.the mom show.

last night i was invited to dinner with strangers. a whole family of them, and their friends.

it's this woman whose blog i read daily. i'm enamored with her, her house, her children, her digital camera. her husband is an adorable ad exec at the most prestigious firm in town. she's a former ad exec herself, a former sorority girl, ski bum, party animal, slut. she's a lot of things i will never be. and now she's a mom, front and center, talking diapers and tit milk and drool all over the internets.

she wears yoga pants and a hoodie, flip flops and a ponytail. she's dressed for dirt and lethargy, couch-sitting, drinking a beer on a lawn chair. and that's what she's doing, slurping pad thai and microbrew, while i hold her six month old boy. she doesn't look straight at me, or at anybody for that matter. she's performing the charismatic still-hip mom show. she talks loudly. my grandma would have said she hollers. she hugs me. she's the kind of person who fascinates me from a distance, but in person, her arms wrapped around my neck, i invert. it's too much, too loud, too close and i can't look at her face.

i'm sitting there, in a purple lawn chair balancing a redheaded infant on one knee and a pabst on the other when the others arrive. a whole family walks up, mom, dad, and three small girls, wobbling in bright pinafores and pink cowboy boots. celebrity mom shouts introductions and i look around for some shade, a tree to hide under, an escape hatch. i wish for a cigarette. i'm pinned in by this crowd of people, and all i can do is count heads: nine adults, six children.

i'm there with my bf. i can call him that, after three months. we're the childless couple in a party of marrieds-with-kids. and they treat us like we're about to be initiated. "maybe z will have a little cousin soon," says susie. they ask us questions as if we're joined. "where do you live?" asks a father to both of us. he expects one answer, not two separate addresses. "don't have kids," instructs the mom show, coy and sarcastic. "how long have you two been together?" we stare at her and i stutter, "not long enough to need the don't-have-kids talk." bf agrees with vigor.

the mom show's middle is round and thick under her hoodie. that middle has been shelter to two home-grown infants, and god give her due credit. but she's got a beer in one hand and pad thai in the other, and she isn't ashamed to eat all of it. i'm picking the shrimp off my plate, stirring noodles strategically, leaving the rest under my chair. food looks like a harbinger of chubby yoga pants to me, and i won't let my guard down.

all in all, i adore children. i pine for their fat hands, high pitched giggles, puzzling vocabulary. i babysit for fun, for free. i need occasional kid time like a junkie. but in this backyard, with six of them circling, falling down, crying, spilling, grabbing at calves and hands, i could throw up a little. they are disgusting. the old one bosses, the little ones stumble, speechless, inept. they approach me, brandishing plastic phones, blinking, screeching and battery-operated. they hold them out to me, touch my knees, smile with big pleading eyes and it's like they're devouring me. i'm in the monster pit, squeamish and panicking. the infant clutches the top edge of my shirt, pulls it down until my cleavage is sunlit and my black bra is visible to the crowd. the toddlers want more juice, more juice. their pizza falls in the grass. they want help. they want to play. they want to touch me.

"can i get you another beer," bf asks, as i'm spooning unidentified orange sauce into the mouth of the baby. "do they have anything stronger?" i ask. "vodka with razor blades? when can we go?" he smiles at me sympathetically, but this occasion doesn't stir up the obvious terror in him that it does in me. he brings me the strongest ipa in the fridge and attends to the greedy screamers, helps them up and down the plastic slide. they climb on him, squealing.

.how to act like a girl.

so he passed the test, the first date test. i was immediately endeared and wondering when we would see each other again. i must have done alright, too, because i heard from him the next afternoon and we made plans for the weekend.

and, as i tend to be, in my internal world of polarized emotions, i was cocky. he digs me, i told myself. i just know it. why wouldn't he? i was wearing my best shirt on our first date, the navy one with the polka dots and the ruffly collar, and a skirt and mary janes and fishnets. fishnets can seal any deal, make anyone watch as you're walking away toward the bathroom, which i made sure to do more than once.

oh, but saturday morning i woke up with butterflies in my stomach, bags under my eyes, and the stone cold realization that, fishnets or not, i'm one half-assed excuse for a girl. i don't know how to giggle, flirt, accessorize. i don't know how to look like a girl or act like a girl. the protocol is foreign to me. i don't know how i missed out on the basic behavior of my gender. i spent my childhood in a house with a sister and a mom, and then i went to a college exclusively for women. my period synced up with 2,000 college-aged females, but my mind missed the boat.

i panicked and called friends for emergency shopping. that's what girls do, they buy pretty new clothes for dates and they wear them. my friend susie and i set off for urban outfitters, an arsenal of meticulously calculated hipness, equipped with a couple of secret weapons: her exceedingly patient husband and rather impatient toddler. the husband obediently picked out low cut shirts and exchanged sizes while providing a valuable male perspective ("that's not low-cut enough"). The toddler screamed "peek-a-boo!" (which she actually pronounces, "pink-ee-doo!") from under the dressing room door while i hopped around in size six skinny jeans that didn't cover my ass. susie continued to bring me size small shirts out of which my boobs draped grotesquely and i wailed at her, like a teenager to a mom, "i said i wear a fucking medium. this shirt makes me look like an obese hooker."

due to low blood sugar on all counts, mom and pop's energy dwindled while myself and the toddler became increasingly manic and out of control. a dressing room dance party ensued, complete with squealing ("look! pretty! pink-ee-doo!") and door slamming and throwing tight t-shirts in a messy pile on the floor. i walked toward the register, exasperated and distracted, ("maybe i should buy a purse! i need a purse for tonight!") while my friends handed the cashier the infuriating skinny jeans, a sweater, and a pair of earrings that i hadn't even looked at. "you can return what you don't want. let's go get some food now." i whined and moaned in mock-protest, but i trusted them and thrust down my card ("credit, please").

"these earrings are absurd," i howled on the way to the car. i made her husband put them on me while i stared at myself in the mirror of the passenger seat. i just got my ears pierced two months ago, and i am not yet accustomed to little silver studs, let alone opalescent sea-shells that dangle down to my shoulder. "i look like i'm doing some medieval ritual where they put fucking holes in my face."

"you look sexy," insisted susie. "you need to go home, relax, take your shower and get all dolled up, put on your makeup and your shoes and THEN put on the earrings."

but i had already showered and dressed. i was planning to wear the converse all-stars i was already wearing and the only makeup i own is blush and lip gloss. that's when it hit me that i really don't know how to be a girl.

but i was determined to try, so i went home and took a second shower. a bath, even. and i put in rose-scented bubble bath that my grandma had given to me as a present years ago. i lit candles and played music and tried to think feminine thoughts. i tried on all of my clothes with ruffles and lace, and then all of my lowest cut shirts, but i just felt silly. i was still changing when i realized i was supposed to meet my date in ten minutes, and i swore to my closet and put on an old, soft t-shirt and a cardigan, swept on my trusty blush and lip gloss, and tied up my converse.

the earrings flopped around my head as i scowled into the bathroom mirror. i did not feel attractive or sexy, but rather like a fucking clown. it was against all of my best judgement that i wore those earrings through the front door and down the street to the bar. i was operating on blind faith and trust that my friends have my best interest in mind, and if they say dangly earrings are sexy, i'll give them one good try.

i got to the bar, flustered and nervous, as usual, and hyper aware of the shells scraping gently against my neck. i settled into a pabst across the table from my date and we dug into some "how was your day?" style conversation. to my surprise, his eyes were darting between mine and something hovering on the side of my head. when i gestured and moved, his eyes followed and he seemed to be enthralled with the dangling. and then he said it, fifteen minutes into the date: "i really like your earrings."

so it's proven, tested, tried and true: my girl instincts are not intact. from now on, i'll delegate all flirtation and frivolity to my friends (and their husbands and children).

