Being alone does have some upsides, though. For my final story of the year, Steve agrees to let me do a piece where I go out on dates with all the randos who contact me on MySpace. The news peg? Social media folks are Time’s “Person of the Year.”
While I’m writing the first draft of the story, Steve comes over to my desk and says, “It reads too much like a stand-up comedy routine.”
I always forget that he can get into my “basket” (as our personal or shared server files are called, with editors able to read ours, but reporters unable to read editors’), and so Steve is reviewing as I am writing.
Steve looks at me uncertainly, and my heart sinks. I don’t want to disappoint him.
“Go deeper,” he says.
To do that, I focus on my favorite person from the story, forty-eight-year-old George Jack.
“We meet in Union Square,” I write of George Jack, who I realize upon reflection might not have been using his real name. “And it’s kind of like Sleepless in Seattle except that he lives in his parents’ basement in the Bronx and I want to kill myself.”
But then I get more honest, less jokey, at Steve’s prodding.
“Let’s be fair. George is pretty cool,” I write. “He says he likes me because I’m not fake like some of the women on there. He tells me some ladies will try to get him to pay for their journey to America. I’m not like that at all, and I feel really great about myself. We part ways, and he tells me when he will be online next. The schedule depends on when the computer store is open. George isn’t ashamed, and I kind of respect him for it.”
When the piece publishes, I’m flooded with email from people all over the world who connect with the loneliness and the desperation. But the best email is from George himself.
have merry xmas and thanks to myspace, me and my ex are probably getting back together and yr article sealed it ty george.
I am still single at the end of 2006, but at least George isn’t.
chapter five
The Dating Column
2007
I welcome in the New Year with comedian Julie Klausner at a small dinner in Chinatown then a “Get Lucky in ’07” party in Greenpoint. After taking a few long drags of a joint with repeats of Intervention playing in the background, I walk stoned and blissed-out in the rain to find the subway. On the F train home, with the mellow numbness of the buzz kicking in and the orange-and-cream colors of the seats fuzzing around me, I have a moment of clarity.
I keep waiting for my life to begin. I keep waiting for everything to be okay. But what if I stopped waiting?
Gazing around the rattling subway, soiled newspapers and trash everywhere I look, I sit down, close my eyes, and imagine myself on a ride at Disneyland. I repeat to myself the question: What if I just decided everything was okay right now?
Waking up the next morning, the feeling hasn’t totally vanished, and I start enjoying how different things look. Maybe the fear that constantly wracks me could be processed as something else: excitement.
As part of my “everything is awesome” initiative, I decide I am going to be the best me possible—by trying to fix all my physical imperfections. So when a doctor I barely know says he is willing to give me a free laser treatment on a few veins near my ankles, I’m stoked.
I originally met him during my piece on the “detox-retox” lifestyle in New York, and a friend told me I should talk to this guy because he partied the hardest. I left the doc a message at the time, and he called me back.
“New York Post, Mandy speaking,” I answered.
“You just feel like the coolest person in the world answering that way, don’t you?” the doc said derisively.
“Oh hey, hi,” I said. “Yeah, I was wondering if I could talk to you for—”
“Do I want to be quoted in a story about getting fucked up all the time?” he cut me off. “No.”
But we kept in touch, and when the opportunity for the free laser comes up, I am excited to try it. In his posh office now, he looks over my chart.
“You’ve had a pectus excavatum?” he asks. “Interesting. Can I see?”
I lift up my dress, and he gets a nice long look at my breasts and the surgery scar from when I was nine.
“Very nice,” he says, and I realize I have just shown my tits for the sole purpose of him wanting to see. I’m there for my ankle. Not my chest.
Pretty soon, he fires up the laser and goes to work on my ankle. It feels like I am being shot, and afterward, I stare down, and a huge red welt appears.
“That’s normal,” he says.
And I nod. But as weeks go by, it doesn’t get any better. It gets worse, in fact, and I think about how much the increasingly ugly tissue reminds me of the pectus excavatum scar he had unnecessarily asked to see.
The scar from my childhood still haunts me.
I was just nine years old when I stood naked for another creepy physician who conducted a full examination, breaking down what was wrong with me.
“Well, do you see right here?” the doctor pointed out to my mom, touching my undeveloped breasts. “Her chest, it’s concave. Now, you wouldn’t want her to be embarrassed when she goes swimming, would you?”
No, no. We wouldn’t want her to be embarrassed about that.
To counteract the very slight chest concavity that no one would have ever noticed in the first place, major surgery was required. In the next few weeks, I was anesthetized and laid out on the operating table, my chest was cut open, the ends of my ribs were removed, and my sternum was broken then straightened out, with a
