How to Meet Cute Boys (12 page)

“You know how I feel about Jon Brion …” I began, trying to shift my tone.

“Oh …” The typing sounds stopped. “You like him?”

“Well,
yeah
. How he plays piano? And the guitar? And the drums? All at once? His version of ‘99 Luftballons’? So good?”
(Why? Am I talking? Like this?)

We arranged the particulars. What time he was getting out of work, what time I should get to his house. I tried to think of
something charming to chat about and …

“Listen, I gotta try to get out of here,” Max interrupted, just as I was beginning what I thought was an impressive riff about
why Brion’s lo-fi rock is really the most po-mo thing an artist can do.

“Oh! Me, too! Busy, busy!”
Painful
.

The first thing Max said when he opened the door was, “I don’t think that jacket will look good on you, man. It came out really
huge and only fits big dudes.”

“Wha—?” I started to say. Max held up his index finger. Oh. He was on the phone. He waved me into the house and continued
his conversation.

“Yeah? You gonna check that party out? Nah. Think I’m gonna go to this show …”

Max ignored me while I wandered around his bedroom, looking for someplace to sit where I’d seem like I belonged. The bed,
which I noticed he made perfectly—no creases in his duvet, thank you very much—seemed too flirtatious, so I perched myself
on the stool next to the drum set in the corner. I ran my finger over a cymbal, checking for dust. Nope. He practiced.

“Yeah?” Max said. “Well that makes sense because she’s, like, a complete nut job. She used to go out with that guy who works
in reception, Eddie. Ummm-hmmmm. Ummmm-hmmmm.”

I watched him pace around the room. He checked his pockets for his cigarettes, found them on top of his dresser, got his lighter
from the bedside table, lit the cigarette, all with the phone tucked in the nook between his shoulder and his ear. His hair
was mussed, like he just woke up. His clothes were all Super Very Good. They hung on him like he was a hanger. I kept expecting
him to end the conversation, to tell his friend I was there. But he kept introducing one new topic after another. I had received
no kiss.

“Hey, whatever happened with those vinyls you were ordering for me?” he said. “No that’s cool. Thanks man. Not too much. Work’s
been killing me. Well, it doesn’t matter if I run the company. Heh, heh. Seriously. Hey, guess who I ran into the other day?”
He was now flipping through his records, maybe looking for something to put on the turntable. Yes, that’s what it was. He
put on a record. Badly Drawn Boy. Good choice. But he had to be kidding. Whenever I tried to talk to Max on the phone, he
acted like he hated it, like he had a million other things he needed to do. Now he was just chatting away.

“She’s good.”

I perked up.

“My mother loves you. You know it. Heh, heh …”

IS IT A LOVE CONNECTION?

A budding romance can be bliss, or it can make you want to sharpen your nails into fine points and claw out your own eyes.
Here, plot the course of your new romance.—B.F.

False alarm.

Finally, I heard signs of the end of the conversation: “Okay. Well then, I’ll catch you Thursday. Right, at Fred Sixty-Two.
Good French toast. Cool.”

He hung up, and I looked at him like,
Are you aware that I’ve been sitting here for four thousand years?

He said, “Don’t you look pretty.”

I couldn’t help but smile.

Later that night, I was back in Max’s arms. The show was amazing—turned out he knew the singer so we got to go backstage.
And then, after we got back to Max’s house, and after I put on his boxers (again), and after he took them off (again), I said
yes.

I just couldn’t wait anymore. And I was fairly certain the timing was right. We’d had a lovely evening—no awkward pauses,
no weird jokes about the other night. And being with him felt so
good
. He was tender, but not in a cheesy way. And passionate, but not in a forced way. When he held me, I felt like I could stay
there forever. Like I could lie there, starve to death, have the ravens come and pick my bones clean, and I’d be completely
fine with it.

After, Max said, “So I was thinking, B.” His breath near my ear gave me the shivers.

“Hit me.” I tried to nuzzle even closer.

“I was
thinking
…”

I held my breath.
He’s going to tell me it’s all going to be okay,
I thought.
That he’s not freaked out by the age difference
. Max rubbed his hand up and down my arm, fingers trailing …

“You were thinking,” I said.

“Yeah, I was thinking that maybe since that party on Friday won’t really get going till eleven we should stop in Koreatown
and play some video games.”

“What?”

“It’s on the way.” He paused and craned his neck to look at me. “You don’t like video games?”

I’ve owned every home system known to humanity, from Atari to Sega to PlayStation 2. But this was supposed to be the moment
when he told me how things were going to be. When our relationship would come into focus. When I’d get some sense of what
I could expect.
Maybe I should just bring it up myself?
I thought.
Point out that, since he was just inside me, maybe this isn’t the best time to talk about the arcade?
But then,
Don’t blow this. You’re not prepared to blow this
.

I smiled into the dark.

“I’ll tell you what, Max,” I said. “I particularly love House of the Dead, not to mention Time Crisis Two, but I’m also fond
of the old school. I can Tron, I can Mario. And if you really want to see something, then get me to an air hockey table.”

“Then I’ll tell
you
what, B.” Max sat up and reached over me for a glass of water. The little hairs on his chest tickled my arm. “I’ve got five
dollars that says I could kick your ass in air hockey.”

I scoffed. “You may as well give it to me now.”

“And why is that?”

“I was the air hockey interstate trimural champion for fifteen years in a row.”