.jumping in with all my clothes on.

so it turned out to be a remarkable blind date.

i walked to the bar, his choice. it was a brightly lit brewpub in an old house in a hip neighborhood. it was a sort of family establishment, and i was wary. i need darkness, lit only from candles and neon beer advertisements. i need smoke and mirrors and safe shadow. but in an effort not to emasculate by undermining his choice, and to, you know, not insist that all of my dates take me to trashy dive bars, i consented.

i was the kind of nervous that had me shitting my guts out in the bathroom every hour on the hour i get like that, stomach full of butterflies and can't eat. all i want is cigarettes (god bless them) and strong booze to calm my nerves. but i sucked it up, forced some yogurt down, and set off on the number 9 bus for the bar. i contemplated what would be more terrifying, arriving first and having him find me, or arriving late and scanning the tables with my guts in my throat, sauntering up to the wrong guy. i decided to go early with a book and get a head start on a beer.

he must have had the same idea, because i had just sat down and was digging through my bag for my book when i looked up to at a very nervous gentleman hovering next to my booth. it's silly, the fear that you won't recognize a person who's picture you've studied carefully. it was him, doubtlessly. i jumped up and smiled my nervous, too big smile, held out my hand and said, 'hi! i'm julie!" he stepped toward me like maybe he was going for a hug, but there was no way i was going to hug him before words were spoken and before i'd consumed several strong ipas. it was a deliciously awkward handshake/aborted hug manoeuvre, and he still hadn't spoken a word. i thought he might be about to cry.

he sat down across from me and said, "i'm sorry. i've never done this before." and i was so relieved that he wasn't some savvy internet dating pro. "me neither!" we set out on several hours of animated conversation and awful, shifty-eyed pauses.

he stuttered a little bit. and wore a grey beanie and a striped polo shirt, hip in a seth cohen sort of way, not, like, you know, the land's end summer catalogue. he was not a big guy. taller than me by just a few inches, but thin, gaunt, hungry. he had a neat beard and a fabulously interesting biggish nose. i was endeared to him immediately.

dude was excruciatingly and bravely honest. other people might swoon over charisma and coolness, like the sort of guy who can unclasp your bra with one finger while sweet talking in your ear. i'm a sucker for unabashed sincerity, and no opening line could convey that more than his. since i am also compulsively and embarrassingly up front, i swallowed a beer in the first 15 minutes and began talking about a list of subjects i'd sworn to myself were not fit for a first date.

i told him about my dead cat, how i had dressed him up in a yarmulke and made hanukkah cards with the picture. how he got hit by a car and i couldn't go into work for days.

then i told him about lorelei gilmore, and how even though i know she isn't real, she feels like my best friend.

i told him about panic attacks and insomnia and watching entire seasons of the o.c. on dvd. i told him i loved death cab like a teenager and i never had any friends in high school. i talked about my family.

i apologized and told him i had a problem with disclosing unflattering information about myself. he said, "it's okay. it's endearing."

i got home, giddy and surprised and hopeful, and called several close friends to screech drunkenly into their voice mails, "i love my online boyfriend!"

we'll see where this goes. but for sure, it shows promise.

.six months to live.

anyone who knows me knows that i am hooked on reading the mercury personal ads. i do it like a normal person would browse the daily paper or a magazine. i sit on my couch after work with a beer or a glass of wine, turn on some mindless television, and read through "men seeking women." i read the same profiles over and over with endless fascination and i keep my eye out for these fellows at my neighborhood bars and on the bus. they're like my personal local celebrities.

i visited a specialist two days ago to get some help with my debilitating tmj, as i like to call it. it's hopeful. he says i might be able to open my mouth and eat food again in six months. but when i asked him about long term plans, he suggested orthodontia. the words "adult braces" were spoken, and it sounded like a death sentence. i bit my tongue to keep from telling him off, but i know that when push comes to shove, i'll do it. i'll be that lady, the one with braces, for a year rather than never be able to eat comfortably for the rest of my life. it's kind of a no-brainer.

