Wedding Fever. Kim Gruenenfelder
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being “just friends.”
But not one of us has ever really felt comfortable around the guy again. How can you relax around someone who doesn’t think you’re enough?
In my experience, the breakup goes one of two ways: either you pretend to stay friends and slowly drift apart— canceling on dinners or not scheduling movie nights anymore. Or, worse, you do keep seeing each other. And while a taste of honey is worse than none at all, a taste of tequila is deadly. Someone inevitably makes a move, someone says no, you both start yelling, and you never see each other again.
Oh, or I guess there’s the third dreaded kind of breakup: the one that happens three months later, after you’ve declared your undying love for him, he has said he loves you back, everything’s going incredibly smoothly, you’re picking out wedding china in your head, and Bam! He breaks up one night. Doesn’t even give a good reason, just doesn’t “feel the sparks” you feel.
This is the biggest reason for why I haven’t kissed Scott. I’ve already felt the heartbreak of him breaking up with me hundreds of times— all in my head. Depending on the night, I either go to bed fantasizing about him kissing me or I think about the breakup that would inevitably follow.
It would happen. I know this logically. We are completely wrong for each other.
I am a key fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Museum. It’s a job I kind of fell into, but I like it very much, and I’m pretty good at it. I organize sophisticated parties and showings for the well-to-do in Los Angeles, and try to get them to become patrons and donate money to the various programs and exhibits within the museum. I have no artistic ability whatsoever, but I am the biggest fan of a good exhibit. I’m stable. I have a steady job, a mortgage, and a 401(k). I get my teeth cleaned twice a year.
On the other hand, Scott— sexy, delicious Scott— is a walking disaster. He’s an artist: like a real painting, sculpting, honest to God that’s his job artist. As such, some months he can barely cover his rent. He goes to the dentist only when a tooth is exploding in his head. Getting him wrangled into a suit for a fund-raising event usually requires negotiations, flattery, and bribery. He sleeps until noon, then works until three in the morning. I get “booty calls” from him at 2:00 A.M.— because he actually wants to talk. (And, like an idiot, I always take the call. Then we stay up until four or five in the morning talking, and I spend the next day at work exhausted and inhaling Diet Monsters and plain M&Ms to get through the afternoon.)
I met Scott about ten months ago at a show a curator from the museum had put together on modern life. I’ll admit, contemporary art frequently escapes me.
Scott had done a piece everyone was raving about that night called The Conformity of Imagination. The piece was a white couch from a thrift store, a dark blue table, and some red, white, and blue tissue paper ribbons strewn from a red painting to the white couch.
I didn’t get it.
So, when the incredibly sexy guy with wet hair and freshly washed Levis walked up to me and asked what I thought of the piece, I diplomatically said, “It’s crap.”
He laughed. “Don’t let the artist hear you say that.”
I looked around the room nervously. “Where is he?” I ask Mr. Hotness. (One thing I’ve learned as a fund-raiser is never to discount an artist in public. You can say you “don’t get” a piece. But don’t cut them out completely— that may be the next Hockney or Picasso you’re dissing, and you will pay for it later when his pieces show up in Paris and three billionaires call you wanting to sponsor him in L.A.)
“Oh, I have no idea,” he who could be Orlando Bloom’s hotter brother said to me at the time. Orlando took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed me one as he asked, “So why don’t you like it?”
“Well, it’s so unoriginal,” I said to the insanely handsome man. “It’s like the artist was on deadline, knew he needed to turn in a piece, and had nothing. So he looked around his living room, and said, ‘Got it! Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,’ gave the piece a good title, and turned it in.”
The man smiled at me. “Wow. You’re even meaner than the art critic from the Times. She said she thought I went to IKEA to pick up some cheap wineglasses, and when I was looking at their display modules, decided to duplicate one and call it art.”
My face fell. “Oh. Shit. You’re not . . .”
“I am,” he admitted with a glint in his eye.
I let my shoulders fall. “I’m so screwed.”
“I would love to take you up on that, but unfortunately I’m here on a date,” the man told me flirtatiously. Then he flashed me a sexy smile as he put out his hand. “Scott James.”
I reluctantly put out my hand as I tried to figure out a way to apologize. “Seema Singh.”
Scott cocked his head. “Seema Singh? How do you have a Northern Indian first name and a Southern Indian last name?”
I was impressed. Not only that he knew that I was Indian (you’d be amazed how many Americans think I’m black, Asian, or related to Tiger Woods), but that he knew that my name was wrong. I smiled at him, immediately smitten. “I had parents who fell in love despite themselves. How do you know so much about India?”
“Took a trip there last year. I was dabbling in watercolors, trying to become less postmodern. More classic.” Scott looked over at his piece and said in an easy, self-deprecating tone, “Clearly I failed.”
I tried to backpedal. “You know, it’s not bad at all. I was just trying to be clever.”
Scott seemed amused. “Never apologize for your opinion. All notes are legitimate.” Then he winked at me and said breezily, “Just promise me that you can love the artist, even if you don’t understand his art.”
That statement was the first of hundreds of flirtatious remarks Scott makes that to this day throw me off my game.
That night, I wasn’t sure if Scott hated me or saw me as a worthy adversary to be conquered.
But I did know that I could have been conquered.
I stared at him off and on all night, and we ran into each other a few more times. Maybe he was hitting on me? I’m still not sure. His stunningly beautiful model date never allowed me to find out— she hung all over him for most of the evening, then dragged him home early.
At my behest, Scott and I exchanged cards and began meeting for lunch to talk about work. Lunch eventually led to drinks, which led to dinners, late-night games of pool or darts, and finally middle of the night phone calls.
But no make-out sessions, and no sex.
You see, our timing has always been off. By the time he was done dating the model, I had moved on to a very nice guy named Conrad. Who turned out to be a jerk, which I couldn’t wait to tell Scott one night, only to discover he had started dating a sitcom writer. By the time he broke up with her, I was with Alan, who I dated until last week. And now that I’m free from Alan, it sounds like Scott might be dating again.
Sigh.
Despite our poor timing, I think a few times we’ve come damn close to a Love Connection.
Maybe.
I’m not sure.
Times like when we were in the kitchen at a party and just started staring at each other, and I wanted to kiss him, but I didn’t. Or one of the many nights when we would order takeout, watch a Blu-ray, hug a bit, and fall asleep in each other’s arms. Hugs good night that lasted forever. Kisses hello that might have lingered a half second too long.
Or maybe this is all my imagination. Who the fuck knows?
And it doesn’t help that he constantly says stuff that could be interpreted a million different ways. Things like:
Date not bad. She’s pretty cool actually. Can’t