can't trust that day

From the ankles down, I look like Barbie.  Some mornings, the only thing that's going to get you out your front door is a pair of 4-inch peeptoes in hot pink patent leather.

(I may or may not have bought these as a birthday present for my best friend a couple of years ago...and then kind of accidentally kept them.  The moral of the story:  Always make friends with women who share your shoe size.)

From the ankles up, I look more or less like a homeless person.  Aside from the shoes, I got dressed this morning entirely in items that were lying on my bedroom floor.  I also ate Trader Joe's Cheese Crunchies for breakfast, and then spent at least an hour peering diligently but uselessly at the statements for my retirement account, which might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense I was able to make of them.

Now, at 6 o'clock, the course of my day is easily traceable by the items strewn all over my desk.  They include:  A dried-up bottle of Elmer's glue; a dead plant; three empty Diet Coke cans (One of our partners frequently stops by my door, shakes his head, and intones, "Aspartame, Clare!" before shuffling off down the hallway); many tiny Post-its full of illegible but undoubtedly important scribblings; one plush monkey that shrieks when you squeeze it in the middle; about two dozen red pens; and a rotating emergency light, of the type you might find on top of a very small toy ambulance, if the ambulance was purple.  Don't ask me; I don't know either.

I have a date in two hours.  It's going to include an "It's not you, it's your cigarettes" speech, and that is going to be uncomfortable.

Oh, it's such a Monday-ish Monday.

vices

"What are your vices? The things you wouldn't want to tell someone on a second date," he asks.

We're at a very nice restaurant in Brentwood, jazzy and loud on a Friday night. The table between us is small and crowded with crab cakes, steak, a really good bottle of red wine. It's unclear how much my mood has been affected by the heavily poured gin and tonic I just finished, but I'm enjoying myself.

I chew, think about it. "Inertia," I tell him.  "That's my big vice." It's an honest answer. It's why I'm still in Los Angeles at all to have this dinner with him.

But he pulls a face, dismissively. In a minute I'll understand that he was hoping for something a little edgier out of me. "What about you?" I ask.

He smokes, he says. Cigarettes, plus weed a couple of times a week. And he likes to gamble. Regularly, at the casinos. In case any of that is a dealbreaker, he wants me to know up front. Then he stares at me and waits.

The truth is that any one of those three is a dealbreaker. I tell him this. But I can't remember the last time someone was so frank with me, not on a second date, and I'm impressed. I tell him that too. There's a brief minute of awkwardness, both of us considering the wall we've hit. And then (is it just the wine?) the conversation sweeps on with a life of its own. We've written ourselves this policy of suicidal honesty. Now we can say anything we want, pick up any subject, and we do.

Later that night, we end up at a dive bar somewhere in the Valley, listening to a cover band play surprisingly great rock and roll. We drink beer and shout the lyrics to Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl at each other, my hand keeping rhythm on his knee. With my big black boots and long brown hair, they might be singing about me.

Later yet, still fully committed to honesty, I say, "I want you to kiss me goodnight."  He lights up like a Christmas tree.

I drive home wondering if I'll see him again. He's already told me that he likes me, wants to see me, but he's leaving the decision up to me. And right now, on this drizzly February night, all I can think about is how attractive it is when someone tells you the truth.