Lynda Curnyn - Engaging Men

I glanced over at Justin as he pounded a fist in the air. “Yea!” he roared along with the crowd on TV.

Oh, yeah. It was not only possible, it was probable.

Despite the fact that I was annoyed at being beat out by baseball, I joined Justin on the couch, never mind that I was a Mets fan, mostly by birth rather than from any true allegiance to game watching. Yeah, I could sympathize. I had watched the subway series with great trepidation. But it wasn’t something I worked up a sweat about on a regular basis. Wasn’t something I ignored friends, families and people I allegedly loved for.

The clock ticked on. Justin became more jubilant with every pitch. The Yankees were up by five now. By the time I did talk to Kirk, he wasn’t exactly going to be Mr. Happy. I thought about calling him during the game, but didn’t want him if his attention was going to be divided. I decided to wait until the seventh-inning stretch.

When the seventh inning finally arrived and a Yankee win was all but secured, Justin decided this called for an all-out celebration. “I’m going down for beer and chicken wings. Want anything?”

“No, no. I’m good,” I said, making my way casually over to my bedroom, where I hoped to make my long-awaited phone call with Kirk in privacy. I was so high-strung at this point, I feared I might do something I’d later regret—like yell.

Kirk picked up on the second ring. “Hey, Noodles, I was just about to call you….”

Ah, if I could only have waited thirty more seconds, I would have had the upper hand. Still, I was glad to hear his voice. I missed him. “The lure of baseball was too great, huh?” I joked.

“You kidding? I couldn’t bear to watch that travesty once I saw the score. I shut it right off.”

Oh, brother. Then, as if to answer my unasked question—What exactly have you been doing in the one hour and fifteen minutes you’ve been home and not calling me?—he said, “I’ve just been settling in, unpacking.”

Uh-huh. “Did you have a good weekend?” I asked, trying to rise above it all.

“Great,” he said, his voice perking up. Then he proceeded to tell me, in lavish detail, all about it. Playing touch football with his cousins in the legendary acre lot his parents lived on (legendary to me, who had never actually seen it); holding his sister Kate’s baby; meeting his other sister Kayla’s boyfriend. All the children in Kirk’s family had first names beginning with K. His mother’s idea, according to Kirk. I wonder if she realized that she had created KKK with her alliteratively named progeny? The funny thing was, Kate had married a guy named Kenneth, and their new baby’s name was—guess what?—Kimberly. I wondered now if the other sister had managed to line up a K-man with this new boyfriend. Hey, wait a second. New boyfriend? Kayla’s new boyfriend was there?

“Um…how long has your sister been seeing this guy?” I asked, hoping “new” boyfriend meant new to Kirk but practically married to Kayla. After all, that was the only reason I could drum up why Karl, Kasper, Kirby, or whatever the hell his name was, had been invited and I hadn’t.

“I dunno. Couple of months?”

Couple of months? Remain cool, remain calm.

“Seems like a nice enough guy, but who knows? Kayla goes through guys like they’re going out of style.”

Remain cool, remain calm. Get the facts. “So, um, does anyone ever ask about your girlfriend, sweetie?” I knew it sounded like I was fishing, but there was no other way to do this. I had to know.

“Oh, yeah. My mother’s always harping on that subject, ever since Susan and I broke up. She always liked Susan….”

Liked Susan…

“But I learned my lesson that time around. Telling my family about stuff like that is like feeding hungry piranhas. They don’t let up.”

“Stuff like what?”

“You know, who I’m dating, whatever.”

Whatever. “Kirk, do you mean to tell me that after almost two years, your parents don’t know I exist?”

“Oh, they know I’m dating someone. But that’s all their getting outta me. Besides, they know I’m intent on getting my business off the ground….”

“Excuse me, Kirk. Someone? You’re dating someone?”

Silence on the other end. The dumb lug probably just realized he’d stepped on a land mine with his blithe comments.

Finally he said, “You know what I mean, Ange. Didn’t you tell me the less your mother knew about your daily life, the better?”

“I was talking about stuff like what I ate, how late I stayed out. Not the person I’m contemplating marrying!”

A new silence descended, this one a bit more harrowing. But no worse than the sigh that finally emerged, the words that followed. “Ange, you know how I feel about that….”

I did?

“My whole focus now is on building my business. I thought you understood. I thought…”

But I was no longer listening. I was tired of what he thought. It was just so…unromantic. I wanted to be caught up in a passion. I wanted a man to want me so badly it hurt to imagine life without me. And I wanted it with Kirk. Was that so much to ask for?

That’s how it happened. I suddenly found myself putting step one of Michelle’s engagement scheme into action. I don’t know why I succumbed. Maybe it was the fact of my absence (both literal and figurative) from Kirk’s big family weekend. Maybe it was the blasé tone Kirk used when he said before hanging up, “Hey, when you come over tomorrow night, could you bring my U2 CD?”

See? This is where we’re at. We don’t even ask each other out anymore. It’s all assumed.

Naturally, I had to start shaking up some of those assumptions. “Uh…actually, tomorrow night I’m meeting up with Grace.” There! Take that!

“Oh. Okay. Where’re you going?”

Wouldn’t you like to know, I thought, feeling a tad triumphant. Until I remembered I didn’t know where I was going with Grace, who didn’t yet know we were going anywhere. “Shopping.”

“Have fun,” he said, as if I’d said I was having my body dipped in hot wax. Kirk was not a shopper, unless we were in say, CompUSA. “You could come by after, if you felt like it….” he offered.

“Oh, well, I’ll probably be too tired. You know shopping wears me out.”

“Okay. I guess it’s just as well. I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do with work—I could stand to put in a little overtime. In fact, I’m gonna hit the sack now. I got a big day ahead of me tomorrow.”

“Yeah, me, too,” I said and, after a muttered goodbye, I hung up the phone, dissatisfied. This lid might need the rubber glove treatment. Or maybe even a sledgehammer.

“Just sit tight,” Michelle advised at work the following Tuesday, when I informed her that I had put step one of her plan in action. “Give it a few days.”

“A few days?” I didn’t think I’d last that long. As it turned out, Grace had had plans with Drew last night and couldn’t be lured to Bloomingdale’s even to make an honest woman out of me. And since tonight she was attending some work-related cocktail party, I was faced with going straight home from Lee and Laurie to another fun evening at home.

So I sat tight. After all, I had plenty of couches to choose from.

Thank God for our large-screen TV, a hand-me-down from Justin’s friend C.J., who had married his long-time girlfriend, Danielle, and moved on to Westchester and a forty-two-inch. The only thing on, of course, was Friends, and, somehow, tonight I just couldn’t deal with it.

Deprivation was going to be a lot harder on me than on Kirk, I could tell.

Because the truth of the matter was, I had done that shameful thing that most women do when they get too cozy in a relationship. I had thrown over my own life for the sake of our life together. Take an average week in my life: