Unwifeable by Mandy Stadtmiller
“You know what it implies,” he says, disgusted.
Of course I do.
I grew wise to this headline-switcheroo trick over time and even developed a warning speech for more sensitive souls wading into the murky thirty-six-point-screaming-font waters of tabloid journalism. For new writers, before they submitted pieces or agreed to be written about, I would tell little illustrative parables.
“It’s like,” I would try to explain, “let’s say you turn in a thoughtful piece about not being sure if you want kids and how you’re happy just being single. You have to be fully prepared, because the next day, the headline on the front page of your article might very well read, ‘I’m a Dried-Up Spinster Who Will Die Alone . . . and I’m Lovin’ It!’ But if you’re okay with all possibilities of what might happen when you relinquish your words, then proceed. Because the exposure will be great.”
Most people proceed. Others back away slowly.
As for Blaine, he never wanted to be written about in the first place.
I start staying late at the paper on Friday nights to make sure I see the final pages that include the headline so no more embarrassment occurs.
But I should have listened to the speech I gave so many others.
Because while another column that I write initially bears a headline like “The Illusion of the Perfect Relationship” or something, that all goes out the window after I sign off. In the piece, I quote a man who confesses to being a serial monogamist who talks candidly about what happens when he notices a woman starts trying to act like a wife—doing all the dishes, making the bed with the TV remote perfectly lined up, extra dusting no one asked you to do. This serial monogamist tells me, “That’s when we know we have you.”
He says it happens in a flash, which he calls “going from being totally chill to being totally psycho in a split second.”
It’s a throwaway line, but a good quote, so I leave it in.
On Sunday, when I open the paper to read the piece, there it is.
The new headline screams: “How I Went from Chill To Psycho.”
Great. This should go over well.
* * *
WHEN I’M NOT writing the column, I’m reporting feature stories on illustrious subjects on which I am an expert.
Like an article about the dangers of “emailing while intoxicated” and a guide on how not to be what a Bachelor alum calls “that girl”—you know, the one who’s drunk, weeping over past relationships, showing her panty line, all while skimming Modern Bride on the first date.
Of course, in so many ways, I am that girl. But why start being honest now?
When I’m tasked with writing an investigative story about what the Sex and the City movie has in store for viewers, I get to do some old-school tabloid reporting.
Using my paparazzi contacts from the Waverly Inn piece, I track down a photographer who tells me he can get me pages from the script that I can use. He puts me through the wringer, though, and when we finally meet up, it’s past midnight in a burger joint, where he continues to tease me about whether he’ll give me the goods. We make some deals about his pictures being used in the newspaper at some point, and finally I leave the diner with the pages from the shooting script.
Now I have to consult with the Post’s legal team about whether or not we’ll be sued depending on how I report the material. It comes down to this: While I can’t say that we have the pages, I can give insight into what happens based on someone who is familiar with the script. This provides the Post with that very special legal protection of not appearing to have received stolen intellectual property but rather of having access to a person who is familiar with the stolen intellectual property in question.
Playing private investigator is my favorite part of Post reporting. It’s fun to be given the challenge of getting information that is locked down. I also learn just how little I know about Hollywood. When a friend hooks me up with an interview with one of the actors in the movie (I label the actor an “insider” in the piece), I straight-faced ask this person, “Now, I’ve heard that some of these scenes are being shot to misdirect people as to what is going to happen . . .”
The actor interrupts my question—to laugh at me.
“Do you know how much it costs to shoot for five minutes?” the actor says. “It’s like ten thousand people on the crew, and it costs a ridiculous amount of money to shoot. Anyone saying that full scenes are being shot just to throw off the audience, that’s an absolute lie.”
We’re able to bill my spoiler-filled (and spoiler-warned, don’t worry) Sex and the City preview as an exclusive, and in the final minutes before signing off on the piece, I go into my editor Isaac Guzmán’s office, where he has a specially prepared cosmopolitan waiting for me that he made from his in-office bar. He knows I’ve worked my ass off, and it’s an incredibly thoughtful gesture from an incredibly thoughtful guy.
Isaac also knows, as the guy who edits my dating column every week, just how unlike any kind of rom-com fairy tale my life is. Unlike Carrie Bradshaw, I’m essentially a joke, eviscerated on Gawker and an embarrassment to the guy I’m dating exclusively. It’s not like in the movies where the guys are beating down your door. The guys want sex, and then they want you to disappear forever—or at least to keep your trap shut.
There’s nothing so loathsome as being associated with female desire expressed and documented. That’s how you don’t get a husband, don’t you know? The reality for most women who write any kind of dating or sex column is that there is no Aidan who tries to thrust the engagement ring upon you, but you in your freewheeling lifestyle of carefree fun and abandon can only bring yourself to wear the giant rock swinging around your neck fancy-free. Because dammit, you’ve just got to do you.
There’s no Aidan, and I’m as far from that doesn’t-want-to-be-caged story line as you can get. I can’t wait to be wifed again, to be claimed. And in constantly vocalizing how no-pressure our relationship is to Blaine, I’m absolutely trying to appropriate a cool girl character like that—because I sure as fuck don’t know who I actually am. I just know how good it feels when I receive approval—especially male approval—and my laser target of choice is poor Blaine.
