This Might Be Too Personal Read online

  The motivation, and marketing, behind See Alyssa Date was that if the readers gave me good enough advice, and I followed it all, they could conceivably get me married. Woo-hoo, a husband! Just what I wasn’t sure I wanted. The announcement in the print magazine essentially read: “Help this woman get married!” Let me repeat: Help this woman get married.

  It was such a wildly unwoke concept that could never hold up today. Even then, I knew it was complete and utter nonsense, and actually quite dehumanizing, and I felt guilty participating in such an uncool, heteronormative, every-girl-needs-a-prince type of project. It went against my nature, not just as a natural-born feminist but as an independent and self-reliant woman who had zero interest in thousands of random Americans telling me what to do with my life. Plus, hello? I had just knocked all the pieces off the board to live my most authentic life, and here I was again presenting as a woman I was not. It all felt so uncomfortable—and I had no one to blame but myself.

  I should have spoken up. I could have just quit! But the reality was: I didn’t know how to express these things to the higher-ups yet, nor did I realize I had every right to. My bosses were reasonable, but I was still professionally inexperienced, and simply wasn’t familiar with the concepts of “agency” or “advocating for myself.” On top of that, See Alyssa Date was for all intents and purposes a big success. So I wore the tube top if the readers wanted me to, and I French-kissed the firefighter if they said so. Though some of the readers were haters or stalkers, most of them were in fact caring and sweet—so I made the most of it despite the cringe.

  Also, it should be noted that I got paid very well to spend an hour a day banging out two or three paragraphs, “putting myself out there,” and hitting send. As Pablo Escobar said, “Everyone has a price,” and I guess Glamour knew mine. In the meantime, the magazine snagged multitudes upon multitudes of new readers, which meant buckets of money for them, and I was, overnight, depending on whom you asked, a famous relationship writer or a goddamn fool.

  Other than the fact that I was completely disgraced by myself, and wasn’t mature enough to take ownership of my actions, which was signing up to do the thing, there was a much bigger reason why See Alyssa Date was never going to work for me. And that is: I was madly in love with someone who despised the dating blog and wanted nothing to do with it, and nothing else mattered but him.

  After calling off my engagement and before starting at Glamour, I had fallen passionately in love with a drop-dead gorgeous Greek guy who happened to be my … dentist. (I know, I know. Just try to imagine a six-foot-two Mediterranean superbabe in scrubs and get over it, because I sure did.) It was love at first sight: a rush of delirium and desire that I had never experienced in my lifetime. From the moment he said, “So, you’re here for a routine cleaning?” I was a goner. It was all over. My life, and my smile, were never routine again.

  But we were a tragic love story. He was from an old-school family, and the pressure he felt to marry another Greek was nearly impossible for him to overcome. We were together, and consumed by each other, for three years. Most of his family didn’t know about me, and the ones who did pretended I did not exist. But I had hope that we could overcome our obstacles, because we were soul mates and I believed in love, and it was as simple as that. (Ha!) I once wrote a letter to his sister, who was my age, and I assumed a little more modern, saying all I wanted to do was make her brother happy, and to please help us navigate the situation. Apparently, she read it, ripped it up, and ripped him a new one for being with me. Over and over, I practiced saying, in Greek, “All I want to do is love your son.… Please let me love your son.…” for some grand reveal that I knew, deep down, would never happen.

  I even hired a Greek shrink who did not take my insurance to help me understand the reality of what may or may not happen for us in the future. The crazy part was, as a Jew, I already understood all the inner conflict and deep-rooted anxiety around the family. Which is not to say I didn’t try to convert myself to Greek Orthodox, because I did, but even the nuns wouldn’t take me. They didn’t want to endorse a good Greek boy marrying a xéni, a stranger. Though I couldn’t help but internalize all the rejection, again, as a Jew, I did “get it.” It hurt me terribly, but I got it.

  Despite the Jesus and gyros of it all, we were a magical couple. We were joyful and loving, gentle with each other’s hearts and bodies. I thought about kissing him all day long from my various magazine jobs, and when I’d see him at my seventh-floor walk-up apartment on the Upper East Side, before he could even catch his breath from the voyage up the stairs, I’d crawl into his hoodie sweatshirt, and under his jeans and take him directly to the closest wall or kitchen counter or shabby-chic bed. He loved and lusted for me, too—I was not delusional about that. But he was terrified of losing his family, and it cut me deep being kept a secret for so long, and our forbidden love affair was becoming, as it does, corrosive.

  Just before I turned thirty, I was left with no choice but to accept that he was never going to bring me into his world, even though he kept asking for a little more time. Every day, he promised that he was going to tell everyone the truth, but then his parents’ basement would flood or a grandparent would fall or it was Greek Easter or somebody’s name day. He … just … couldn’t. It was never going to happen, and there was nothing I could do about it. So I gathered all my humanly power to turn the page. That’s why I moved to LA. To learn to live without him. To put three thousand miles and an insane dating blog between us. Maybe after all that, I’d stand a chance of moving forward. If only it were so easy.

  As See Alyssa Date was either worshiped or ridiculed around the world, I remained emotionally dissociated from all of it because I was constantly thinking of him. It was excruciating. Major producers wanted to turn the column into a scripted TV show and after several emails back and forth, I never even showed up for our face-to-face meeting because I was too busy driving in circles around Laurel Canyon listening to “Leather and Lace” and crying my eyes out into the steering wheel. That’s how I spent most days.

  I was fixated on him, and whether or not I should have stuck it out for longer or pushed harder or learned to make pastitsio from scratch or how to pronounce galaktoboureko with more fervor. My career might have been on the path to something interesting, but my heart was smashed to smithereens. And you want to know the truth? I never stopped loving him and it never stopped hurting. This was the relationship that demolished me in a way I never recovered from—and it’s kind of perfect, and a little bit devastating, that I started writing about love just when it proved to be so cruel.

  It was a hard year to be a grown-up. See Alyssa Date was regretful. I was frustrated with myself for writing such a regressive blog, even though it technically “put me on the map.” The anger was probably a bit displaced too, considering I was injured so bad from the breakup and mad at—I don’t know … Religion? Souvlaki? Life? Perhaps I should have asked the readers to vote on this: Do I hate this blog with every bone in my body or am I just in unbelievable pain?

  To be fair, See Alyssa Date was not all bad. It helped me shape and refine the kind of writer I wanted to be, which was a writer who had a capacity to share deeply personal stories as a way of exploring complicated universal truths. Not at Glamour, and not like that, but I’d figure out a better, more progressive, more me way.

  Vulnerability (on paper, at least) didn’t scare me. And somehow I had easy access to my emotions, as shattering as they were at the time. Though I can’t say it was worth it—my broken heart was never put back together the same way again—my grief for the Greek made me a better, more sympathetic writer and human when it came to understanding life’s expansive beauty and pain.

  There was an unconscious motive in becoming a relationship writer as well. Somewhere deep within, I thought that maybe if my work and my words could put some air and space in between my heart and the struggle, then maybe my future relationships would hurt a little less. Perhaps, if I wrote about love, then s
omeday, I could make sense of it.

  three

  This Might Be Too Personal

  After my interview with Sarah Jessica Parker, I had one hour to get the abortion.

  SJP was my first cover story for a major magazine, and my first cover story ever—an exciting and metamorphic milestone for any aspiring journalist. I was thirty years old, and it felt like the perfect time to cross over from dating blogger to formidable writer, and I was ready for it.

