Poonam Sharma - Girl Most Likely To

There were only two ways to win respect at a company like that: either act as if you’re thrilled to have the honor of being part of the team, or encourage the impression that you know everything about the business and are therefore an irreplaceable asset to the firm. Early in my career I chose the latter tactic. My method involved a careful blend of carrying myself as if I had it all figured out, and intimidating people from asking me questions I didn’t know how to answer. Being a self-assured (translation: inherently scary) woman among the type of men who self-selected New York finance in the first place didn’t hurt.

Instead of causing you to want to poke out your own eyeballs due to the mind-numbing details of what I actually do at work, I will share the stuff that’s interesting. I’ll talk about what went on between the people thrown together in a place like that, which is always far more compelling than how the money is made.

My neighbor, Christopher, had apparently decided that he was my new best friend. He was standing at my door not five minutes after I got home from work that Sunday evening, with a presumptuous smile and a blender full of peach margaritas. With Booboo in tow, he barreled right past me and began to make himself comfortable. Having also decided that we were too close to bother ourselves with formalities like Hello, he simply waved the blender in my face, kicked off his flip-flops, and bounded into my kitchen.

“If you turn me away, I’ll become that pathetic queen who lives alone down the hall, drinking margaritas and talking to his cat,” he said. “Please don’t turn me into that guy. I may be getting old in gay-years, but I am still way too cute to be that guy.”

I watched from my doorway as he sat on my couch and began pouring into my mismatched coffee mugs. After rearranging my throw pillows and settling himself among them, he held a mug out toward me. He motioned to the easy chair, and I sat myself down.

“So tell me.” He smiled, propping his heels onto my coffee table. “Why won’t you give Jon another chance?”

Booboo busied himself in my closet, probably trying my best heels on for size. After leaning on my apartment buzzer for about a half an hour the night before, Jon had apparently realized that either I wasn’t home, or I wasn’t planning on letting him in. Since he was drunk, he decided to buzz all the other apartments until he found someone who was willing to hear him out. In the end, he found Christopher, who was all too happy to listen to his side of the story through the intercom. Which leads us to Christopher, reclining on my couch that evening, expecting me to justify myself. The annoying yet endearing thing about gay men is how they assume instant emotional intimacy with almost any single woman whom they meet. That, combined with the fact that I babysat Booboo, probably meant Christopher and I were family.

I took a gulp of my margarita and made no attempt to respond.

“Don’t you at least want to hear his explanation?” he asked, lifting and sniffing each of the candles on my coffee table, and scoping out my copies of The Economist, Newsweek, and Jane magazine. He was probably looking for the Vogue I didn’t have. For a new best friend, his loyalties were all wrong.

“Not really,” I answered, grabbing a package of double-chocolate Oreos from the cupboard. “I think the child speaks for himself.”

“Does he? How old is he?”

“That’s not what I meant.” I kicked his feet off my coffee table before putting down the Oreos.

“I know.”

“Look, I just don’t think he should have the right to explain himself. He forfeited all of his rights when he cheated on me. And made a fool out of me by keeping it a secret. You have no idea how humiliated I am.” I swallowed one cookie, and twisted off the top of another.

“Wait a minute. You mean your friends knew about this?” he stopped.

“I don’t know if they knew, or if they didn’t. The point is that he’s got me wondering if any of them knew. He made me look like a naive, trusting idiot!”

“To who?”

“To myself.”

After a moment of silence during which he contemplated the inside of an open-faced cookie, Christopher decided, “I don’t like double-chocolate.”

“What?”

“The Oreos. They’re double-chocolate flavored. I don’t like ’em.”

“Oh, okay. Well, me, either.” I sucked down the rest of my margarita and then refilled my mug.

“Then why did you buy them?”

I huffed, rubbing my forehead. “Because it was all they had. You know, you’re not a very good houseguest.”

He placed the offending Oreo on the coffee table and lifted Booboo to his feet, before returning his attention to me. “So you’re really gonna let your ego rule your life?”

“That’s not what I’m doing. I’m cutting my losses. I’m being practical. Doesn’t anybody understand that? It’s what it means to be an adult.”

Christopher shrugged, and made Booboo dance before his own ref lection in my mirror. I sank deeper into my chair.

“Hmm, this reminds me of an article I was reading online,” I began, absentmindedly dipping an Oreo into my margarita. I took a bite, which made me gag and immediately spit a mouthful into a paper towel. Christopher was too busy checking the ref lection of his soon-to-be-bald spot in my mirror to notice, so I continued. “The article said something about the similarities between financially independent women and gay men in our dating rituals. Maybe that’s why you think you know how my mind works.”

“Think I know?” He turned around.

“Anyway, the title of the article was ‘You Don’t Get What You Deserve…You Get What You Settle For,’” I slurred, sliding down far enough in my chair to prop my mug on top of my stomach.

“Yeah, sure. Fascinating. Whatever. Listen, you don’t think I look like an accountant, do you?”

Yes…I thought, while I shook my head and insisted, “No! Not at all.”

“You must kill at poker. You’re really too good at telling people what they want to hear.” He smiled. “And for the record, you definitely do not look like an investment banker. Anyway, I’m sorry about Jon. But I think you should seriously consider sleeping with him at least one more time. For me. He sounded sexy over the intercom.”

“You probably think I should sleep with everybody.”

“Well, thank you for the blanket presumption that all gay men are promiscuous,” he said, trying to act offended. “Besides, not everybody, honey. You’re far too sweet for that, even though you try to act like a hard-ass. You leave the skanking to me. For you, just the men you love.”

“Loved,” I corrected him.

With one hand on his hip, he concluded, “Oh, honey, who do you think you’re kidding?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s turning my stomach almost as much as these margaritas and Oreos.”

“Then let’s talk about your weekend. How was that wedding? Did you meet the man of your dreams?”

“No.” I tried hard to focus on Christopher’s face despite my blurring eyes. “But I think I might have met the man of yours.”

Hung over, lying on the floor of her apartment, spooning a severely obese cat while being spooned by its gay, balding owner, with the remains of margaritas and Oreos plastered to the roof of her mouth is no way for a respectable Desi girl to wake up.

I struggled to my feet after shaking Christopher awake. And when I noticed a new stiffness in my neck, I thought to myself, Something has got to change.

Coffee was a priority, but as usual on a Monday morning the line at Starbucks stretched into oblivion. Of the three grocery stores within a four-block radius of my office, only one wasn’t out of my way. Unfortunately, it was also the one that was open twenty-four hours, and where personal space was a luxury. I particularly avoided that place before nine a.m. on weekdays, since the middle-aged Indian man working that shift had a habit of eyeing me like a plate of Chicken Tikka Masala while asking suggestively if I were from Punjab. I expected better from my own kind.