well, i drove straight from the tmj specialist's office to my friend's house listening to death cab and realizing that i could lose my late twenties, my prime dating years, to adult braces. and i realized that it may be now or never for dating. jokingly, my friend suggested i post a personal ad on craigslist. "it will be funny! we can laugh at the people who respond." i never, ever thought i would participate in the online dating scene. even if everyone else is cool with it, i still associate it with a lot of stigma: it's pathetic, sad, desperate. i just like to watch the other silly, desperate singles sing for each other while watching the entire first season of the o.c. on dvd with my cat. cuz i'm not pathetic.

anyway, my friend, she's a clever girl, and she knew if she could get me to dip my toe in the internet dating pool, under the guise of kidding, i'd end up jumping in with all my clothes on. she was right. i find it delightful. i don't know why this has never occurred to me before, but online dating is perfect for me. i'm awkward and shy in person, but in text i feel safe and sassy and smart. just writing an ad was a riot.

what i didn't expect was the deluge of emails i received. i mean, my ad was short and honest: i like cats, television, and going to bed early. who knew that close to fifty men would respond? and not with short responses, either, but long-winded and carefully crafted pleas. one guy sent a hypothetical conversation between me and him in which he tries to impress me and i tell him his fly is down. another man is a pro-golfer. most of them send pictures, and most of them make me cringe. but i am amazed at the bravery and unabashed hope of this batch of suitors. i suspect that these are some of the same hipsters who haunt my neighborhood bar, aloof and solemn, closed off to conversation. but online, they share measurements, secret details of their record collections, and hopes for the future.

the best part about this experiment is that i got several emails from men who had personal ads on the mercury. i felt like i was getting emails from madonna. it's THAT guy, omigod, i KNOW him. one guy sent me an email with the exact same text as his mercury ad, which i recognized immediately. and i replied by sending him pictures of himself. poor guy is so freaked out he's still emailing me, convinced that i'm his friend lisa. another guy, incredibly handsome, didn't respond when i sent him my picture: my first online rejection. but the whole endeavor has kept me amused and giggling all week.

at six o'clock today, i'm going on my first real live internet date. and not to a guy who responded to my ad. one ad caught my eye because he talked about the free scones at my favorite breakfast restaurant, and then went on to talk about wanting to adopt children and someday get a vasectomy. who says that? and in a personal ad! women plead with their husbands for years to get vasectomies, and this guy is offering it up to strangers. so who knows. i'm having a beer with him today and, at the very least, it is sure to be a story. i'll keep you posted.

.hard feelings after all.

yeah, no, i was dead wrong. dude was into me. dude was so into me he sent me an unusually kind and endearing email the following afternoon. he may have actually said i was "darling."

i looked it up in the dictionary to see if perhaps my vocabulary was outdated and darling is actually slang for "embarrassing drunk girl" or "badly dressed embarrassing drunk girl." but no, it's meanings are all complimentary.

this dude just earned so many props for exceptional dating etiquette. making contact the very next day after a date to say he had a good time is, unfortunately, out of the ordinary. and he threw in a very well-crafted sentence about digging my "insights." it may be some kind of calculated compliment intended to convey that he's into women for their minds. but nevertheless, the email had me totally sold on this guy.

except that it didn't. and being exactly the kind of email a girl like me wants, it should have sealed the deal.

i have already tried to force myself to like someone to which i wasn't attracted. i thought i would be endeared to her gradually. i thought that i could learn to want her. her vocabulary, her sarcasm, and her vegetarian sentiment would somehow make up for the fact that i felt nothing when i looked at her. and i ended up in a relationship with her for nine months, all the time forcing myself to go through the motions of sex and feeling guilty for not wanting to be with her. she was sweet, smart, and she adored me. how dare i want anything more?

as tempting as it is for me to settle into a relationship because someone else is willing, eager, and witty, i know i can't do that again. i don't think it's selfish or haughty to want everything i want. i want someone who calls the next day with clever complements. i want someone who uses words that i have to look up in my travel dictionary in the bathroom while we're on a date. i want wit, affection for animals, impeccable punctuation (it's a big deal to me, i know it's weird), and height. i want somebody who's so darn adorable that i throw up in my mouth a little bit each time i look at them. and in the meantime, i need to be alone and not distracting myself with the next best thing.

so i spent a full 24 hours writing and editing an earnest pitch for being friends. and i sincerely hoped that we could be. but i guess slamming someone with rejection and transparent excuses ("i really like being a single cat lady") doesn't inspire friendliness in people. i got a very cordial thanks-but-no-thanks reply ("your cat is very lucky"), but it stung with reciprocated rejection. i guess it wasn't my "insight" he was digging after all.

