prey all you want, but I’m facing facts. There are no more smart, successful, interesting men in this city. Only narcissist-psychopath finance guys who mentally give us their ‘valuation’ based on the sum of our body parts. Or developmentally arrested geeky tech guys who play video games all day, who lunge at you mad-eyed for a kiss on your awkward, conversationally challenged second date. Or, second-wave hipsters with dirty beards and ‘I am a chef and a musician’ tattoos who are looking for twenties twee bar-maidens. That’s it. I’m not looking for a unicorn. There are no unicorns. We need to face it. We’ve missed the boat by being stuck in the wrong long-term relationships in our twenties. All the relatively stable types with short, nonimpulsive alleles have already married off with basic-bitch-type college girlfriends and live in Westport and are on to leading their gapster lives, sipping craft beer and pumpkin spiced lattes while they take pictures of their babies at the apple-picking orchard.
“All that’s left are an emotionally stunted crop of underemployed, scruffy, pasty boy-men who are following the Don Draper path of transactional fucking, or are angrily divorced, or might have plans to commit to their bourbon collections—but not us—ever. The most we can expect is some last-minute, late-night outside-of-the-spoon cuddling. Definitely no PHs.
“If we’re lucky, we’ll meet transient drunken Australians who still have some masculine qualities left. That’s our only hope...” I trail off, hit hard by the rusty nail that has snuck up on me. My friends look around, shell-shocked and hoping no one’s heard.
“Hmm. Thaaaat’s interesting.”
All of a sudden, I twirl around to find this supremely hot, sandy-haired man—who has an Aussie accent. “Hello, I’m Gavin, from Melbourne. And you, my lady with the extremely acid tongue are...”
“Liz. Liz Buckley.”
“Good to meet you, Liz. Love those theories. You’re completely wrong about them, though. I can help you with that. Here’s my number. Give me a call up sometime.” With that, he knocks back what’s left of his red wine, drops it on the bar and takes off toward the door as he gives me a wink.
I stand, red-faced, eating my words, holding his card, which says, “Gavin Bettencourt, executive importer/exporter. Barossa Distribution Co.”
“It’s the vortex. Works every time,” says Addison.
“Every time.” Brie nods.
At that, we’re done for the night. I tell the girls I’ll meet them for brunch that weekend, making sure they get in a cab. I hail one of my own, riding up Eighth Avenue toward midtown, noticing offhandedly all the restaurants lining the blocks, the same ones I’ve seen the past ten years.
I pull out my phone and casually scroll through the addresses, whiskey coursing through my veins in a way that doesn’t make me feel drunk—more like high. I pop Gavin’s number into my contacts—you never know—and then Ryan Murphy pops up at R.
Good 2 c u last night. I had fun. Let’s do it again soon! I type out. For two seconds I question the second part, but part of me thinks we’ve gotten to that place in our friendship; the other part—the sober part—tells me it would be safer not to send this. But what the hell, Addison is right—why am I being so low-self-esteemy these days? I’m not. The old Liz wouldn’t have cared. My finger hovers over the send key. Click.
The next morning at 11:14 a.m., with a dull ache in my left temple, I realize I’m late to my friend’s baby shower in Westchester after the auto-reminder appears on my phone. I can’t tell what I’m most queasy about—last night’s pub outing or texting Ryan at 2:03 a.m. on a Friday night. Total rookie move.
Sitting on the train from Grand Central Station and looking out at the beautiful presummer blossoming of the trees along the Hudson River, my thinking softens toward what the girls were telling me last night. Even if Ryan is in his prime Peter Pan years, still, he’s turning older and could change his agenda if the right girl came along.
When I get to my friend Katie’s house, I have to admit, it’s adorable. My old friend from high school must have gotten some help from her parents on the down payment. The three-bedroom Tudor-style home is on a quiet street in the same town the Clintons live, and orange marigolds are peeking their heads out from the ground in front of perfectly landscaped shrubbery. Taken altogether it feels, unlike me, very grown-up. Then again, my wants are more simple. I’d be really happy if I could find my soul mate and a life that didn’t involve a long daily commute to the Bird Cage. I don’t need West Elm, a grown-up couch or a Vitamix.
As I walk in, all of Katie’s suburban friends are doing the “sit around a circle opening gifts, oohing and ahhing.” I wonder if they know that to a trained baby-specialist like me, they look as though they are just going through the motions, or whether they are actually getting some joy out of staring at the same Baby Boppy they’ve seen at every other baby shower they’ve been to. Even the clothes from Baby Gap are starting to all look the same.
I amble in, and in one quick motion, Katie’s sisters take my gift and hand me a mimosa. Everyone’s staring at the mom-to-be as one of Katie’s blonde sorority friends whispers a comment to her cohort decked out in Lilly Pulitzer. They look just about my age, but seem older, or at least more mature than I, and they size me up and down. My black stretchy material dress, whose empire waist gives me room for my post-night-out bloat, is probably not so baby-shower appropriate, but still very comfy.
As I look for an empty seat, I say a silent prayer that the women in the room with babies will not ask me to hold them. When I pick up one of my friend’s babies my first thought is never, Isn’t she adorable? It’s usually, How long do I have to hold her and smile before I pass her on to the next friend? Not because I don’t love babies—I do. It’s because I find myself going into a thought sequence of the worst possible scenario—not holding her head correctly so her neck falls back, turning her into a paraplegic for life.
Thankfully there are no longing-to-be-held babies in sight, so I take a seat in the back to watch the gift opening. I realize the women are gossiping about my lateness when one says, “She probably got her the baby bib—women without kids always get clothes.”
Ha! Wrong! I turn and stare at them with a self-satisfied grin. They don’t realize I work at Paddy Cakes and may have been, oh, an hour late, but have stealthily arrived with the best gift ever: the Breast-a-nator 2000, the ultimate antimicrobial milking machine that’s like a lactating spa in a box, and makes breastfeeding easy and comfortable.
Katie’s just about opened every gift piled sky-high in her family room—which I am envying, especially the cool velveteen sectional from Crate and Barrel, when I see her sisters handing her mine. I start to smile with pride.
“Oh, my God! This is, like, two hundred dollars! Thank you so, so much, Liz. I didn’t even register for it because I heard they were back-ordered in the States!” Katie exclaims, as she rips off the fancy embossed wrapping paper from my office’s crafts closet.
“I had my press contact call in the newest model from Denmark,” I say, beaming.
“How’d she know about that?” asks the blonde.
“I don’t know,” responds Lilly, “I didn’t even hear about it until last summer, when one of my nipples was about to come off.”
I decide to let everyone in the room in on my secret: “It won Paddy Cakes’ Top 10 Best of Babies last year. It stimulates milk while simultaneously applying a blend of aloe vera, vitamin E and shea butter to the affected area. The suction is centrifugal, mimicking conditions in space, so the areola gets