  I had rebuilt my life into something as glamorous and devious as I dreamed it could be. Heath Ledger, Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Giselle … I engaged with all of them, both on and off the record. There was no party I couldn’t get into, no red carpet I couldn’t waltz down, no Olsen twin I couldn’t bum a smoke off of, no Derek Jeter I couldn’t grind on, and no deadline I didn’t crush. My friend Lisette and I even wound up on the cover of the National Enquirer pegged as the girls who broke up Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson’s marriage, complete with a snapshot of me and Nick getting cozy at a club in Miami. It is a rumor I can neither confirm nor deny but … Nick, I love ya, babe.

  Intercut with all that stardust and excitement and celebrity swag, however, there were also VIP rooms and VIP rooms of social climbers, paparazzi, and coke whores. For every Jennifer Aniston and Julia Roberts, there were slews of Lindsay Lohans and Tila Tequilas. My life was radiating with A-list glamour—every night was more unbelievable than the next—but I had no stomach for the darker side of fame. The fast track was fun while it lasted, but the luster for me had worn off fast, and I was searching for a way to escape the Hervé Léger hamster wheel.

  Landing an SJP cover story was a triumphant step in my career, and could lead to dream opportunities like writing for The New York Times, which was the dream. Work goals aside, no one else could write the story but me. I had heard the whole “You’re so Carrie Bradshaw!” thing every day since the show aired on HBO, and of course throughout the duration of my famous-slash-infamous dating blog. This was a compliment, no doubt, but it also made me wince a little that I came off as a knockoff of someone else. I mean, I was this exact messy, flirty, writerly human long before Michael Patrick King had a hit TV show. And there were so many bad Carrie Bradshaw clones around then—with the Louboutins and Cosmopolitans and Magnolia cupcakes—and I found that shit so uncool. So I always recoiled a little when I heard it: You’re the real Carrie Bradshaw! Sometimes I’d even correct people by saying, “You mean, Carrie Bradshaw is the real me.” And then I’d regret sounding so cocky.

  Sure, I could see it. My real life and her fictional life were uncannily alike. I, too, loved style, and in my own individualistic way. I was a broke-ish shopaholic with no cushion or savings. Neither of us were naturally beautiful, but kind of unconventionally sexy. We both had not-small noses, frizzy hair that I sometimes referred to as “freshly fucked,” and, fortunately or unfortunately, I had my Mr. Big (big, and Greek). However, my Mr. Big was now in the past, and never coming back, whether I liked it or not.

  The only problem with scoring the SJP cover story was the timing.

  My life had taken a hard left turn that month. I had just started dating a mysterious architect who lived on the North Fork of Long Island. He wasn’t someone I could see myself with long term, but he was an interesting change of scenery, and I was open-minded. North Fork showered me with presents, dinner reservations, and car services—and after all the unbelonging from my previous relationship, I took comfort in him wanting me in such an outward way. After a few weeks together, North Fork also got me pregnant.

  To be fully transparent, it was the first and only time I ever had unprotected sex, and it was a very bad mistake. North Fork immediately proposed after I told him about the positive pregnancy test, and I reluctantly said yes and let him put a big, fat cushion cut on my finger, because I was in a state of shock and extremely freaked out, and up was down and down was up, and everything was happening so fast. To compound the dizzying velocity of it, as I spent more time with North Fork in the following weeks, I sensed that something was not right. I became worried he had serious anger issues. After an incident in a car together, where I witnessed a fit of rage like I’d never seen with anyone before, I started feeling not just concerned about him but increasingly scared for myself. It didn’t take long before I realized that I could not—and would not—have a child with this man. The pregnancy, and our relationship, had to end. And the SJP interview was set for the day I was scheduled to deal with it all.

  It was a lot. And I was capable of managing a lot, but I wasn’t sure I was capable of this. As the day neared in, all I could do was repeat to myself again and again, “There is nothing you can’t handle.… There is nothing you can’t handle.…” Maybe if I enshrined that into my being, it would be true.

