The Lonely Hearts Club Page 10

  Max is over working on the Web site when the computer chirps. Yet again. He’s changed the sound of the chirp to an old-fashioned telephone sound, but that’s no less annoying than the default setting.

  “We’ve gotta change that sound,” I say.

  “It’s retro,” Max says. “You look like the sort of girl who likes retro.”

  I smile, and a tiny giggle escapes my lips. I have no idea if he’s flirting with me—is that flirting? But it seems like he is. And even though I’ve sworn off love, I like it. I like it a lot.

  “Are you flirting with me?” I ask. I’ve been thinking about the Thai food offer all week, but just haven’t known how to bring it up again. Is there an organic way to say: Ask me out again. This time, I’ll say yes.

  Max gives me a look I can’t really register. “No,” he says. I’m about to tell him that it’s okay if he was, when the computer chirps again. That damned noise.

  “This one any better?” he asks. It’s the sound of screeching tires.

  “No,” I say, and lean over his shoulder to turn down the sound.

  “Hey,” he says. “I need to hear that if I’m going to change it.”

  He plays another clip for me. It sounds like an ’80s video game. Chomp, chomp, chomp.

  “No,” I say.

  “You don’t like video games?” Max asks.

  I shake my head no.

  “Oh, man,” Max says. “You’re going to want to read this.” He turns the computer screen my way. He’s showing me an e-mail. Doesn’t he know how many e-mails I get a day? An e-mail isn’t exactly going to get me excited. I can barely keep up as it is.

  But this one is different. Max is right—I do want to see it. It’s exactly what he promised me the first day we met: an advertiser. It’s an offer to pay me to put an ad up on the blog.

  “This is from Love, Inc. They want to put an ad up for a dating site,” I say to Max. “That makes no sense.”

  “Maybe they think that you guys are all talk about this whole anti-love thing,” Max says.

  “I’m not all talk,” I say.

  “Oh, I know that,” Max says and puts his head back down into my computer. And then, under his breath, “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “You didn’t offend me,” I say. “I’m just telling you that I’m not all talk. So, do you think I should let this Love, Inc. thing put up an ad on the site?” I don’t mention the fact that I recently got a gift certificate from Love, Inc. and promptly threw it in the garbage. But if I write back to them, I plan to put that in the e-mail.

  “Of course you should,” Max says. “It’s a no-brainer.”

  “But it’s the opposite of the message I’m trying to convey with the site,” I say. “You realize that, right?”

  “I disagree. The site’s about love. It happens to be about rejecting love, yes, but it’s still about love. This ad would be right in your wheelhouse.”

  “This ad makes me a sellout,” I say.

  “This ad makes you money,” he says. “And this loft looks expensive.”

  “This loft is expensive,” I say. “And it belongs to my father. Who’s now charging me rent that I can’t afford.”

  “And you’re really questioning whether or not to take the ad?” Max says, laughter in his voice. “You’ll be the homeless girl with really high principles.”

  “Let’s write back then,” I say. I sit down right next to Max, close—too close, really—and start to type.

  E-mail from Jo@LonelyHeartsClub.com:

  I’m interested in your offer. But there are some rules you’ll have to follow if you want your ad to be on my site. First and foremost, you’ll have to change your logo. I can’t have something pink and red and all girly on my site. You can keep the graphic, but you’ve got to make it edgier. And the color scheme has to go. You can only use the colors black, white, and gray. And I reserve the right to put any tagline on the ad that I choose. You don’t get final approval. I recently got a gift certificate to your site and threw it in the garbage, so it will probably be something along those lines.

  If you want to meet these terms, double your ask and we’ll get your ad up tomorrow. Rock and roll, Jo Waldman

  “You’re a tough cookie,” Max says.

  “Oh yeah?” I ask, and it comes out a little flirtier than I’d originally thought. Did I mean to be flirting?

  Max looks away.

  “I should get back to work,” he says, and takes the computer over to my kitchen counter.

