Once a week, Daily Intel takes a peek at what your friends and neighbors are doing behind doors left slightly ajar. Today, the Fat-No-Longer Woman on the Prowl: 39, Upper East Side, interior designer, straight and single.
Day One
12:40 p.m.: Dressed like a homeless person on my trip to get a coffee, I get a smile from a construction worker and a hello from someone who looks like a serial killer. After a decade-long “dating hiatus” due to being obese, followed by 70-pound weight loss, my initial goal was “consecutive dates with a non-weirdo.” I’ve recently revised that policy. Looks are mandatory.
12:50 p.m.: Returning to my building, see that my pervy mailman is in there. Per my usual, I circle the block to avoid him.
2:45 p.m.: Online research of the Cone, a vibrator I am curious about. It’s out of my price range for items such as this, so I earmark funds for other things to help meet a real person with whom to have actual sex: push-up bra, heels.
7:30 p.m.: Happy hour at Upper East Side dive bar. No big surprise that there’s nothing age appropriate to speak of. That’s what I get for making my location choice based on not having to travel too far in the rain.
11:30 p.m.: No chance of falling asleep anytime soon, so I masturbate. Not sure if anyone else thinks of Steve Carrel as a sex symbol, but he works for me.
Day Two
8:15 a.m.: Cute guy at Weight Watchers meeting, who I always catch looking at me. I’m still not sure I want to say “I met my boyfriend at Weight Watchers.” I would have to lie and say we met at the gym.
2 p.m.: Twenty-mile marathon training run. Pass a lunatic at East 110th Street who claps, stomps his feet, and cheers me on by chanting, “Go! Go! You’ve got a great face!”
1:24 a.m.: Arrive home after drinks, check e-mail which includes link to photographs from last Saturday’s half-marathon. Immediately move to new site to purchase very expensive new sports bra to alleviate what looks like sagging but is actually 36Ds running fast.
Day Three
4:30 p.m.: Running by reservoir. Despite the sign that says “running track,” it’s become a cross between a lovers’ lane and a haven for people who just stare into space. I get annoyed.
1 a.m.: What starts out as drinks with friends ends up as a make-out session with a guy I’ve seen around the neighborhood. Last I heard, he had a girlfriend, but I guess he’s not above making out with other people.
1:30 a.m.: Aforementioned “gentleman” invites himself home with me and we take a taxi to my place.
1:45 a.m.: In my vestibule, I mention the girlfriend. “Yeah, I have a girlfriend. So, just to be clear, if we go upstairs and fuck, it doesn’t make us a couple.”
2 a.m.: Yummmmm … Alone upstairs, I reheat some macaroni and cheese, grateful for the free taxi ride home.
Day Four
11 a.m.: Brunch with a single friend and a married friend. The married friend always seems disappointed when even the most horrific of our dates don’t work out. Seriously, when I described giving a blow job to a 21-year-old (whose name I forgot by the time I recounted the story), when I was 36, she asked, “So are you going to see him again?”
11:30 a.m.: Brunch was in Chelsea. Not a lot for me here.
1 p.m.: Kick off my weekly Sunday-afternoon tradition: “Find Steve on Craigslist.” Steve is a disgusting person I slept with back in April, who attributed my lack of an orgasm to his use of a hair-replacement product. Every Sunday, sure as the rising sun, he posts an ad where he comments about the weather and requests a ‘beautiful companion’ to go to the beach/take a walk in the park/get a coffee/see a movie. He sickens me.
1:05 p.m.: Find Steve. Walk myself through the time he was naked in my bedroom and said that he’d just gotten over having viral conjunctivitis. I throw up a little in my mouth.
11:45 p.m.: Have trouble falling asleep, but unfortunately can’t masturbate on a Sunday. Not because of twelve years of Catholic school, but because of Steve. Thinking about him turns me off from sex. I know you’ve had one like that. You still gag years later.
Day Five
8 a.m.: Googled the high-school love of my life and finally, after years, net a huge find: a picture! He was a lot hotter as a 17-year-old McDonald’s employee than in his current lot in life: a Denny’s restaurant franchisee and father of three.
11 a.m.: In the shower … see and feel the war wounds from yesterday’s run. Scratches all over from pinning miscellaneous gear on waistband. No one can see me naked until these clear up. What’s the point of running a marathon if you get muscles yet are disfigured?
8:27 p.m.: Walking up to blind date, and my date calls to confirm that he is in place for our 8:30. Not sure what the point of confirming three minutes before go time. Bad sign.
9 p.m.: Safe and sound and never dating again. The blind date was also comatose. He was slumped over the bar, a non-talker, totally glum and depressed and entirely devoid of enthusiasm and life. It was like he was overdue on his plan to commit suicide. I threw back my glass of wine like it was a shot and ran into traffic.
Day Six
9:15 a.m.: Check e-mail, which continues every two minutes until I leave again at 5 p.m. Waiting for response from a guy who dared me to go out with him (“I bet you can’t go out for drinks after running twenty miles”), then bailed through a mutual friend. Her take: He is a 35-year-old virgin who woke up sober and scared to go. I e-mailed on Monday morning asking for a rain check … no rain check yet.
5 p.m.: Still no rain check. He is definitely scared.
11:45 p.m.: No rain check. He is definitely a 35-year-old virgin and looking to stay that way.
11:55 p.m.: Masturbate, after vanquishing the mental images of the aforementioned virgin. Instead I think about Danny … another weird guy I slept with awhile ago, whom I nicknamed “The Thong Guy” because, for some reason he left what looked like a stripper’s G-string thong at my apartment. However, he was well endowed and really confident which sort of offset the weirdness.
Day Seven
7 p.m.: Appointment with new client. Handsome, single thirtysomething man, who seems to have it together. I consider whether he’s dateable for either me or my friends and can’t put my finger on why he’s not for me.
7:30 p.m.: He’s nice, he’s polite, what is it … Oh. He’s a Totally Type A. Important realization. I do not want someone who is Totally Type A.
9:15 p.m.: Beeline out to meet friend at the Living Room on the LES, the part of town where I feel the least hip and young.
9:20 p.m.: Upon arriving at the door, I am asked for I.D. I roll my eyes, impatient as he’s the only barrier between me and my first glass of Sauvignon Blanc. I tell the scary man, “I’m older than this building.” Hand him the evidence and he says, “Wow! You look great for 39!”
Total: Zero acts of intercourse; two acts of masturbation; one make-out session as “the other woman”; one date that should have happened and didn’t; one date that should never have happened and did. And one new very expensive vibrator in the mail.
