Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim Read online

  Finally, I asked, “You’re divorced, right?”

  “Yes, sure,” he answered. And he had been for five years.

  Ka-boom!

  Generally I’m at the point where I know that talking about the past is no-win, because I have a lot of past, and so does anyone my age. If we start talking about it, we’ll never get to the present by dessert. After all, there’s only so much time at dinner, and I can break it down for you:

  The first ten minutes of any date are spent going for our respective reading glasses, and we whip them out like a showdown for the superannuated.

  The man is usually the quicker draw, because he isn’t worried about what he looks like in reading glasses. I fumble for mine, act casual as I put them on, and suppress the inner voice that says, Men Don’t Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Reading Glasses.

  So far, so good.

  Then we have to get the waitress’s attention, to order, which presents another test my hapless date doesn’t know he’s taking. Because I’m used to getting the waitress myself, since that’s what single women learn to do.

  Or they starve.

  It’s not hard to get a waitress’s attention. Make eye contact, dude. Waitresses don’t like to be waved at, and I know.

  I was one.

  Yet I restrain myself and don’t call the waitress myself. If my date cannot succeed in doing so for fifteen minutes, he’s out.

  Ka-boom!

  Because I’m hungry, and I can’t take it.

  To be fair, I set up the mine only because you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. I was on a date once where the guy couldn’t get the waitress’s attention, so I did, and his face fell. Later, when we walked to our respective cars, he remarked that my car was nicer than his. And I knew I was getting the kiss of death, instead of a kiss goodnight.

  What’s a girl to do?

  Keep the car, and get a higher-octane guy.

  Skype Appeal

  By Francesca

  Dating a person with an accent is the best thing ever. There’s only one drawback.

  They’re not from here.

  My British boyfriend and I had spent five blissful months together in New York City. The foreign aspect of him manifested in only the most charming details, like drinking tea instead of coffee, taking toast with Marmite, and complimenting my “bum.”

  But then he told me he’d have to spend some time back home for work, and his connection to a place thousands of miles away became a stark reality.

  And so I was introduced to the savior and scourge of every long-distance relationship: Skype.

  Skype is a free, Internet-based program that lets you “call” and video-chat with anyone anywhere in the world. It sounds awesome. In many ways it is. But in others, it’s a Trojan horse of romantic woes.

  We planned Skype dates, although I use the word “plan” lightly. With a time difference and completely different schedules, we took whatever time together we could get. Normally, the program displays which of your friends are available to call, but my boyfriend kept his status “invisible” so his hundred other Skype contacts wouldn’t bother him when we were talking.

  He was my only Skype contact.

  So he initiated all of our calls. That meant I had to be camera-ready at any moment. This was not going to be easy.

  Not that I could tell him that.

  I work at home, so I rarely look appropriate for public consumption, much less boyfriend consumption. My daily uniform is some variation of workout clothes, regardless of whether or not I make it to the gym. If I think I’ll have to go out, I might wear old jeans, but that’s as good as it gets on a weekday.

  Imagine a twenty-five-year-old woman styled by Kevin James.

  I don’t bother with makeup at home, and I conserve my One-A-Day contact lenses like the gold that they are. Unless I’m going on a date, I’m wearing my glasses.

  Looking casually beautiful twenty-four/seven was going to be a full-time job.

  I asked my friend, who has also had a long-distance boyfriend in another time zone, for styling advice. “Go full-on painted whore,” she said. “There’s no such thing as too much eye makeup on Skype.”

  I tried it, going for a Kim Kardashian level of artificial perfection. In the mirror, I looked like a rejected cast member of Jersey Shore, fired on account of paleness. But on my computer’s built-in camera, the makeup looked all right, in a Fem-bot sort of way.

  Still, I didn’t feel like myself. So I washed it off and settled for nighttime eyeliner.

  Then I scouted my entire apartment for which spots had the best light at each time of day.

  Morning: at my table, facing the kitchen window.

