The Hookup

This is what my mother says to me this afternoon: "Don't you want to meet our friends' attractive son? We could go out to a fish fry tomorrow night. Or maybe I could slip him your e-mail address the next time I see him. Or maybe we should print off a picture of you. Yes, maybe that's what we should do. You decide on a picture, print it out, write your name and e-mail and phone number on the back, and I'll bring it to him. That's a good idea."

I ask her if I should write my height and weight, my likes and dislikes on the back, too. "You know," I say. "Long walks on the beach, sponge candy..."

"Listen," she interrupts, "I'm just worried he's going to meet some other girl before he meets you. He's such a nice boy, Jess."

My mother sounds so sincere and a little heartbroken--as if she's imagining the friends' attractive son meeting some girl, falling for her, bringing her to the next bowling party--and that's why I say okay, okay, I'll do it. I'll find a picture. I'll write my name and e-mail and phone number on the back. I'll sit around try not to think how sort of lame that makes me seem, how desperate. My mother, after all, thinks it is a good idea. My mother also thinks that her boyfriend's gay black belt son is not gay, so her judgment can sometimes get iffy, but I want to make my mother happy. She's mostly stopped giving me the normal pep-talk, the one that involves her saying things like you're actually lucky you're single and everything will work out in its own time. Now sometimes when she looks at me I think it looks like my mother is wondering if she gave that pep-talk a little too fervently, if she's worried I'm actually starting to believe I'm lucky and that things will come my way if I just wait around all patient-like.

This attempted hookup smacks of disaster. Any attempted hookup that involves me smacks of disaster.

Katy once tried to get me interested in one of her husband's friends. He worked in some sort of meat-packing plant. He had a child. He drove a purple Grand-Am, which--if I remember correctly--had pink flames on its side. He had nine and a half fingers--a result of a tragic accident at the meat-packing plant.

Katy also tried to get me interested in another of her husband's friends. This one lived in a trailer, didn't own silverware, didn't do dishes except for once a month (if you were lucky), slept with every dirty girl and stripper in town, and got fired from a job--even the Happy Chef--every few months.

My uncle has tried. My mother has tried. My cousins have tried. My friends have tried. It has only worked once. Once.

That once was Ex-Keith. He'd seen me once at a party thrown by mutual friends. He liked what he saw, and he asked his best friend about me. His best friend asked his girlfriend, who was my best friend's sister. Then, at a baby shower thrown for my best friend's other sister--who had, consequently, been knocked up by a man who moved away with his gay lover several months later--my best friend's non-pregnant sister, the one who was dating Keith's best friend, grabbed me by the arm and towed me into their parents' bedroom. The bedroom was small and cramped. I felt a little nervous. The sister was looking at me with big eyes, telling me she had something to tell me, to ask me.

"What?" I asked. "Just what?"

Then she told me about Keith, how he thought I was cute, how he wanted to take me out. "I know it's all very overwhelming," she said, "so I thought maybe we'd all go on a date together. A double date. Very low pressure."

A week later I was sitting across from Keith at an Olive Garden in his hometown. I was eating chicken parmesan and praying I didn't get a little crazy with the knife, send a hunk of the chicken catapulting into my lap. Later that night Keith and I stood awkwardly at the foot of the sister's car while she and her boyfriend said goodbye with loud, loud kisses. I told Keith I had fun. I was shivering. I was thinking low pressure my ass. That's when Keith put his arm around me, tipped my chin up for a kiss. And that's when I realized it was all worth it, that things were going to be okay.

So maybe someone will have that kind of success with me again. Maybe someone will find me a boy who will give me his coat because it's just so cold out, it's starting to snow, and the sister and her boyfriend won't stop making out. Maybe someone will find me a boy who will take me to the bottom of a ski hill at the end of the night--just when everyone is doing their last runs before slipping out of their skis, just when everyone is doing their fanciest, most elaborate, best moves of the night. And maybe this boy will sit there with me and tell me all his best stories until it's late, until they're shutting the lights off and the whole world goes dark right there in front of us. Maybe I can have that sort of luck again. Maybe it can start this way. Maybe it can start with a picture and my name and e-mail and phone number on the back.

Maybe.