Meet Me at Emotional Baggage Claim (10 page)

I found out in the morning, when I got an email from a beloved reader, who shows excellent taste in literature, except that she also reads this magazine. She wrote and told me that I had won the Worst Columnist award, and I laughed.

Mother Mary was next to me at the time, sitting at the kitchen island, having her mug of morning coffee. A whitish hunk of powdered sugar donut floated inside, like an iceberg with saturated fats. She asked, “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” I answered, wisely. I was lying to protect the magazine staffers. I know what she’s capable of.

Vendetta
is an Italian word, for a reason.

She may be eighty-seven, but she can still wield a wooden spoon.

And she has a history of defending me that would shame a grizzly. Once, when I worked in a law firm, and she thought I was working too hard, she told me she wanted to call the principal. In elementary school, when I got yelled at for something I didn’t do, she wanted to call the governor.

Funny, the governor also won a Worst of Philly award, for Worst Sports Column, but I didn’t tell my mother that, either.

Personally, I don’t want my governor to be a good sports columnist.

“No, really, what’s so funny?” Mother Mary asks. “What are you looking at on the computer?”

“Porn.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I know, I’m the Worst Columnist. It says so, right here.”

“
Who
says that?” Her cloudy brown eyes flare behind her trifocals. She has a temper that goes from zero to explosive in sixty seconds. Nitroglycerin has a higher flashpoint.

“A magazine says it.”

“Where? I want to see it!” Her face flushes, and she becomes a human thermometer, with all the blood rushing to her bulb.

“I don’t have the magazine to show you.”

She waves me off, with an arthritic hand. “Oh, you’re only kidding. They don’t say it. You’re gonna give me a heart attack.”

“No, I’m not kidding. They really said it.”

“Then prove it. Show me the magazine.”

“But I’d have to go out and buy it, and I don’t want to.”

“GO BUY IT!” Mother Mary points to the front door, and her sugar donut sinks into her coffee. So I leave the house, get in the car, drive to the store, and buy the magazine that officially trashes me, in print.

I bring home the magazine and show it to her.

“I can’t read this magazine! The print is too small!”

So I read it to her. “It says I’m the Worst Columnist, see? Here?”

Mother Mary peers at the paragraph, red-faced. “This is terrible!”

“Not really, Ma.”

“Yes, it is! They didn’t mention
me
!”

You’re So Vain, This Is About You

By Francesca

Writing memoir can get complicated, especially when you write about love. Each time I refer to a guy I’ve dated, I agonize over what they’ll think when they read it.

I’m a writer, but I’m still a person.

So I take great pains to disguise their identities. I consider it my duty to protect them this way—unlike fiction, I don’t own their characters, and my perspective is a subjective one. By the time my story goes to print, their own mothers wouldn’t recognize them.

But while they may be anonymous to other readers, it’s possible that they could recognize themselves.

And that kept me up at night. Until I realized one important fact:

The men in my life don’t read me.

Well, my father does, but that’s what dads are for—making your boyfriends look inadequate.

I’m talking about the men I date. And I’ve dated wonderful, supportive, intelligent guys. They seem interested in a lot of things about me, except my job. I try not to let it bother me.

But it does.

One time, a reader wrote my mom, saying that she thought I would be a great match for her son. Her son was supersmart, very successful, and a bona fide nice guy, so my mom passed along my info. We ended up going out a handful of times, and by all accounts everything in the description was 100% true. But I did have a funny conversation with him:

“I have a confession to make,” he said. “I’ve never read your column.”

I was surprised. Not because I expect guys in their early thirties to be reading the column, but this was a blind date, a setup
based
on my easily-Google-able, 700-word column. What if he disagreed with his mother and thought I sounded awful? Wasn’t he curious?

“Then what made you want to meet me?” I asked.

“I liked your picture.”

There’s a reason no one ever wrote a book called
The Masculine Mystique
.

But his apathy is not unique. Even boyfriends I’ve dated seriously, men I have loved, don’t read my writing.

