Fake it for Real

2. Cecile

2

CECILE

Sitting on top of a picnic table, I watched as my class of third graders played with each other during recess. My phone made a soft ding, so I pulled it out from the pocket of my skirt to see who had texted me.

Mary, another third-grade teacher at the school I worked for, sat next to me. “Someone interesting texting you, Cecile?”

“Well, I’d thought he was interesting, but from this text, I’m not thinking that way anymore.” I rolled my eyes, but psyched myself up to tell her everything. “So, the backstory on Pete is that he and I were set up by a mutual friend who thought we’d have a lot in common since I’m a schoolteacher and he’s a college professor. We went out to dinner last Friday night. He took me home and asked if he could come inside. When I declined, he nodded and said he understood. He didn’t call the next day, and I didn’t call him either. I’ve heard nothing from him the entire week, but now that it’s Friday again, he texts.”

“What does the text say?” she asked as she leaned over to see it. “Oh, I see. A booty call, basically. ‘How’d you like to forgo the dating s**t and get right to the good stuff,’” she read off my screen before scoffing. “And I suppose that’s the address to where he lives? Did that man really write that he hopes you’ll show up, wearing something sexy for him.”

“Another man who’s after only one thing.” I didn’t bother to reply to the nasty text. “Are there no gentlemen in Los Angeles anymore?”

“You know, I’m not sure if there are any left anywhere. Everyone wants to just play the field and avoid commitment like the plague. The longest I’ve dated a man in the last few years is ten dates before he just stopped calling. I eventually saw him out with someone else.”

“The last guy I dated wanted to spend more time in bed than he did actually talking to me. He would take me out to eat and then ask if I wanted to watch a movie at his place. We’d go back to his, and then he wasted no time getting to the making out, followed by carrying me to his bedroom.”

“It sounds romantic,” Mary said with a gleam in her eyes. “I’ve never been carried to bed by anyone.”

“As romantic as it sounds, there was no romance there at all. I think he carried me so that he wouldn't have to actually ask me if I wanted to have s*x with him. He did nothing else romantic for me at all. And he most definitely did not want anything long-term. The last time I saw him was when I took a toothbrush and left it in his bathroom so that I would be able to give my teeth a good scrubbing before leaving his apartment the next morning.”

“You left something of yours behind?” she asked with wide eyes. “Wow. That was a big risk if you didn’t talk to him about it before.”

“I found that out the hard way. He changed his number and moved away only a couple of days after I left him the next morning.”

“That’s a rookie mistake, Cecile.”

“We had gone out each Saturday night for six months. I thought that was more than long enough for me to be able to leave behind a toothbrush. Guess I was wrong.”

“You were probably his Saturday night girl, and he had others for the other nights,” she said knowingly. “That’s how my brother works. He takes Sundays off for family. Other than that, he’s got a different girl for each night of the week, and so far, none of them have found out about what he’s doing.”

I hadn’t even thought of that. “Maybe I want an old school kind of man — the kind that the good Lord no longer makes. Maybe I should start looking for an older men.”

She snarled her lip. “I’m not into old men.”

“I’m not attracted to any. But if I could get to know one, I might like the way he treated me — then the attraction would surely come. I don’t know. Maybe I should just wait for guys around my age to grow up a bit. I’ve just hit my thirty-year mark. Surely, men in their thirties start to grow up and look for something that will last.”

“My brother is thirty-six.”

“Well, that doesn’t bode well for me then, does it?” I couldn’t deal with the dating scene in Los Angeles any longer. “All I know is that I am out of it all. No more games. No more one-night stands. No more being asked if I want to just have s*x with someone before they even ask my name. I’m out. No more dating for me. Not for at least a year.”

Shock filled her face. “A year? An entire year? No s*x for a year?”

“None.” I knew I had to stop trying to find the right man when he just didn’t exist yet. “I can’t take another man wanting only one thing from me. At this stage of my life, I need more than s*x from a partner. There won’t always be s*x in a relationship anyway. If all you have with each other is satisfying s*x, then that’s just not enough.”

“I would settle for just satisfying s*x. I have a hard time finding even that.”

“That’s probably because you have no real connection with the men you’ve been having s*x with. Real feelings have to bring on better connections, and better connections have to mean better s*x, right. It just has to work that way. And I am ready and willing to wait for that to happen for me. So, no more dating until I actually know the man first. And, of course, I have to like him. I’ve been going out with just about anyone so long as someone thinks I’ll hit it off with the guy. So far, I’ve gone along. But not anymore.”

“You sound like you really mean that, Cecile.”

“I do mean it. I’m so tired of all the fake stuff. I mean, why bother to take me out to dinner if all you want is the s*x you think you deserve for buying my dinner?” I really was done. “A year. At least one year. No men.”

“But what if Mr. Right comes along and you ignore him because of your little hiatus from men?”

She had a point. “I won’t ignore all men. If someone catches my attention, then I will see where that goes. But he’s going to have to do a lot of talking, some mental connecting, way before we connect our bodies. But I seriously doubt that will happen just at the moment I’ve finally sworn off men.”

