Unwifeable(38)

He tells me to meet him at the Sherry-Netherland, where he’s at a dance.

After many, many drinks, later that night Blaine spins me out on the dance floor, where I go careening to the ground and the night fades into laughter until he unlocks the door to his apartment, which is the size of the floor of the Post.

I realized he was rich. I did not realize he was this rich. I immediately fall off some steps that go up to his bedroom and laugh because it has to be hilarious, otherwise it will just be sad. The next morning, I wake up. I look around and tell him that his place is insane.

“Tom Cruise actually has a place in the building,” he says.

“Wow,” I say. “That’s nuts.”

After I write my “50 Most Powerful Women” article, for the July 4 holiday, the grand dame of hedge fund selection Lee Hennessee invites me to her insanely swanky Upper East Side penthouse party, so I ask Blaine if he wants to be a plus-one. He says it sounds like fun but to watch out because the cougars might be all over him. At the party, I end up spending most of the night talking to a charismatic female plastic surgeon.

“Maybe I’ll get a boob job,” I tell her. I’m saying it to pass the time. I could just as likely have said, “Maybe I’ll have a heart attack,” if I was talking to a cardiologist.

“No,” Blaine interjects. “You’re perfect.”

We are soon talking to a red-haired children’s-book author who has clearly undergone a lot of plastic surgery. She’s telling us about her book When I Grow Up. When she goes to get a drink, Blaine whispers, “You know who that is? Tina Louise. Ginger from Gilligan’s Island.”

“Oh man,” I say.

“I would have gone with Marianne,” he says.

By the time we leave the party we are fairly wasted and go back to his apartment once again. When we wake up, with the morning sun streaming in, the mood is romantic. The mood is sexy. The mood is ripe for sweet nothings. He moves in a little closer.

“I’m going to get you,” he says, touching me gently, “some upper-arm exercises.” He smiles. “They’re a little flabby.”

My face betrays a look that I’m about to murder him.

“I mean,” he backtracks, “you’re perfect.”

“What?” I say.

“You’re an über-babe,” he says. “You’re an undeniable über-babe.”

It’s so funny to me, being out on these dates with men who fetishize skinny women. As we lie in bed, strategically placed above Blaine and me in his ridiculous loft is a giant art print of two naked porn stars giggling. They are airbrushed and gorgeous, with upper arms that are beyond reproach.

They will make much better companions, I think. As we lie in bed together, he continues to look over my body. He points to the scar on my ankle.

“It’s healing,” I say.

“I just want you to be perfect,” he says. I lie there, pissed beyond belief.

I can’t leave immediately, though, because I can’t find my dress.

“Did we throw it out the window?” I ask.

“Maybe,” he says.

I take some old sweatpants and a T-shirt and head out, infuriated. Soon after, I receive an email from Blaine telling me how much fun he had creating “some fireworks of our own” after the July 4 party. I write back, “I had a good time, too. But that line about my arms was kind of a deal breaker.”

He replies immediately, profusely, and sincerely—explaining that it was teasing payback from the night before, when I’d told him he had “man boobs.”

Oh shit. I forgot I call everyone fat when I’m drunk. We talk on the phone and some of the night comes back to me. I also said, “You don’t have herpes, do you?” and “You should send me flowers!”

Later that day, I get a call from the messenger’s office. Flower delivery. From Blaine.

In the column, I call him Super Preppy. I send all of these About Last Night columns along to Alex Balk at Gawker, who links it, making fun of it as expected. The comments are, of course, savage. I summarize them and send a note out to my mailing list, “I’ve started a new man-hands, horse-faced Renée Zellweger with Down syndrome dating column!”

But I know the game. Gawker brutalizes you. Your site gets the traffic. Everyone is happy.



* * *




ONCE ALL IS copacetic again with Blaine, he surprises me by wanting to see me—a lot. When he is traveling for work down South, buried in paperwork, he writes, “A bold suggestion, why don’t you come down to East Hampton? Weather is supposed to be nice, and it would be a good change of scenery for a summer weekend.”

I take the jitney up, catching up on email, one of which is introducing Hannibal Buress to a few comedy folks I know. I’ve by now told Hannibal all about this new guy in my life, even showing him a ridiculously preppy picture of Blaine wearing blinding yellow trousers.

“Thanks, Mandy,” Hannibal writes after I’ve made the introductions. “This almost makes up for you consistently going out with this weird-pants-wearing dude.”

Kyle Kinane describes him another way. “He sounds like a villain from a bad eighties movie.”

Blaine picks me up in his Jeep at the station, and we drive to his family’s converted farmhouse in Amagansett, which has a long winding road to the main house. It is daunting. I’ve never been to East Hampton before, let alone to someone’s regal country estate. The view from the living room window looks like a Monet painting, with a tiny bridge leading out to the water, trees and tall waving grass.