“Pac Ten, huh?” he said, and he laughed.

For some reason, I wanted to hear him sleep. I lay perfectly still and waited for his breathing to get slow, low, and deep,
and when it did, it made me happy to the point of giddiness. Something about how he seemed so relaxed. So mine. So right there.
There’s so much there, there,
I thought. And this made sense to me. It really did.

I love Duran Duran. They’re so eighties and weird and if Max knew I’d die. But I couldn’t help driving in my car, thinking
about Max, and blasting that song “Save a Prayer” over and over. I mentioned this to Kiki, and she said, “Some people call
it a one-night stand, but we can call it paradise.”

Once I’d resigned myself to how old he was—make that, how old he
wasn’t
—I consoled myself with the fact that at least I had all the hand in the relationship. I’d tell the Story of Max in the coming
years, and it would be like he was my last hurrah. I’d talk about how I was getting up there and guys my age and up were starting
to get paunches and taking “recreational” Viagra. Or, even worse, they’d go buy a BMW, get a hip haircut, and start going
obsessively to the gym. Kiki once dated a twenty-nine-year-old television executive who would only eat boiled chicken for
breakfast (with a well-packed bowl of marijuana on the side) because he was on the high-protein diet. And what, this was acceptable
just because he was so rich he kept his chicken and his chronic stashed in his stainless-steel Sub-Zero fridge? So Max was
going to be my nonchicken guy. My fabulous young boyfriend who could have sex for hours and who wouldn’t get fat. There were
other forecasted benefits as well …

“He’s younger than you, so naturally, he’ll worship you,” Kiki said over beers at The Shortstop, sneaking a cigarette and
trying to keep the smoke away from Nina, who’d quit and was being very holier-than-thou about it.

Nina waved her hands around her face like she was warding off a mosquito, and added, “Yet he’s socially potty trained, owns
his own business, and should know a thing or two about how to act at parties.”

“I’m all for it,” chimed in Collin, looking over his shoulder at a girl in a sailor-striped top and mandarin jacket. “Is she
famous?”

Me, Kiki, Nina:
“No.”

“Yet,” Kiki added, turning back around, “because of his youth, he can’t
really
be as experienced as you …”

“But that’s positive,” interrupted Nina, “in that the women he’s
dated
couldn’t have been as smart as you or as successful as you, either. Or as good in bed.”

“He’ll be amazed by your fabulous connections and all the parties that you’re on the list for,” Collin volunteered. “Speaking
of which, I was wondering if you could get me into that Playboy Mansion party next week.”

“She can’t take
you,
” Kiki said. “She has to take Max. He’ll die when she says hello to Hef, shows him around the Grotto … It’s a real opportunity.”

Max’s age had been making me feel insecure, but while listening to my friends plotting away, I was suddenly swimming in vast
seas of self-confidence.
Yes, yes!
I thought. I could bring Max to the Playboy Mansion
and
introduce him to Hef because Steph was his event planner—he’d be
so
impressed. And when Kiki rightly pointed out that when I met The One I’d have to break things off, I realized that the best
thing was nobody would really blame me. I’d magnanimously explain to Max that even though I adored him, I was older, and therefore
had more pressing biological-clock concerns that simply couldn’t be ignored. He would pine for a while. Okay, maybe a whole
year. But then he’d realize my leaving him was the natural order of things. Years would pass, and one day Max and I would
have lunch and he’d almost tell me that he was still in love with me but I wouldn’t let him. I’d change the subject gracefully
to my husband’s new film, or how my toddler was faring at Les Enfants, and frankly, he’d love me for that, too, because I
would be teaching him how to have dignity. And I would have dignity.

This would be my future—provided I didn’t take my romance with Max too seriously, of course. Kiki insisted it was simple strategy.
Keeping my feelings in check, she said, would help me not get hurt by a younger man who couldn’t be trusted with my heart.
But being self-possessed would
also
be intriguing to Max, making him more and more likely to come through in the end. I couldn’t lose. Even Chandra, who’d called
the next morning and given me precisely three minutes of her time—until she had to go scream at her assistant for giving her
“the wrong pen”—was on board. “Hit that shit, Franklin,” she said, after I’d told her I’d entered into a tryst with someone
who could only just legally drink. “Hit. That. Shit.”

Max and I settled into a wonderful routine. We had plans to have plans two nights a week. On the weeknight we went to whatever
big party was happening, or Max took me to a rock show. He always knew the best bands to see, and we usually got backstage
passes because Max seemed to be friends with an awful lot of musicians. On the weekends Max and I avoided the crowds, who
would take over all our favorite spots, and ordered in. Usually Thai food. We’d rent a movie that we’d never watch because
we always ended up having sex halfway through, and since his roommates were always out at bars looking for girls, we had the
house to ourselves, which meant we could make as much noise as we wanted. It was perfect.

Except. The other night, we were supposed to have dinner with a few of my fancier friends, one of whom promised to procure
“the New Coppola” (yet another relative of Francis Ford who had been recently unleashed on society). But since the New Coppola
flaked—something about jetting off on the family Gulfstream IV to Paris, you know how it is—Max and I ended up at yet another
list party. This one was promoting a new kind of cell phone from Motorola. But anyway. It was being sponsored by Tanqueray,
and Max seemed to be having a good time. I caught him staring at me while I sipped my gin daiquiri, and he said, “You know
what I like about you, B?”