The Oracle of Dating

  The Oracle of Dating

  The Oracle of Dating

  Allison van Diepen

  To all of the guys I’ve ever dated.

  (Yes, you. And even you.)

  Contents

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  one

  Find Tracey a great boyfriend

  Make a choice about my hair: straight or curly, because wavy just isn’t working

  Cure cereal addiction (possibly through hypnotherapy—see Yellow Pages)

  Write more blogs for the Oracle of Dating Web site, give lots of dating advice, make stacks of $$$ and quit job at Hellhole

  Take the Oracle of Dating to the next level!!!

  YOU MIGHT THINK that September is a weird time to be making New Year’s resolutions. Well, Mom never accused me of doing anything on time, especially tidying my room, loading the dishwasher or Swiffering the kitchen.

  “I don’t see how you ended up with an eighty average last year, Kayla,” Mom says. “You’re always chatting online or on the phone.”

  Which implies that I am not being productive.

  The truth is, she has no idea what I’m really up to.

  Brrrrinnnggg!

  I clear my throat and answer, “The Oracle of Dating.”

  “It’s client number zero-two-four.”

  “Sabrina?”

  “You remember me!”

  “I do. What can the Oracle do for you?” I scoot over to my computer and open up my PayPal account to see that her five-dollar payment has been received.

  “It’s about this guy, Shawn, I’m dating. I hate going out in public with him.”

  A case of total butt ugly, perhaps?

  “Why’s that, Sabrina?”

  “He always embarrasses me somehow. Like when we went to the school dance Friday night, he was dancing like a maniac. Everybody was staring at him.”

  “He’s a really bad dancer?”

  “The worst. It’s not just that. Wherever we go, he says or does something dumb. But when we’re alone, he’s really sweet!”

  “Mmm-hmm.” Listening noises are very important.

  “What do you think I should do?”

  “Have you talked to him about this?”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t get it.”

  “I have another question for you, Sabrina. Do you love him?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. We’ve only been dating for a couple of months.”

  “Why not find a guy who wouldn’t embarrass you in public?”

  “It’s not so easy getting a boyfriend. He’s only the second one I’ve ever had.”

  As I well know. Sabrina’s been calling me to discuss every crush and flirtation in the past six months.

  “Ask yourself this. Are you with him because you really like him, or because you like having a boyfriend?”

  “Er, maybe the second thing.”

  “How would you feel if he answered the question the same way?”

  “I wouldn’t like it.” She sighs. “I guess I have to break up with him?”

  I lift the phone away from my ear and pound a tune into my little xylophone.

  “The Oracle has spoken.”

  “Thank you, Oracle. I know it’s the right thing to do.”

  “Good night, Sabrina.”

  I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE thinking. What makes me such an expert on dating? Have I had lots of boyfriends?

  Um, no.

  There have only been two, and both were disasters. But I’ve learned from each one, and now I think of them, with total detachment, as Case Study No. 1 and Case Study No. 2. I even made retrospective notes.

  Case Study No. 1: 9th Grade, November.

  Lead-up to relationship: weeks of note-writing and flirting, a subtle ass-grab at a school dance and a kiss behind the portables.

  Relationship length: one month.

  Activities: playing video games, kissing in his basement, playing more video games.

  Conflict: He often wouldn’t answer the phone because he didn’t want to interrupt his video game. His gaming addiction resulted in a thumb injury for which medical care was required, and he was unable to hold my hand due to a thumb splint.

  Outcome: He didn’t see me as a girlfriend, he saw me as a gaming partner, make-out buddy and occasional history tutor. So I gave him an ultimatum: “What do you care about more, me or your video games?” He answered: “They’re my thing. I’m a gamer, babe.” Babe?

  Case Study No. 2: 10th Grade, March.

  Lead-up to relationship: I met him at a party. He remembered my name and added me on Facebook. We chatted online for a couple of weeks before he finally asked me out.

  Conflict: None. He was totally sweet. Or so I thought.

  Outcome: After three weeks of going out and making out, he changed his Facebook picture to one of him kissing another girl. ALL of our friends saw this. I called him immediately: “Are you trying to tell me something?” He answered: “Sorry, I didn’t know how else to say it.”

  My two boyfriend disasters only confirmed what I already knew: teenage guys are less mature than teenage girls. Therefore, if I want to date my equal, I should date a guy who is at least twenty, which I would never do, because what sort of twenty-year-old would want to date someone still in high school?

  It would’ve helped a lot to have someone to talk to during those relationships; someone nonjudgmental and anonymous like the Oracle of Dating would have been perfect. I never laugh at a client’s concerns or get too preachy. I wish I could’ve given myself better advice at the time, but it’s hard to see clearly when you’re emotionally involved.

  I decided there was only one solution—to put off dating until college, when the scales of maturity will start to balance. I simply don’t have the emotional resilience to deal with immature high school guys. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t change my mind if my ideal guy came along, but statistically, it’s highly unlikely.

  For those teenage girls who are brave enough to deal with teenage guys, and for anyone else who needs me, the Oracle of Dating is there. I do a lot of research so that I can give sensible advice. When I’m not sure of the answers, I tell my clients the Oracle will have to get back to them so that she can “meditate” on their dilemma. My advice is serious, though I’ve put “for entertainment purposes only” on my Web site so I don’t get sued if something I suggest backfires. With all of this responsibility, I don’t have time for a love life, anyway.

  Besides, I’m not the one who needs a man, my sister does. Tracey is ten years older than I am, and has been coming to me for advice since I was twelve, often trusting my guy radar more than her own. She’s even been afraid to introduce certain guys to me because she knows I’ll see what she prefers not to see.

  Tracey lives on the Upper East Side—it’s about forty minutes from Brooklyn by subway. I usually meet her in Manhattan on weekends for lattes, which she insists on paying for. (She says it’s fair, considering I don’t charge her for advice.) I’ve also given lots of free advice to her friends. It was actually her best friend, Corinne, who called me the Oracle in the first place. After that, the name stuck.

  Nothing would make me happier than to find a great match for Tracey. She’s an amazing sister, and never makes me feel like a pain when I call her. She
’s kind, hardworking and selfless—sometimes to a fault—and I won’t let her settle for anything less than she deserves. In any other city, she’d have been snatched up by some wonderful guy already, but New York is tricky, since there are far more single women than men, and the dating culture is downright strange. Since she’s twenty-six now, I figure she has another few years of trying to find a good man before I’ll suggest more extreme measures.

  By extreme measures I mean going to Alaska. I see nothing wrong with that. People move for their careers—why not to find a man? In some parts of Alaska, single men outnumber women ten to one. Tracey would have absolutely no trouble finding a guy there. And I think an Alaskan man—big, strong, not afraid of bugs or heavy lifting—would complement Tracey’s personality. The only problem is that she’d be so far away! I guess she’d have to convince her Alaskan man to move to, say, rural Vermont. Because Alaska is just the wrong time zone.

  True, there’s still a great woman-to-man ratio in the Silicon Valley in California, but I’d prefer she didn’t marry a high-tech guy. Dad is in tech, and I don’t want Tracey to end up with a guy like him. He and Mom divorced ten years ago, and since then, he’s reverted back to the lifestyle he was meant for: the lifestyle of a bachelor. He’s traveled the world with his company, living in Singapore, Johannesburg, Berlin and now in Ottawa, Canada. We only see him a couple of times a year, Christmas and summer vacation. And that’s fine with me.

  I remember the day he left. Mom and Dad sat down with Tracey and me, explaining that he was going to move out. Tracey didn’t argue. I think she was sick to death of the fighting. But not me. I thought they should make it work. I used any rationale available to my six-year-old brain to stop them from breaking up. And when none of my arguments worked, I started to cry.

  The truth is, Mom and Dad were a disaster from the start. I’m surprised Mom didn’t see through his hollow charm right away, but I guess she was young and innocent, and trusted love. Too bad no one had the guts to stand up at the speak now or forever hold your peace part of their wedding, since the only things they had in common—good looks and ridiculous eighties hair—were not enough for a happily ever after.

  IT’S A WINDY SUNDAY and I get off the 6 train at Seventy-seventh Street and Lexington to meet Tracey at Starbucks. I see all of the Sunday couples walking around holding hands. Sunday couples are young couples who stay over Saturday night (if you know what I mean) and have carefully assembled designer sweats, sneakers and baseball caps to wear on Sundays. They always look freshly showered and slightly hungover and you find them ordering greasy breakfasts at Second Avenue diners before spending their afternoons browsing shops, buying artwork for their tiny apartments and crowding neighborhood cafés so that I can hardly ever get a seat.

  Tracey is looking beautiful today, though she has puffiness under her eyes, indicating that she either slept too little or too much. She has rich dark hair the color of a flourless chocolate cake and shining brown eyes to match. Her cheeks are slightly pink from the windy day, and her complexion is flawless. At five-nine, she’s four inches taller than me, giving a sleek elegance to her figure that many girls would kill for.

  As for me, I’ve inherited my dad’s Shredded Wheat–colored hair and my mom’s hazel eyes, which are mistaken for green or brown depending on the day, light conditions and my mood.

  Today Tracey is wearing fresh unscuffed New Balance sneakers. Sunday is the only day of the week you won’t find her in heels of at least two inches—an error in judgment, IMO, since it tends to narrow her pool of possible guys to those five-eleven and above. But I guess that’s her choice, her preference being men over six feet—not always easy to find unless you’re in Denmark or Norway.

  She gives me a big hug and two European cheek kisses, and I know I’ll have to take my compact out to see what lipstick smudges she left.

  At the counter, we’re served by a skinny guy we privately nicknamed Pip. He’s there every weekend and talks like Mickey Mouse.

  “Tall soy iced Tazo chai latte,” he says to the huge guy behind the espresso machine.

  “Tall soy iced Tazo chai latte,” the huge guy repeats in a booming voice.

  “Uh, no foam, please,” Tracey adds.

  Pip turns to me. “Miss?”

  “I’ll have a tall soy latte.” (Lactose intolerance runs in the family, if you haven’t guessed.)

  We find a little table on the upper level in the midst of several twentysomethings on laptops. An old man is dozing in one of the comfy chairs, his mouth hanging open. I angle my seat so I don’t have to see if a fly swoops in there.

  “Did you go out last night?” I ask.

  Her lips spread in a smile. “It was awesome.”

  “Tell me, tell me!”

  She giggles. “His name’s Miguel.”

  “Your salsa instructor?”

  “Yes. We had drinks at Bar Nine. He was telling me that he does an hour and a half of yoga a day—talk about self-discipline! Anyway, after drinks we went to a salsa bar. I was stepping all over his feet, and I actually got super-dizzy when he spun me around, but I didn’t want to tell him that.” She leans closer to me and lowers her voice. “It was so hot.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Kayla. You’re thinking that a salsa instructor is obviously sleeping with half his students. But he’s not like that at all. In fact, he won’t even give bachata lessons—it’s too personal.”

  “I think he sounds fab.”

  She blinks. “You do?”

  “Sure, I do.” I sip my latte. “I only have one piece of advice.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Don’t sleep with him for at least a month.”

  “I knew you were going to say that.”

  Tracey and I are pretty open about her sex life. (Well, the fact that she has one.) She promised to tell me everything I want to know if I agreed to stay a virgin until I was at least eighteen. I told her we had a deal. I didn’t plan on having another boyfriend before then, anyway.

  “How’s business?” she asks.

  “It’s good. Look what I’ve got.” I open my knapsack and pull out a bunch of business cards.

  She examines one. “This is fantastic! How’d you do this?”

  “I just did it on Word. It’s easy. I got the card stock from Staples.”

  “Can I have a few? Maybe I can get you some business. A lot of my colleagues need a service like this.”

  I give her a stack. “I have hundreds.”

  She puts them in her purse. “Maybe I’ll ask for a commission. Say, ten percent?” She winks.

  “How’s work going, anyway?”

  “Ugh, it’s a gong show! We’re supposed to deliver this software to clients at the end of the month and we’re running into all these obstacles we didn’t expect.”

  That’s another thing about my sister. She speaks an alien language known only to Gen Y guys in square-rimmed glasses: the language of computers. She’s a software developer for a company called Hexagon. Unfortunately, I don’t share her smarts in technical stuff. But I can blog easily, and only need her help for the Web site design.

  “You won’t guess who’s back working in the office,” she says.

  Uh-oh. Don’t say it. “Scott.”

  “Yep. And he had the nerve to ask if I wanted to go out for drinks with him and Matt and Chris on Friday. I told him, ‘Sorry, I have plans.’ Can you believe that guy?”

  I can. It’s Scott’s style. He was her boyfriend for seven months only to end it with “I’m not sure if I’m ready for a full-blown relationship.” As if it were a disease.

  Yes, they were once one of those Upper East Side Sunday couples.

  But Scott hadn’t stopped with dumping her. That would be too quick and easy. Over the next few months he kept calling, pretending he was confused, tortured. And in spite of my warning to ignore his calls, she always answered them, hoping that he’d want something real.

  His calls faded, ev
entually.

  But now he’s back.

  Intelligent woman that she is, I should be sure that she won’t give that loser the time of day, right?

  Wrong. Tracey doesn’t always have the best judgment when it comes to dating, which is why it’s so important that I weigh in. I always wondered if Tracey was messed up by my parents’ marriage (not by their divorce—that was the healthy part). She was sixteen when it happened, and it sent her skidding off in the wrong direction—grades sliding, bad boyfriends, borderline eating disorder. Thank God Mom managed to get her back on track, but I wonder if the scars remain. Is she destined to be attracted to unreliable types like our dad?

  “Don’t you dare, Tracey.”

  “I won’t. What, you think I’m stupid?”

  That’s the thing about being the Oracle. Sometimes you know things you don’t want to know.

  I USED TO THINK SUNDAY nights sucked because the excitement of the weekend is over and a whole week of waking up early stretches ahead of me. Plus, ever since Mom gave me the choice of whether or not to go to church, I usually sleep until noon, so I can never get to sleep at a good time.

  When I realized that my friends were going through the same Sunday-night blues, I decided to take action and organize a weekly get-together. And now, Sunday night embodies everything we love (to hate): the rich bitches, the beautiful people, the trash-talkers, the sex-crazed and the backstabbers. In other words, Glamour Girl. Or, as Mom calls it, potato chips for your brain—they taste good but have no nutritional value.

  We’re in Viv’s basement on beanbag chairs in front of the flat-screen TV, except for Amy, who is stretched out luxuriantly on the sofa in her Don’t Feed the Models tee.

  On the coffee table is an assortment of traditional East Indian faves: samosas, pakoras, badgies. It’s one of the things I look forward to about our Sunday nights here.