She patted my hand, looking concerned. “I’m just afraid that a year without a man — a year without s*x with a man — will change you.”

“I can’t imagine that it will affect me that much. I mean, s*x with a stranger or a man who wants nothing from you isn’t any good anyway — at least not for me. And you just proved that for yourself with what you said. You haven’t even had satisfying s*x, Mary. We deserve more, and we deserve better. I’m tired of acting as if all I want is s*x as well. It’s not true. I want so much more than that.”

“Like a hand to hold as we grow old?” she asked with a nod. “I do want that. I want someone who will hold my hand when I have our babies. I want someone who will bring me chicken noodle soup when I have a cold. I want someone who will be happy just sitting with me on our worn-out sofa, watching television while we eat takeout food.”

“Yes. Now you see what I’m getting at. I want to be happy with someone for many reasons, not just one. s*x is good and all, but it’s not everything. We need more than that. We need someone who we can share everything with. And someone who wants to share everything with us.”

Mary nodded in agreement. “You know, I dated this one guy for a few weeks, and he refused to tell me what his middle name was. When I finally got him to tell me why he wouldn’t, you’ll never believe his reason.”

“What could knowing his middle name possibly do for you, Mary?”

“Well, he thought that if I knew his entire name, then I could sign his name to anything I wanted and ruin him financially. The real kicker was that this guy had nothing. He drove his mother’s car. He lived at his uncle’s house, and he worked the nightshift at Panjo’s Pizzeria.”

“We have certainly found us some real winners, haven’t we, Mary?” I had stories like hers too. “When I was in my early twenties, there was this guy I went out with one time. He refused to let me see where he lived. And he said that it was because he didn’t want me to try to stay with him. He’d had that happen to him too many times, he said. Apparently, women would come and not want to leave. Or so he said. I thought he was crazy.”

“He sounds crazy.”

“I stopped seeing him after he told me that. And then I got really curious and did something so unlike anything I’d ever done before.”

“What did you do?” she asked curiously, a bubble of excited laughter about to escape.

“I stalked him one night.” I put my palm on my face, shaking my head as I laughed. “I borrowed a friend’s car and followed this guy home. And what I found made me sick.”

“What was it?”

“When he pulled into the drive of a nice suburban home, three kids ran out to greet him. They hugged him and said how much they’d missed him while he was away at work. And then a woman came out with open arms and kissed him on the cheek.”

Mary’s jaw dropped. “He was married with children?”

I nodded. I had never quite gotten over that one. Not just married with children, but happily married, with children who adored him. And he’d looked as if he adored them all too. It made me sick. How could he be out on the dating scene when he had this wonderful family waiting for him at home? It made no sense. And what was worse, he’d lied about having to be away for the entire week. He’d worked right here in Los Angeles, with his home less than thirty minutes away. I know because I followed him home from there.

“What an asshole,” Mary said as she snarled her lip. “Did you get out of the car and tell the poor woman what he was doing?”

“No.” I couldn’t have ever done that. “She looked so happy. And there were the children to consider as well. Whatever he was doing, that was on him. I was sure that one day, his wife would figure him out.”

“Do you think that she ever did find out about his secret life?”

“I have no idea. My ideal about love were a bit battered and bruised when I drove away that night. Everyone I tried dating after that guy had their own things too. One after another, bad guy after bad guy.”

“You know what?” she asked. “It sounds like you’re attracted to bad boys.”

“Am not,” I said quickly.

“Well, it sounds like it. Maybe you just like that weird charisma bad boys all seem to have. Or the devilishly good looks that seem to guy with that kind of man. Angels and demons have been known to attract. The demon loves to pretend that he’s good for her. But then he thinks he’s good for everyone. And breaking an angel doesn’t bother a demon one bit. Most times, they actually blame the angel for falling for a man like him in the first place.”

“Ain’t that the truth?” I asked as I laughed. “I am a sucker for hot guys.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“I’m going to have to stop going after the looks that turn me on and start looking deeper than that. Maybe talking to men who are a bit more average in the looks department is the first step I should take in finding a good man.”

“If all you’ve been seeing are hot bad boys, that could be your problem.” She smiled. “I know that’s mine. I love those dang rebels. But then I hate them when I get replaced by another girl whose heart they’ll surely break as well. You know, the thing is that every single time, I fall for the looks and charm. Even though none of them have satisfied me in bed, I keep on being pulled in by guys like that, hoping that one day, I’ll find that one man who was made just for me.”

“Well, that’s most likely not going to happen if we keep looking at guys like that. I had this friend when I was in college at UCLA. He was the most notorious bad boy on campus. The first time I saw him, he was hitting on this girl, and she was all infatuated with his looks and charm. The next day, I saw him using the same lines and tactics on another girl. And the day after that, it happened again. So, when our eyes finally did meet, I just shook my head at him and walked on by without saying a word. We ended up being good friends — with absolutely no benefits. I guess that seeing him in action made my alarm bells go off and stopped me from falling for his lines and charm the way the others had.”

She nodded her head. “You knew better already.”

I nodded back. “Exactly. I knew better than to set my sights on Finn Murphy.”

I wonder how he’s doing nowadays.