Emily's Reasons Why Not Read online

  “Every time I meet my potential husband, or someone I think could be my potential husband, or at the very least someone I will have sex with, the men who will have an impact on my life, hit it like a meteor hitting a small village, disseminating its populace, I get the ‘flutter, flutter.’”

  “That’s your internal warning system,” Dr. D. states clinically. “It’s good that you’re in touch with it. But next time you get … the ‘flutter, flutter’ I would prescribe the following behavior: Run. It’s your fight-or-flight instinct. A lot of women confuse it with fate, or destiny, or some other illusion clouding good judgment. Please continue about the potential boyfriend.”

  “Well, a guy who makes me laugh is important. And definitely a guy with a job.” I scratch my head …“And has his own car.” I pause for a minute. “A kind smile. I don’t know, that’s a good start … wait, and, and maybe,” I look down, “someone who makes me feel pretty.”

  “You are pretty,” Dr. D. states flatly.

  “Thank you. I guess I’m just waiting for my prince to come,” I add in hopes of taking the focus off my ridiculous list.

  Dr. D. looks concerned. “Emily, I am going to tell you something now and I want you to brace yourself for it.”

  No wonder I am single. Jesus, why did I go into the “flutter, flutter” thing? Is my list unrealistic? Is that why I’m single? I’m shooting beyond my means. NO. NO. NO. A guy with a job, nice forearms, and straight teeth is not too much to ask. Stay focused. Stay on the path. He’s coming. Right?

  I sit back and take a deep breath, clearing my head for whatever Dr. D. has to say.

  “Your prince is never coming.” He takes off his glasses and looks me straight in the eye. “He doesn’t exist. You need to stop looking for the right man and start looking out for the wrong men.”

  I hate therapy.

  “Here’s what I want you to do for our next session.” Dr. D. sets down his pad and pen. “I want you to think back to the first adult relationship that you had with a man in your twenties. Teens are too early. Then I want you to make a list, a list of ten things that went wrong, not with the relationship, but with the man. The cell phone with what’s his name …” he looks at his legal pad “… Reese, is a perfect example. Then, as we progress and you begin to date again, as, Emily, you will find love, you are going to write down ten potential problem areas, reasons you should not be with your new man before you give your heart away.”

  “Ten reasons?” I question, thinking to myself that Dr. D. is a mix between Tony Robbins and the professor from Gilligan’s Island.

  “It’s an exercise that will help you learn from the past and protect yourself in the future. Because, Emily, if you can come up with ten reasons why you shouldn’t be dating a person, you probably shouldn’t date him. Writing it down will just help you figure it out a little sooner with less pain involved.”

  I PUT THE white top down on my navy ‘68 Mustang and start the engine. She dies. I pump the gas, turn the key, and she revs right up. Pulling out of the garage onto Sunset Boulevard, I turn up Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and sing along.

  At the end of the session, I committed to weed out the losers and become my own prince, which is fine, although, I don’t really want to be the prince. I think that was my whole point for going to therapy. I am tired of being the prince. The she-wolf, SSW The cor-pra-sexual. The woman working so hard to get ahead in corporate America, she bypassed love. I can check my own oil and take out the garbage, but it’s still a man’s job. I just do it by default.

  I came up with my own secret vow. I will find love. I just need Dr. D.’s help to guide me though the clutter in the maze of dating.

  Saturday night I am folding laundry. Sam, my six-year-old dog, a rescue pooch, part wolf, part German Shepherd, is lying with his tongue hanging out of the front of his mouth, as it’s too long for his snout and gives the appearance that he’s always sticking out his tongue at you, and refusing to get off. Every time he sees me folding clothes he thinks I am packing to go away. Thus he blocks the whole process even when it is just about having clean towels. I think the whole rescue thing has given him abandonment issues, made him codependent. I know the feeling. He gets a scratch behind both ears. “Come on, boy … get off.”