  The press tour was pegged to one of the Sex and the City movies, and I was warned in advance, multiple times, by my team at the magazine and especially by SJP’s team, to stick to the subject. When you interview a huge celebrity, their PR people are fiercely protective. They hover. They glare. They make you feel like the scum of the earth if you pivot in any which way. The intense chaperoning is kind of a joke and totally demeaning to the journalist (in my opinion) and very awkward for a star who possesses any ounce of emotional intelligence.

  SJP had more emotional intelligence than she does stilettos or cosmos or cupcakes, so from the minute I walked in the door, she was working overtime to offset the policing of her PR staff. She was as warm and welcoming as the first day of spring. Genuinely thoughtful and whimsical and kind. They say you should never meet your heroes, but I knew that very second, I’d always be grateful that I met her.

  I loved her, but I obviously couldn’t tell her what I was going through that day—even though I desperately wanted to. For some reason, I was dying for her to know that all I ever wanted was to be a writer and a mother, and I had made so many mistakes and my life had malfunctioned so bad that soon I’d exit our downtown hotel room for an uptown abortion clinic. The words felt lodged in my chest and I wanted to release them with all my being. But, of course, I couldn’t and wouldn’t go there.

  Maybe I could, however, say something on a lighter note. Maybe I could tell her that she and I were kindred spirits, that everyone had said so forever. And yes, I know that Sarah Jessica Parker is not Carrie Bradshaw. And Carrie Bradshaw is not a real person. But perhaps she’d find a small delight in the symbiosis.

  My train of thought begged the question: Why did I need SJP to love me, or at least feign acceptance of me, so bad anyway? Who knows. All I can say is that hanging out with celebrities is a shortcut to a strange and insecure life. And in the spirit of generosity, it’s probably what makes these celebrity publicists so salty too; they’re feeling strange and insecure all the time.

  A lot of celebrity reporters share some version of the same recurring dream. The dream entails an actor or actress realizing that you’re actually a smart and interesting person, and not just some gross gossipmonger—and then they actively pursue a friendship with you. My recurring dream consisted of getting a manicure next to Maggie Gyllenhaal somewhere on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, near where we both live in real life. We start talking. It’s fun and fluid and it is her who is fascinated with me and me who’s kind of like, Eh? about it all. She says she wants to set me up with her brother, Jake. And I’m all, Whatever, sounds cool. She calls Jake and tells him she met this amaaaazing new chick, and that when our nails dry, we want to meet him for nachos and margaritas. We all get together at a hip Mexican dive bar; Maggie and I are laughing and dishing like the fast friends we are; Jake is lovestruck out of his mind over me. And that’s usually when I wake up.

  It’s such a wacko dream, especially because when anyone asks me who’s the biggest asshole I’ve ever met through work, the answer is easily Jake Gyllenhaal.

  In the press room with SJP, I asked the standard—and carefully preapproved—questions. What was your favorite scene to film? Who were you close
st with on set? What do you like to eat after a long day at work? (The answer was a pork chop—a detail that, for some reason, I’ll never forget.)

  Once we wrapped those mini-conversations up, to my surprise, SJP started asking me questions. Where do you live? How long have you been a writer? Do you like your job? She was one of those celebrities who make every interaction feel intimate and real, partially to come across as intimate and real, but also to signal that we’re all equal, we’re all human and it’s all good. Behind my friendly journalistic facade, I was yearning in the most primal way to start talking about everything at that very moment. It took all my self-restraint to stay so buttoned-up. But I stopped myself. I was not going to risk terminating my career along with my motherhood all at once.

  I enjoyed our interview very much, even though we both stayed in our lanes and played our parts. By the end of our allotted half hour together, SJP’s publicist was at bay, and I knew my editors would be pleased with the copy. More so, I was proud of my work and how I’d handled myself, especially on such an emotionally loaded day like that.

  And just then, just as I was about to stand up and leave on a high note, Sarah Jessica Parker cleared her throat and said, “This might be too personal, but … where did you get that dress?”