I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti Read online

  I was glad that Mitch would see my apartment. I was fond of the place where I had, at that point, been living for ten years; I believed it revealed likable things about me. The records, for instance: There on chrome shelves—assembled by Ethan to replace a hand-painted leaning tower I rather liked but he believed to be dangerous—sat every one I ever purchased dating back to 1978, a collection of more than two hundred, including a twelve-inch extended dance mix of Men Without Hats’ “The Safety Dance,” which, come to think of it, could have been tossed a few years earlier. I imagined inviting Mitch to “come up and see my vinyl” when he arrived at the door. I’m always looking for witty openers for awkward encounters like therapy appointments or second dates.

  When the blaring doorbell signaled Mitch’s arrival, my heart pounded as I tried to make my way slowly to the door. When I opened it, I greeted him with a peck on the lips. I did not use the vinyl comment, thank God. But the kiss wasn’t such a great idea, either. Mitch seemed distant and uncomfortable. He came in and nestled into a corner of the couch. I offered him one of the nonalcoholic beverages I had purchased while on my fruitless search for a dress. I brought two Cokes over to the sofa and sat opposite him. It wasn’t long before, without my even having to bring up Kurt Cobain, or Hole, or drug abuse, or even the city of Seattle, he mentioned that he had once been friends with Courtney Love.

  “Did you sleep with her?” I asked.

  Mitch was coy, though bringing up the subject was plainly designed to elicit that very question. I was inexplicably intrigued.

  I took Mitch down Smith Street, the now revitalized Brooklyn boulevard that had transformed—despite Ethan’s negative pronouncement during that Valentine’s Day date three years earlier—from a desolate stretch of bodegas and old-lady underwear stores into an impressive row of restaurants and boutiques. While I tried to figure out where we should eat, Mitch talked about some band he had seen on Conan O’Brien called At the Drive-In that was destined to be the hottest thing. Mitch didn’t strike me as the fine dining type, and I had no idea what he could afford among the pricey options. In lieu of the Polish or Greek diner I assumed Mitch was accustomed to, I settled on a simple Italian café, Paninoteca; they specialized in pressed sandwiches of melted cheeses and cured hams. I could have a much needed glass of wine, and it wouldn’t be too expensive.

  I was fond of my neighborhood, I even considered it hip, but walking through it with Mitch gave me the impression that what registered as hip to me did not for him. Mitch was posthip. “Emo” was the thing, he explained as he ate a salad, though he wasn’t so good at defining what seemed to be a philosophy that covered both music and fashion. After a twenty-minute conversation, all I knew was that it had something to do with looking, or acting, or sounding, like a librarian. Was that all it took to turn on Mitch Smith? I could certainly opt for my glasses, instead of my usual contact lenses, for our next date—if there was one.

  I felt decidedly square as Mitch rattled on about the many different cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Prague—he had lived in over the past few years. Since 1991 I had lived in the same apartment, the one I’d moved into with Kit. Before he got sober, Mitch took a lot of drugs and slept with strung-out punk girls. My brief dalliance with illegal substances never led me down any road more perilous than the consumption of too many Hostess CupCakes. I slept with Jewish boys who had back problems. Mitch didn’t ask me many questions, and when he did, they were the wrong ones. Like “Were you a lesbian in college?” I didn’t have the requisite alternative answer to that.

  The check totaled $21.95.

  “Do you want some money?” I asked.

  “If you want to,” Mitch replied.

  I didn’t want to. Giving him that ten was humiliating, but I duly handed it over.

  Back on Smith Street we ran into Henry, who was amazed to see us out together.

  “I can’t believe neither of you e-mailed me! How long have you been hanging out? Is this the first time?” he said.

  “Actually, we’re engaged,” said Mitch.

  Mitch’s sense of humor was mostly hidden until that moment. Instead he seemed intent on impressing me, or more likely alienating me, with a litany of references designed to prove how cool he was. Not unlike a character from a novel written for teenagers, only here there was no older, wiser person to advise him to just “be yourself.”

