Excerpt
My friend Jillian calls from Oregon. “So explain to me what following
the Colts has to do with dating.”
“Everything!” I say, and I tell her how I’m “in training” for my dating season.
She sighs. “Cathy, you are so hard on yourself.”
“No, I’m not,” I say. Then I pause. “Okay, so I am, but just look how far being hard on myself has gotten me in life.”
Jillian laughs. “Instead of Peyton Manning, you should emulate Brett Favre. At least he knows how to have fun.” Her tone turns more serious. “Cathy, maybe what you need to be working on right now is convincing yourself you don’t have anything to work on. That you’re fine the way you are.”
I’m quiet for a long time. “But if I’m so great, why am I still alone?”
She sighs. “Because you didn’t settle, and that’s to your credit. A lot of people settle because they’d rather do that than be alone. And some are just luckier and found the right person already.”
I light a cigarette. “How do people meet other people?” I ask.
Jillian hmmphs into the phone. “I have no freaking clue, babe.” She’s been divorced for a few years now.
I tell her that romantic comedies, sappy songs, even the stories people tell about meeting each other, they all make it seem as though it’s about serendipity, about NOT trying. I wasn’t going to go to the bar mitzvah, but I did, and then there s/he was. Movies teach us that all you need to do to fall in love is walk around this earth until one day, boom! the love of your life will literally run into you. “I’ve been patient, Jill. I’ve walked around on this earth for 37 years, and I’ve never run into the love of my life, and he’s never run into me.”
Jill lights a cigarette. “What you need, girlfriend, is practice. Lots and lots of practice. Go out with any guy who asks, anything that moves. You need to get your confidence back.”
“Back? I never had it to begin with.”
“You’re too nervous. Pretend they aren’t dates. Pretend they’re like research subjects for some anthropological study you’re doing.”
Late that night, I sit on my deck alone, chain smoking cigarettes, thinking about love and football. What ultimately determines the outcome of these games? Is it about intangibles like fate and chemistry, or is about tangibles like preparation and control? Or is it both? The lesson the Colts keep learning over and over again is that you can have a great team, a great season, home field advantage, the best QB in the league, but you still might walk away from the season without a Super Bowl ring. The lesson I keep learning over and over again is that I can have a sense of humor, a good head on my shoulders, a kind heart, a nice smile, a decent rack, but I still might walk off the playing field alone. Why haven’t the Colts won the Super Bowl? Why am I alone? Are we victims of bad luck, or is there something we should be doing differently? Is it like people keep saying? Be patient. It’ll happen when it happens.
It’s very late now. I can see the three green copper domes of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church lit against the downtown skyline. A train clatters through the night. On the other side of the Allegheny River is a mountain of golden stars, the streetlights of Pittsburgh’s Troy Hill blinking in the distance. But I’m completely in my own head. I’m thinking about instinct, how athletes can perfect their performance by changing their less-than-ideal instinctual reactions and movements into more powerful swings or better throws. They perform a motion again and again. Muscles memorize and absorb until the new motion becomes a new-and-improved instinct. Perhaps I need to unlearn the way I’ve always played the game of love. I haven’t really been trying—so I’ll try. And I always seem to like the wrong kind of guy—so I’ll like a different kind of guy. It’s like John Cusack’s character says in High Fidelity: “I've been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I've come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains.”
I stub out my cigarette. I have one left in my pack. The next morning, I smoke that last cigarette and decide that it’s my last one ever. If I can change this instinct, I think, I can change anything.