  Afternoon: in my bedroom, facing the setting sun.

  Evening: on the couch, facing the better lamp, with the laptop on a pillow.

  This way, whenever he called, I could stop, drop, and roll into optimal position before activating the camera function.

  Meanwhile, my boyfriend would call me while lying on his sofa with the laptop on his belly and the camera aiming up his nose. He was completely unself-conscious.

  It was one of the things I found most adorable about him.

  And yes, I recognize the irony.

  Using the thing has its own pitfalls. The camera eye is at the tippy-top of your computer screen, but the image of your friend appears on the screen below, which means you can’t look at the lens and your friend at the same time. In other words, you’re watching each other watch each other.

  It’s all very meta.

  And painfully self-conscious; it’s like being thirteen all over again.

  I’m not this girl. Well, I was this girl, but I grew out of her.

  Should your vanity get the best of you, Skype provides you with a rearview mirror of sorts, an auxiliary window that shows you the image of yourself, as seen by your partner. This smaller window appears beside the main one, serving as constant temptation to check yourself out.

  The trouble is, if you’re sneaking peeks all the time, your partner will see your shifty eyes.

  Rapid eye movement is not sexy.

  Talking on Skype, I felt sapped of my powers, my mojo, my wiles. My go-to style of flirting is to make jokes. But Skype can be glitchy, and there’s often a delay on the video feed, so our usual banter was reduced to talking over each other with a sprinkling of awkward pauses.

  And God forbid I try and be funny. Thanks to the delay, my jokes would be followed by a moment of absolutely no reaction. In reality, it was probably a two-second break, but in my mind, that was plenty of time to panic:

  Omigod, Francesca, you are such an idiot. Why did you say that?

  Maybe he didn’t hear it, should I say it again?

  Or no, just pretend it didn’t happen.

  Okay, it didn’t happen.

  Only then he would laugh.

  But still, I missed my boyfriend more than I disliked myself on camera, so I always looked forward to our calls. Little by little, I followed his lead and relaxed. My favorite was when he would play guitar for me over Skype, because that felt less like watching a video and more like being together.

  We settled into a nightly routine of Skyping each other.

  Sometimes I even wore my glasses.

  I was getting the hang of it when disaster struck in the form of good news. He’d been offered a terrific full-time job … over there. So he wouldn’t be coming back to “the States” after all.

  If I thought I looked less than perfect on Skype before, watching myself cry on camera cured me of that notion. I felt crummy enough, I really didn’t need to see my snot bubbles on screen.

  There’s a Sex and the City episode about Carrie getting dumped via Post-It, but that’s nothing compared to breaking up over Skype. It has all the embarrassment of a face-to-face breakup with none of the physical comfort. You’re robbed of the bittersweet breakup hug. And if you’re splitting on less-than-amicable terms, you definitely shouldn’t throw a drink in his face. />
  But our breakup was amicable, just three thousand miles apart.

  I suppose having your ex across an ocean does offer certain assurances, like we’ll never bump into each other when I least expect it.

  No matter how much I’d like to.

  Dating at the Speed Limit, or the Good News

  By Lisa

  The good is that dating at my age can be as fun as dating when I was sixteen years old. It’s still thrilling to kiss someone new, though it’s equally surprising to find myself, even at my age, worrying about it all through dinner.

  Part of the problem is logistics. Most of my dates involve meeting someone at a restaurant, so that means there’ll be a goodnight kiss in some guaranteed-awkward location. Namely, a suburban parking lot.

  Good night, Irene.

  I freeze up. I don’t like it. Families are walking by, and nobody feels sexy around minivans.

  Worse, some of the restaurants have valets, usually a bright-eyed young man who has nowhere to go after he opens the car door for you. The last time this happened on a date, I gave my date a peck and almost gave one to the valet, standing next to him like an earnest son.

  And there was another time when my date walked me to my car, which was parked around the back of the restaurant. As we approached my car, I saw a group of busboys taking their cigarette breaks in front of my grille. Again, I stiffened, but my date was fine with it, like a host in front of a studio audience. He went to kiss me, and I recoiled.