  We live in a one-bedroom fourplex in Brentwood. It’s a cute forties bungalow-type apartment with hardwood floors, arched entries, and overstuffed shabby-chic furniture. I pull Sam out of the laundry basket and he goes for the forbidden sofa. His bad hips cause him to pause before jumping onto the end cushion. I can’t really blame him for settling in, as it is one of those sofas that makes you want to cozy up in it for the night and watch bad movies. Overall the apartment is a spacious spot with a little yard where Sam can sun and howl at passing strangers. No dishwasher, no garbage disposal, no washer and dryer. But plenty of charm. It’s home for Sam and me.

  The doorbell rings and Sam begins to howl.

  “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday … dear Emileeeeeeeee!” I hear the girls singing outside the front door. Sam howls and wags his tail, joining in the festivities. I open the door to Grace and Reilly holding a birthday cake with a huge “30” candle burning on top.

  “Happy birthday, you whore,” Reilly laughs, pushing in the door and patting Sam. “Helllloooo, Sammmmmy!”

  “Lovely,” I say, hugging Reilly.

  Reilly Swanson and Grace Hunter are my best girlfriends. Grace and I met in college after the DGs, the sorority we wanted, didn’t want us because our bangs weren’t big enough … it was the late ‘80s. A cute blonde from Davenport, Iowa, Grace is the type of girl who will ruin a New Year’s Eve to rescue a kitten. Reilly, an Asian with the biggest breasts I’ve ever seen, was adopted into the Swanson family of Manhattan Beach, California, the whitest, beachiest family in the area. Not only is she the youngest of all boys, she’s also the only Asian of the bunch. We all met at Cannery Row, a dive bar within walking distance from our freshman dorm at Arizona State University.

  Would-be frat boys in a beer chugging contest surrounded Reilly. She won and the boy she beat threw up all over me while I was waiting for a Coors Light at the bar. Eleven years ago we began our thicker-than-thieves bond. Wow, eleven years. The thought sends shivers.

  Grace kisses me on the cheek as she steps in the door. “Happy birthday, Em. You didn’t think we were going out tonight without us wishing your twenties good-bye with cake and vodka, did you?” Reilly holds up a bottle of Absolut Citron. We all head into the kitchen.

  Reilly starts to mix cocktails as we sit at the breakfast nook to eat strawberry birthday cake and drink Citron martinis. “What’d you think of Dr. D.?” Grace asks.

  “Why do you need to pay some stranger a hundred-plus dollars an hour when we have a licensed therapist among the ranks?” Reilly volleys at me, referring to Grace.

  Grace adds in her therapist voice, “Friends aren’t supposed to counsel other friends. We’re too personally attached. Besides, she stopped listening to me somewhere between Jeff and Dennis.”

  “We do it all day,” Reilly counters.

  “Repressive male-bashing is not necessarily healthy counseling,” I retort.

  “Stick together we must!” Reilly laughs.

  We raise our glasses and Grace toasts, “To our girl. May she find a man to love her as much as we do.”

  Our glasses clink at the rim.

  “Happy birthday, Em,” they say in unison.

  We pat Sammy good-bye, filling him with enough love so he knows we’re coming back. At least love between people and their dogs is still intact. Sammy wags his tail as if satisfied, at least for the moment, that the laundry is still unfolded and inside.

  Reilly crawls into the back of my car and I notice a hickey on the back of her neck.

  “I see you’re dating Denny again,” I say as I shut the door behind her and lower the top.

  “I wouldn’t call it dating,” Reilly rebuts. “More like exercise with a hint
of heartache.”

  “And you now understand why we shouldn’t take relationship advice from our friends.” Grace looks back at Reilly.

  I am always the driver. Call it control, call it love for the Mustang, but mainly call it the security that I can leave wherever we are whenever I want.

  I turn on the ignition. It dies. I pump the gas, turn the key again, and rev once as we embark on the unlikely adventure of a Hollywood fund-raiser on girls’ night out.

  “Lemme know if Dr. D. tells you anything we don’t know already,” Reilly says as she puts on her seat belt.

  Grace pipes in, “As a licensed therapist I will tell you one thing for sure. Deep down we already know what therapy is trying to teach us way before we ever go in. We know when to leave a shitty relationship. We know when men are bad for us. We know what it means when they don’t call. We just need to pay someone to tell us before we believe it.” She smiles, satisfied, as if she has just changed the lightbulb in a dark room.

