Life Will Be the Death of Me: . . . and You Too!(48)

“You have been a human doing, and we need to get you to be a human being.”

“Did you really just say that sentence?” I winced.

“Why, what’s wrong with that sentence?” he asked innocently.

“It just sounds like something straight out of a therapist’s handbook,” I told him.

This felt like a golden opportunity to alert Dan to some non-negotiables I had regarding men.

    “Bear with me,” I told Dan. “This is going to be a long list. I don’t like strong scents, so that kind of prohibits waking up next to someone of the opposite sex, or any sex, really. I’m extremely sensitive to smell. I have a problem with smelling anyone’s breath. I’m not the kind of person who can get past that. I get turned off very easily. It could be anything. It could be finding out they have a cat, or seeing their apartment, or they could love room temperature water.”

“What else?”

“Feet are tricky. That’s why I like to lead with them. When I meet a guy I like, I take out a foot and show him what he’ll be dealing with if things go any further. Put your worst foot forward. That’s how I like to start a conversation. And then, when they’re gracious enough to tolerate me and my feet, God forbid they have a weird foot or a double-decker toe—I can’t deal with it.”

Dan was squinting at me. “Is there something wrong with your feet?”

“No, but they’re feet…feet can be tricky in general.”

“Okay, let’s keep moving,” he said with a sigh.

“Also, I have too many questionable habits that no man would be cool with, and by the way, if there was a guy that was cool with them, I’m not sure I’d be interested in him. There are snacks I get in the middle of the night that are not something I could do if anyone was around. If I didn’t have cleaning ladies that came every day, I’d probably be in jail. I find crumbs everywhere. In my clothing. My bed. My cleaning ladies leave chocolate next to my bed like I’m at a hotel, and those usually end up somewhere in my sheets. I don’t have a flawless enough body to get away with some of the more disgusting things I do…or eat…in bed. This is all from my mother. She ate in bed all the time, and there’s nothing I find more comforting than eating in bed. I stand by it, actually. It’s just not ideal for another person to have to witness.”

    “Anything else?”

Dan looked intrigued…or bored. It was hard to tell.

“There are certain accents I simply cannot bear. One of them is my own. I can get icked out so easily. I’m aware this behavior is unreasonable and immature, and I’d like it to stop. I don’t want to get turned off so easily, but I just don’t know how to get past a bad pair of shoes, or…male jewelry.”

“Can you give me an example of a specific incident?”

“I could give you a hundred. Pick a city.” Dan asked me if I was serious. I was only half serious, but yes, I was serious.

“Let’s start with the last guy I hooked up with. Nice guy, nothing wrong with him. I was in Park City—skiing for a few days—and hooked up with a friend of a friend. Anyway, we wake up in the morning, and he tells me he wants to drive me to the airport instead of me taking a car service, because he was heading back to his house in Salt Lake City. I was rushing to pack my things and wasn’t thinking clearly—because I said yes, and normally I would not do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to be in a car with a guy I barely know for that long. It’s a forty-five-minute ride to the airport.”

    “Okay.”

“So, we get in the car, and I immediately regret my decision. It was like being on a first date—after we had sex.”

“What was so bad about it?”

“Well, we got on the road, and then he lowers the music and says, ‘Top ten favorite bands. Name ’em.’?”

“And?”

“And that was it. That sentence hurt my vagina. ‘Top ten favorite bands’?”

“And then what happened?” Dan asked.

“I told him to turn the music back up so I could find out.”

“And that was it?”

“Oh, no. It’s never a small story. This ordeal went on for hours. Keep in mind, this was simply a nice guy giving me a ride to the airport that was supposed to be only for forty-five minutes. We got to the airport early, and he insisted on driving me around the area to show me his house, and then he wanted to have breakfast. I felt like I was being held hostage. There was nothing I wanted to do less than have breakfast, and when we got to the restaurant, he ordered an ahi tuna sandwich and a Caesar Bloody Mary. I almost threw up at the table.”

“I see.”

“This happens all the time. All over the world. It’s never just an incident. It always snowballs into something bigger.”

“Tell me about the kind of men you do like,” Dan said.

“I like older men a lot, and I’ll tell you why it’s become a problem: because I just turned forty-three, and older men are getting really old, if you catch my drift. So now I have to scale back my margin and lower the difference in age that’s most preferable to me, which used to be twenty years. This is what is referred to as ‘thinning the herd.’ That is why I have the feelings I do for Robert Mueller.”