Choose Your Own Love Story Read online

  So now you’re ready to get back on OkCupid.

  The Internet dating scene hasn’t changed much since your pre-Greg years: guys who can’t spell, guys who are inappropriately angry, or guys who are forty-five and accomplished, seeking eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds who enjoy “fun and good times.”

  You get back into the groove and stomach a string of mediocre dates. Your good friend Crystal advises that you must decode Internet Dating Language. Like if a dude says he wants to “hang out” instead of “take you out,” he’s just looking for sex. If he says he’s an artist, it means he’s unemployed. If he writes too much on his profile, he’s overcompensating for something, like that he lives in his car. If he writes too little, he’s bland, like he won’t like Shakespeare because there’s “too much fighting.” After a while scanning men’s profiles becomes a full-time job.

  Part of it is fun, but it can also be baffling and dispiriting. You can go out with a terrific guy and have a truly wonderful night and then he never calls you again.

  This happens frequently, across all different sites, from Tinder to e-bloody-Harmony. Every eight dates or so you’ll have a perfectly lovely time, get really excited, and never hear from the man again. The world of dating is pure anarchy. Plus, your swiping finger is getting sore.

  One time you see a cute guy online named Max412 who claims to know the movie Clueless by heart like you do and who even read the Jane Austen book Emma that it’s based on. You like him, so you decide not to message him back; after all, your instincts have been dead wrong lately. This is the upside-down world you live in now.

  “You can’t let it break you,” your friend Meg says. Her perfect poise and steely determination is why she’s a millionaire lawyer and you’re a broke French-fry addict. But you like the expression, “Don’t let it break you.” You repeat it to yourself one night as your eyes grow bleary from staring at the computer.

  You’re sorting through your new messages (you’re now on three dating sites), and you finally notice two guys who aren’t bad: Goodnplenty and Architect1753. The first one has a gentle smile. The second one lists a high income and wears an impish grin.

  If heartache has you wanting to be soothed by a gentle smile, turn to page 171, section 47.

  If an employed dude sounds like a refreshing change, turn to page 9, section 2.

  7

  Your seventh date with Benjamin arrives, and you are pumped from the pep talk. You’re ready to say some sexy stuff or at least repeat back phrases Benjamin says to you.

  He takes you to a high-end sushi restaurant, where you eat spicy salmon kelp rolls and delicate fluke sashimi, perfectly balanced with dried red miso and yuzu sauce. For a moment Benjamin has to text someone for work, so you stuff another piece into your mouth. Then he puts his phone away and looks into your eyes.

  “You are absolutely gorgeous,” he says.

  You smile demurely, cheeks puffy with kelp.

  “And that dress is a knockout.”

  You’re glad he noticed the tight aquamarine sheath dress Crystal lent you. It’s racier than your usual style, but it seemed like Benjamin wasn’t thrilled when you wore jeans and a nubby sweater to the movies last week. You could hold that against him, or you could just enjoy being the Sexy Girl for a change! It doesn’t mean you have to dress up like a slutty nurse on Halloween or anything, does it?

  “Plus, you’re a great writer,” he says, as if reading your thoughts. “I loved your piece about how access to frozen yogurt, like access to contraception, is a women’s rights issue.”

  You feel yourself glow. The man is reading your articles. This is definitely something. You guzzle some extra sake for courage before heading back to Benjamin’s clean, modern apartment. What a lucky girl you are! Benjamin is great—he deserves some dirty talk!

  Thirty minutes later you’re both naked and Benji’s getting chatty.

  It’s P-this and C-that, wet-hot this, and want-to-bend-you-over that. You burn with embarrassed pleasure and get ready for the big moment.

  If you’re ready to talk dirty, turn to page 25, section 8.

  If you don’t want to fake it, turn to page 159, section 44.

  8

  You take a deep breath and blurt, “I want to feel you inside—my vagina!”

  Drat. You pussied out on saying pussy.

  And “vagina” was a terrible choice—so clinical! Pussy is to fucked as vagina is to gynecologist. Why not ask for a pap smear while you’re at it?

