The truth was, I also knew it all too well. It was poignant and demeaning at the same time.

The truth was, I also knew it all too well. It was poignant and demeaning at the same time.

"Anyway, Gail's focused on career all through her twen­ties, and by her late thirties she's become a serious profes­sional. But her personal life is still on hold. She 'meets people' at work, or some other way, and she has a couple of long-standing relationships that finally crater because the guys, make that commit-ophobes, 'need space.' Along the way, there're ghastly fix-ups and dismal dinners with what seem like a hundred thousand misfits. She becomes the Dat­ing Queen of New York, but eventually she realizes all the men she's meeting are either assuaging their midlife crises with some pneumatic bombshell named Bambi, or they're divorced and whining and carrying a ton of emotional bag­gage. The fact is, she's become the sensible, successful pro­fessional she's been looking for all this time. This all sort of seeps in as back story."

"Anyway, Gail's focused on career all through her twen­ties, and by her late thirties she's become a serious profes­sional. But her personal life is still on hold. She 'meets people' at work, or some other way, and she has a couple of long-standing relationships that finally crater because the guys, make that commit-ophobes, 'need space.' Along the way, there're ghastly fix-ups and dismal dinners with what seem like a hundred thousand misfits. She becomes the Dat­ing Queen of New York, but eventually she realizes all the men she's meeting are either assuaging their midlife crises with some pneumatic bombshell named Bambi, or they're divorced and whining and carrying a ton of emotional bag­gage. The fact is, she's become the sensible, successful pro­fessional she's been looking for all this time. This all sort of seeps in as back story."

I perched on a stool at the breakfast bar and looked down at my jeans, and noticed that a rip was starting in the crotch. Shit, back to cottage cheese. Those horrible eight pounds I could never get rid of.

I perched on a stool at the breakfast bar and looked down at my jeans, and noticed that a rip was starting in the crotch. Shit, back to cottage cheese. Those horrible eight pounds I could never get rid of.

I crossed my legs. "Finally, after she gets a couple more promotions, she wakes up one morning and realizes she's never going to have a family. All the stable, rational men have disappeared. Like there's a black hole or 

 Prev. P 16/495 next