.no hard feelings.

i went out with the short guy last night. after a bizarrely fated chance meeting and possibly the longest chain of schedule-negotiating emails in the history of half-hearted dating, i got it over with. i went out with him.

what's more significant than the date, if not as interesting, is the entire day that i spent paralyzed with anxiety on my couch, with a hot water bottle and a pint of haagen daaz dulce de leche and the entire sixth season of sex and the city. i am terrible with anxiety. it's uncanny, my ability to swell up with inordinate amounts of anxiety about every tiny event in my life. i spent most of yesterday having a heart-pounding argument with myself: it's just a date. not even a date. a date is dinner or a movie. this is a drink. just one beer. but oh god, all i can see is opportunity for horror. where will we go, first of all? i can only handle a bar that is dark, with booths, and a wide selection of draft beers. i need there to be at least three ipa's to choose from. that is what i am comfortable with. and when i walk in -- how late should i be? -- will he already be there, or will i be first? and should i wait at the bar, have a seat, order? or should i sit at a booth? should i face the door, or away from the door? will he recognize me? that's silly. i always think that people will not recognize me, or when i call them and say, "hi, it's julie," they will pause for a good three or four seconds and then say, with irritation, "who?"

but of course he will recognize my face. my question is will he recognize me if i sit away from there door. probably yes, he will figure it out. i should sit a booth so that there will be sitting, and distance, and a table between us. and no awkward standing, and facing each other, and people looking at us and thinking, "that man is shorter than that woman."

that's how it goes. and goes.

my sister called later that afternoon, shortly after he called me to finalize plans. "he sounded so nervous," i told her. "i mean, i'm nervous too, but i don't act nervous."

my sister agreed. "i know. i mean, by the time you're in your twenties, you think you'd have your shtick figured out and you could handle calling a girl to make plans."

i must not have mentioned that he's slightly older than me. "yeah, you'd think by your forties you'd have at least that much figured out."

"WHAT? he's in his forties?!"

the age thing is much less of a problem for me than the height thing. this is evidently not the popular attitude.

i finally got up off the couch twenty minutes before i was supposed to meet him, at seven, at the dive bar down the street. not the one that's closest, that i go to most often, and that i like the best. i suggested we go to the slightly less convenient, less cool bar. i don't want anybody to see us.

i brushed my teeth, futzed with my hair, put on some blush. i tred on my usual going out clothes, shirts with a bit of a neckline that show cleavage and fit snugly. jeans that are tight in the ass. then i took them all off and put on a long-sleeved cotton t-shirt and a hoodie, sneakers. it was something i would wear to school in the eight grade, comfortable, mother-approved. i was going for ugly. my phone rang and i chatted for ten minutes, not bothering to say i should probably go, i'm about to be late. and at seven on the dot, i jogged out the door and headed to the bar, boyish, frumpy, and frowning.

he was there first, sitting at the bar and halfway through a beer. i didn't even need the knitting project and book that i bring with me every where i go just in case, god forbid, i am alone and don't know what to do with my hands. i said hello, sat down at the next stool, and ordered a shot of whisky, neat, with a beer back. i drank it quickly and it went straight to my head. in all of my anxiety, i forgot to eat dinner.

i'm a nervous talker. i started talking immediately and didn't stop for an hour. i talked about my job, how hard it is to quit smoking, my ugly couch, my friend's baby. i talked on and on about the most mundane topics and didn't pause for him to contribute to the conversation. it's an awful nervous habit, talking too much, but i couldn't seem to turn it off.