  Benjamin doesn’t react poorly. Actually he doesn’t respond at all. He just keeps thrusting away. Thank God his eyes are closed so he can’t see your face.

  Maybe he didn’t hear? You want to die or, at the very least, call Crystal. The rest of the sex act goes by in a mortified haze. You squeeze your eyes shut and try to hurry the procedure along so you can both forget it as soon as possible.

  Afterward you lay there while Benjamin strokes your arm. You try to enjoy the caress, but you’re still blushing from your ridiculous comment. Benjamin grabs his phone and sends another text.

  “More work stuff?” you ask. There’s silence for a minute or two.

  “You know, I’m still pretty serious with my girlfriend,” Benjamin says finally.

  “Ha ha,” you say. You’ve been busy trying to think of an interesting new topic to distract from the vagina episode. (Racist police? Fracking? The importance of extra-virgin olive oil?)

  “No, I’m serious,” he says in his kind tone. “I thought you should know so that, ya know, you could be informed.”

  You feel dizzy. “Are you serious?”

  Nothing is making sense. Benjamin’s voice sounds so gentle, but his actual words are awful. Not again. This can’t be happening again. You can feel the salmon sloshing around in your stomach.

  “Yeah!” Benjamin says, rolling over to his nightstand to pick up his iPad. “It’s important to me to be honest.” He starts surfing the web.

  If you were Crystal, you would say, “You want honest?” and smash the iPad over his head. You would say, “Why don’t you take your honesty and shove it up your ass?” or “Oh, well it’s important for me to tell you and your girlfriend to go fuck yourselves!” These phrases roil inside you, but you can’t say them.

  Purple with fury and embarrassment, you scramble to the bathroom to get your clothes and get out of there. Benjamin is a mother f-er, a c-sucking, p-obsessed a-hole. Like so many scoundrels before him, he uses the excuse of “being honest” to honestly be a jerk.

  And yet . . . have you brought this on yourself? Did your vaginal faux pas send Benjamin running for the hills?

  You’ll never know, but it doesn’t matter much, does it? After calling Crystal to cry and then watching several hours of Say Yes to the Dress on Bravo, you’re back where you started: tear stained, alone, and filled with yearning.

  “He’s out there!” your married friends say gaily. They think dating sounds fun. They are so far away from the loneliness, so far from that thick, hateful expanse of time that stretches before you every night. No one to cuddle. No one to bring you matzoh ball soup when you have the sniffles. How long can you keep your chin up?

  If you’re ready to give up, turn to page 108, section 31.

  If you want to get back out there, turn to page 38, section 13.

  9

  “Greg . . .” you whimper and press yourself against him in a hug that feels so good, it hurts.

  “It’s okay,” he caresses your back, and you breathe in his familiar smell with a shudder of relief. You know by his hands that he has finally come to his senses.

  “I love you so much,” you whisper into his chest.

  “Honey, are you in there?” Someone is knocking on the door, someone with a melodic voice and bare shoulders dusted with glitter. Can you guess who?

  “Shit,” Greg says, but Oasis is already inside because apparently she has a key.

  “She has a key?” you splutter, immediately withdrawing from the hug. You straighten up
and wipe your eyes with the back of your hands. No way this chick is going to see you cry.

  Oasis is wearing Daisy Duke jean shorts and a halter top that shows off her tan. She’s so tall and skinny that she doesn’t need the four-inch platform sandals, but she wears them anyway because she is the devil.

  “Hiii,” she croons. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “You have?” you mumble pathetically. Her legs are so long, it’s tedious.

  “Of course! I hope you’ll Facebook me.” She, the destroyer of your dreams, would like to be besties.

  “I’m not much of a social media person,” you say. Hours squandered taking quizzes and looking at your friends’ drooling baby pictures notwithstanding, that is somewhat true. What’s not true is the way you’re pretending to be a person when you feel like a corpse. Greg has just lodged a bullet in your heart, and you’re talking Facebook with a fetus named Oasis.

