admit that I’ve heard that,” he said. “But I’ve a real desire to see you again sooner rather than later, if that’s all right with you, Sharita.”

Thursday had once quoted something she had read somewhere in reference to a guy I wasn’t sure liked me or not. It basically went, “If you’re confused, then he’s just not that into you.”

And though this Scottish assistant director wasn’t the black man I had been dreaming of all of my life, he intrigued me and, perhaps more importantly, for the first time since I’d started dating after graduating from Smith College, I wasn’t confused. Like, at all.

“Okay,” I said. “How about meeting at the Granville Café at eleven?”

RISA

O
n New Year’s morning, I woke up in some box of a Manhattan hotel room, took a piss, opened a window, and lit a cig. I grabbed my phone and left my kajillionth message for Thursday between puffs. “Motherfucking call me back already,” I said. Then just in case she wasn’t getting how incredibly pissed off I was: “Way to keep your promise to stay away from Mike Barker. You’re a truly loyal friend and I can see why you stayed mad at Sharita so long for not living up to your impeccable standards. Motherfucking call me back already.”

Then I hung up.

This was not good. Not good at all. A small panic squeezed my heart. Tammy was so upset with Thursday, and Thursday was my best friend, so that meant she was upset with me. Tammy almost never got upset, but on the rare occasion when she did, she put me through the “maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore” drill.

That was exactly what happened last Valentine’s Day after I saved her from the entertainment lawyer at Kate Mantilini. I took her home on my Harley, and when I went to help her off the bike, she surprised me by kissing me in the parking garage, not quite in public, but not behind the closed doors of her condo, either, as she usually insisted.

Tammy was so fucking pretty, so well put together, it always seemed like a privilege when she allowed me to mess her up. I smeared her lipstick with my kiss, and I wrinkled the skirt of her cute green dress when I slipped my hand underneath it and pushed aside the crotch of her frilly pink panties. And I disproved Thursday’s theory that Tammy did not possess sweat glands when I made her come on top of my bike.

But then I went and fucked it all up by saying afterwards, “You know if you came out to your family, then you wouldn’t have to put up with your sister springing dates on you.”

And she morphed into Public Tammy again. She smoothed her hair and looked around to make sure no one had come into the garage and seen us. Then she pulled out blotting papers to remove the sweat from her face, because heaven forbid someone see her looking less than her best on the elevator ride to her condo.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Risa,” she said, pulling out her compact and lipstick to fix her makeup. “I always feel like I’m hurting you by trying to stay friends with you. Maybe we shouldn’t see each other anymore.”

“You’re not hurting me,” I said because the truth was it went beyond hurt. Sometimes it felt like she was slowly killing me with her refusal to come back to me on a permanent basis. “I’m just saying … I fucking love you. I never loved anybody like I love you.”

Tammy lowered her eyes. “I can’t choose between you and my family,” she said quietly. “I understand if that means you need to move on and find somebody else. I know you’ve got all kinds of girls throwing themselves at you.”

“No, I don’t want anybody else. Just you. We could be so good together.”

And we went on and on like that until I asked her to marry me again.

“I have to go before I start crying,” Tammy said after I asked her that.

And then she didn’t accept my calls for a while, which wasn’t so unusual after we got into an argument about her coming out.

I pretty much staged the whole Sharita intervention so that I could see Tammy again. But of course that only made it worse, because not only was her sister mad at me for springing Tammy out of her Valentine’s Day trap, but now her brother thought I was a little crazy. I knew this because he said, “You’re a little crazy, aren’t you?” as we were all leaving Sharita’s house.

By the time I showed up at her apartment, yet again prepared to do anything to convince her that we could remain friends and that I wouldn’t
try to pressure her into something more, she went off script and told me she had cancer.

So yeah, by the time Thursday called back, I was practically foaming at the mouth. “What the fuck?” That was how I answered the phone. “What the fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck?”

“Risa …” she said.

“Don’t ‘Risa’ me. You had no right. You promised.”

“I did,” she said. “And I’m sorry—”

“Apologize to Tammy, you feckless bitch,” I said. Aside: The only word I love more than “bitch” is “feckless,” and the only thing I liked about this situation was the fact that Thursday had provided me with a reason to use both.

“Whoa, first of all …” she said, “I’m not a bitch like you’ve been Tammy’s bitch for all of these years.”

That’s when I realized that Thursday was speaking to me in the same tone of voice that I was speaking to her. “Hold up, how are you going to be mad at me? After what you did?”

Thursday sighed. “I’m not mad at you, but I am feeling a little testy after listening to you do nothing but curse me out on, like, ten different voicemails. The only thing that’s keeping me from cursing you right back out is that I feel sorry for you.”

This sent me into a full-on sputter. “How the fuck are you feeling sorry for me?”

“Risa …” she said. “You shouldn’t have introduced Tammy to us as your friend. You should have told us who she really was because, if I had known, I never would have let her into our friend group. I knew you before The One. And I knew you after. She used you and she strung you along, and she made you complicit in hiding her from your two best friends. But worst of all, she really fucked you up.”

