Assisted Loving (14 page)

“Leave it alone? Leave it alone? Sure I can leave it alone, Dad. But let me tell you something. I have a date tonight. And I have to get going or I'll be late. And if you want me to enjoy myself, then I need you up and dating, too. So tomorrow I want you to brush your hair, put on a clean shirt, and make nice to the ladies with the good jewelry. Right now, I've got to go. Tonight, you can date vicariously through me!”

For the first time all night, he sits up straight and looks me in the eye.

“Good luck, Bobby,” he says as he waves. “I wish you all the luck in the world.”

“Thanks,” I say. “I'll need it.”

Mercifully, traffic isn't bad, and I get to the city just in time to make it to a midtown bar to meet up with a guy called Guy. But he isn't here yet. I sit down and order a martini. We met a couple months before but have not been able to connect since.

He's a half hour late now.

I order another drink and look around the dimly lit bar. This place, it's so predictably groovy—gay-century modern with the big globe lights and Eames knock-off coffee tables. And all the men in here are thirty years old. Or trying to look it. None of them have anything resembling my middle-aged paunch. All of them have flawless skin and boyish hair without even a fleck of gray. And why are they all wearing long-sleeve T-shirts under short-sleeve ones? They're all laughing shrilly and drinking the new muddled mint martini with artisanal vodka from Chechnya. I feel old in my collared shirt. But then again, if eighty is the new seventy, then forty is the new thirty, right? That makes me, what? Thirty-five? Nobody wants to act or dress his age anymore. Why shouldn't I be here, trying to fit in with all these skinny twenty-somethings in low-riding jeans?

But where is my date? It's embarrassing to be alone here. Am I being stood up? I could have been spending this time with my father. I hated having to rush off from him tonight, when he's so down. I check my cell phone. No messages. Why am I sticking around this bar? Am I so desperate? Another drink. This music—house music or whatever it is. It's so monotonous, and it's pounding away, reminding me of all the years I've stood around at bars like this one, snubbing or being snubbed. How many more years will I be holding a drink in my hand, staring into space, hoping to make a connection, nodding my head to this monotonous music I hate? All I'd really like to hear right now is one of the sweet, uplifting sentimental songs that my father loves so much.

I'm drunk when Guy finally arrives. He's looking handsome, and tells me he's sorry to be so late. He was stuck
at dinner with the president of a big jewelry company, he explains, or something like that. Name-dropping. I'm not impressed.

“I blew my father off so I could be here on time to meet you,” I tell him.

“I'm sorry. I didn't have my cell phone, so I couldn't call.”

“You're almost an hour late! Do you know that?”

“Can you lower your voice? You're making a scene.”

“Whatever.” I slam down my drink and storm outside into the cool autumn night. I assume he's going to follow me, but he doesn't. It's pathetic, but I can't quite make myself go home. Moments later, he comes outside, steps up to me, lights a cigarette.

“Sorry,” I say. “It's been hard with my dad.”

I assume he's going to ask me about him, show some concern, let me get it off my chest so we can reconcile.

“Look,” he says. “I don't think this is going to work out tonight.”

“You know,” I say, “I've never known why it's so hard to get together with you.”

“It's been a busy time,” he says. “But I'll call you. I definitely will.” He throws his cigarette on the sidewalk and goes inside. I let my shoulders drop and feel the air let out of my night with a whoosh. Then, after a long sigh, I head home.

M
y TV show doesn't sell. My staged reading ends up getting no backers. I don't tell my father any of this because it will prove he was right. That would be intolerable.

Meanwhile, Dad's life has moved on beautifully. Against everyone's advice, he gets himself out of rehab early and goes home to his assisted-living place in Great Neck, where he recuperates ahead of schedule. Then he packs his things, and, with a brand-new hip, he hobbles onto the free flight he booked on his miles account months ago, and soars right back down to Florida, where he is happiest.

And much to my delight, he quickly finds his
she
-legs again and takes up where he had left off last summer
with—ta da!—Fifth Avenue Florence. It gets off to a funky start when he shows up an hour early to pick her up for a date. She's in her bathrobe, but it doesn't faze her, nor do any of his other habits that I thought would be deal breakers—including his urge to defend his beloved Republican Party to all her liberal friends. Apparently she likes having him around as more than a bridge partner. She's taking him to lunch at the Palm Beach Country Club, a scene far beyond his social sphere.

“It's a gorgeous place, Bobby,” he tells me on one of his phone dispatches. “And Florence is a very classy lady. A woman of the world. You'd approve.”

“So has there been any canoodling yet, Dad?”

“Canoodling? Is that like cuddling?”

“With benefits. Although I don't know why I'm asking.”

“For now I think she just likes having an escort, but I'm willing to be patient.”

“So tell me more about her, Dad. Looks?”

“Fair. Nice figure. And she's younger than me by ten years.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Well, she's also a little self-centered and domineering.”

“Oh. In what way?”

“She likes to decide the agenda when we go out. And she tends to be more interested in spending time with her friends than with mine.”

“Well, you love meeting new people, so that's good, right?”

“Most of her friends aren't anything extra. But then,
none of the women down here are all that pleasant, especially the bridge players. They always find something to complain about. Some of them have chips on their shoulders the size of matzoh balls. You can tell a lot about a woman by the way she plays bridge.”

“And Florence is
great
at bridge, right, Dad?”

“Yes, she's a good player, but she's very strong-minded, so it can be a little hard to take. I don't like being henpecked. I like to keep things easy.”

“Oh, come on, Dad, she must be very fond of you if she's asking you out so much. I think it's time to take it to the next level.”

“The thought has crossed my mind. But how? If I ask her out to a movie and I take her hand and she pulls it away, do I have to apologize for being too forward?”

“No. Pretend it never happened.”

“And if I want to kiss her, where is the best place to give it a try?”

“How about at her front door when you drop her off after the next date?”

“I don't escort her to her door. My hip's still recuperating.”

“How about in the car? You're keeping it clean for her, aren't you?”

“I'm trying to keep things off the passenger seat.”

“So you have some of your music playing, maybe Frank Sinatra, very smooth, and then you just kind of lean over and kiss her good night and see where it leads.”

He says he'll give it some thought. But he's still a little leery, I can tell.

I can't say I blame him. And besides, what do I know about putting the moves on anybody? When I hang up
the phone, my face is flushed with excitement, as if I'm the one about to kiss someone good night. Why am I so desperate for him to pursue a relationship with this Fifth Avenue Florence? Is it zip-code envy?

Am I social climbing through my father?

O
ne Friday night in December, a few weeks after Dad's departure for Florida, when I'm in the city with no plans for the weekend (even as my old man is booked nonstop), I find myself pulled into an intense little e-mail correspondence with a guy on my dating Web site. We parry over a bestselling novel I like. He suggests it's overwritten. I disagree. I rave about Moby's new CD. He dismisses it. We only know each other's Internet names (his is particularly pretentious—an arcane Danish modern furniture designer), but after a few hours of e-mailing back and forth, we have gotten to level two and exchanged phone numbers. I take a breath and call him to arrange a dinner date.

He picks up his phone and says, “Not that Bob Morris!” He has my name on his caller ID. It throws me. He knows
of me, and I know of him. He's a book agent. We set up a date for the next night, but it bothers me that we know of each other. I like to keep my dating life private. That way, when it doesn't work out, I don't have to worry about word getting around. Repercussions and reverberations.

I choose my outfit carefully on Saturday night. Leather pants and a pleated shirt. Very avant-garde, I think. My cheeks are burning from the cold when I walk into a downtown restaurant. I'm anxious. Part of me is already trying to think of a nice way to make it just drinks rather than dinner. The restaurant is noisy, everyone with a cell phone and BlackBerry at the ready so they don't have to commit fully to being where they are. I don't see anyone I know, and that's a huge relief. I hate introducing dates to friends. So awkward. Is that him at the bar, face glowing in the light?

“Ira?”

“Bob?”

We shake hands and sit down at a corner table. I order a vanilla martini. He orders a Diet Coke. He's handsome, but I think he kind of looks like me. And I am not my type. He's small, with wavy salt-and-pepper hair—a Jewish Richard Gere is how people might see him. Edgy tortoiseshell glasses. Brown eyes. Good skin. Strong-looking hands. Bold yellow turtleneck sweater that only a very confident man in his early forties could pull off. Attitude to spare. And that voice. How do I describe it? It's definitely New York, but with an almost plummy English overlay that doesn't quite erase his nasal Bronx accent.

I don't know anybody from the Bronx. It's enough that I still know people from the Islips, where I'm from. This is only one of many toxic thoughts I bring to the table.
(And later I find out that he almost writes me off for my leather pants and vanilla martini.) But there is an instant rapport. We are both so opinionated.

“I can't stand how gentrified this neighborhood is,” he says about the West Village, where I'm proud to have a rent-stabilized apartment among the wealthy.

“Doesn't bother me at all,” I say. “In fact, it feels validating to have an Olsen twin living around the corner.”

“The whole city I knew as a kid is gone,” he says.

“Which means there are no more heroin addicts?”

“Yes, but now we have fashion editors,” he says.

We shouldn't laugh, but we do. Maybe two abrasive personalities are better than one. Neither of us seems to see the need to be careful. Our conversation is the least-strained first-date conversation I've ever had. We argue about books and movies and magazines. We gossip about people we have in common. I feel so comfortable with him that I let down my guard and do something I would never do on a first date: I talk a little about my father and his dating travails. Instead of changing the subject (could there be any less-attractive subject on a first date?), Ira just listens and laughs. He appreciates that I'm concerned about my old man, and then he tells me that his mother is a widow, too, and in Great Neck, no less. My ears go up like a dog who has just heard the food hit the bowl. “Hey! My father lives in Great Neck!”

“Oh yeah? Where?”

“The Centra, assisted living.”

“I know that building very well.”

“So what's your mother like? How old is she? Is she attractive?”

He describes her as a small, youthful eighty-two-year-
old with a big SUV. She still drives, runs around to her senior groups and lectures—an upbeat, lively woman. Okay, she's a finger-wagging socialist who has no interest in involving herself with another man. No matter. She could be good for my father, I'm thinking, especially if Florence fails. Someone for the spring, when he's back from Florida. Ira dismisses me with a brush of his hand. He's tough.

“Why don't we table this topic for now?” he says.

“Why? Just ask your mom if she'd be up for meeting him!”

“Maybe I should have brought her along on this date,” he says.

As we eat our meal and then pay the bill—Dutch—I realize that the hour has sped by. This man with the name that makes me cringe could easily be a friend.

But boyfriends?

He's kind of affected, if not a little flamboyant. And I mean, not to harp on it, but come on—Ira Silverberg. Can I date such a Jewish-sounding name? With cold wind on our cheeks and clouds of condensation coming out of our mouths, we walk through the Village after dinner, chatting away, with endless topics to cover and more still untouched. I should not have had that last martini. He had only Diet Cokes. And okay, I'm not on my best behavior because I'm not intimidated by him, or even concerned that I'm making a good impression. He isn't quickening my heart the way a good date should. But what the hell? It's cold. He's cute. Or cute enough. Outside my building, with take-out menus swirling around our feet, I kiss him good night. He doesn't pull away. But he also doesn't egg me on for more. He just smiles. He has a slightly crooked
tooth. His eyes are squinty, and if they're pools, only lap pools. They're also brown when I prefer blue. But they are full of light and life. “Good night,” he says. “Let's do it again.”

He walks away in a chic black shearling coat, all posture and dignity.

Amusing guy. And compelling on a level that isn't superficial.

On our second date, I meet the dog. I have come to pick Ira up in his Soho apartment. The place is a well-designed walkup with midcentury furniture in bold colors. Most impressive are his shelves of books. Books by friends. Books he published, edited, sold as an agent. On the one hand he's a flip city boy into clothes and design. But on the other hand, there are all these books he is absolutely passionate about, that he championed, and I'm impressed. His heart is in the world of serious authors and artists. There are black-and-white photographs of him as a teenager hanging around with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg. This Ira Silverberg of the Bronx has lived three times as many lives as I have. He was even a doorman at Limelight, the nightclub. He's younger than me by five years. Yet he knows so much more than I do.

The only thing he doesn't know, apparently, is how to control his dog, Byron, a high-strung cairn terrier. As we are leaving his apartment to go to a holiday party, I am putting on my coat when I feel something at my ankles, and I jump when I look down. This little dark cloud of fur is trying to sink his teeth into me to keep me from leaving.

“Hey! Your dog's biting my legs!”

“Byron! No!” Ira says as he pulls him away. The dog
tries to snap at him. It is an alarming display of domestic doggy discord. In fact, it's rather like seeing that the child of someone you're dating is an out-of-control hellion. What to think about it?

After he locks his front door, he tells me, “Byron has abandonment issues.”

“Meaning he doesn't like to be left?”

“Exactly.”

“Does he bite a lot of people?”

“Not enough, if you ask me. This neighborhood is overrun with tourists.”

I laugh. We laugh the whole night, and he's great at the party I've been invited to. Even though it's more a style crowd than a literary one, he knows people and fits right in. He's witty and attractive, animated to the point of antic. But then, a little while into the evening, I start to worry that he's talking way too loud. And I wish that his Bronx accent wasn't quite so pronounced. I find myself fighting the impulse to interrupt what he's saying to people—isn't he going on a bit too long? Of course, everyone is finding him wonderful. I rarely have dates who fit right into my pushy little party world. At the end of the evening, he asks if I'll walk Byron with him.

“Is he going to be biting anyone?” I say.

“Only men in bad shoes,” he says.