  “You do?” I ask. “I thought we were talking.”

  “Girls who look like you never would have talked to a guy like me when I was in high school,” he says, and I challenge him with a look. “I get it. Would you have ever talked to a guy who wore glasses and played D&D?”

  “D&D?” I ask, silently praying that he’s not asking me about some sort of sexual fetish.

  “Dungeons and Dragons,” he says.

  “Oh,” I say. “When I was younger, I wasn’t really into video games.”

  “It’s not a video game,” he says and laughs. “It’s a role-playing game.”

  “Oh,” I say, unsure if that meant that it is, in fact, some sort of sex fetish thing.

  “The point is,” he continues, “girls like you never talk to me. I get it, Jo. You don’t have to apologize. You don’t have to worry about making me feel bad. I’ve met girls like you before.”

  There’s really only one thing you can do when someone challenges you like that. And that is to show them how wrong they are.

  I lean into him. Lingering only for a brief instant, I kiss him. Our lips touch and I realize that I’d wanted to do that from the first minute he walked into my loft.

  Max barely moves. I pull away from him and look into his eyes. Was that wrong? Did I overstep my boundaries? Worse, did I just sexually harass the only person who’s actually helping me with this thing? Was the Thai food not an offer for a date?

  Then something changes in his eyes. Max grabs my shoulders and pulls me to him. We’re kissing, his lips are all over mine, and I can’t remember the last time I was kissed like this. If I was ever kissed like this. His lips are soft and I melt into him. He’s got his hands tangled up in my hair and I run my own hands down his arms. His arms are strong, stronger than I would have thought, based on what he looks like in his work shirt, and I feel my face getting hot. But I don’t care. I just want him to kiss me more, harder, stronger, and I don’t want him to stop.

  We stumble out of the kitchen, arms entwined, lips locked, and fall onto the couch.

  “Should we go into the bedroom?” I murmur.

  “Slow down, there,” he whispers. “I want to enjoy you.”

  He kisses my neck, my shoulders, my collarbone. Then he lifts my shirt up and plants kisses all over my belly.

  “Don’t stop,” I say, and he says, “I won’t.”

  We’re kissing and we’re kissing and our bodies fit perfectly with each other. It’s like my body was created just to nestle into his. Every move he makes drives me crazy and I tell him so.

  “You’re making me crazy, too,” he whispers in my ear. And then he kisses it. He brushes my hair to the side and kisses my neck. Slowly. Deliberately. Like it’s the only thing he has to do all day.

  We kiss again and I pull at his shirt, try to pull it over his head, but he says, “Stop.”

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “I like to go slow,” he says. His hand caresses my cheek as he says it. “There’s no rush, is there? I want to get to know you.”

  “Is that what the kids are calling this these days?” I say. I smile at him.

  “Is this going to be a problem?” Max asks.

  “Is what?” I say, wondering why he’s talking and not kissing me.

  “Your new role as the poster girl for the anti-love movement currently taking place in Manhattan,” Max says. “This sort of seems the opposite of all that. Can we be doing this when you stand for that?”

  �
��Yes,” I say, a little too quickly. “Of course we can. It’s not going to be a problem.”

  At this point, I’ll do anything to get the talking to stop and the kissing to start up again. I’ll say anything. Anything he wants right now. But he’s right. It is going to be a problem. I know it will. Of course it will. How can you be the symbol of all things anti-love if you’re falling for someone you just met?

  17 - More, More, More

  Tweet from @DiscoSux:

  Viva #LonelyHeartsClub!

  Blog comment from NewYorkDoll:

  I’m so glad I found this site. I’ve been broken-hearted for over six months now, and it seems like no one understands how I feel. My friends are sick of hearing me talk about it, my family wants me to move on, but it’s all I think about all day at work. At home. In between. Sometimes I can’t even sleep at night.

  A friend of mine said that I should just repeat this mantra over and over again in my head: How can you love someone who would treat your heart like that?

