Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace Page 6

  And the women are not crazy about the men’s secret Internet-porn lives. But perhaps we will discuss this at another time.

  Yet union with a partner—someone with whom to wake, whom you love, and talk with on and off all day, and sit with at dinner, and watch TV and movies with, and read together in bed with, and do hard tasks with, and are loved by. That sounds really lovely.

  I had experienced varying degrees of loneliness since my guy and I split up. After our breakup, I had just assumed there would be a bunch of kind, brilliant, liberal, funny guys my age to choose from. There always had been before. Surely my friends would set me up with their single friends, and besides, I am out in the public a lot doing events at bookstores and political gatherings, the ideal breeding ground for my type of guy. But I hadn’t met anyone.

  People don’t know single guys my age who are looking for single women my age. A sixty-year-old man does not fantasize about a sixty-year-old woman. A seventy-year-old man might. And an eighty-year-old—ooh-la-la.

  Almost everybody wonderful whom my friends know is in a relationship, or gay, or cuckoo.

  I went onto match.com with a clear knowledge that relationships are not the answer to lifelong problems. They’re hard, after the first trimester. People are damaged and needy and narcissistic. I sure am. Also, most men a single woman meets have been separated or divorced for about twenty minutes.

  The man of my most recent long-term relationship, whom I’d been with nearly seven years, was in a new, committed relationship about three weeks after we split up. I am not kidding. You can ask him. We’re very friendly.

  So I signed up at match.com. This—subscribing—means you can communicate with people at the site, instead of just studying the profiles, questionnaires, preferences, and photographs for free. I subscribed and answered the questions.

  My preferences are: smart, funny, kind; into nature, God, reading, movies, pets, family, liberal politics, hiking; I prefer sober, or sober-ish.

  So the first morning, eight profiles of men varying in age from fifty-four to sixty-three arrived by e-mail. Most seemed pretty normal, with college degrees, which I don’t have, but certainly meant to; some attractive; mostly divorced, but some, like me, never married; some witty, some dull, some bizarre; sort of like real life.

  Curiously, almost without exception, they were “spiritual but not religious.” I thought for a while that this meant ecumenical, drawn to Rumi, Thomas Merton, Mary Oliver. But I have come to learn that this means they think of themselves as friendly. They are “glass-half-full kind of people.” That’s very nice. They like to think that they are “closest to Buddhism” and “open to the magic that is all around us.” They are “people people.” They are “open-minded and welcome all viewpoints.” They are rarely seeking religious nuts like me—rather, they are seeking open, nonjudgmental women. (The frequent reference to wanting a nonjudgmental woman makes a girl worry. What if you’re pretty nonjudgmental, but then Tiger Woods asks you out for coffee, or Phil Spector, and little by little, more is revealed?) A strangely high number of them mention that they hope you’ve left your baggage at the airport—because, I guess, they are all well! How great. I love this so much.

  Eight new guys arrived every day, along with a remnants section of men who lived pretty far away. Some of my eight guys were handsome, if you could believe their profiles, and in my case the profiles tended to be pretty honest. They mentioned that they drank moderately, or never, or socially (the most you can admit to; there is no way to check for “drinks alcoholically”).

  For my maiden voyage, I had coffee with an accomplished local man, who said his last girlfriend had been religious, a devout Jew, and this had driven him crazy. I said I was probably worse. We parted with a hug.

  I selected a nice-looking Englishman with grown children for my second date. He said he had a good sense of humor, loved movies. He was, perhaps, the tiniest bit fat. I don’t care much about weight, or hair loss. I e-mailed, and we arranged to meet at a Starbucks halfway between our homes, on a Sunday morning before my church.

  This is a true story: He was ten minutes late, and shaken; he had just seen a fatal motorcycle accident on the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge. He had stopped to inspect the body, because he was worried that it was his son, although his son rode a dramatically different brand of motorcycle. He had gotten out, talked to the police, and taken a peek at the corpse. This sort of put the kibosh on things for me. I recommended that we reschedule to a day when he hadn’t seen any dead people. He wanted to proceed. I got him a nice cup of tea.

