Date Eight: The Way We Are

My horoscope from this month’s Vanity Fair reads, “Just when you’ve accepted the fact that you’re going to spend the rest of your life under your grandmother’s afghan, peek-a-boo! There’s somebody under there with you. Try to hold on to them, however, and poof! There they go.. Besides, you’re a Virgo, remember? You’re supposed be throwing yourself into service and focusing on staying healthy, not chasing people you can’t catch. Who can blame you, though?”

Fuck. Sometimes, horoscopes scare me. Because I actually sleep under my grandmother’s afghan. I know that everyone thinks their grandmother is special, kind of like babies, except filled with wise sayings and funny quips and the occasional horrific sexual comment. But if there was a market for quirky grandparents, my grandmother would pretty much take the cake, if she ate cake. Nana, as she is known worldwide, has been a source of humor, anxiety and love from as far back as I can remember. She’s like any other one named wonder, Madonna, Cher, Elton – a diva at her best, something far worse at her worst. When I was a baby, she was probably one of the hottest grandmothers around, with her Farrah Fawcett do, and her string bikini tops, and multiple long gold necklaces. But then when my dad left, and she moved in, Nana just became the hippest grandma on the block.

Between her permed blonde hair and her CP Shades knits, her turquoise jewelry and her Rolex watch, I idolized her as much as I hated her. Because for all the times she would switch a price tag at Neiman’s so that she could buy me a designer dress, she would rip me down for not be cool enough, hip enough, in the know. I don’t know what exactly I was supposed to know at eight, but apparently talking to myself and video games were not it. A firm believer in the ethos “It doesn’t matter if you are rich, so long as you dress rich,” Nana’s obsession on how things look on the outside isn’t merely some generational concern that nothing appear less than normal. She is more like a narcissistic fashion designer, watching her looks walk down the red carpet, screaming at the models, the set designer, anyone who will listen, “Everything must be perfect!”

When I was little, there were three things Nana and I always agreed on: music (preferably Whitney Houston and Guns n’ Roses), books (Danielle Steele and JD Salinger), and movies (anything starring Robert Redford or Gene Wilder). We watched The Way We Were only as many times as we watched Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. And so I learned everything I needed to know about romance from Hubble and Katie. And from Nana. Because it is Nana whose four marriages taught me that women as strong as us have trouble settling down. It is Nana whose greatest love was a married man fifteen years her junior who showed me that more often than not, it is the ones we cannot have whom we love the most. At seventy–five and as single as one human being can be, she now quips that men are only good for two things: breeding and heavy lifting.

And I learned everything I needed to know about family from Charlie and his Grandpa Joe. Because that was Nana to me. Although impossibly critical, she was also my older pal, my wing man, taking me to school, dancing with me in the living room, and joining in my birthday parties as though she was one of the kids herself. And now today, when she visits, we sleep in the same double bed just like Grandpa Joe and the rest of the family. Because what I learned from Nana is that even when the rest of the world deserts you, for better or worse, your family will always be there.

And so, I sometimes think I will spend the rest of my life under my grandmother’s afghan. And then like the horoscope says, peek-a-boo. Jimmy shows up. I return to LA, and Jimmy and I make plans for our first real date the next night. Wednesday. He picks me up and we go to a lovely restaurant up the street from our neighborhood. We sit outside. We smoke. We talk. A little awkwardly. I still have a cold, and I blame it on that. I get up to use the restroom, and discover this back room with high ceilings and dim light and wide cold walls.

I come back to the table, and take my seat across from Jimmy. I tell him, “That back room makes me want to dance.”

“Really? Why?” he asks.

“I don’t know. There was just something about it, it wanted to be danced in.”

He stands up, “Show me.”

I have been waiting years for someone to say that. “Show me.” I lead him to the room. And we slow dance. And he kisses me. And I feel just like Barbara Streisand in The Way We Were, with the cool guy sweeping me off my feet and acting as though he has never seen anything like me in his life. I laser the memory into my brain. Take the photo and develop it immediately. I know it will hurt someday and so I burn it in deeper just to be sure.