  We took the G train—a mysterious line that stopped at Bergen Street, my regular subway stop, but I never had any occasion to use—to Williamsburg. The G is the only line in the entire New York City transit system that does not go to Manhattan. This underdog train took on a new sense of purpose as Williamsburg and its environs became a living destination for young hipsters. It snakes through Brooklyn to Long Island City, which is actually in Queens. I marveled at the stops as we passed them: Fulton Street, Clinton-Washington Avenues, Classon Avenue. Where in God’s name were we? But the question that was really burning through my mind was: Why was I feeling so awful?

  “Are you okay?” Mitch asked, noticing my discomfort. He took my hand and then, perhaps thinking that wasn’t the cool thing to do, quickly withdrew it. Instead he soothed me by mocking himself: “You know you’re on a hot date with Mitch when it’s eleven o’clock and you’re riding the G train,” he pronounced, and I laughed.

  We exited at Metropolitan Avenue—which I’d seen hundreds of times from the vantage point of a car on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway—and walked over to Pete’s Candy Store. The place was cute, like its name, with a bar up in the front, a middle room where bands play, and a garden, which was where Mitch’s friends were assembled with pitchers of beer. I drank some; Mitch had a Coke. We talked to them for a little while and then went to the other room to watch the band. Mitch put his arm around me as we listened, then he gave me one of those little cheek kisses, as he had done on the street the previous Tuesday. It was two in the morning when we left.

  When we got to the subway, Mitch pointed me in the direction of the westbound platform and explained that the eastbound train was the one that took him home.

  “You’re not going to make me take the G alone at two in the morning,” I protested.

  “How stupid of me, of course I can’t do that. I’m such a terrible date,” Mitch exclaimed.

  “There are several areas in need of improvement,” I replied.

  I wanted Mitch to come home with me not only because I was concerned for my safety, but also because I was still hoping I could turn this date, and the way I felt about Mitch, and the way Mitch made me feel about myself, into something more akin to our previous date.

  “Well, since you came all the way here, you may as well come up and watch some TV,” I said, pretending not to care whether he did or not, when we arrived at my door. We lay on the couch side by side, watching videos on MTV. Things got cozy, and soon enough we were making out. This was when I discovered where Mitch really shines on a date. It was incredibly exciting to kiss him and be touched by him, even though when he reached into my dress he couldn’t resist criticizing it.

  “What is this itchy material?” he asked.

  We didn’t go far, but there was something about fooling around with Mitch that I really, really liked. It was altogether unlike sitting across from him at a restaurant or beside him on a train. Here we were in synch while he introduced compelling story lines that were left uncompleted when he finally said: “Thanks for a fun evening.” We kissed for a little while longer by the door, then he said, “See ya,” and descended the front stoop.

  See ya.

  What did that mean? Would I in fact be seeing him again? I couldn’t hazard a guess. The next morning, I met Jen and her husband, Jeff, at Barney Greengrass for brunch and a fruitless analysis of the date and the possible meanings of the phrase see ya over bagels and whitefish salad. Jeff always likes to help me dissect dates and is usually quite astute, but even he couldn’t make heads or tails of this one, and of course neither of them could understand why I cared
so much, anyway. Monday after work I went running, then stayed home and waited for Mitch to call. Tuesday I went to a benefit at the American Museum of Natural History and made believe I was someone who wasn’t waiting for a call. Wednesday at 9:48 in the evening, the phone rang. Mitch and I talked for a while and covered topics that were, to my relief, a little more bourgeois. Turned out Mitch’s father was a doctor, too: an orthopedic surgeon.

  “Do you play tennis?” he asked.

  “A little, why?”

  “I have a theory that all the children of doctors know how to play tennis.”

  Now we were on the same court, as it were—a couple of normal middle-class kids with round-robin in their backgrounds. Mitch had shed the pose of social deviance he was affecting four days earlier. I was cheered by our smooth interaction, ready to laugh off the Saturday disaster as simply an aberration. We were both nervous, I thought, we’ll go on another date and it will be fun again like our first.

  “Well, call me if you know of any parties,” Mitch said before hanging up.