  “Really?” I asked.

  Which is not the kind of thing that most men like to hear when they’re zooming in for the smooch. But this guy took it in stride.

  “Just ignore them,” he said, but I couldn’t, then oddly, as if on cue, the busboys put out their cigarettes and shuffled inside the kitchen, evidently following the secret rules of some Guy Code. But by then, the air was filled with carcinogens, and the moment had gone up in a puff of smoke.

  The truth is, that all of this is an excuse. Because I’m worrying that I forget how to kiss.

  I know, it’s embarrassing to admit this in print, but we know I tell the truth in these essays, and why stop now.

  I can’t be the only one who forgets how to kiss.

  A guy I mean.

  I can kiss a dog, no problem. I kiss their lips, heads, ears, and paws. Easy as pie. Piece a cake.

  Also cats. I’m a great cat kisser. They keep coming back for more.

  As long as I hold them down.

  I kiss horses, too, and their noses are all big and velvety.

  So you would think I can kiss a guy, because they’re not as big as a horse, as feisty as a cat, or as sloppy as a dog.

  But no.

  I forget.

  It’s not like riding a bike; it’s like learning a language. If you don’t use it, you lose it. In other words, if you don’t practice your French, you forget how to French.

  Which brings me to the subject of tongues.

  Just when I thought I was getting the hang of the goodnight kiss, someone tried to slip me the tongue. On our first kiss ever. In his car.

  I jumped back so far it almost qualified as a secondary collision.

  Dude, only my dogs get tongue.

  Which brings me to an even more personal subject.

  Sex.

  You’ve heard the folklore that it’s okay to sleep with someone after three dates, but I think that’s crazy.

  Unless he’s George Clooney.

  For a normal guy, three dates is too soon. I don’t sleep with someone until I’m in love, and I haven’t been in love for a long time, if you follow. The odd thing is, to be completely honest, I’ve gotten some pushback on the issue.

  As in whining.

  By which I mean, I recall one date where the guy was miffed that I wouldn’t sleep with him, saying, “Come on, it’s not like we’re kids anymore.”

  Really?

  I’m not sure I follow. I may be in my fifties, but I still have feelings. And there has to be a better line than telling a woman she should sleep with you because she’s too old to matter.

  I still link sex with love, maybe even more than when I was younger. I value everything more these days, and yes, I value myself more.

  Funny, in a way, that guy was right.

  I’m not a kid anymore, dude.

  And that’s why I’m not sleeping with you.

  Girl with a Pearl Earring

  By Lisa

  It all started when I went into my jewelry box for a pair of earrings and found four teeth.

  Let me explain.

  My jewelry box is a mess. None of the earrings is with its mate, which is the story of my life. Even my earrings are single.

  My hoops are hopeless.

  I was trying to find a pearl earring, which was lost amid a tangle of gold chains, bound tight as a rubber-band ball, and a slew of earring backs, strewn around like so many tiny Mickey Mouse ears.

  It’s as if I don’t value my valuables.

  Please tell me I’m not alone in this.

  The problem is that my jewelry box contains every piece of jewelry I’ve ever owned, even a happy-face ring that Mother Mary gave me when I was ten years old.

  Do you know anybody less likely to give a happy-face ring than Mother Mary? I showed it to her once, and she denied having bought it.

  I think she was trying to save happy face.

  I kept my first pair of gold posts, still scabby, from sixth grade, when I used to drown my newly pierced ears in alcohol, so I smelled vaguely like a pathology lab. I spent most of the school day turning my posts, panicked that the holes would close up.

  This was in the old days, when the only thing people pierced was their earlobes. I wonder if people with pierced nipples have to turn them.

  Their earrings, not their nipples.

  Either way, serves them right.

  I also have spoon-handle earrings from my hippie days in high school, which continue, in that I’m still hippy.

