Unwifeable(55)

It’s not just Blaine either. One day I receive an email from a wealthy tech entrepreneur I had reached out to asking if he could set me up with any “nice guys.” No, he can’t do that, he explains and proceeds to shame me for everything I’ve ever written online.

“Given your proclivities,” he tells me, “I’d predict you’ll either never get married, or have N husbands.”

It turns my stomach a little to read. So I tell him that I already have been married once before and indeed am a very loving and devoted partner.

Instantly, he replies: “I’d suggest you stay away from marriage going forward? :)”

Reading his words, I am livid.

I hate him. I hate Blaine. I hate anyone who has ever looked down on me ever. I despise the hypocrisy inherent in shame. If I don’t fit into a polite world, then I will live as unpolite a life as possible, I think. I will ravage myself. I will dive headfirst into one seedy encounter after another. And that’s exactly what I do.



* * *




MY LIFE BECOMES a cocktail of excess. And my coworkers start to notice.

One night after a rollicking evening on the town with a bunch of Post-ies, I lose all track of time around 2 a.m. I come to early the next morning. I wake up in a hotel room with a strange man I quickly remember I met the previous evening when I swerved into a Village diner, approached a booth of strangers, and swung my legs up onto the lap of the closest guy—and proceeded to eat all his onion rings.

Everything after that goes to black. At this very moment, though, I recognize that Mr. Onion Ring Man is now on top of me, looking positively gleeful, his shaggy brown hair flapping about as he thrusts inside me.

“You took a little nap,” he informs me. “I had to wake you up.”

Yeah . . . that’s one way to put it.

On the way into work, I refuse to feel sadness or regret. No, this is just a crazy story. That’s what it is. So I write it up and email it to all the coworkers I partied with the night before, telling them all about the “hilarity” of what happened after I left.

All jacked up on no sleep and a severe hangover, I’m greedy for even more reaction and jokes to be made, though. So while Katherine didn’t go out with us, I forward on my witty little summary to show her what a hysterical maniac I am.

I just know she’ll get a kick out of this.

Later in the day, Katherine walks over to my desk with a tentative smile on her face. She is kind as always, but there is a difference in her demeanor. It’s like she’s looking through me.

“Wasn’t that crazy?” I laugh, all lazy and cool and smiling.

“Yeah,” she says quietly, sitting on my desk, shifting uncomfortably, seeming more like a big sister than my boss or my friend.

“Hey, I don’t want to be weird,” Katherine begins. “I’m just, you know, a little worried. I don’t want you to end up like Diane Keaton in Looking for Mr. Goodbar or anything.”

The instant I hear the concern in her voice, tears well up in my eyes. Embarrassed at having blown my cover as the wild party girl who is having so much fun, I look down and brush them away. I’m crying because Katherine knows how easily I get crushed. She knows I feel crushed by someone winking at me the wrong way, breathing accidentally in my direction, and yet she’s saying all of this anyway. She is saying this as a friend. She is saying this as a friend who doesn’t want to see me die.

“Well, I mean, I’m . . . I’m sorry,” I stutter. “I mean . . . I certainly don’t want to worry you.”

“No, that’s not it at all,” she says softly. “I’m just a little concerned. Just a little bit.”

That’s all she says, but it’s something I’ve never forgotten.

I wanted so badly for someone to look at me the way that she did that day—to want to protect me, to care if I am alive or dead.

And when it happens, just that tender little scrap of love feels almost too much for me to handle without breaking down crying.



* * *




NOT TOO LONG after my breakup with Blaine, when I realize that I can’t stop looking at his Facebook profile, I decide to do a story on “stalking exes,” where you keep looking at their social media to see who they are dating and what they are doing.

I interview and get to know the comedian Marc Maron for the piece. He shows me very quickly that I am not the only one to do this.

“After my divorce, I decided to do a Google research project, and the title of the project is, ‘Who Is My Ex-Wife Sleeping With?’?” Maron tells me. “And I googled her name and saw some pictures of my wife with a screenwriter, and within a half hour I found out he was Harvard-educated, comes from a rich family, writes for a TV show, and has a script deal with a major studio. All I didn’t find was footage of them having sex, and stopping in the middle to turn to the camera and laugh at me.”

Maron pauses. “I’m not saying it’s not out there. I just didn’t want to search anymore.”

Not too long after that article runs, I have a killer meeting with an HBO executive and the idea of doing an exaggerated version of my life is tossed around. So I decide to film a reel to illustrate what that might look like, based on the two-pilots story. I call the project Spinster, and I ask Maron if he’ll play my boyfriend in what I’m shooting.