I wrote a short novel as my senior thesis in college, and in it, I gave the love interest the same name as my ex-boyfriend. The character wasn’t based on him, but I found using his name in the first draft helped trigger some of the emotions I needed to express for the story. I always intended to change it. My ex went to my college, and I didn’t think my new boyfriend, also a classmate, would appreciate the homage.

But then my thesis advisor thought the new name I suggested sounded too much like another character’s, and somehow in the haste of editing on a deadline, it remained. My thesis went on to win an award, and as part of the honor, the university produced bound copies to be displayed on a front shelf in the library.

I should have been celebrating, but instead I felt sick. What would happen when they read it? I braced myself for the awkward conversations and hurt feelings sure to be coming my way.

Any minute now.

Luckily I didn’t hold my breath. Neither of them cracked the cover.

Maybe it’s a gender thing. There are different expectations for men and women in relationships. In high school, even in the 2000’s, I remember boys would ask their girlfriends to watch their sport’s practice. As if watching a bunch of sweaty, pimply adolescent boys run drills could possibly be entertaining. But girls would do it!

Thank God my first boyfriend was a band geek, so I didn’t have to endure this tedium.

See, I can call him that because he’ll never know.

Women are trained to show interest in every aspect of men’s lives, and men are trained to believe they are fascinating. Meanwhile, women are mocked in movies and sitcoms for wishing their boyfriends or husbands would ask about their day.

The nerve!

I’m not against supporting your partner, I’d just love to see some sixteen-year-old boys watching field hockey practice.

And it’s not that I want my ex-boyfriends to be obsessed with me. On the contrary, I want them to move on (slowly), date other people (after I start seeing someone first), and be (almost as) happy (as I am).

Ex-boyfriends should have a greater stake in their former flames’ creative output, because they might show up in it.

Think of Carly Simon’s famous lyric, “You’re so vain, you probably think this song is about you.” For the last forty years, fans have tried to guess which famous ex-lover she’s addressing. Is it Mick Jagger? Warren Beatty?

The mystery was fun, but it didn’t really matter. What made the song awesome was the idea of an old boyfriend pining away, deluding himself that he still matters, while his ex, once jilted, now rocks out at his expense.

If living well is the best revenge, the second best is a hit record.

But last year, Simon released a new edition of the song, promising it would answer the riddle of the man’s identity, and sure enough, if you play the song backwards, you can hear her whisper: “David.”

David? Bowie? Cassidy?

David
Geffen,
according to
The Sun
and
Us Weekly.
Not an ex-lover at all, but the gay record executive who headed her then-label Elektra. Supposedly, Simon blamed Geffen for favoring rival singer Joni Mitchell over her.

Boring.

But typical. I’m sure Jagger and Beatty were vain, too, but they were probably also too self-absorbed to be poring over the lyrics to their old girlfriend’s song.

Adele’s infamous ex might be the only person on earth who hasn’t heard her album.

If my ex-boyfriend wrote a hit album after we broke up, I would hold a stethoscope to the stereo speakers and replay it for a panel of my girlfriends.

In fact, my last boyfriend was a singer-songwriter, and although he had many delectable traits, this one excited me most. The way I saw it, it was win-win—whether our relationship became a true-love affair or a fiery train wreck, I could end up in a song!

One day, I asked him if he ever wrote songs about women from his past or present (wink wink, nudge nudge).

He said no, not really, he just made them up.

Even the girls’ names in his songs?

Whatever rhymes.

A cleverly diplomatic answer, I thought, but I didn’t believe it. Instead I cursed my mother for giving me such an un-rhymeable first name. I can’t even work my name into a limerick:

There once was a girl named Francesca …

In the end, we split up amicably, I got no souvenir song, and my only parting gift was five breakup pounds.

Now if he read this, I would never cop to the weight gain. Luckily I don’t have to worry.

So I’m still longing for the artist whom I can inspire or, at the very least, damage.

I’d love to be a masterpiece, but I’ll settle for your severed ear.

