Wreathed by Curtis Edmonds Read Free Book Online

to be lectured to on the primacy of bourgeois values by the co-chairperson of the Bryn Mawr Social Justice Forum, Class of 1967.”
    “The Sixties were not a revolt against bourgeois values. Unless you count war, racism, and sexism as bourgeois values.”
    “I was thinking more about short hair and personal hygiene.” I couldn’t let Mother push my buttons without pushing some of hers right back, and revisionist Sixties history was a huge issue for her.
    “I will not sit here and let you call me a hippie. You weren’t there and you didn’t know and I took showers frequently. Anyway, most of us did end up getting married and settling down, you know, even the hippies.”
    “I have a very good job. I am self-supporting. My romantic life”— or serious lack thereof , I added silently—“is my own personal business. If and when I get engaged, I will let you know.”
    “A very feminist outlook,” she said. “I congratulate you. I just would appreciate the occasional update, you know, as an interested party.”
    “There’s not much to say.”
    The last guy I had anything to do with was named Clyde Witherspoon. I had met him in a bar on New Year’s Eve, and neither of us had anyone to kiss. Clyde was an accountant who worked on the south side of the courthouse square in Morristown. He was pleasant enough, and lonely enough to be nice to me. He spent the night at my place after one too many vodka tonics on a snowy Saturday night in late January. We were supposed to go to a cabin in the Poconos over Valentine’s Day weekend. But right before, he snuck off to what he said was a Super Bowl party over in Wayne but turned out to be a drunken romp with a naked Hooters girl.
    So Clyde dumped me, right before Valentine’s Day, and took the Hooters girl (whose name was Hyllton, hand to God) to the adorable little cabin in the Poconos that we’d picked out together. He not only had the gall to take a picture of them together, standing on the balcony of said adorable little cabin, but the complete lack of common sense to post said picture on Facebook without paying any attention to the privacy settings.
    I was proud of my reaction. I didn’t complain. I didn’t drown myself in alcohol, or at least not any more than usual. I didn’t draft up a fake insurance claim form showing that Clyde had received medical treatment for an STD and e-mail it to Hyllton the Hooters slut. I just waited until he made an appearance at the Starbucks that we both frequented. Then I ordered a venti iced vanilla latte and poured it down his back. Slowly. Then I walked two blocks to the Dunkin’ Donuts, got a large box of Munchkins, and took them back to my office and ate them all, one by one.
    That was not, shall we say, a typical dating episode for me, but it wasn’t something I cared to chat about with my mother on a leisurely drive to a funeral.
    “I could help you, you know,” she said. “Maybe not so much in Morristown. If you’d at least consider moving back to Cherry Hill, it would be much easier.”
    “I am not moving back to South Jersey. That’s non-negotiable,” I said.
    “What about Washington? I still know a lot of people on the Hill. It wouldn’t be that hard for you to find a good job somewhere. There might be a pay cut, of course.”
    “Not today, not tomorrow, not ever.” It was bad enough that my mother wanted to run my romantic life without her running my career as well.
    “I am trying to be helpful, dear. But I don’t know what it is that you want. ”
    “I want a husband, Mom. Don’t get me wrong about that. But I want the relationship to happen... I don’t know what the word is. Organically, if that makes sense. I want it to be something that happens because it was supposed to happen, not because it was something that you or anyone else made happen. I’m looking for something natural, something spontaneous. A relationship that happens because it’s meant to happen, not because somebody did something to