  I liked him, though, and we exchanged adorable and kicky e-mails, arranging another date, for sushi, and he was lively, cultured, and sort of charming in his e-mails and texts. But at lunch, during the first forty-five minutes of the conversation, he accidentally forgot to ask me anything about my life. It was fascinating, that we did not get around to me until that one question. Then I got cut off.

  My pointing this out politely in an e-mail the next day did not sit well.

  The next guy was highly cultured, a creative venture capitalist who was familiar with my work, and he turned out to be a truly excellent conversationalist. We had a coffee date, a long walk on the beach, a candlelit dinner, texts and e-mails in between, definite chemistry, and then I didn’t hear from him for five days. If I wanted to go for five days without hearing from a man with whom I had chemistry and three almost perfect dates, I would repeat junior high.

  My friends were great. They turned on the man immediately. (Of course, I talked mostly to my single friends and to Sam about match.com.) They knew how brave it was of me to go on dates. I was their role model.

  This pattern repeated—a flurry of dates, followed by radio silence on the man’s part—and made me mourn the old days, when you met someone with whom you shared interests, chemistry, a sense of humor, and you started going out. After a while—okay, who am I kidding, sometimes later that day—you went to bed with him, and then woke up together, maybe shyly, and had a morning date. Then you made plans to get together that night, or the next, or over the weekend.

  But that is the old paradigm. Now, if you have a connection with a match.com man, he might have nice connections with two or three other match .com women, and so each date and new dating level—coffee, a walk, lunch, and then dinner—is like being on a board game, different-colored game pieces being moved along the home path in Parcheesi.

  Every few weeks, I went out with a new man and practiced my dating skills—i.e., listening, staying open, and bringing the date to a friendly close. My son has “We don’t give up” tattooed on his forearm, which is sort of our family motto. So I didn’t give up, even when that day’s date had an unbuttoned tropical shirt, or explained that there is no real difference between Republicans and Democrats.

  Sam told me not to give up, that I would meet a guy who was worthy of me, quote unquote. That made the whole year worthwhile.

  One of the bad coffee dates was a kingly little man who bore an unfortunate resemblance to Antonin Scalia, complete with tasseled loafers, and was snotty and disappointed until he figured out that I was a real writer. Then he wanted to be my BFF.

  I saw the profile of a handsome religious man, who had graduate degrees and a great sense of humor and did not look like Antonin Scalia. He said he believed in courtesy and friendliness. Okay, I’ll bite. The only iffy answer on his questionnaire was that he was “middle of the road.”

  I dropped him a line.

  He wrote back fifteen minutes later. “Your politics are abhorrent to me.”

  I loved that. “Middle of the road” almost always means conservative, I promise. It means the person is Tea Party but would consent to getting laid by a not-hysterical liberal, which rules me out.

  A man with a graduate degree, a great sense of humor, spiritual but not religious, wrote to say he loved my work and felt we were kindred souls. We met at Starbucks. H
e was very sweet and open, but had a compulsive Beavis and Butt-head laugh. After ten minutes of this, my neck went out on me.

  Then I met a man who was as far to the left as I am, in the weeks before the presidential election! Heaven. He was English also. I am powerless in the face of foreign accents.

  Or rather, I used to be.

  We went out four times in rapid succession, for coffee, lunches, a hike. We had chemistry, laughed a lot, sent lots of e-mails. But we didn’t touch. I thought, in my mature and/or delusional way, that this would come, but it didn’t. I made a few practice casual touches, but he didn’t respond.

  My consultants said that I should pay attention to this. Part of me didn’t believe them—this guy knew we weren’t on hikingpals.com. We both wanted mates. But then I got it, that my horrible friends were right, and he didn’t feel physical with me. I felt teary and surprised. I wrote to him, with my e-mail voice high in my throat, saying that maybe it wasn’t going to happen, and maybe we should take a break while I went out of town.