I didn’t know where this was coming from. I told her, “I’m not fucked up; I just have a strong personality.”

“First of all, you haven’t dated anyone seriously but her, and it’s been ten years. Second of all, you didn’t smoke or have an eating disorder before the first breakup.”

“It’s not an eating disorder.”

“Risa. If I look up ‘eating disorder’ in the medical dictionary it reads ‘
Exactly what Risa has
.’ Third of all, she damaged your self-esteem to the point that you think you’re nothing unless you can get her back. Fourth of all, she hid you. And, Risa, you are too awesome to be anybody’s secret girlfriend.”

For the first time in maybe the history of Risa, I didn’t have a smart comeback.

In the ensuing silence, Thursday asked, “Why didn’t you tell us?” She sounded so disappointed in me.

And for some reason I couldn’t answer her. The old panic that I’d come to associate with Tammy came back and clogged up my throat.

“Risa, why did you introduce her to us as your friend? Why did you cover for her like that?”

The box of a hotel room had become unbearably hot, but I kept on sucking on my cigarette. “It was the only way I could keep her,” I said. This answer sounded logical in my head, but when I said it out loud … not so much.

Thursday sighed again, like this entire situation was too tragic for words. “I know there isn’t a ton of dating advice out there for lesbians, and even if there was you wouldn’t read it, so I’m just going to give you the synopsis: What Tammy has been doing is called ‘stringing you along.’ She does just enough to keep you available, so that she can hook up with you whenever she wants and then leave again because you two aren’t really in relationship, and she technically doesn’t owe you anything. She’s holding you hostage with crumbs of affection, and worst of all, she’s somehow convinced you to keep up her cover story with those crumbs. Quote-unquote nice guys do this all the time. Tammy has pretended to be a nice girl this
whole time, when in actuality she’s a coward who won’t stand up for herself or you even though she’s dying. And I’m not going to let your lying to me ruin our friendship because I can see that you have the love equivalent of Stockholm syndrome.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t understand. We got in this big fight. And then everything started going wrong with the Sweet Janes and I said some really shitty things to her. Then I ran out of money. But if I could have made this music career work and if she hadn’t gotten cancer—”

“What? What do you think would have happened if you’d become the biggest rock star on earth before Tammy got cancer?”

“She would have come back to me. We could have made it work.”

Thursday was silent so long, I thought maybe we’d lost the connection, but then she finally said, “First of all, she would have been an asshole if she only came back to you because you got famous. But that doesn’t matter, because it was never about the fame or the money. Tammy already has fame and money. More money than most rock stars. It was about Tammy. Nothing you could have done would have gotten her to commit, because in Tammy’s universe, being a lesbian isn’t a good look, and she’s all about looks.”

The truth of Thursday’s words radiated inside the hotel room. And for the first time since meeting Tammy, I didn’t see myself as the brooding hero of this story. Instead I felt weak, like the hunter that got caught by the prey.

Thursday mistook my silence for anger.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m your best friend and I will represent for how awesome you are until the day I die. When you come to your senses and realize who’s been on your side this entire time, feel free to call me back. Till then, I’m going to be having lots of hot sex with Mike Barker.”

Then she hung up on me, even though I was by all rights supposed to be the one hanging up on her.

A few moments later, my phone went off again. I looked at the caller ID. It was Tammy.

I’d loved her since I was twenty-one, and I would fucking do anything for her, and sometimes it felt like when she died I would no longer have any reason to go on … but I didn’t answer the phone.

I just didn’t.

Sometimes opposites attract. But if you meet one of these “opposite” couples who have been together for a while, and dig a little deeper, you’ll find two people that may not look or act alike, but have the important things in common.

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

THURSDAY

L
ast Valentine’s Day, Caleb and I went to Cliff’s Edge, a romantic restaurant in Silver Lake. I gave him a gift certificate for a Bikram yoga class, which is a kind of yoga done in a very hot room. And Caleb gave me a T-shirt that said, “THURSDAY IS THE BEST DAY OF THE WEEK.” Then we went back to my place, where we had perfectly nice Valentine’s Day sex, after which he said, “I love you,” and I said, “I love you, too.” After that, I’d driven back to Silver Lake and pretended I knew how to bartend while Risa got increasingly drunk. “Don’t bother,” she kept on telling me. “I’m about to quit this job anyway.” Then in the wee hours of the morning, I closed the bar and drove her back to her apartment, where her landlord helped me carry her up the stairs—she had passed out during the five-minute drive, in the middle of a slurred sentence about how next year The One would accept her proposal because she was going to be famous.

“We’ll fly to Massachusetts. Do it at Smith.” she told me. “You can come, too.”

“Oh, I don’t think The One will want me there,” I said, furious that this woman shattered Risa’s heart every year, leaving me to pick up the pieces.