  So that’s what I tell myself. How do the rest of you deal with it?

  Response from Chi-Town Girl:

  Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours. —Mary Schmich

  Response from FreePussyRiot:

  Listen to Jo: Love sucks!

  18 - What’s the Matter Here?

  “What is this?” I say, barging into Lola’s apartment.

  “Did you print that out?” Lola asks, referring to the print-out of my latest blog post that I’m holding. “God, you are so 2002.”

  “Is this your comment?” I ask, pointing to the one in question, the comment with the tag WhateverLolaWants. I won’t let the veiled insult about my age get me off track. Though, seriously, I’m only twenty-two years old—how old does Lola think I am?

  “Yeah, it’s mine,” Lola says. “What of it?”

  “I don’t want you on the blog.”

  “Everyone’s on the blog,” she says. “Why can’t I be?”

  And she’s right. The Lonely Hearts movement is everywhere—it’s all over Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but the blog itself is where the real stuff happens. It’s where people pour their hearts out, where people confess their true feelings. Two months after my first post, and it’s grown exponentially.

  Lola opens her laptop and shows me that it’s not just her—all of her friends are leaving comments. I’m not sure what I’m more shocked about: that the blog is catching on with kids so young or that I can’t tell the preteen comments from the adult ones.

  But hey, even eleven-year-olds need to get out their anger and rage, don’t they? I mean, maybe there’d be less Ritalin prescribed if kids were encouraged to write down their feelings more often.

  “You just can’t be,” I say. I realize I sound like one of my parents: Why not? Because I said so! But now, talking to Lola, I feel like “Because I said so” is a very reasonable response to “Why not?”

  Lola responds with a look, and my phone begins to ring.

  “Hi, Pumpkin,” my dad says.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “The first of the month is coming up,” he says.

  Is this man about to evict me over the phone?

  “Yes,” I say. “It is.”

  “Any job leads?”

  “You know, Dad,” I say, “I’m with my Little Sister right now. Can I call you back a bit later?”

  “That’s not a paid job, is it?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not. But I have some advertising money coming in.”

  “Well, that’s great, kiddo!” my dad says. “Keep me posted.”

  What I don’t tell my dad is this: even with the ad on my blog, it won’t pay for the loft. I have no other ad prospects on the horizon, no other job prospects. No matter what I tell him, or myself for that matter, by the first of the month, I’ll be packing up and moving out. I have no idea where I’ll go—real estate in Manhattan is outrageously expensive, no matter what neighborhood you look at, no matter how small of a place. Even Brooklyn’s completely out of reach for me. If you want to live in New York, you need to have a job. One that pays a lot.

  Lola breaks my train of thought—she’s reading all of the Lonely Hearts blog comments aloud, guessing at the age of each one.

  “This lady sounds really bitter,” she says. “I bet she’s old.”

  I refrain from asking her how old she thinks “old” is.

  “Listen to this one,” she says. “‘The love of my life left me for my best friend. How do I get him back?’” I think she’s missed the point of your blog. This is the sort of person who’s gonna bite for Love, Inc. This is why they put an ad on your site.”

  “Are you ready to play?” I ask Lola. I settle myself on the couch and take out my guitar.

  “Have you ever thought about getting all these people together to meet?” she asks.

  “No,” I say, tuning my guitar. “That’s not really the point of this whole thing. I think that people like the idea of saying what they really feel, but staying anonymous. Isn’t that the point of the entire Internet?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Lola says, and she turns her laptop toward me.

  And she’s right. There’s no mistaking what’s happening:

  Facebook comment from RebeccaFine:

  We should all meet.

  Blog comment from RockStar1993:

  Yeah, let’s meet.

  Tweet from @Free2BU&Me:

  Jo, you need to do this!

  Blog comment from Anders7886:

  We want to meet.

  E-mail from hmanning@gmail.com:

  We want to meet.

