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Meg
I was born to be a grifter, though I didn’t see it until after I’d been one for some time. I’d just thought of what I did as getting by—a date, a free meal, a doggie bag with the remains of my food and sometimes his too. I tried not to think what my mother would say—almost four years gone—if she knew this was where I’d landed. Evaluating men on whether they might be the type to use fabric softener on their bedsheets, or keep toiletries—shampoo, soap, toothpaste—under the bathroom sink where I could swipe them. But in October 2009, I had to accept that living this way wasn’t working anymore.
Rain battered the windows of the internet café where I sat, nursing a mug of hot chocolate—more filling than coffee—and scrolled through my dating profile on Circle of Love. I glanced toward the street where my mother’s old minivan was parked and tried to calculate how much time I had left on my meter. My feet ached from a long day standing behind the counter at the Y, where I checked people in for their daily workout, handed them a towel, and pretended I wasn’t dying inside.
It was a job I couldn’t afford to lose. It was where I showered every day, where I kept my clothes, and where I could toss in a load of laundry alongside the towels I was tasked with washing. It paid for gas, which kept the car where I slept in operation. I made just enough money every week to cover my personal expenses plus the interest payment on my mother’s funeral costs, several thousand dollars of debt she never intended for me to carry. There was no room for error. I couldn’t afford to get a parking ticket, or a cavity, or even a cold sore. I was one UTI away from the homeless shelter.
But last night had scared me. I’d parked on a quiet, tree-lined street in Mar Vista, one of many I rotated through over the course of a month. It was one of my favorites—not a lot of foot traffic and few streetlights.
I’d burrowed into my nest of blankets, tucked behind tinted glass, the sunroof open just a crack to keep my windows from steaming up. Someone in the neighborhood was listening to Sting’s “Fields of Gold,” which my mother had loved. The music floated over me as I fell asleep, my muscles releasing, my mind easing into darkness.
I’d been yanked awake by the sound of someone trying to pop the lock on the passenger side door. Through the window I could see a huge, shadowy figure in dark clothing, a hood over his head, just a thin piece of glass separating the two of us. I’d acted on instinct, leaping from the backseat, grabbing my keys, and leaning on the horn as I jammed them into the ignition, peeling away from the curb and nearly hitting another parked car in my panic to get away.
It took an hour of driving aimlessly before my hands stopped shaking, before my heart stopped pounding, and I shuddered to think what would have happened if he’d gotten in. I kept imagining scenarios, each one more horrific than the last. A hand over my mouth. Being driven to a deserted location. Being dragged into a ditch.
My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep as I reread my dating profile, where only my name and age were true. Meg Williams, age 21. Profession: Marketing. Likes: live music, dining out, travel. I love to laugh and am always looking for adventure! Age range: 18–35. Looking for fun, not marriage. That last part was the line that kept me fed. I managed to get at least three dates a week, and I pushed hard for dinner and not coffee. When you live in a car, the last thing you need is more liquid. I said yes to every invitation, and I became a master of flirty online banter, giving the illusion that good things might happen after a sit-down dinner that included cloth napkins, appetizers, and a dessert menu.
A minimum of three dates a week saved me at least $50, money I’d hoped would grow until I had enough to afford a place to live. But something always set me back. Car registration. Rising gas prices. A parking ticket.
And so, on that rainy October afternoon, I finally gave up and admitted to myself I needed more than just a one-night reprieve every few days. I needed a safe place to live, and someone willing to give it to me. I wouldn’t find that from the men on my screen, all of whom were in their twenties and thirties. They were interested in casual dates. Hookups with no strings. Not an instant, live-in girlfriend.
I was going to have to go older.
I clicked over to my settings and slid the age range from thirty-five to forty. Would that be old enough? Forty-year-old women were over the hill, but men had longer shelf life.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath and slid it up to fifty-five.
I thought back to my mother, a beautiful woman who had insisted on doing everything for herself, making my childhood ten times harder than it needed to be. She never accepted help when it was offered, and because there always seemed to be some poor fool in love with her, it was offered frequently. She said no when one of them wanted to buy me new shoes or to pay for a week at summer camp. She declined offers of a place to live when we needed one. Car repairs. An occasional meal at a nice restaurant or a day at Disneyland. It wasn’t like I wanted her to sell herself. Just agree every now and then to things that would have made our lives a little better.
But she believed women should stand on their own. She wanted to find a true partner, not a handout. She thought she’d found that partnership with Ron Ashton, never seeing the rotten core of him until it was too late.
A new page began to load profiles of men two or three times my age, many of them completely gray, and my breath hitched as I imagined sitting across a table from one of them, faking an attraction I was never going to feel.
I clicked through profiles, one by one. Too old. Too creepy. Usually, when I hit on a potential date, I’d try to find something we had in common, and if I couldn’t, I’d make it up. I love Steely Dan! A quick Google search would bring up their concert schedule. I even went to Vegas to catch their show last August. Epic! At the end of the night, if the guy seemed nice enough, it didn’t matter what the truth was.
But the men on my screen now were from another generation altogether. Any personal connection with them would likely involve Barry Manilow and a deep affection for Tom Brokaw.
I took a sip from my hot chocolate, flipped to the next profile, and nearly choked when I saw the face on the screen. “Oh my god.”
Cory Dempsey.Mr. Dempsey, math teacher at my former high school. His blue eyes were just as vibrant on the screen as I remembered them, with that same unruly brown hair curling around his ears. The girls loved him, and the boys wanted to be him. His profile listed his age as forty-eight, but he’d always seemed younger—more like the students than the other teachers. Engaging and energetic, always voted the most popular teacher by the senior class, including mine.
But great teaching wasn’t why people whispered about him. In the girls’ bathroom, in the corners of the cafeteria, on the bleachers at the football game.
Mr. Dempsey is so hot.
After math class, Mr. Dempsey was totally flirting with me. I bet I could have made a move.
Ohmygod, please. You’re not special, he flirts with everyone.
I read through his profile again. Cory Dempsey. Profession: High School Principal.
Status: Single, never been married.
Likes: Basketball, fantasy football, surfing, inspiring the youth of today to become their very best selves.
Of course, Kristen came to mind immediately. We weren’t exactly friends—she was popular, and I was just the nobody who sat next to her in English class. But she’d always included me in group projects, and made sure to say hi in the hallways while everyone else’s eyes slid right over me, as if I were invisible.
To them, I’d been The Bag Lady because of the reusable grocery bag I used to carry my books, never able to justify the cost of a backpack. But Kristen had always defended me. “Don’t be an asshole,” she said once to Robbie Maxon. “Last week I saw you pick your nose in chem lab.”
