My Year of Really Bad Dates: A Memoir by Rachel Lithgow, EXCERPT
For anyone who’s ever gone on terrible date, a vulnerable memoir that explores dating in midlife after divorce, with bad dates—from terrible one-night stands to promising matches who ultimately disappoint—anchoring the theme of every chapter.
After two life-shaking events—losing her father and divorcing the man she’s spent half her life with, who happens to be an actor from a famous family—Rachel Lithgow leaves a thirty-year career to write full time and pursue a relationship with a calming, delightful man she recently met online. She thinks she has it all figured out . . . until he announces he’s joining a cult and moving to Phoenix with a blonde real estate agent.
Through a year of terrible dates, peppered with a few great experiences and a lot of pinot noir, the author learns that patterns can be changed, that asking for help is sometimes necessary, and that there’s only one way to repair her brokenness: by facing her trauma and demons head-on.
With a unique mix of humor, self-deprecation, and gritty vulnerability, this dark yet hopeful memoir tackles divorce, dating, single motherhood, PTSD, grief, loss, and starting over in midlife. From emotional rock bottom to a peaceful acceptance of the woman she truly is, Lithgow finds the humor in the blackness, redemption in the pathos, and fulfillment in the idea that “happily ever after” isn’t always a storybook ending—and doesn’t need to be.
EXCERPT
The Clintons had Jeffrey Epstein murdered. Did you know that? I read it because I did my research. You should do your research. You should do your research. A lot of women don’t know how to do research. They think that whatever some douche says on the news is real, but the truth is, there are a lot of different versions of the truth. Most women don’t get that. Anyway, Hunter Biden is going to be arrested this week because of his laptop. You wait and see, it’s happening. People are waking up. When they do, we can finally take our country back from the immigrants destroying us. Hey, how’s that chicken? It’s good here, right?
The pinot noir goes down in one long, greedy, burning gulp. On our first date, he is wearing a zip-up sweatshirt and dirty jeans, as though he has just been working on a chain gang digging trenches. I am wearing dress pants with a lovely sweater and tasteful jewelry. My hair is blown and looks great despite the drizzle, which can make me look like a cross between Barbra Streisand and Donna Summer in 1978. A well-worn ball cap on his head bears the logo for a local brewery, which he has mentioned he owns about forty times during the meal. The restaurant is a popular one on the south shore of Long Island. It is an Italian place with good sauce, geared toward families. It is well-lit but not crowded on this rainy night. Do I retreat to the bathroom to deploy plan B, the standby friend who can call to alert me of an emergency that I must attend to immediately?
I was never good at figures, but I do some quick calculations in my head. Dating math, as I refer to it, requires a nimble mind and a working knowledge of physics, word problems and algebra, and the ability to navigate between feet, inches, and meters. Tonight’s equation is a tough one. If I am two-thirds done with my chicken Parm, and he is four-fifths through his pasta Madeira, and his height online was listed as six feet, how many more minutes do I have to wait until I can escape his actual five-foot-eight-inch frame as well as his barely double-digit IQ?
Not long, as it turns out. Record what happens and report back he is disenchanted with what he describes as my quote woke” personality. If by woke he means I’m not sleeping, he’s right about that score one for the dolt in the cap who has an irrational fear that drag Queens will invade his brewery we can I don’t have the heart to tell him no self respecting queen would come within a mile of the whole that is his pride and joy. In his profile, he listed his political views as moderate, though the conspiracy theories he has been throwing at me since he noticed the TV over the bar was turned to CNN betrayed that his bend is slightly to the right of Attila the Hun.
He whistles at the waitress, and the poor woman, being signaled to like a dog, turns her head toward our table. He makes the universal sign for bringing the check by signing the air in front of him in his sweeping, dramatic gesture. I’m almost out, and I exhale in relief. We exit together, and I thank him for dinner. He tries to kiss me on the lips, but I turn and offer my cheek. He gets the message and stalks away without a goodbye. Fair enough. I’ll never get those two hours back either, but there’s no reason to be rude. It starts raining harder as I drive away, and the drops beat on my windshield. For some reason, the rain has always made me amorous.
My mind flashes to Joe, the man I hope to have a future with, almost five years after I separated from my husband of 22 years, and our marathon love-making sessions in my bed while we listen to the rain on the roof and windows. After a year of dating, he joined a multi-level self-help group and ended the relationship. I shake the thought out of my head and hustled to make it home before 8:30. My ex-husband will be dropping the kids off at my house any minute.
In the eyes of the law, we are still married since he has employed every tactic to stall signing. After he insisted on mediation and picked the mediator which was fine by me, it has taken 18 months to come to an agreement in which I received nothing waived child support pay for college for both kids alone, and pay him alimony for five years period I can’t fight him any more on these issues, because he truly believes that he is under no obligation to pay for anything since he quote can’t quote UN quote period of course he quote could,” but that would require him to do things that he doesn’t want to do which never goes well for him. He has never been good with money and is the sort of man whom my grandfather would have said jumps over a dollar to pick up a dime. While this sounds better in Yiddish, I have never been able to convince him that his Ivy League education and the master’s degree that I paid for could translate into earning a living.
In a few months, I’ll be 50. I’m starting a new career as a writer while having full custody of my two teenagers with no break except Tuesday after school and Saturday between the hours of noon and six, though that is hazy too. Attempting to have some balance in my social life while juggling the rest has not been a resounding success period since my ex-husband still lives in the large studio apartment that I procured for him when we separated, furnished mostly with the things I gave him, there was no room for the kids to hang out there for any length of time, let alone overnight period when I travel for work he stays at my house. That’s getting old, too. Every time I come home from a trip, something in my house is broken, the kids are beating each other with household items, and in general, chaos has ensued in my absence. Another really bad date has come and gone. As I pull into my driveway for the 100th time, I vowed to delete the dating apps for good and get a cat.
God, I fucking hate cats.
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Rachel J. Lithgow is a historian and museum professional with thirty years of experience running large cultural institutions. Her work and writing have appeared in dozens of publications around the world, including The New York Times, The Daily News, Time, The Advocate, The Jerusalem Post, The Huffington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Times of Israel, eJP, The New York Observer, and the Buffalo News. Rachel has two children and splits her time between Long Beach, Long Island, and Hell’s Kitchen in New York City.
“From the opening sentence, I knew Rachel Lithgow is a hilarious new voice in women’s fiction. This book is part memoir, part life lessons, and part How-NOT-To instruction manual on love & dating. The stories of sex, heartache, love, betrayal, and ultimately hope will keep you laughing and crying, then laughing again. This is a MUST read!” —Randi Mayem Singer, screenwriter of Mrs. Doubtfire
Category: On Writing
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