Boy Meets Girl

Journal of Kate Mackenzie

Professor Wingblade in Soc 101 said writing down our feelings would help us organize our thoughts and enable us to approach problem-solving in a rational manner. But I don’t feel very rational. What am I going to do? I can’t fire Mrs. Lopez.

Okay, yeah, she did refuse service to the paper’s chief legal counsel. But I’ve seen Stuart Hertzog in action, and the fact is, like most lawyers—the ones I’ve met, anyway—he’s a pig. Once I had to share a cab with him to an arbitration and he yelled at the cabbie for taking Lexington Avenue instead of Park, even though the cabbie said there was construction on Park. Then when it came time to pay, Stuart wouldn’t give the guy a tip and said that he can’t stand immigrants because they think they know everything and that even if in the cabbie’s native land he was a surgeon, like he said, that didn’t mean he was qualified to navigate the streets of Manhattan in a moving vehicle, and why couldn’t they all (he meant immigrants, I guess) just stay home?

I totally wanted to point out that Hertzog isn’t exactly a Native-American name, which means at one point Stuart’s relatives must have been new to this country as well, and who knows, maybe one of them worked as a cabbie or an omnibus driver or whatever and how would Stuart have liked it if some lawyer in a fancy suit spoke to his great-great-great-great-grandpa like that?

Only I couldn’t say anything like that because Amy was there and she would have fired me. I actually don’t know if you can get fired for saying something like that—right to free speech and all—but I’m sure Amy would have found a way.

I can’t believeI’m the one who has to fire her. Mrs. Lopez, I mean. Whyme ? I’ve never fired anyone before. Well, okay, I fired that porter who tried to feel up that seventeen-year-old lacrosse player who was touring the paper’s offices on that school field trip, but he so totally deserved it—I mean, his defense was that he couldn’t help it because she looked so good in her little plaid skirt. Please! I mean, it was apleasure to fire him.

But this! This is totally different. I love Mrs. Lopez, and really, I don’t blame her a bit for what she did. I mean, they ought to fire Stuart Hertzog, is what they ought to do. I once saw him with a cigar—a CIGAR!—in the 3rd-floor hallway while he was waiting for the elevator, and when Mel Fuller from Features came by and asked him to put it out because she’s pregnant, he just went, “It’s not lit,” which was only half true because it totally had been lit in Mr. Hargrave’s office, it was still smoldering a little, even. Who does that, who smokes cigars inside a public building? And yells at poor innocent cab drivers? I mean, really.

And now Jen wants to go out for drinks and she could be pregnant RIGHT NOW, which means she’ll probably have some kind of flipper baby, and it will all be my fault. Oh my God, I have got to find somewhere else to stay, I can’t keep crashing on their couch. It’s so nice of them, but I can tell Craig is getting sick of having to share a bathroom with not just one woman but two. I could not have timed this thing with Dale worse. I mean, Jen and Craig have been trying to have a baby since they got married, and now that Jen’s on all those drugs—and really, she has to see me all day at work, and then again at home—we never get a break from each other. It’s a wonder she hasn’t cracked. . . .

If I could find a decent sublet I would move out in a second, but I just don’t think I could handle having a roommate I don’t know. I mean, that girl in the share up on East 86th—I admire people with goals and all, but shouldn’t women in this day and age be striving to help improve the planet, or at least their community in some small way, instead of focusing all of their energy on finding a husband? I guess I should be more accepting of other people’s dreams, but really, I don’t think marrying an investment banker is going to solve all of your problems. I just don’t. I mean, it might HELP, in the long run, with rent and everything, but you can’t just go around life being Mrs. Investment Banker. I mean, you have to find where YOU as an individual, not Mrs. Whoever You Marry, fits into the world.

And frankly, no matter how many Upper East Side bars you hit on a Saturday night, there is no guarantee you are going to meet someone decent in any of them. All the bridal magazines in the world aren’t going to change that. I mean, you’re better off volunteering somewhere. At least that way you’ll be doing something to improve the earth, in addition to trolling for a man. So it won’t be a COMPLETE waste of your time. . . .

Oh God, maybe I’m being stupid, maybe I should just go back to him, I mean, it isn’tthat bad, being in a relationship with someone who won’t commit. I mean, lots of girls would die for a boyfriend like Dale. At least he never beat me up or cheated on me. I think he really does love me, and it IS just a stupid societal more. Marriage, I mean.

Except that I distinctly remember Professor Wingblade telling us in Soc 101 that in EVERY civilization in the world—even in places like Micronesia where for hundreds of years they had no contact whatsoever with outside cultures—there issome sort of ceremony where couples in love stand up before their community and pledge their devotion to each other. I mean, essentially, Dale is flying in the face of thousands of years of tradition by saying he and I don’t need to do this to have a satisfying and nurturing romantic relationship. That simply isn’t true.

Which is not to say that if Dale agreed to marry me today, I’d move back in with him tomorrow. I mean, I don’t want him to ask me just to humor me. I want him to ask me because he honestly and truly cannot picture a future without me. . . .

Except that it seems like Dale is incapable of picturing any kind of future at all, except maybe a future where the fridge isn’t fully stocked with Rolling Rock, which is why he always seems to remember to buy more. But me, I don’t think he sees me in his future. . . .

And I’m not even sure Iwant him to anymore, because the truth is, after seeing Jen and Craig and the way they are with each other, I know what true love looks like, and it isso not what Dale and I have, and I think I deserve to have love like that. I think it’s out there, I don’t know where, but somewhere. . . .

Oh God, she’s here.