  Are you that out of touch with reality that you missed the signs with Greg? Are you that desperate that you fell for someone who could love an Oasis? Is Greg insane, or are you? Either way, you’re headed for weeks of sobbing in the fetal position. Your little pink heart is dying.

  It’s time to call a therapist.

  Continue to page 31, section 10.

  10

  Your new therapist, Dr. Stein, has flowing gray hair and wears no makeup, like a good witch or a ceramics teacher. She congratulates you for being willing to Do the Work as you grieve your broken heart. But let’s face it: in the past six months one weekly hour of therapy is all the “work” you’ve done. You haven’t gone out to a new restaurant to review a dish in weeks, choosing instead to churn out angry nonsensical tirades about how finger foods are immature and why almond milk is afraid of commitment. The magazines and websites that normally request your work are growing disinterested.

  You’re off the dating market and not interested in making plans with your friends, most of whom are married and doing Tubby Time or playing with a Diaper Genie or whatever the hell all those parents do. Meanwhile you’ve become brilliant at doing nothing.

  Today you’re on the couch, blasting the air conditioning, gorging yourself on Entenmanns’s chocolate-frosted doughnuts. (Hmm, there’s an article idea: Why Entenmann’s are still better than Fonuts and Cronuts, you LA douchebags.) When you get thirsty, you gulp down a glass of cheap red wine. You are reading a trashy magazine, smacking your lips at the article about a starlet’s jail sentence. You think it serves the ingénue right: Celebrities shouldn’t be allowed to flout society’s rules. But you are flouting them too. You’re broke, barely employed, and single—and not doing anything about it. The landline rings.

  “Hi Mom,” you say, breaking off a piece of your third doughnut.

  “What, you’re still sitting in your apartment?” your mom gasps.

  “If you didn’t think I was here, why did you call me?”

  “Well, I just think you need to get outside, for goodness’ sake.”

  “I work from home, Mom,” you put on your patient voice. “I have nowhere to go.”

  “Well, I’m sure you have some errands to run,” Mom sounds pleading. “And you need to start looking for supplemental income!”

  “Mother, it’s too hot outside, and I apply for jobs online.”

  “How are you ever going to meet anyone if you don’t––”

  You slam down the phone.

  First of all, you weren’t lying—it’s scorching outside and humid too, which is terrible for frizzy hair. Second of all, you never know who might show up at the door. The Thai delivery guy, for one thing. Well, maybe not him specifically. But what if something happened to him, and the actual owner of the store had to make the deliveries? And he was handsome and understood that sometimes the heaviness just sets in? What if he smoothes your hair and tells you that everything will be okay?

  You plop back down on the couch, refilling your wine glass. No television during the day was Mom’s cardinal rule. But you are an adult now and can do whatever you want.

  You want to watch reruns of the Tyra Banks Show. Today it’s about morbidly obese teenage girls. Tyra brought doctors on the show to talk about diabetes. Then she shows video clips of the girls huffing on a stair-climber and growing breathless after two minutes. The audience is dismayed, but Tyra seems to be enjoying it. She keeps looking for excuses to refer to her own beauty. “Look, girls, I know the treadmill can be hard, and I was a supermodel,” she says. Or, “Look, this isn’t about weight. It’s about self-esteem. I mean, even I have felt bad about myself,” and then she tosses her hair back. The girls sob about how much they hate themselves.

  You aren’t morbidly obese, but maybe you’re getting a little chunky. You tell yourself that this is a good romantic litmus test: if a guy can’t handle a few extra pounds, he has no emotional substance.

  If you want to order two noodle dishes from the Thai restaurant, continue to page 34, section 11.

  If it’s time to get out of the house, turn to page 76, section 23.

  11

  You decide in favor of the pad thai with chicken and the pad see-ew with Chinese broccoli, even though they are both noodle dishes. Carbs shmarbs.