  I didn’t. I also didn’t know what to do next, so I read his first novel, the one about the girl who wants to have sex with the guy in the band. When I finished I sent him an e-mail saying that I loved the book. I really did. Judy Blume is still one of my favorite authors and I love music, so the combination of the two appealed to me. And I am acquainted with enough writers to know that none lives who can ignore a compliment of their work.

  Mitch called me the next afternoon, and I, in a last-ditch power grab, didn’t call back. Monday morning he e-mailed and asked me if I wanted to go to a movie that Saturday night.

  “Yes,” I wrote back.

  “Okay. But you’ll have to pay for yourself,” he replied.

  This was supposed to be a joke. It wasn’t funny; I did pay for myself—and Mitch paid for himself with a ten-dollar bill, all the better to ensure that no one—not me, not the ticket clerk, not the guy behind us—would mistake him for someone who might be buying two tickets.

  After Riding in Cars with Boys, a movie about teenage sex, Mitch came over and we had approaching-middle-age sex. It was as I thought it would be. Mitch, for all of his dopey hipster posturing, was incredibly sexy. I became instantly hooked on being with him and hoped we could develop something out of bed that more closely resembled what went on in it.

  And much as he resisted, I could tell that Mitch was getting attached, too. “I can’t believe I slept over,” he said the next day. “But when I woke up and saw the sun and trees out your windows, I knew I was in the right place.” Naturally, I wasn’t in the bed when he woke up. I was in the kitchen making coffee and putting together a batter for pancakes. I added a touch of vanilla, which Mitch disapproved of. He liked his pancakes “without flavor.” Who tastes vanilla? I wondered. It just enhances. Mitch could. The vanilla was the pea under his pile of mattresses.

  Unflavored Pancakes

  (Adapted from Mark Bittman, The New York Times)

  I would add 1 teaspoon of vanilla or a little orange zest, and you should, too, but not if you’re dating Mitch Smith.

  1 cup flour

  1 tablespoon sugar

  1 teaspoon baking powder

  1 egg

  1 cup milk

  Butter

  Mix the first five ingredients until just combined. You don’t want to overwork the batter; Mitch is enough trouble as it is.

  Heat a nonstick griddle over medium-high heat and melt 1 teaspoon butter per round of pancakes. When the butter is sizzling, drop ¼ cup batter for each 5-inch- diameter pancake. Cook until dry bubbles form (about 1 minute), then cook the other side for about 30 seconds.

  Yield: 8 pancakes.

  Our intense physical attraction made those early dates feel special, even with Mitch’s occasional grievances. Still, I could never be sure if I’d hear from him again each time we parted. But I was determined to get something in particular from his erratic presence in my life, a desire I fulfilled when I ran into Ethan at the gym one Saturday morning a few weeks into my thing with Mitch. I stopped to talk to him as he pedaled a stationary bike, white, gym-provided towel around his neck, New Yorkermagazine balanced on the handlebars. I abandoned my exercise to talk to him, and since we couldn’t stop talking (this hadn’t changed even after the breakup), we decided to finish our workouts and then meet for lunch. While stretching, I concocted a sly way of letting him know I was seeing someone.

  Knowing the topic of music would come up (it’s either that or restaurants in the postdating version of Ethan and Giulia), I would tell him I was into the Strokes and find a way to let him know who turned me on to them.

  “Who are you rocking out to these days?” I asked as we sat across from each other at one of the Smith Street bistros even he was embracing.

  Badly Drawn Boy, a less than rocking singer-songwriter I hadn’t yet heard, was Ethan’s pick.

  “Who told you about them?” I asked, hoping that he’d ask the same question when I told him about the Strokes.

  He did.

  “Some guy,” I replied with a false breeziness that needed no interpretation. Ethan didn’t take it well. He accused me of trying to humiliate him; I retaliated by blaming him for putting me into the position of wanting to humiliate him.

  “My despair is bottomless,” I said, ever the Sarah Bernhardt in his presence.