So on a cold December night—our second date—we walk Byron together, his little Toto dog, whose tail is wagging sweetly as he pulls Ira on his leash past the well-dressed evening-outers on the streets of Soho. The dog is twelve years old.

“But he has puppy energy,” Ira says.

Puppy energy. I like that, it's a kind of adorable, strain
ing-at-the-leash quality, a quality I am seeing in Ira, too. For better and for worse, he is nothing if not high-strung.

When it comes time for our third date the next weekend, I am very anxious.

I dress carefully, in a black cashmere turtleneck that will hide my love handles. I shave twice. I can't really tell what he thinks of me, but I get the sense that we're both trying to make it work.

We're in his apartment. Bryon the dog is out of sight somewhere, giving us space to be alone. We finish the Japanese take-out dinner. Barry White is singing “Can't Get Enough of Your Love.” We've got a shag-rug vibe going. I've had several drinks. He's had several cigarettes. The lights are low, candles flickering anxiously. All around us his book collection looms. All those brilliantly convoluted minds seem to be egging us on. It's better company than I'm used to. It's midnight in Soho, and, while the world outside is racing around in expensive jeans, looking for love or a good party, we have arrived at this, shoes off, the third date.

The night when sex has to happen.

And the disturbing truth is that, because I'm unsure of our chemistry, I have not been rushing to get into bed with Ira. Apparently Byron isn't all that eager for me to get into bed with Ira either. As I climb on in his candlelit bedroom, stomach in knots from the anxiety, the growling from underfoot that I've been ignoring suddenly becomes a fierce gray mass lunging at my bare feet. Grrr! Arf! The teeth just miss me as I jump, afraid for my life. “Byron,” Ira yells as the little dog pulls back under the bed. “Bad dog! No!”

I'm in shock. What is it with me and dogs on dates? I laugh nervously at the unchecked feral energy attacking from under the bed. It's something between Dr. Freud and Dr. Seuss. Sex as the out-of-control animal with sharp teeth menacing in the night.

“He just attacked me! Why did he do that?”

“I'm so sorry,” Ira says. “Cairns are cave dwellers, and when he lunges like that, he's just protecting his lair. It's not personal, just instinctual, something his breed does.”

Eventually we turn out the lights.

I want to be physically responsive, in the moment. But I can't with my mind firing in so many directions. Do I really want to do this tonight? If I don't really feel this, how will I do this? It ends with all the sophistication of sixteen-year-olds in the backseat of a car.

“High school sex,” I say, as I jump up and get dressed.

“Better than nothing,” he replies, smiling from the bed.

“I have to go,” I say.

“I'll call you.”

“Okay,” I say. Then I open the door and flee, letting it slam behind me.

Walking home past many lovely young couples, I flail my fist in the air.

“What is wrong with you?” I mutter. “Get over yourself!”

I know there's something very good in him, and I know he's the marrying kind, an unusual trait in New York men. He's a deep person. Funny. Handsome. Honest. Yet my impulse is to run. I always run. Why? Am I still afraid to become intimate with anyone, no matter how appropriate? By making a real effort to commit,
am I making myself too vulnerable? Will I have to turn myself inside out in order to make this work? What if he decides I'm not good enough after a month? Maybe it just isn't meant to be. That happens between people all the time. I can't force it. He's wonderful. But he just isn't my type. He leaves a message the next morning. I don't call back.

I don't return an e-mail either. Is he figuring out that I'm pulling away? He's leaving for California for a week, he writes. I feel awful. We should talk.

But what is there to say? I'm too ashamed of myself to explain myself.

The next day, flowers arrive. He must have ordered them just before getting on his flight. They are white narcissi, delicate as they are fragrant.

There's a card inside. “If that was high school,” it says, “then let's go to college.”

I spend the week talking incessantly about Ira to my friends, saying he's so great and so good looking, but just not for me. “So I guess I'm letting it unravel,” I tell Marisa.

“Are you out of your mind?” she says. “Don't you dare!”

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm having dinner with her family in New Jersey again. She is now completely entwined with Silvano, and they have become a flashy little It couple.

“But I just don't think I can make it work,” I whine. “It's complicated.”

Later, another friend, Amy, is dropping me off after dinner. She's divorced and finding the dating scene impossible.

“Why the hell would you dismiss a man like that?” she asks.

I try to explain that, while I like Ira, I don't think I'd like sleeping with him. She isn't buying it. “It's too early for you to decide if you're physically compatible or not,” she says. “You have to sleep with a guy three times before you can make a good decision.”

“But why? What will that prove if I don't like it the first time?”

“Three times,” she says. “That's the rule. Promise you will before you give up.”