  The delivery guy is not rich and handsome but rather tired and sweaty. He looks as if he’s just crossed a brutal desert. You ask if he wants some water, and he does. He doesn’t speak very good English, and a long black hair sprouts from the mole on his chin. Still, he’s friendly enough. You offer to share your noodles, so the two of you sit on your couch and watch Dr. Drew. All these guys are cheating on their girlfriends with the girlfriends’ little sisters.

  “What’s crazy,” you say, “is that these women are willing to take the men back.” The delivery guy nods. It seems like he’s taking all the chicken for himself and leaving nothing but peanuts and noodles for you. When you realize this, you tell him he has to leave, that you’re going to a party tonight. Of course there’s no party, but that’s not the point.

  You go back to reading, now with a little surge of pride.

  You’re turning a corner, doll. Time to write a new dating profile . . . turn to page 38, section 13.

  12

  “I can’t lie for you, Zack,” you say, and he looks at you with the injured eyes of a shelter dog.

  Police Officer Ruiz gives Zack a ticket for drunk driving and a date to appear in court. He warns him about the fine and license suspension that await him. But he says nothing about three strikes or any previous record.

  Turns out Zack lied about that.

  Turns out Zack lied about other stuff too. The marriages. The children. The house in Marin. (Of course, you’re to blame for believing the last one.) Zack is a pathological liar. But he swears that loving you was always the truth.

  You can’t believe that you’ve allowed yourself to fall into this life of debauchery. In fact, it never even felt like you. It felt like something took over you, something out of your control.

  This is what you tell Dr. Stein at least, who has mercifully decided not to charge you for all your missed appointments. Instead, she tells you you’ve become a sex addict and advises you to join a twelve-step program.

  You’re positive she’s wrong. Yes, something took over you with Zack, but that was a one-time thing—a Zack thing.

  Dr. Stein presses the issue, reminding you that the meetings are free.

  You relent and find yourself in a sultry church basement, listening to people talk about the way they use sex like a drug to numb the pain. Some of it sounds like what you just went through. Some of it doesn’t. There’s a lot of God stuff too. You don’t know what to think about that. That calm feeling you get in the Redwood forest—does that count as God?

  All you know is you are not calm right now. Something strange is happening; you feel buzzy and your skin prickles with warmth. One by one, you’re drinking in the men in the group and how unusually attractive they all are. One has glowing bronze skin and sun-kissed hair. One is Jamaican with pectoral
muscles erupting through his tank top. One has an English accent and a knowing smirk that sets your soul aflame.

  Maybe you’ll stay for the meeting.

  THE END

  13

  Good for you! The past is the past. You decide to get back out there but be smarter this time. That means writing a new Internet profile. But what should your name be? Olderbutwiser? Loveisawful? Girlswithbadhairneedlovetoo? Your (only single) friend Crystal tells you to tone it down a bit. She has a new Internet date practically every night and has agreed to come over and help you.

  “All the girls on this website have half-naked selfies,” you grumble.

  “So you’ll be a breath of fresh air,” Crystal says. She vetoes ten of your name ideas until finally acquiescing to “churlishbutgirlish.”

  “If someone doesn’t like that name, they can go fuck themselves,” you say.

  “You gotta get your act together, gorgeous,” Crystal says. She’s from a mining town in Pennsylvania and isn’t scared of anything. You’ve always admired her courage, and she (impulsive with two broken engagements) admires your restraint.

  You bite your nails as she reviews the second draft of your profile.

  “I see you put in a review of Indonesian eggplant where your autobiography is supposed to go?” she asks, sipping her wine. “At least this picture in a skirt shows a touch of femininity.” Crystal doesn’t mind that the wine is warm and the takeout Chinese food is cold. She is a true friend.

  “I’m totally feminine,” you growl and slurp more pork lo mein. The sauce is too salty and the pork too fatty, but it’s getting the job done. “The guys on here are the worst! Every single one of them says they love Hemingway and Bukowski. Every single one of them says they work hard and play hard. How is that possible? They all work just as hard as they play? None of them work at a reasonable level of intensity? None of them play in a casual manner? They’re either lying or in a state of perpetual exhaustion!”