We go back to Jimmy’s house. We get into pajamas. We brush our teeth. We kiss more. Because kissing rocks. We go outside to have a smoke.

I know that Jimmy and I have the physical part down so I am not quite sure why we are having such trouble with talking. But then again, so did Hubble and Katie. And like Hubble, Jimmy is that All-American guy with the too cool style and the sense that even in his darkest moments, he has always been a golden boy. And I am the nervous, talkative nut who though charming and attractive, doesn’t generally catch myself a Hubble. I live in a world of hipsters like him, and to a certain extent, I remember how I felt when I first got sober in my neighborhood. There were lots of sober women there who didn’t reach out to me, who weren’t the friendliest, and I finally realized that though the popular girls may now have bangs and tattoos and vintage clothes, they’re still the popular girls. And Jimmy is the popular guy.

Maybe it’s just that Jimmy and I come from different cultural worlds. He likes rock music and westerns and motorcycles and has tattoos. He has lived his whole life in California, and fixes things, and reads biographies on Lee Marvin. I don’t know rock music or westerns or motorcycles and I only have one tattoo that no one can see. I have been many places and don’t fix things and just learned who Lee Marvin is. But that didn’t stop Hubble and Katie, well not at first. They were from completely different worlds, and somehow slow dancing was enough. Jimmy asks me if I’ve ever read Newsweek, and suddenly I find myself telling him about my obsession with the conservative editorialist George Will. He just looks at me. I would like to say with rapt attention, but it’s more like sleepy boredom. Sadly, this doesn’t stop me. I continue on, “Well, I was really into Ayn Rand at the time. I even wrote him a fan letter about his take on Hillary Clinton’s insurance reform.”

He doesn’t even blink. I don’t know if I am showing off or if I am just trying to make conversation, but it appears that Jimmy was trying to have another conversation.

He clears his throat and says, “Yeah, I was reading in there about corporate titans. I guess you forget what it’s like to stand at the head of a business. You know to really have that responsibility.”

There is a strange pause and I am beginning to feel like two actors who, though there is an incredible on-screen chemistry, the minute the director yells cut, have nothing to say to each other, and I wonder sadly whether we should leave the set and just go back to our separate trailers.

I shrug, “Yeah, it’s not all about power and greed.”

“I guess not.” He sounds disappointed, but I have faith that it’s simply a matter of getting more comfortable, of settling into this thing, of finding the spaces where we do meet, like on the dance floor and in his bed. I put out my cigarette. I don’t really know what else to say. I stand up and Jimmy grabs me from behind, and that type of conversation is far more comfortable.

“Mmmm, you feel so nice,” he murmurs into my hair.

We sleep in our underwear. And I want to melt into his chest. And his strong arms wrap around me. My hands flit through his hair. And he smells so good that any awkward conversations are soon lost in this impossibly lovely thing that happens when the cameras are rolling. He drives me home the next morning, and I go to work. As I drive to pick up pastries for my boss’ morning meeting, I realize that I am not in The Way We Were. And though the trip to New York, the visit to my father, this recent romance feels like it has broken open my year of peace and quiet and paid bills and boring meals and yoga and silence, I have to remember that my life is real. And as Jimmy goes off to his day as an electrician, and I go off to mine as a secretary, that I can let go of these concepts of Robert Redford romances, of the popular guy and the nerdy girl, of the way we are, were, or one day might be.           

Because I think for both Nana and I, we have treated men like clothes. So long as they had the right label and looked good, we were interested. And once we found out that everything wasn’t perfect, that everything wasn’t exactly how we wanted it to look, we left. And so I forget the hard lessons of Nana, of Hubble and Katie. Because at the end of the day, what I really need is someone who can hold me, and make me feel safe. And I know that waking up in Jimmy’s arms is the happiest place I found for some time, that the way his face crinkles in the morning is enough to make me want to stay. And I believe as I get out of his truck, as he kisses the palm of my hand, as the Observatory stands tall in the hills above us, as my forehead presses against his own, that this thing we have growing between us might be worth getting out from under my grandmother’s afghan of perfection because sometimes, slow dancing is more than enough.

Next Chapter Please