  Grace is the friend that I know is my ticket to heaven. She saves everyone from homeless crack addicts to her perpetually single girlfriends. She is the one who comes over when I am PMSing and drowning in a single, bottle of pinot, self-pity party. She reminds me that indeed there is love out there for me, and on a good day she can be pretty convincing.

  “Go ahead and smile,” Reilly shoots back in at Grace. “But if you’re so smart, why’d you take on one hundred thousand dollars in student loans to get ‘Doctor’ before your name so you could make forty thousand dollars a year counseling junkies and freeloaders? Where’s the fucking sense in that?” Reilly blows smoke from her Marlboro Light into the night air.

  “They’re homeless, and I am trying to make them be productive citizens.” Grace shakes her head.

  “Save it for the pearly gates,” Reilly says as she finishes her smoke.

  “Em, is Josh coming out with us?” Grace changes the subject.

  “Hot, rich, loving, great taste …,” Reilly says. “Such a waste of a perfectly good penis.”

  “No, he has some new boyfriend. They’re going to some new club in Boy’s Town. Although he did say, for my birth day, that he would be my donor if I needed to breed in the next decade.”

  “You could do worse,” Reilly smiles at me.

  “I think I actually want the penetration.”

  In reality, I don’t think having a donor backup plan is such a bad idea. I mean, with Josh, at least I know he’s going to be my friend forever. He’s going to love me when my boobs are saggy, when I am PMSing and the baby is crying. I know that he’ll take the kids to soccer practice and cheerleading tryouts and he’ll help our daughter pick out the perfect prom dress. I mean, it seems a lot more reliable than believing that love, passion, and monogamy are going to last forever.

  “Red or pink?” I hold up two lip liners as we wait in 10:00 P.M. gridlock.

  “Definitely red. Red says take me, I need it, and I need it bad on my birthday,” Reilly laughs.

  “For God’s sake, we’re heading out into the wilderness of Los Angeles on a Saturday night, wear the red,” Grace backs Reilly up.

  I check the red lipstick in the rearview mirror as the Mustang waits on little Santa Monica Boulevard behind a convertible BMW full of twentysomething-backless-shirt-wearing model types and an oversized black SUV with a P. Diddy look-alike bumping to rap music behind us. We finally reach the valet stand outside the Beverly Hills YMCA.

  Who knew they even had YMCAs in Beverly Hills?

  We enter the Y and the doorman directs us to the gymnasium. We walk through the metal doors of the gym and immediately notice that it is decorated like a high school prom in the eighties. I start to itch.

  I hated all the insecurity that came along with being a sixteen-year-old in braces whose breasts had yet to develop. I had hives all through my sophomore year and now I remember why. This gym has thrust me into the past and suddenly I am feeling like an awkward, knock-kneed geek. I am wishing I was home watching reruns of Magnum, PI. in my pajamas with Sam.

  Scanning the room, I make out all the familiar faces, and it dawns on me that Hollywood is exactly like high school. There are the popular kids. The jocks. The freaks. And the annoying student council types trying to get ahead—only now they are agents, studio executives, managers, publicists, and lawyers.

  They are all crammed together in Armani trousers, Hugo Boss sweaters, and backless shirts. They are the same two hundred people that I witnessed four nights ago pouring out of a premiere at the Director’s Guild theater as I sat in the Mustang at a stoplight watching them all smoke cigarettes and discuss the pros and cons of film noir.

  Two hundred of exactly the same people, only now they are crouched together smoking cigarettes and trying to figure out who is more important than whom, which isn’t Reilly, Grace, or me.

  We make a beeline for the bar. Reilly fires up her second Marlboro Light and blows her smoke into the chest of George Clooney.

  Wow. George Clooney is a babe. Keep moving. I look over my shoulder at him and he smiles.

  “Actors,” Reilly says with disdain.

  “I don’t know, he has the sexiest eyes,” I defend him.

  “He is the epitome of the American bachelor and makes no bones about it. He never wants to get married. Never wants kids.” Grace lays it out like it is.

  “George is another example of perfectly good genes going to waste,” Reilly realizes.