he seemed bored, confused, possibly annoyed with my antics. it didn't take me long to get drunk. i was shitfaced by eight o'clock and slurring words. we were talking about movies, and i was a caricature of a drunk lady, like in that episode of friends where rachel gets drunk on a date and realizes she needs to get closure in order to get over ross and throws a man's phone
into the champagne bucket. i kept saying, "have you seen that movie? what's it called? what's it called? WHAT'S IT CALLED?" only drunk people do this, repeat themselves like this, louder and louder without giving any more information.

i looked at his legs hanging off the bar stool and wondered what they would look like in bed, if i would notice that they were short, smaller than mine. i'm five foot seven and i have long legs. this guy is all torso. i won't be able to handle it.

he was the one to finally call it a night. at 9:30 sharp. i wonder if he did that because i'd been staring at the clock all night, not because i was bored, but because i didn't want to forget to go to bed at a decent hour on a sunday evening. i was about ready to say, sorry, buddy, but i need to head home to bed, when he finished his beer and said, "i think it's about time" or something to that effect. at this point, i had been loaded and rambling for about an hour, not to mention neurotic, badly dressed, and unable to make eye contact for the whole night. it occurred to me that this guy was not that into me. he wanted to leave early, he didn't make a single attempt to touch me or act flirtatious. dude was not into me.

this was perfect. i'd achieved the effect i was going for. we had no spark, no chemistry, and it was mutual. i was elated. i also had the spins.

i woke up this morning with a hangover fit for a saturday. i made coffee and left it on the stove because the smell of it was repugnant. then i sat at my kitchen table eating low-fat cottage cheese out of the container very slowly in hopes that i could keep it down and that it would prevent me from barfing. when i got to work, after a particularly dizzying and hot bus ride in which i didn't get a seat and accidentally managed to punch myself in the face when the bus slammed on its breaks, i kept my wastebasket very near. just in case i might hurl at
my desk, within earshot of my boss.

i was so pleased with myself to be in the clear, to have endured the dreaded date and to have arrived at a blissful state of mutual disinterest. no one is to blame. no one is guilty. it's just not
meant to be. he won't call, or if he does, it will be after a few days, and with some lame apology. and i'll say it's okay, i'll see you around. and he'll tell the story of his bad date with the 26 year
old lush, and i'll tell of how i'm a basket case who can't handle dating and i have a height complex. no hard feelings.

.uncommon knack for embarrassing everyone in the room.

so i'm sitting at my desk at work and the front desk bell rings, so i run out there all hungover and with food in my teeth or whatever and probably fucking cat hair fucking all over me. and standing there is the FUCKING GUY that asked me for my number on new years, who was all too short for me, but then when he didn't call i was all, fuck holy shit, now I'M BEING REJECTED BY SHORT MEN. so i'm standing there and having this totally awkward "what are you doing here?" "no, what are you doing here?" conversation with this guy. so i decide to say, and then proceed to say, out LOUD, "so, you never called me." cuz that's really gonna make the conversation less fucking weird.

and then it was just terrible and embarrassing as i suddenly realized that i'm standing there, at work, and announcing that i've been rejected, and then my coworkers started walking in. so i just died on the spot. it was horrible.

and then the sad, pathetic nature of my situation really hits home when i sit down at my desk and start to tear up while staring at my cold microwaved trader joe's enchiladas. my phone starts to ring and i think, either it's one of my friends for whom i just left a "omigod i'm so embarrassed" voice mail, or it's him. calling. because somewhere between the awkward confrontation and the searing humiliation, i charmed him. because that's what i was going for, you know, was like, casablanca or whatever, "of all the offices in this town, you had to walk into mine." but it came out more like, "i'm scary and angry. turn and run." anyway, so i have this moment of, like, hope and it's an unknown number that is calling me, so it must be him, and he must have walked right out of my office and thought, "i'm a fool not to have called her!" and i answer it, all cocky and flipping my hair.

"hello, julianne? this is so-and-so, confirming your fucking doctor's appointment tomorrow, you sad loser."