Try as I might, I never made my wife happy. So I made it my task to learn how to please a woman. I then was able to please a dozen women, although it never made me happy. So I became an itinerant horse trader. ~ Mullah Nasruddin
I was surprised to read the email. Although he was my college roommate, I hadn’t heard from Chad in some 20 years. From mutual friends, now and then, I learned he had become an actuary, gotten married, yada yada. You know how it goes, once the routine starts, it develops a life of its own. Nevertheless, it never sounded like the Chad I knew. I suppose it had to be that way; the path he used to be on could only lead to death, addiction, or a long imprisonment. I hoped he wouldn’t bore me with some maudlin conversion story, or worse, try to sell me an insurance policy.
I became an entomologist, specializing in entomophagy. I got a good gig at a state university in the South. The place revolved around football. Not much for high culture, but it my case, that did not extend much beyond the Grateful Dead and Netflix comedies anyway. I was compensated with many international trips; that was plenty of culture. As a gag gift one birthday, my wife gave me a poster that read, “It’s the little things that count,” which I hung on the wall behind my desk. Hmm … I assume she meant my professional interests. She’s been a great companion all these years even though she never learned how to prepare my bug recipes.
I met up with Chad at the cigar bar he suggested, since we both happened to be in Boston at the same time. He was smoking a fake Cohiba and a glass of scotch straight up. I opted for a glass of red wine. The odd thing about catching up with an old buddy is that the years don’t count. It’s as though you just saw him last Tuesday and there is no awkwardness. You assume he has been the same person during the long gap, and any changes are no more than the superficial ripples on a much deeper pond.
We did the long time no see greeting and began to relax. I asked about his family. He hesitated, but then answered, “My wife ran off with a professional drag car racer two years ago.”
“Wow, what are the odds of that?”
“Hold on a second, I can pull that up for you,” as he reached for his cell phone.
“Whoa, dude, the question was rhetorical. What have you been doing since then?”
“I decided I needed a complete personality makeover. So I bought a small condo in the Art Deco section of Miami Beach. Then I started a consultancy, extending my actuarial work with data science. I was basically an electronic gumshoe.”
“You were always good at math.”
He seemed irritated by that remark. “They are totally different. Math is based on logic and certainty. Once a proof is found, it is true from the beginning of the world until the end of time. On the other hand, an actuary deals with uncertainty, risk, doubt, the unknown, the improbable. I am always looking for what is the worst that can happen.”
“And I’m sure it does,” I conceded. “But what does that have to do with a makeover?”
“I did the research and drew some conclusions.”
I’m sure he did; once Chad got an idea in his head, he became obsessed. Whether it was contract bridge, a political movement, or the best fried rice in Chinatown, he read everything about it. We would go to China town on weekends, usually around 2 or 3 AM when the strippers, hookers, and sailors were winding down. One time, I remember, there was an insect in his fried rice. When he complained to the waiter, the waiter reassured him, “You lucky! Now fried rice is free.” I always wondered if that motivated his career. Any deviations from certainty or predictability disturbed him. I suppose he needed a way to measure that.
He elaborated on his plan. “I think I was too nice to my ex. I brought home the bacon, mowed the lawn, played with the kids. My party days were over, I was thinking. But she had known me then, so she was expecting an ongoing party. I gave her a generous allowance, so she could stay at home, play tennis at the country club, hang out by the pool. I assumed that was a good bargain.”
“To be honest,” he continued, “I really had no idea what women did when the party was over. I would just leave and not even give it a thought. I was poorly prepared for all that togetherness.”
“Ok, cut to the chase. If nothing worked, what changes did you make?”
“Obviously, I did the research, evaluated the statistics, calculated correlations and moved on from there. The conclusion I reached was that a transformation of all values was necessary. I had to become a different personality; it turned out to be an experiment on the malleability of personality.”
I started to get curious. Insect behaviour is predictable and, I suppose, in a way, that I came to regard humans as just more advanced “bug men”. That doesn’t mean I am ready to turn cannibal. I let him continue.
“The easy stuff came first. I worked out, watched my diet, bought new clothes, took dance lessons. Heck, I even took acting lessons to learn how to play my roles consciously!”
“That’s probably a good and healthy lifestyle,” I replied. “How did all that work out for you?”
“Actually, the physical was the easy part. The difficult part was to change my mindset. I read the game and PUA blogs, and realized I had to be more like a bad boy.”
“That just doesn’t sound like you. Could you really do that?”
“Trust me, I was determined. Actuaries play it safe, drag racers don’t. Yet I understood the statistics about who was getting the girls. I just needed to follow the numbers.”
I could see this would be a longer night than expected. So we took a break to order some sandwiches. He flirted with the bartender, which I had never seen him do before. To my surprise, she even flirted back. He ate the meat but not the fries. I prodded him to continue the story.
“I approached it like a marketing expert. I figured that self-help meetings, art exhibits, dance classes, beach cleanup projects, and so on that would likely draw compatible women. I kept notebooks and analysed the data. The conclusion I reached was that out of 10 or 12 in my target demographic, at least one would be attracted to me.”
“That sounds like how I study insects,” I interrupted.
“You really seem obsessed with bugs,” he responded huffily.
“No more than you are with women.” At least he wasn’t watching porn, so I apologized for the interruption. “So after you found ‘em, did you keep ‘em or throw them back into the sea?”
“It turned out to be too easy. The hints went from subtle to overt. They would ask me about a car problem, or what an art piece meant, or they would want to practice a particular salsa move. I got the point. Others would just ask me out, for coffee, dinner, upcoming parties, concerts, skybox seats at football games. One even sent me flowers and chocolates.”
“Seems like your social life became quite active.” Guys don’t often speak so intimately, so I wondered if he was trying to get something off his chest. “Go on,” I encouraged him.