  He said he wanted to pursue this and for me not to throw in the towel.

  Hooray. My heart soared like an eagle. We stayed in touch by e-mail while I was gone for a couple of weeks.

  I got home. He asked me out to lunch, and we had an easy, entertaining time. Afterward he wrote that he had really enjoyed it. I asked him if he wanted to go for a hike on Thanksgiving morning, before the hordes and riffraff arrived at my house. We had coffee in the kitchen with my son and younger brother, and then we had the most beautiful walk. We hiked the next morning, too. Then, in a feat of derring-do, I invited him to a movie that night and kept my adorable little starfish hand on the space where the armrest would have been, if I hadn’t stealthily raised it when he went to get popcorn. But he didn’t reach for my hand; and to make a long story short, we haven’t seen each other since that night. After four days of silence, I wrote to say that I guessed it wasn’t going to happen. He wrote back that, yes, this was probably true; it had felt friendly but not romantic.

  Now he is my mortal enemy.

  That was four months ago. There have been some smart, sweet guys since, even one recently. And today, I had coffee with the first guy, from almost exactly one year ago. We compared notes; he loved “Your politics are abhorrent to me,” and commiserated about the second Englishman. He and I don’t have huge chemistry, but he’s a good guy, and it was pleasant.

  You could say that my year on match.com was not successful, since I am still single, have been reduced to recycling my Starbucks companions, and am pleased with “pleasant.” To have gone out so many times took almost everything I had, and then I didn’t even meet the right man. You start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you.

  Nah.

  But I have two weeks left till my membership expires. Anything could happen. God is such a show-off, and I never give up on my dreams. Plus, amazingly, I have learned how to date. I can meet guys for coffee and hang out with them for an hour, and either not have to see them again or keep my heart open, hoping I do. Talk about awesome. I did it.

  Families

  Sustenance

  My parents were about the pursuit of the so-called good life. When they fell in love after World War II, it was as intellectuals. This meant that you went out with other couples like you—good-looking, highly educated, and ironic folks who listened to Coltrane and Miles Davis, and raised their kids to be extremely high achievers, drank a lot of wine, passed along great books, knew about the latest poets, and cooked Julia Child’s recipes and cutting-edge ethnic food.

  I still remember my mother fully engaged in a number of enlivening, centering pursuits—cooking, writing for local papers, reading, baths, hanging out with her best women friends making marmalade or chutney (then trying to trick the poor children into liking it). And the figs my father and I devoured from our friends’ backyards—how perfectly one fit into your mouth, the succulent flesh with just a little something to chew against to keep you focused, the honey juice that didn’t run down your chin but ran down your throat, bathing you in the exotic ancient pleasure of a most common fruit.

  The food and life my parents created would have been delicious and nourishing, if it had not been for one tiny problem—that they were so unhappy together. My brothers and I ate cassoulet at a table where our parents avoided making eye contact and, rather than shout, which was considered déclassé, engaged in clipped conversation. It was The Joy of Cooking meets Harold Pinter. So the steamed persimmon pudding was easy on the taste buds but hard to swallow, because it came at such a cost: a lump in the throat, anxiety in our bellies.

  What had happened that turned my parents from the bright young things who fell in love over literature and wine to a cheerless woman and man who after dinner took their books and glasses to opposite ends of the living room, connected only by a lily pad of children on the rug between them, lost in homework?

  I think the answer is what didn’t happen: They were not able to take their pleasures, their love of their children, out to the next concentric circle, where something bigger awaited. My mother and her women friends made not only vats of that world-class chutney but also mole poblano and cakes from scratch, and yet because she was empty inside and stayed in a miserable marriage for twenty-seven years, she who cooked like a dream could not ever feel satisfyingly filled and got fat.

