Age Range You Are Seeking:
18–99
Seeking Height:
4’–7’11”
Weight:
Nothing over 200 pounds unless you are over six feet.
Ideal Man:
Athletic, financially sound, outdoorsy, masculine. No wimpy bullshit.
There were too many questions and I felt like I had already summed up the basics, so I skipped to the end.
Ideal First Date:
Waking up early on football sunday, making my signature homemade chili recipe, and getting to suck dick while the game is on.
I would have to have Molly upload Gina’s photo later that afternoon, but at least I would be able to get her profile up and running.
I needed to get out of my house, so I grabbed my sunglasses and the paper, and walked outside to my driveway. It was then that I realized it would have been nearly impossible to get my Bentley out without having first moved Shmitney’s Mercedes. One would have had to physically pick up my Bentley and throw it over Shmitney’s car.
I walked down my driveway and down to the corner of my street, where I found a nice, cool spot in the shade, and sat on a corner of the cement perimeter of someone’s garden bed. Just as I flipped the paper over to read the Sunday Review, a pickup truck blaring heavy metal music made a sharp right turn at about thirty miles an hour driving over the puddle that I hadn’t noticed was directly in front of me. The puddle was brown—and then so was my face. I sat on the corner, stunned, as I typically do when I’m humiliated—wondering if someone was filming me. I don’t mean to sound like a narcissist, but I have a hard time believing these kinds of things happen to other people.
I got myself together and hiked back up my incredibly steep driveway in what was now boiling hot sun. I walked inside and back up to my bedroom to wash my face and change my clothes for the second time that day. It wasn’t even 1 p.m.
My phone kept dinging, and it was notifying me that I was getting several “winks” for Gina’s profile. It was already working. Gina was going to find love because Shmitney stole my car.
I called Shmitney again to ask her if she was even coming at all. She didn’t answer but texted me back: “Fifteen away.”
I walked back down the driveway and back to the corner I had been assaulted on to survey Gina’s future paramours. The men responding weren’t exactly winners, and every one of them had facial hair and was holding a fish. I thought it was impressive that in the time I had created Gina’s profile, these guys had managed to go and catch a striped bass. They were seriously trying to impress her, and even I had to have compassion for them.
My phone rang again, and this time it was Molly. “Is she there yet?”
“No. She’s been saying she’s coming for three hours.”
As we were talking a red SUV turned on my street, zipped past me, and then turned around and headed back in my direction. Once in front of me, the car stopped and the driver turned the engine off. “Oh, shit.” Someone was going to shoot me right here on the streets of Bel-Air. I froze. I couldn’t believe I was going to get shot right on the corner of my street while innocently reviewing a dating site. I put my hands in the air and waited to be shot in the face.
A woman got out of the car, and a nine-year-old got out of the passenger seat. A family shooting spree.
“I’m so sorry,” the woman said, as she closed her car door. “I really hate to bother you, but we live up the street and I promised myself I would never do this, but my daughter’s a huge fan. I would never normally do this. Would you mind if I got a picture of the two of you?”
I asked her daughter what her name was. She told me her name and then asked me what mine was. I glared at the mother as I took my glasses off and fake-smiled. This woman had just used her innocent daughter in a ploy to get a photograph with someone on the E! network, and she wasn’t even Armenian.
Once our photo shoot had concluded, I lifted the phone back up to my ear.
“Are you on the street?” Molly asked me.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I’m not really sure.”
“OK, I’m on my way,” she told me. “Go back to your house.”
“I’m going to end my friendship with Shmitney when she gets here,” I told Molly as I followed her instructions and headed back toward my house.
The next text from Shmitney sent was this: “I have Ramona in the car. Can she stay at the house with your dogs?” Ramona was Shmitney’s new pit bull puppy and—a nightmare. What white person gets a pit bull? On top of that, she had taken the dog to a vet earlier in the week and found out that Ramona was possibly half Great Dane. Only I would have that luck, so I didn’t believe her when she told me that, either. This fell right in line with her tall tales of being a drug-addled teenager in recovery.
Her bringing Ramona over meant that I would be walking down my driveway once again. My driveway is like a miniature version of the stairs at Machu Picchu.
This is how I was sitting moments later when Shmitney pulled up, laughing riotously:
“How do you drive this beast?” she yelled out my car window, trying to pull up my driveway, lurching the car forward and backward as she waited for the gate to open.
“That’s not really the point,” I told her, punching in the gate code. “The point is, it’s Sunday, and every Sunday, I go to Hotel Bel-Air for brunch and have my margarita there. Today is Sunday, and I don’t want that dog in my house.”
“And how is it possible that you don’t know how to make a margarita?” Shmitney yelled.
The half Great Dane/half pit bull dog jumped out of my car and onto my driveway, and lunged toward me. I couldn’t run from the dog fast enough because of the steepness of my driveway, so I ended up falling into the embankment between my driveway and my gate. This was exactly where I had seen the snake in my driveway a year earlier. Shmitney was filming all of this on her iPhone while hysterically laughing.
Ramona wouldn’t stop licking me while also gnawing on my hand that was trying to push her away from me. Shmitney’s dog was just as much of a lunatic as she was. I hate that dog.
Shmitney had put the car in Park, and she stood at the side of my driveway filming me at close range. I finally was able to get myself back up on my feet with no help from her. I pushed her out of the way, got back in my car, and drove it up my driveway, since driving up my driveway happens to be one of the few things I excel at. I went inside to my backyard and closed all of the doors I normally keep open for my dogs when I’m not home. My dogs will easily attack an intruder—as long as they’re not sleeping.
I told her I didn’t think her dog would survive in my backyard and that I didn’t trust pit bulls.
Then Ramona peed on my boot. I didn’t change this time.
We met my cousins Molly and Kerry at lunch at Hotel Bel-Air, where Shmitney and I proceeded to argue about what had taken place that morning and whose version of events were accurate.
“You have no idea what I was dealing with,” she told my cousins, explaining that her friend she had taken to Spin class was in AA, and apparently freaked out when she heard she’d be having brunch with me.
“I’ve got one alcoholic who’s in recovery and one who needs a margarita,” Shmitney told them, holding her hands to her head. “I felt like I was on the set of Sophie’s Choice.”
“My mom’s going on a road trip,” Molly announced, taking off her sunglasses.
“And she asked us to get her a gun for protection,” Kerry interjected.
“Wait, what?” Shmitney asked.
“Oh, dear.” I took a sip of my margarita. “What’s her problem now?”
“Well, she says she’s out of money. She’s sold all of her furniture, and the lease to her apartment is up,” Molly informed me.