I think most women find the notion of being a muse romantic. So why don’t men?

Maybe it’s because the role of the artist’s muse was historically female, so men don’t share the fantasy.

Well, that’s not true either, because history has been rewritten as of late. Experts now believe that Shakespeare likely wrote his love sonnets about a young man, and Da Vinci’s
Mona Lisa
was a portrait of his pretty-boy assistant.

Historical proof all the good ones are gay.

But these straight men are missing out. Guys, don’t you see? This is your chance at real immortality—not with sperm but with ink. The pen is mightier than the penis! You can leave your mark on the world without having to pay for its college tuition.

Are you a great lover? Get it in writing!

Are you a total jerk? Revel in your infamy!

Or don’t. I’m over it. I’m not writing to get male attention anyway. I write to share my perspective, laugh at myself, and hopefully connect to my lovely, intelligent, and sensitive readers. My boyfriends may not be among them, but that’s for the best. It’s better I be uninhibited, or at least it’s more fun that way. Like my favorite Real Housewife and spiritual leader Camille Grammar says, freedom is a girl’s best friend.

When I first tell guys I’m a writer, they’ll often make a joke along the lines of, “Uh-oh, I better be good. I don’t want to end up in a book!”

I always smile and assure them they have nothing to worry about.

And I mean it.

What they don’t know won’t hurt them.

Shortcut Sally

By Lisa

The world divides into two categories of people: Those Who Like Shortcuts, like me, and Those Who Don’t, like Daughter Francesca.

These worlds collided last week, when I was in New York visiting her.

Before I explain, let me point out that I don’t take shortcuts in everything. In fact, once again, the world divides into two categories: Things In Which I Never Take Shortcuts, like my writing, and Things In Which I Always Take Shortcuts.

Which is everything else.

Most of the time, this serves me well. For example, I couldn’t figure out how to program my VCR, so I never did, and that didn’t hurt me in the end, because now VCRs are extinct.

Joke’s on you, VCRs.

To follow up, I got a DVD player, but I couldn’t figure out how to attach it to my new big TV, so I didn’t bother. And that didn’t matter either, because my cable company invented On Demand.

Comcastic!

See, if you just wait long enough, some problems solve themselves, which is a special form of shortcut.

In fact, my favorite.

It works well, but don’t try it at home if you’re not an expert, like me. It requires years of practice ignoring things, and you have to know which things to ignore. I also have a genetic predisposition, as Mother Mary is a master at ignoring things, like oxygen and me.

I’ve been living my life, taking my shortcuts, but it became a problem visiting Francesca, because she doesn’t. We were doing things around her apartment when we decided to hang up four pictures. They were of equal size, and they had to be mounted in a straight line. Francesca has her way to do it, and I have mine.

The shortcut!

I grab the hammer and want to bang a nail into the wall, hang the print, eyeball it, then hang the second print next to it. If it’s not level, I’ll take off the print, pull out the nail, and hammer in another nail. It won’t matter, because all the nail holes will be hidden behind the picture and no one will ever know.

You may recall that I’m the girl who painted around my pictures rather than taking them down and painting the wall.

Francesca says, “We should measure before we hang them. Each print is six inches across, and if we leave two inches between each one, we can make a little tick mark on the wall and…”

I stop listening. I love her, but I hate math. Discussion ensues, after which I say, “Look, you wanna do it yourself?”

“Yes,” Francesca answers, already reaching for the hammer, as she knows me and loves me anyway.

Ten minutes later, we have a second incident, when we were unpacking a new carbon-monoxide detector. By way of background, Francesca has a detector in the hallway of her apartment, and it had gone off in the middle of the night, as had her neighbor’s. Her super had determined that the cause was a waning battery, and not lethal gas.

Good to know.

But being the excellent mother that I am, I wanted her to have an extra detector in her bedroom, so we bought one. It said on the package that all you had to do to install it was to plug it into an electrical socket, which is my kind of installation. If VCRs had worked that way, they’d still be around.