  Tweet from @Blondieismyspiritanimal:

  We want to meet. #LonelyHeartsClub

  Facebook comment from SethRonald:

  We want to meet.

  Instagram picture from Rageisthenewblack: A gritty picture, an aerial shot, of a bar filled with hip-looking people, all dressed in black.

  This should be us. #LonelyHeartsClub

  9,087 likes. 9,088. 9,089...

  19 - I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish

  “I told you that Riesling went well with Thai food,” Max says. But I’m barely eating. Sure, the food’s great, but all I can think about is kissing Max. We’re nestled in a corner table at Kittichai, with a perfect view of the reflecting pool.

  “It does,” I say, and take a sip of my wine. Max’s leg brushes against mine and it sets my entire body on fire.

  I look at him and he smiles at me. I smile back, but I get the sudden feeling that someone’s looking at me. Watching me. Judging me. After all, aren’t I the girl who swore off love? Who’s now running a Web site (or “media empire,” as my mother is telling her friends) dedicated to all things anti-love?

  Even my outfit’s all wrong. Gone is my usual uniform of ripped jeans, concert tee, and motorcycle boots. Tonight, I’m wearing black skinny jeans with a black tank. Hardly revolutionary compared to what all of the other women at the restaurant are wearing—and hardly as dressy—but a big change for me. I even borrowed a pair of heels from my mom’s collection. I told myself that I only wore them because they made me taller and Max towers over me at six foot four, but I know that a tiny part of me also liked the way the heels made my body look. Liked the way they made me walk differently.

  “Try this,” Max says, and puts some pad thai onto his fork for me to taste. I am not the sort of girl who likes to be fed by one of her dates. I can feed myself quite well, thank you very much. But when I look into Max’s eyes, something inside of me just melts. Everything changes. My shoulders loosen, my legs turn to jelly, and it feels like I can breathe again, after being stuck underwater for a very long time.

  “Delicious,” I say, and I’m not sure if I’m referring to the company or the food. I polish off my third glass of wine and decide that it doesn’t really matter.

  We walk a few blocks to the rock club where we’re watching a new band p
lay, and I remember why I hate wearing heels. For starters, my feet are killing me by the time we get to the club. The balls of my feet ache, and something’s been rubbing the side of my big toe. And then I remember the narrow flight of stairs I need to walk down to get to the club.

  “You’ve never heard of Daft Punk?” Max asks me as we settle into a spot at the bar.

  “I’ve heard of them,” I say and laugh. “I just prefer real instruments.”

  “They use real instruments,” Max says. “How else would they make the music?”

  “It’s electronic,” I say, laughing. Usually when nonmusic people try to talk to me about music, I get really annoyed. But on Max, it’s kind of adorable. “They use computers to create their sound.”

  “What’s wrong with computers?” Max asks, faking an indignant look.

  “Music should be grittier,” I say. “It should be real.”

  “Computers are real,” Max says. The crowd is beginning to fill in and he has to lean over and yell into my ear just so that I can hear him.

  “No, they’re not,” I say back. I hope he can hear my flirty tone, even though I’m yelling while standing on my tippy toes to reach his ear.

  He kisses me. “There’s more than just one way to create music,” he says. “Isn’t that a good thing? All different people like different things.”

  All I can think is: Please don’t say you like Amber Fairchild. Please don’t say Amber Fairchild.

  “I’m glad I’m introducing you to some real music,” I say.

  “I’m going to get you to love Daft Punk,” he says back. “Different is good, too.”

  A blinding light shines in our faces and it takes a second to figure out what’s going on. No one else in the crowd reacts. That’s what I love about the rock club scene downtown. Nothing surprises anyone. Ever.

  I see a NY1 reporter doing some test shots by the stage. She catches my eye before I have a chance to look away.

  “I know you,” she says, moments later, as she taps me on my shoulder. I drop my hand from Max’s and turn around.

  “You do?” I ask, but I already know where this is going.