  I found the spiritual food for which I longed as a child in the families of my two best friends. One was Catholic and lived down the block. The Catholics said grace before serving up aggressively modest fare—English muffin pizzas, tuna noodle casserole, fish sticks. The parents seemed to enjoy each other’s company: what a concept. Sometimes they yelled at each other and then later hugged and kissed in the kitchen—oh my God. It had never crossed my mind that peace could be found in full expression, in yelling and weepy embraces.

  I also loved to eat with—and be with—a Christian Science family, who did not yell but read the Bible and Mrs. Eddy together. When I was at their house, we prayed, eyes closed, breathing deeply. In the silence you could feel and hear your own breath in your nostrils, and that could be both relaxing and scary, like having a car wash in your head. Of course, I did not mention this to my parents; they would have been horrified. For me it was heaven, even though we frequently ate snacks for dinner—popcorn, store-bought pie. This food was so delicious because of the love in that house, the love that had at its core a sweet, strong marriage. The parents did not yell or kiss as much as the Catholics, but I felt enveloped by the friendly confidence of their faith, and I was sad each time I was remanded to the spiritual anorexia at my house.

  By the time I was in high school, I did what all bright perfection-seeking girls learned to do, besides staying on my toes because something bad might be about to happen: I dieted. Or, come to think of it, binged, dieted, and binged, like my mother, but never felt that simultaneous state of being full without being stuffed. And like my father, I began to drink a lot. Like both of them, I had the disease called “More!” and absolutely could not feel gently satisfied.

  Nothing can be delicious when you are holding your breath. For something to be delicious, you have to be present to savor it, and presence is in attention and in the flow of breath. It begins in the mouth, my parents’ preferred site of comfort, and then it connects our heads to our bodies through our throats, and into our lungs and tummies, a beautiful connective cord of air.

  In the middle and late 1960s, two things came along that started to give me my life back: the counterculture and the women’s movement. A beautiful hippie teacher at my small high school gave me I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and then Virginia Woolf’s journals, all of which I consumed like someone at a hot-dog-eating contest. My best friend, Pammy, and I together discovered Jean Rhys and Ms. magazine. Then I went to a women’s college, and the older girls and professors gave me the Margarets, Atwood and Drabble, and the first Nora Ephron collection, and it was al
l like when Helen Keller discovers that Anne Sullivan is spelling W-A-T-E-R into her hand, and wants her to spell everything in the world now. I was learning the secrets of life: that you could become the woman you’d dared to dream of being, but to do so you were going to have to fall in love with your own crazy, ruined self.

  I met in circles with more and more women, who, over lentil soup and Milanos, taught me about my spirit and my needs and my body. I met with mixed groups of people to strategize protests or save open space, and we gobbled down rice and beans. I showed new friends how to make my parents’ cassoulets. They taught me about halvah, pomegranate wine, and massages to heal both body and soul.

  Awareness dawned on me in these years that the values of my parents’ lives, of the good life, were going to be part of an evolutionary journey—the marvelous food and storytelling, bookstores, hiking—along with what I found in the religious houses of my childhood friends and in churches, along with sharing the deepest truth with women in profound and very funny conversation, along with silence and meditation. God: this was so radical, and so delicious.

  I am not saying that it became easy. Like learning the piano or Spanish or meditation, I had to practice and do poorly—I had to read difficult material, and then stay with it, and talk to others, and slowly start to understand. Then I had to try something else hard and worthy. I had to seek wisdom, teachers. And oh, relationships. Don’t even get me started, unless I have all day to describe the total, almost hilarious inappropriateness of every fixer-upper, I mean man, I tried to get to love me. But as Rumi said, “Through love all pain will turn to medicine,” not most pain, or for other people; and the pain and failures grew me, helped slowly restore me to the person I was born to be. I had to learn that life was not going to be filling if I tried to scrunch myself into somebody else’s idea of me, i.e., someone sophisticated enough to prefer dark chocolate. I like milk chocolate, like M&M’s: so sue me. But I no longer have to stuff myself to the gills.