  I have silver bangles from the years I loved silver, and gold bangles from when I got my first credit card. These things are not unrelated.

  I have a high school ring, a college ring, and two wedding rings.

  Two of these things make me smile.

  And the other two make me laugh.

  Most of my jewelry box isn’t jewelry, but random stuff. It’s as if my jewelry box had an affair with my junk drawer and gave birth to an array of foreign money, Mass cards, and old laminated driver’s licenses.

  This would be the trifecta of things no woman can throw away.

  I can’t throw away foreign money, because after all, it’s still money.

  Except for the euros. I hear that’s not money anymore.

  I have coins from Australia because I never know when I’ll be in Australia again.

  And when that day comes, I’ll bring my thirty-seven Australian cents.

  Then there are Mass cards. Sadly, I have more Mass cards than times I’ve been to Mass.

  For those of you who aren’t Catholic, a Mass card is sent to notify you that prayers are being said for someone who has passed. I can’t throw one away, though I have Mass cards for people I don’t remember and never even knew. I even have Mass cards that were sent to me by mistake.

  Still, I’m not throwing away a Mass card. That would be like throwing people away. And I can’t throw away an old driver’s license, because that would be like throwing me away.

  In the bottom of the jewelry box were four baby teeth from Francesca, three wrapped in old toilet paper, but one loose, a cute nugget of little-girl ivory. I remembered the day she lost the tooth, after dinner, in an orange. The Tooth Fairy left her twenty dollars because it was all she had in her wallet and the bank was closed.

  The teeth were with Francesca’s baby bracelet from the hospital, a plastic ring not wide enough for two fingers, which read Baby Girl Scottoline.

  She still is that, to me.

  And there was a lock of her baby hair, thin and gold
, with a single curl like an oversized comma.

  I held the teeth, bracelet, and hair in my hand, trying to decide whether to clean up the jewelry box.

  It was my life, after all, with the valuable, invaluable, and just plain absurd mixed up together.

  So I closed the lid, and let it be.

  Magic Mushrooms

  By Francesca

  My mom got me dirt for Christmas.

  At least that’s what it looked like at first. Then she explained that it was an at-home mushroom-growing kit.

  “FUN FOR KIDS!” it said across the box.

  Or for your twenty-five-year-old daughter!

  But who am I kidding? I was super excited to play with the kit.

  The kit is an upright rectangular box with a little trapdoor that reveals a plastic bag inside. The plastic bag looks like it contains rotting compost, but it’s actually recycled coffee grounds and mushroom seeds. The directions said all you have to do is cut a slit in the bag, soak it overnight, and mist it with water twice a day, and—voila!—you’re a gourmet-mushroom farmer.

  I like some plant matter in my apartment. I grow fresh sage, rosemary, basil, and thyme in a pot on my windowsill. But since I cut most meat from my diet, I hardly use the herbs, so at this point, the plant is taking over my windowsill.

  Whatever, it looks pretty.

  And I support the green movement. Apparently mushrooms are normally grown on wood chips, so this kit saves trees and recycles old coffee waste. The company website says they’re on track to redirect 1 million pounds of used coffee grounds.

  I get saving trees, but I had no idea coffee waste was such a threat. Are we in danger of caffeine rain?

  So I set up shop. If it was meant for kids, how hard could it be?

  For the first week, absolutely nothing happened. If you want to test your patience, wait for a plant to grow. I felt like an idiot, dutifully misting the outside of a plastic bag, but I had faith.

  On the fifth day, my patience was rewarded. The following is a daily log of my mushrooms’ growth.

  Day 5: What I found in my kitchen looked like something you’d find on a foot. I thought it was going to look like a munchkin colony of perfectly formed baby mushrooms, like the way a baby snail is a perfect miniature of its mother.

  But what I saw today was the Rosemary’s Baby of mushroom plants. It didn’t even look like a plant, just a bumpy protrusion, or the type of wart you definitely need to get looked at.