Unwifeable(31)

The next day, I scrounge five dollars in quarters from the lesbians’ change drawer to take the subway in to work, and, not really knowing who to call, I reach out to an uncle who I know is a minister.

I cry and talk, cry and talk. He asks me if I will agree to accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and savior.

“Sure,” I say.

My uncle shares with me passages of scripture from the New Testament, like “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

That sounds good. I ask him if maybe he will call me every day to check in.

“Oh well,” he says, “every day might be kind of hard.”

“No, no, don’t worry about it,” I say.

Awesome. I am just as needy with him (“if I accept Jesus as my savior, will you be my friend?”) as I am with guys I’m dating. I feel like I’m just good for a one-night thing, either with Jesus or with sex. Still, I’m grateful for the talk and I don’t mind the foray into spirituality either. Overall, my feeling about religion is this: If it works, it works. Even though that conversation doesn’t quite lead to a long-term personal connection, I do appreciate the notion of welcoming God more into my life, no matter how bumbling I am in the application of it. Prayer is calming and focused and love. And—when it works, boy does it work.

Being alone does have some upsides, though. For my final story of the year, Steve agrees to let me do a piece where I go out on dates with all the randos who contact me on MySpace. The news peg? Social media folks are Time’s “Person of the Year.”

While I’m writing the first draft of the story, Steve comes over to my desk and says, “It reads too much like a stand-up comedy routine.”

I always forget that he can get into my “basket” (as our personal or shared server files are called, with editors able to read ours, but reporters unable to read editors’), and so Steve is reviewing as I am writing.

Steve looks at me uncertainly, and my heart sinks. I don’t want to disappoint him.

“Go deeper,” he says.

To do that, I focus on my favorite person from the story, forty-eight-year-old George Jack.

“We meet in Union Square,” I write of George Jack, who I realize upon reflection might not have been using his real name. “And it’s kind of like Sleepless in Seattle except that he lives in his parents’ basement in the Bronx and I want to kill myself.”

But then I get more honest, less jokey, at Steve’s prodding.

“Let’s be fair. George is pretty cool,” I write. “He says he likes me because I’m not fake like some of the women on there. He tells me some ladies will try to get him to pay for their journey to America. I’m not like that at all, and I feel really great about myself. We part ways, and he tells me when he will be online next. The schedule depends on when the computer store is open. George isn’t ashamed, and I kind of respect him for it.”

When the piece publishes, I’m flooded with email from people all over the world who connect with the loneliness and the desperation. But the best email is from George himself.

have merry xmas and thanks to myspace, me and my ex are probably getting back together and yr article sealed it ty george.

I am still single at the end of 2006, but at least George isn’t.





chapter five




* * *





The Dating Column


2007

I welcome in the New Year with comedian Julie Klausner at a small dinner in Chinatown then a “Get Lucky in ’07” party in Greenpoint. After taking a few long drags of a joint with repeats of Intervention playing in the background, I walk stoned and blissed-out in the rain to find the subway. On the F train home, with the mellow numbness of the buzz kicking in and the orange-and-cream colors of the seats fuzzing around me, I have a moment of clarity.

I keep waiting for my life to begin. I keep waiting for everything to be okay. But what if I stopped waiting?

Gazing around the rattling subway, soiled newspapers and trash everywhere I look, I sit down, close my eyes, and imagine myself on a ride at Disneyland. I repeat to myself the question: What if I just decided everything was okay right now?

Waking up the next morning, the feeling hasn’t totally vanished, and I start enjoying how different things look. Maybe the fear that constantly wracks me could be processed as something else: excitement.

As part of my “everything is awesome” initiative, I decide I am going to be the best me possible—by trying to fix all my physical imperfections. So when a doctor I barely know says he is willing to give me a free laser treatment on a few veins near my ankles, I’m stoked.

I originally met him during my piece on the “detox-retox” lifestyle in New York, and a friend told me I should talk to this guy because he partied the hardest. I left the doc a message at the time, and he called me back.

“New York Post, Mandy speaking,” I answered.

“You just feel like the coolest person in the world answering that way, don’t you?” the doc said derisively.

“Oh hey, hi,” I said. “Yeah, I was wondering if I could talk to you for—”

“Do I want to be quoted in a story about getting fucked up all the time?” he cut me off. “No.”