Unwifeable(35)

When I’m in his office, though, I drop the act. Something about doctors and people in authority has always caused me to break down and cry. He is the gentlest physician I’ve ever met. He tells me I never should have had that laser to begin with. He helps me dramatically reduce not just the ankle scar but my chest scar too with Fraxel and never makes me feel like an idiot or a hysteric. Most importantly, he is the first person to convince me to see a shrink in a long time.

The last shrink I saw, the best thing I got out of the experience was the psych intake form (which revealed, of course, that I am very depressed). It consisted of 175 true-or-false statements that started off mildly crazy, like, “People have never given me enough recognition for the things I’ve done” and then just got crazier: “I watch my family closely so I’ll know who can and who can’t be trusted.”

After the appointment, I proceeded to take all these statements from the psych inventory to mess with guys in sex chat rooms (and to use the resulting material to audition for a show called Shelarious for which Julie Klausner was helping to arrange casting). The results were for sure entertaining:

Robert_hard: what do u look like?

Sexy_lady: I believe I’m being plotted against

Robert_hard: I have 8'' and am stroking it

Sexy_lady: Someone has been trying to control my mind

Robert_hard: do you like anal?

Sexy_lady: I have not seen a car in the last 10 years

Robert_hard: damn girl you makin me horny as a bitch, why you talking that wild shit

As entertaining as that performing experience was, in terms of actual therapy, I am not getting very far—at all.

I spill all of this to Dr. Colbert, and when he suggests I see his good friend and colleague Dr. Marianne Gillow, I tell her that because of my experience with my mom and how medication just kind of knocked her out, I’m definitely not going to take any psych drugs. She does something that I’ll never forget. She tells me that she respects where I’m coming from and doesn’t try to pressure me into anything. This makes me instantly like and trust her and want to maybe give Zoloft a try.

When I do, it’s like another world opens up to me. That crippling anxiety that has plagued me all my life is lessened so much. I’m able to give myself more of a break. And thank God I do, because the men I’m meeting for About Last Night require more self-esteem and resilience than I ever could have mustered otherwise.

The column affords me the perfect way to superficially seek love while never exploring the more difficult questions about what true love for oneself and others really takes.

Before too long, I am writing off Brazilians on my weekly expense report. I have only one goal: Get good material. And I am determined to find all necessary, even if I put myself in danger during the process.



* * *




A HANDSOME, GREGARIOUS man approaches me at the Apple store one day when I’m taking my Mac in to be fixed. He tells me that I am charming and intriguing, and that he must get my number.

“You must see the TV show I host,” he says in his heavy French accent, beckoning me over to a giant HD screen, which he tells me he owns one of at home. “Here, I will show you.”

His name is Hugues-Denver Akassy, and he pulls up his website orbitetv.org on the screen, which features segments of him interviewing everyone from Angelina Jolie to Bill Clinton. He is a French journalist come to New York to bring his TV show to America.

When Hugues and I finally arrange our date, he meets me wearing pink gingham at what he calls his favorite “cozy little wine bar,” Shalel, on Seventieth near Columbus. He asks for a table with the curtains closed so we can have privacy.

I start to talk about work, and he reprimands me, then orders a thirty-five-dollar bottle of chardonnay and a single appetizer because “we are not hungry.” He asks me what I want most in life, but I don’t know, so he brings it back around to love.

“Most men are shit,” he tells me. “They just want to sex in your pants. And I can tell you are a woman of romance, style, complexity, and many passions. Is that true?”

“Sure,” I say, nodding distantly and scribbling notes on my reporter’s pad when he’s not looking. “That sounds good.”

We split the bottle of Hess Napa Valley, and without food in me, I’m rather smashed rather quick.

He literally grabs me and kisses me underneath the chandelier on the burgundy pillows. His tongue is all over my chin, but I’m trying to keep an open mind.

“We go for a walk in the park?” he asks afterward.

As we walk into Central Park past Strawberry Fields, he holds my hand. This is nice, I think. Sweet even. I like hand-holding. Then he begins kissing me by the water, and when he reaches down into my pants, I tell him, “No, no, too fast.”

Then he does something I’ve never had a man do before or since. He pulls out his penis and places it in my hand.

“No, no, no, no,” I say. “I don’t want to. It’s not what I’m looking for. I’m sorry.”

We walk along, and when we are hidden behind a giant rock, he says, “We kiss?”

We kiss a little more, and then he whips his dick out again. I’m pleading for him to stop, and then I finally say, “I feel uncomfortable.”

He seems to understand. I have, perhaps, hit upon the international safe word. But he is angry. He yells at me: “You are a sexy brat provocateur!”