Classy Cherry #8

Maggie only knew one woman whose taste in men was worse than hers – her mother. Her mother had married the first boy she’d ever kissed and been unhappy since. The only thing her parents ever did together was argue. Despite this, they’d been married for almost thirty-five years. So of course Maggie’s mother never understood why her daughter never dated a man long enough for him to propose. “They couldn’t be that bad,” she’d nag, “I’ve stayed with your father all these years and they can’t all be as pathetic as him.” But somehow Maggie always found something wrong with them.

Her first boyfriend, Todd, asked her out when she was fifteen. He always smelled of his cigarettes and CK One. He’d stuck his rough fingers into her panties before she was even comfortable kissing him. It was years until she let another man touch her again.

There was Rick the charming soccer player. He spent more time looking at other girls than he did at her. She never caught him cheating on her but she always suspected it. Then there was Steven who only ever talked about trucks and beer. She couldn’t remember anything about him now except that he wouldn’t be caught dead driving a Ford and that he was grumpy if his beer was warm. There was Ethan, the beautiful Jewish medical student. Maggie’s mother had loved him because of his title alone. But there wasn’t enough room for both her and his ego in his life. There was the preschool teacher – James? Jack? He had the intellect of a child and he bored her. She really liked Sage for a couple of weeks. He was as exotic as his name but even greedier for her attention.

Her last boyfriend was Michael. She found him wildly attractive – he had short, curly hair and hazel eyes. Only one of his cheeks pinched into a dimple but that never stopped him from smiling. He’d been a poet from the first day they met. He told her how she stirred a passion for life within him that he hadn’t known existed before. Woah. She still got a little breathless thinking about the intensity of those words. When she undressed for him, he looked at her like she was the first naked woman he’d ever seen.

Maggie had loved him for a while. She thought his skin was perfect and she loved it when he made her breakfast in bed. But as always, her superhuman ability to criticize kicked in. She thought he took her for granted. He didn’t pay enough attention to her. He didn’t kiss her often enough.

Michael left her. He said he couldn’t take the pressure and it hurt him too much to never be good enough for her. Her mother actually sobbed when Maggie called her to tell her the news. She reminded her for the millionth time that she’d married her father and that Michael was certainly more tolerable than him. “You’re thirty and you’re still single. You’re not getting any younger.”

When she hung up the phone, Maggie cried too. She missed Michael but she didn’t even want a man anymore. She didn’t want to tolerate anyone; she wanted to love him. But her mother took it as a personal failure that her daughter was an “old maid.” Maggie was staring out the window at the grey sky when she had a fabulous idea. She would take out a personal ad. Woman seeking gay husband.