  I took way too much pleasure in the knowledge that it killed Ethan to know I was with another guy, especially one with such good taste in music. Clearly I wasn’t quite over him, so I threw renewed effort into worrying about Mitch, who was, as usual, taking the maximum time allowed by ancient codes to get back in touch.

  I heard from him next on election day, and when I chided him for taking so long to call, he told me he wasn’t interested in a relationship, he wanted to be “friends.” Distraught on the F train on my way back to Brooklyn, I came up with this:

  “If we’re friends, why can’t we have sex?”

  I tried it out on Mitch when I called him from outside my polling place on my cell phone. The line was stolen directly from his first novel, which could be why it worked.

  “I’ll come over,” Mitch said.

  I voted, then went home and whipped up a pear cake to serve him with postcoital coffee.

  Pear Cake for Friends with Benefits

  (Adapted from Bon Appétit magazine)

  2 large eggs

  ½ cup butter, melted and cooled slightly

  ¼ cup whole milk

  2⁄3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar

  1½ cups self-rising flour

  4 Bartlett pears, peeled, quartered, cored, and cut crosswise into ¼-inch-thick slices

  Confectioners’ sugar

  Preheat oven to 375° degrees.

  Butter and flour an 8-inch cake pan. Whisk eggs, melted butter, and milk in a large bowl. Whisk in 2/3 cup sugar. Add flour and whisk until batter is smooth. Mix in pears. Transfer batter to pan and sprinkle top with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar. Bake until top is golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes.

  Cool in pan, then invert onto a plate and sprinkle confectioners’ sugar on top. This cake is wonderful made with summer peaches, too.

  Yield: 8 servings.

  We didn’t even say hello. We just started kissing the second Mitch walked in the door. His glasses fell to the floor and got a little bent; his iPod, whose earphones were still in his ears for the first few seconds, also hit the ground and took some scratches. It was like a scene from a teen version of 9½ Weeks. We did it on the couch with the Strokes playing in the background.

  Afterward I made coffee, and Mitch dropped cake crumbs all over his chest and my sofa as he tried to eat a rather large slice while lying beside me. I didn’t mind; I was happy watching election returns with Mitch, and the cake was pretty awesome, too (to use a Mitch word). Mike Bloomberg became mayor, and Mitch stayed over. But we were notdating!

  While I waited for my friend’s next call, I wondered if alcohol
might have had anything to do with the slow approach in getting to know Mitch. I had never been with a guy who didn’t drink. I craved those relaxed, bonding moments that bloom easily over a shared bottle of wine. We weren’t going to have any of those. Mitch was committed to his sobriety, which was certainly important for him but wasn’t doing a whole heck of a lot for me. How could anyone possibly fall in love without grown-up refreshments?

  The next week, Mitch invited me to go bowling with “some publishing people.” I like bowling about as much as I enjoy getting my teeth cleaned, but I wanted to see Mitch, so I went and put on the disgusting shoes and bowled and even got a strike or two. The friends were more impressive than I expected friends of Mitch to be. There was an editor from the Paris Review, a literary scout, an independent film producer. They drank pitchers of beer, but I stuck with Coca-Cola in solidarity with my sober “friend.”

  “What’s going on with us?” I asked Mitch later that evening when we were by ourselves, eating French fries at Corner Bistro. “We have these amazing times together, then I don’t hear from you for six or seven days. I can’t go on like this.”

  “I’m afraid of you,” Mitch said.

  “You’re hurting my feelings,” I told him.

  Apparently, Mitch didn’t know I had any. I tried to convince him I did (if you can imagine such a conversation, and you will have to, as I have permanently blocked it out of my mind) and that he had some sway over them. I think he heard me a little. We got somewhere that night, somewhere a couple of martinis (gin, please) could have gotten us to a lot faster. Out on Waverly Place, we made a date for the weekend. Before I jumped into a cab, Mitch slipped a piece of Bazooka bubble gum into the pocket of my denim jacket, where it stayed for five years. Each time I wore that jacket and felt the gum in there, it reminded me of the first time I felt connected to Mitch outside of bed.