So, most of the time my mental energy at the paper is consumed with About Last Night. Not even the column itself, but the stress around it that it creates for Blaine.
Whenever Blaine meets more of my friends, I try to ease his fears, but my passive-aggressive anger leaks out.
Me: “I do feel a little pathetic at a certain point saying, ‘Please don’t let it get out that this guy is my boyfriend.’ Like that you’re ashamed to be that person.”
Blaine: “Listen, you know that I take our relationship highly seriously and am totally excited to be dating you. I am also excited for most of your friends to know my identity and really like meeting and hanging out with your friends. Just not sure if I’m quite ready to have the whole Gawker media circus thing.”
But I do enjoy the status that dating (and writing about dating) a high-society guy affords.
Shallow actions bring shallow rewards. The slightly buzzed thrill of being swept in VIP to Skybar and the Reading Room in Newport along with the rest of the blue-blazer set, with Blaine at my side makes me feel like I’ve come so far. I am no longer the too-tall high school dork who screamed along to the lyrics of “I Don’t Like Mondays” and tolerated the popular girls who would ask for homework help, then later pretend not to know me at parties.
When the sad reality is it is the exact same dynamic.
I am still the embarrassing secret. I am still gobbling up those little crumbs of love and attention anywhere I can get them, and then apologizing for the burden I am.
As the relationship intensifies, I realize it is time for me to finally unburden myself of my physical past. So I return to Chicago for one final trip to rid myself of stuff I’ve kept in storage. Going through boxes, I unearth an old CD that has a song that my ex-husband, James, wrote for me right after we
A little while after I told him that story, James showed up outside of my therapy appointment and handed me a mix CD that had this song he wrote called “I Can Do This.”
I can’t resist when I see it. I play the CD and listen to it once more.
“I can do this,” the song begins with a soft, uplifting melody. “There is nothing to this. / I cannot find in myself. / When strength has deserted, hope seems unreal. / Take heart, in knowing / That strength is filling / A heart / Far from yours but filled by yours.”
It’s wrenching. Another ghost in a city filled with them.
On the flight back to Manhattan, drained and seemingly cried out, I check my email and see that I have a potentially interesting reader note in my “User Quarantine” folder with the subject line “Love reading you!” It gives me a smile. These notes from readers always make me feel so good. It’s been a rough trip, so I decide I won’t release the message just yet, but that I’ll savor it later.
Once in Park Slope, I release it.
Subject line: “Love reading you!”
I click on the email to move it to my inbox so I can read the rest. Here’s what it says:
“Actually . . . you are the fucking worst. You are the reason men think women are crazy. Your teeth are worse than Austin Powers and if I were you, I would have put a gun in my mouth a long time ago.”
I just sit on my bed staring at it. Numb. I know I shouldn’t let things like this get to me, but the extra effort of someone trying to make me think it was positive so they could maximize pain inflicted when they pulled the rug out to tell me I should commit suicide hurts even more.
Wanting some kind of comfort, and with Blaine on a trip to Europe, I call my parents instead.
I ask them if they’ve read any of my recent columns, even though I know what the answer is going to be. They haven’t. Of course they haven’t. I do feel worse. It’s almost like I wanted to get there, to punish myself somehow.
My dad follows up our phone call with an email.
“Mandy,” he writes, “we are being hypocritical to tell you we love you and in the same breath admit that we don’t care enough to read your past columns. Whereas our intention is not to hurt you, I realize that we have not only hurt you in the past by not reading them, we are continuing to hurt you each day that we don’t.”
It goes on, and he apologizes and reiterates his love for me. But it feels like a punch in the gut. Physically revisiting this email from him (and of course, I have blocked it out of my memory entirely until finding it) inspires such sadness. It’s like the embodiment of a lifetime of not being good enough to warrant attention and care.
How could I expect Blaine to want to be associated with me? My father doesn’t even care enough to pay attention to what I’m doing. I’m not worth it.
But despite my wallowing briefly in self-pity, I resolve to not let myself go there fully. Because there is something else growing inside of me: resilience.
I take to my blog, and I compile a ton of reader emails that are kind, and I publish them with the email addresses blacked out and preface the entry by saying, “I never have enough time to thank all the wonderful readers, so I wanted to share some of their notes here.”
It is my fuck-you to the guy telling me to kill myself. It’s even a little bit of a fuck-you to my father. I’m not going anywhere.
* * *
WHEN LOLA’S TWINS arrive, her luxury apartment now houses me, the Trinidadian baby nurse, the two baby boys, and Lola. The only thing we’re missing is the international sperm donor, and we could have ourselves a reality show. It is about as modern family as you can get.
Looking back, I wish I never left—although I might never have found myself if I’d stayed.
The five of us live together for quite a while, and Lola’s fraternal twins are the sweetest little creatures on the planet: crawling around, playing in their bouncy, loving on their mama, and just being so grateful to exist at all.