  George … I could love George, with his perfect hair, sly smile, and strong forearms, a perpetual prankster. I could fall madly in love with a man who professes to find marriage the ultimate death for men. George, a man whose longest caretaking relationship is with a potbellied pig. George, who would rather spend Sundays shooting hoops with his buddies or riding his Harley than lie naked with me watching The Way We Were. But I could change him. Teach him about the benefits of intimacy, nurturing, and commitment. JESUS! George is the exact type of man that I am attracted to for all of the wrong reasons. George easily has ten reasons why NOT to date him. How much clearer does a man need to be to me? He printed his disdain for monogamy in People magazine!

  “But he’s so utterly, completely beautiful,” I say. We all nod in agreement as we watch his tight butt sashay away in 501s.

  After downing my entire drink in one gulp I ask the girls, “One lap, you ready?”

  Reilly unbuttons the top of her sweater, revealing her very large cleavage, smiles at us, and mimics in a lusty, bar-wench tone, “Oh, I’m ready.”

  We go on the move, cutting in and out of the groups of popular kids, hoping to find one trinket of possibility that love exists in L.A. and is just waiting for me to stumble into it.

  I pass by Patrick Whitman, a super-hottie superagent to stars like Matt and Ben. He flirts a little with me while eyeing Reilly’s cleavage. Grace looks bored. Patrick’s flirting quickly ends when he spies an actress who is firmer, younger, and much richer than any of us.

  “We should get together,” I murmur under my breath.

  Still eyeballing the actress over my shoulder, he says, “Yeah, sure, have your assistant call mine. We’ll put something on the books.” And he walks away.

  I turn and look at Grace. “Can you get right on that?” I say with disbelief.

  “Yeah, right after I book the church for your wedding to Clooney.” She shakes her head.

  What is wrong with these people? The phenomenon of not being able to have a conversation while looking you directly in the eye never ceases to blow me away. The constant need to look around for someone better is worse than deplorable. Over your head, shoulder, arm, back, while you are trying to have a meaningful or not-so-meaningful chat with them, is a special form of crazy-making L.A. torture. I wonder if this neck-craning disorder is entertainment-industry specific or if it happens everywhere. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s my conversation skills. Whatever it is, I am reminded why I didn’t want to go out tonight.

  I take Grace’s hand. “Is it me, or are all of th
ese guys complete dickheads?”

  She hands me another cocktail. “It’s not you. Here, have a vodka crème soda.”

  Thank God for the girls.

  We make our way under a heat lamp and I see George Clooney again. He is talking to a group of guys, one of whom is his equally hot friend, Waldo.

  SHIT. I get nailed staring right at him. Jesus, how long have I been looking at him with these horny thoughts running through my head? To George, I now appear to be a party stalker. Instead of smiling at me he gives me a quick, puzzled look that may be fear-based.

  I look for a diversion and notice two random guys standing off in the corner behind George. I smile and wave at the taller of the two. George looks from me to the guys and his face fills with relief.

  I head toward the two guys, dragging Reilly and Grace behind and telling them, “Trust me.” We saddle up to the strangers. Please let them be normal. Let them be nice. Let them be single. Let them not be a couple.

  “Hi, I’m Emily, and this is Reilly and Grace.”

  My boondoggle seems to have relaxed George and now my immediate thought is how the hell do I get out of here, although the taller guy, up close, is really cute. He’s got short dark hair, gray-blue eyes, and one of those shirts Vince Vaughn wore in Swingers. His lips part in slow motion, and he has the most perfect teeth I have ever seen, straight, white, and large, which amounts to a great big dangerous smile. He sticks out his hand. “Stan, and this is my friend, Adam.” Reilly instantly hates them both.

  “Drink?” Reilly asks Grace as she grabs her arm and drags her away, leaving me standing there.

  Tons of thoughts continue to flood my brain like a flash flood in the Arizona desert. Shoooosh! Thoughts like, Please don’t let this guy be in the entertainment business. Please let him look me directly in the eye. Who is he? Where did he come from? Why is my heart racing?

  Flitter, flutter.

  Huh, not quite a “flutter, flutter.” But a “flitter, flutter.” Oh, shit! I have a damaged flutter.