“That’s nothing. It gets better. I was invited by a state department bigwig to stay at her place in a Caribbean island. She needed a date for the Marine Ball at the embassy. I had to pass up similar invitations with US destinations. But the best invitation was to stay 10 days at a woman’s flat in Paris near the Arc de Triomphe, after I had just met her passing through Florida to visit relatives.”
“And you didn’t even have to buy a race car. How, then, did they know you were a bad boy?”
“It’s a balance. You can’t show puppy like enthusiasm, yet you need to seem safe enough not to strangle them as they sleep. They need to think they are winning, but are not.”
I wanted specific examples, so I pushed for details.
“I was meeting a psychologist in Palm Beach for a cocktail, actually more like a blind date. She tried to test me from the start. First of all, she was 45 minutes late, so I waited by the beach. I was silent and aloof when she finally arrived. This disconcerted her and she asked why. I told her I had been meditating and was still in that frame of mind. That actually pleased her. Then instead of a glass of wine, she began ordering champagne splits. At $25 a bottle, I wasn’t happy but didn’t show it. She was attractive, intelligent, and financially independent; my target demographic so I stuck with it.”
Then she wanted proof of who I was. I pulled out my wallet to show my driver’s license; I think she wanted to see if I had any credit cards. She objected that anyone could get a driver’s license. So I showed her a concealed weapon permit. That reassured her that I am not a felon yet could still be dangerous. Things loosened up between us. It was game and set, and I knew I could get to match point with a little care.”
I had the impression he could have gone on for an hour longer, but I had someone to go home to. “No offense, Chad, I’m sure you met some fascinating people. But it seems pointless considering all the effort you put into it. Does it have a happy ending, or an ending at all?”
“I did get shook up. I met Kari at cocktail party. She was the archetype of the Norwegian blonde, tall and fit from daily kayaking. She was interested in digging up the finances of ex-husband, so I offered my data sleuthing services. She invited me to a steak dinner the following night at her home at the end of a cul-de-sac in the nicest section of the island, where she lived with her young son. I brought him handmade chocolates, since chocolate was his favourite desert.
That’s when I fell out of my new character. She had been married to a real bad boy, so my pose was inauthentic to her. She left home at 18, but did not say why. Most women talk, but not her. I’ve been surprised many times about what secretly goes on in many of the houses of middle America. They are not songs of innocence.
Pierre was older and homely. She resisted his advances but eventually yielded to his persistence. After all, she was working as a make-up artist for a cable news channel and he promised her a much better lifestyle. As an aside, she was with his girlfriend watching a news host. Unexpectedly, the host announced on air his engagement to someone else, to the girlfriend’s shock. Only a real bad boy could do that.
I heard all the stories, many more than I can, or should, tell tonight. For example, he said his mother escaped from the Nazis by hiding in a French forest beneath some murdered Jews. I checked with a Holocaust expert in Israel; he had never heard of that story.
Curiously, despite how he eventually mistreated her, she remained oddly proud of Pierre. His business activities all sounded to me like scams or con games. She claimed proudly that he could sell snow to an Eskimo. I tried to explain to her that only the gullible or the greedy would fall for such deals. Nevertheless, she tried to push her son into acting like him by being aggressive with food vendors. I’m sure the lifestyle was seductive; a large house, money, and connections to prominent politicians.
That all ended when a federal SWAT team raided their house and arrested Pierre. He was indicted for stock fraud and money laundering — actually a Byzantine tale with international connections, worthy of a James Bond movie. I read through all the pleadings from the federal courts, hoping to see where he was hiding money.
He got a reduced sentence by squealing on his partners, while Kari dutifully waited for him, in much diminished financial circumstances. Presumably, his assets were seized but he seemed financially secure after his release.
He sent her to Florida, he said to protect her. Initially, he flew down from New York every weekend, then monthly. He convinced her to get a divorce, allegedly in order to protect her assets from the feds. It was not a real divorce, he assured her, but a matter of convenience. Then he stopped visiting altogether. I finally tracked him down. He had remarried and started a new family, just as she suspected.”
I was rather shocked that my bookish roommate could have become involved with people like that. I was sure that he left a lot out of the story. “That sounds like a bad TV cop show. Was that the end of your involvement?”
“I did offer to write a screenplay. That might have happened if things did not get cut short.”
“What does that mean?” I was perplexed.
“Our relationship got personal,” he explained. “We could talk. She called me a breath of fresh air. Obviously, she did not need anyone to help her financially. Just someone who was direct and able to share feelings, and so on. I’ve heard that before, but she was laid back and I had nothing better going on. She was hoping to meet someone like me, but probably, as it turned out, not actually me.”
He ordered another Scotch, although I was hoping this would not take too much longer.
“We went out for a while. Polo matches, dinners, but mostly quiet nights at her home. Her son said I was one of the best grownup friends he had met. I sent her a thank you card. In an email she thanked me, saying how great it was to receive such a nice card from a nice caring person.
That should have been a warning to me. It was against everything I had been training for. A couple of weeks later, she was really cold at her house, so I decided to leave early. She followed me out to my car.”
“Was that it?” I asked. “Tell me what happened next.”
“Since she prized directness and honesty, I asked her bluntly if I should call her anymore.”
“Did she answer, or talk about her feelings?” I wondered.
“Are you kidding? She went on and on about how desperately she wanted to be with a nice reliable guy. But when she found me, it wasn’t working for her. Her friends couldn’t figure it out. She said she had to go back to psychotherapy to see what was wrong with her. But I could have told her that for free.”
“So you took that for a No, I presume?”
“I explained to her: Kari, I just wanted a Yes or No answer, not a story. Then I got in the car and drove away.”
“So you’ve been a nice guy all along?”
“Yeah. What are the odds of that?”
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.