But word is soon passed down the newsroom grapevine that the Post’s music critic Dan Aquilante has an apartment for rent in the SoHo building he owns (he bought it for a steal back in the ’70s, and if you get anything out of this book, let it be this: Invest in New York real estate). Inspired, I decide it’s high time that I get a place of my own. Dan and I agree to $1,600 rent for the initial eight months and then $1,800 after that. I’m right smack-dab in the middle of all the bustling action of SoHo, and it feels like the height of luxury. The apartment is so nice, with a separate office in the back, a spacious living room, a kitchen, big windows with a view to the street, and exposed-brick walls.
Blaine calls it “cute.”
As I settle into the apartment, I try to feng shui it according to one friend who’s an expert on the subject. “Always shut the toilet seat,” she says. “It keeps in prosperity that way.” Another maxim is to put mirrors over the burner for “abundance.” I learn peonies are good for marriage, so I buy an Isaac Mizrahi peony comforter, too.
The entire move is such a major undertaking, but I’m so psyched to finally prove myself a capable homemaker. Of course, I tell myself it is for me. But it’s so obviously a self-imposed “look at how wifeable I am” display for Blaine. On my first shopping trip to Bed Bath & Beyond, I fill up two carts and spend more than $2,000 on everything from boot shapers to three kinds of wineglasses because I don’t want Blaine to think I’m not cultured enough to know the difference.
The wineglasses never get used. The boot shapers get tossed in the corner. That’s okay, though. Because I’ve just read The Secret. You have to spend money to make it. Besides, I’m not digging myself deeper into debt. I’m attracting things. With my credit card.
I call this Secret-ing yourself into bankruptcy.
Around this time, the other spiritual pop bestseller of the moment is Eat Pray Love. I read that, too, and when I spot that SNL’s Mike Myers has a new movie coming out called The Love Guru, I pitch a trend piece on the topic.
To report “Feelin’ Guru-vy,” I reach out to several gurus, including Amma, the so-called hugging saint of India. At the end of my interview with her spokesperson, he tells me I should come meet her myself the next time she visits New York.
When summer arrives—and so does Amma—I do just that.
When I enter the Manhattan Center on Amma’s first day in town, I’m dazzled by its top-to-bottom transformation into a sandalwood-scented bazaar, with kirtan devotional music piped throughout. When I go to receive one of Amma’s famous hugs, she clutches me close to her bosom in what is called darshan (a Sanskrit term meaning “visions of the divine”). I lose track of time and feel all-consumed by a sense of love and acceptance I didn’t anticipate. Amma releases me backward and gives me a playful smile, hands me an apple, and I am moved to the side, where chairs have been set up for people to meditate.
What the hell just happened? The little glimpse of peace I feel is like a rush of heroin to the veins. Is it cult? Probably. Maybe. Who cares.
As I explore, I sign up for healing treatments being offered. Spiritual acupuncture. Sound healing. Distance Reiki. Pranic healing. There’s an Amma retreat coming up in Massachusetts for only $200 in a couple of days. Should I go? Yeah, I should definitely go. I sign up and fork over my credit card. When all is said and done, I spend more than $2,500 in a matter of days.
When I start going to the healing sessions, I fall even farther down the rabbit hole. I am going to be healed, dammit. I don’t care what it costs.
* * *
IF MY SPENDING on “spirituality” were the only thing that made balancing my budget hard, perhaps I would not have spiraled out so much financially during this time.
But from the very first day I arrived in New York, my almost daily shopping
These are all reasonable purchases, I told myself. The $150 bikini wax, the $600 facial lasering, the $80 nails, the $60 eyebrows, the $400 teeth whitening, the $500 hair, the $300 makeup, the $200 perfume. When I travel with Blaine up to the Hamptons and Newport, I try to observe and write down the best brand names all the socialites are wearing; then I run out and buy these, too.
There are outfits for beach days (Scoop sunglasses, $200; Lilly Pulitzer beach dress, $200; Jack Rogers sandals, $80; Vineyard Vines tote, $100; Tommy Hilfiger bikini, $60) and outfits for brunches (Rag & Bone denim, $225; Barbour jacket, $200; Brooks Brothers shirt, $80; Ferragamo shoes, $350) and outfits for evenings (Kate Spade dress, $300; Gucci purse, $500; Tory Burch high heels, $250; Oscar de la Renta jewelry, $300). I won’t even get into what a skiing weekend costs—just in accessories alone.
It is my desperate attempt to fit into a world that I very much do not. Instead, there is often tension—and the feeling that I am a very expensive liability.
One weekend, one of Blaine’s friends drives me up to Newport before Blaine, who is finishing business in the city, and even though no one is home at the house where we are staying, the friend drops me off to sit on the steps, alone, in the dark, with nowhere to go.
I’m pissed at how I am treated, knowing that Blaine’s friend never would have dumped some socialite girl on the curb like that. I drink even more than normal that night, starting out with a Dark and Stormy and working my way up to glass after glass of champagne.
Blaine and I are having dinner with a bunch of his friends, and one of them begins to tell me about how even though he is in his sixties, he dates girls in their twenties.