“Totally,” I say, laughing. “Oh my God.”
And then—as I sober up—I return to my ABC (Always Be Closing) Stepford Wife party line. So much for the “Fuck Blaine” independent-woman internal monologue I gave myself last night. Now I’m back to used-car salesman. Hey, I can still save this thing. We talked. We laughed. We bonded. No one said they wanted to break up. Maybe it’s time to register him another domain name?
“You could propose to me,” I say.
He looks at me quietly.
“Yeah,” he says, “that’ll be quite a story for our grandchildren.”
Blaine and I have an already planned dinner with his friends that night—the ones I apologized to after saying mean things to them when I was drunk a few years ago. And the entire thing is bizarre. We are now fully playacting. Pretending that I haven’t just sent a nuclear missile into our relationship.
After dinner, Blaine tells me he’s going to go to Vermont for the weekend to go skiing.
I text Mackenzie, encapsulating everything down to one sentence: “I had sex with two Italian pilots last night.”
“HOLY CRAP,” she texts back.
Staring at myself in the harsh glare of daylight, I see what I don’t want to about myself.
I am in fact even more chickenshit than Blaine in this entire scenario. I’m the one who didn’t have the courage or dignity to end things earlier because I was in such a disgusting diamond-ring horse race mode. And when it doesn’t seem like I’m getting what I want, I turn into a feral maniac.
When Blaine and I finally meet up when he returns from Vermont, within the first few minutes of talking at the Smith in Union Square, he says, “You know, you did hurt me. I think we need to take a break.”
“Fine with me,” I say, and I stand up instantly. I leave the merlot I’ve just ordered on the bar. I walk away, crying as I march through the East Village, logging onto Facebook on my phone, and changing my status to no longer in a relationship.
My self-awareness is sorely lacking. My entire problem with Blaine is that he’s so afraid of what people might think about us dating, but what’s the reality here? I’m the one hung up on perception. Status. Associative redemption. And I so care how I’m seen.
The very next day after we break up—I kid you not—my first assignment is to cover a wedding expo. A goddamned motherfucking wedding expo. I’m doing a video, and ducking into the bathroom frequently to fix the eye makeup I keep fucking up with unexpected tears every time I see some happy couple reminding me of what a complete failure of a human being I am.
A few weeks later, when I am gone at work, Blaine drops off a stash of my assorted belongings with a note that reads, “You are a fabulous, joyful person whose life is filled with nothing but happiness.”
I feel empty reading it. So I have a long conversation with my old friend Hollywood manager Jonathan Brandstein about what I have done. He emails me a little bit later on.
“Mandy, you are a Kashmir Sapphire,” he writes. “The famous sapphires of Kashmir are mined from a remote region high in the Great Himalayan mountains of northwestern India. Lying at an elevation of approximately 150,000 feet. These sapphires are so beautiful and rare. Today with the exception of estate sales, fine Kashmir sapphires are virtually unobtainable, mute testimony of the degree to which they are coveted. They are often categorized as a conundrum gem. They form an exclusive class of its own. And once they are cut, they make a beautiful jewel.”
His note makes me weep. I don’t cry because Blaine fails to see me this way. I’m crying because I can’t see it either.
chapter seven
The Unhinged
2009–10
You seem lighter,” Mackenzie says after the first week or so.
I definitely am—but there is an inner darkness that she doesn’t know about.
My mission to de-Blaine myself results in a kind of twisted logic where I become determined to do the opposite of what I once did with him in my life. No one tells me what to do. Did he think I was embarrassing? Did he think I was unwifeable? Well, he doesn’t know the half of it.
I’ll show you fucking unwifeable.
It’s not just Blaine either. One day I receive an email from a wealthy tech entrepreneur I had reached out to asking if he could set me up with any “nice guys.” No, he can’t do that, he explains and proceeds to shame me for everything I’ve ever written online.
“Given your proclivities,” he tells me, “I’d predict you’ll either never get married, or have N husbands.”
It turns my stomach a little to read. So I tell him that I already have been married once before and indeed am a very loving and devoted partner.
Instantly, he replies: “I’d suggest you stay away from marriage going forward? :)”
Reading his words, I am livid.
I hate him. I hate Blaine. I hate anyone who has ever looked down on me ever. I despise the hypocrisy inherent in shame. If I don’t fit into a polite world, then I will live as unpolite a life as possible, I think. I will ravage myself. I will dive headfirst into one seedy encounter after another. And that’s exactly what I do.
MY LIFE BECOMES a cocktail of excess. And my coworkers start to notice.
One night after a rollicking evening on the town with a bunch of Post-ies, I lose all track of time around 2 a.m. I come to early the next morning. I wake up in a hotel room with a strange man I quickly remember I met the previous evening when I swerved into a Village diner, approached a booth of strangers, and swung my legs up onto the lap of the closest guy—and proceeded to eat all his onion rings.
Everything
