Can't Help Myself

  Copyright © 2018 by Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC

  Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10104

  grandcentralpublishing.com

  twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First Edition: April 2018

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  ISBN 978-1-4555-4377-9 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-4555-4378-6 (ebook)

  E3-20171012-DANF

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Chapter 1: Help Me, Help You

  Chapter 2: You Make Me Wanna Snoop

  Chapter 3: The Rachels

  Chapter 4: The Company Ink

  Chapter 5: Fangs

  Chapter 6: Behave Yourself

  Chapter 7: The Salon

  Chapter 8: Man Up

  Chapter 9: Cursed

  Chapter 10: The Nucleus

  Chapter 11: Draco

  Chapter 12: Sickness and Health

  Chapter 13: Ring Watch

  Chapter 14: Dad

  Chapter 15: Grilled Cheese

  Chapter 16: Yo-Yo Ma

  Chapter 17: IRL (One Year Later)

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Meredith Goldstein

  Reading Group Guide

  Newsletters

  For my sister, Brette Goldstein, the most interesting character.

  Introduction

  This is a memoir told in stories and letters. It’s what happened, as I remember it, and my sister says my memory is pretty good.

  Some names and details have been conflated and changed, mostly to protect innocent people who took me to the Cheesecake Factory.

  —Meredith

  Chapter 1

  Help Me, Help You

  It was not a good time to start writing an advice column.

  I was not at my best. Not in 2008.

  I’d always been good at helping friends with their problems; I was the consoling, honest confidante who could make anyone feel better about a breakup or a bad first date.

  But during that long period of dejection, which lasted a full twelve months, I was the woman crying near the vending machines at work.

  I had a special spot where I liked to turn into a puddle—next to two snack machines in the old Boston Globe pressroom where they prepared the circulars, those colorful ads with coupons that fit inside your newspaper.

  I’d sink to the floor, under the glow of the Coke logo, and weep, usually for about seven to eight minutes at a time. Sometimes no tears would come, and I’d dry-heave like the wind had been knocked out of me. Sometimes it was a Claire Danes Homeland cry, with a trembling chin and angry whimpers.

  The vending machines were just out of the way of the spot where broad-shouldered men with Boston accents brought stacks of newspapers to and from a freight elevator. If those guys noticed me in tears, they didn’t let on.

  I’m sure they did notice, though, because my nose blows were mighty, like the trumpet of an elephant, thanks to my sinus polyps, which, according to my ear, nose, and throat doctor, are “very impressive.”

  I’d never been a big crier, but back then, I couldn’t stop myself from weeping about Patrick, my ex-boyfriend and coworker, who’d dumped me when I’d least expected it. Patrick, who took me to dinner by the beach and bought me cotton candy at Fenway Park. Patrick, who was the tallest guy I’d ever dated (6'6"!). Patrick, whose emails about our colleagues were so deliciously sarcastic that often I’d have to minimize them seconds after I received them so that no one near my cubicle would see.

  Sometimes I’d cry about Patrick because I’d accidentally crossed paths with him in the Globe cafeteria. That kind of run-in was devastating, because he always looked content and relaxed—like the breakup hadn’t ruined his life. He wore his everyday khakis and button-down suit shirt, and chatted with coworkers with an easy smile on his face. I’d hide behind the cafeteria plants thinking, “How dare he. How dare he eat.”

  Other times I cried because I hadn’t run into Patrick.

  Early on, I thought it would feel better to avoid him, so for the first few months after the breakup I brought a toaster to the office to make my English muffins at my desk. No more cafeteria for me. I would live in my cubicle like it was a panic room.

  But all the toaster did was attract mice—there were shit pellets everywhere—and I was no less miserable. Avoiding Patrick made me feel like he could just disappear, like our closeness had never happened.

  I just wanted him back. I wanted him to run to my desk and tell me he’d made a mistake by letting me go.

  “I miss you,” he would say in my fantasies, with the slight Boston accent that got worse when he was drinking. “Let’s go get burgers.”

  I was miserable without Patrick—but I never wanted to marry him. I didn’t want to have babies with him. I never even thought we’d move in together.

  The truth was that the breakup devastated me because I had no intention of marrying Patrick. I’d decided—during our short relationship—that he might be an alternative to everything I didn’t want.

  As I entered my thirties, I was surrounded by peers who were either married or looking to be, but I didn’t see myself on that path. I couldn’t imagine living with anyone besides friends, and I had no desire to have kids.

  Maybe it had something to do with my mom, who gave up a piano performance career to marry my dad, only to get a divorce. She always said she loved raising my sister and me, and that on most days, teaching piano lessons in our living room was a more rewarding use of her Juilliard degrees, but I couldn’t imagine making those sacrifices for a relationship. I liked putting work first, and I loved my freedom.

  But that didn’t mean I wanted to be alone.

  Patrick, a Massachusetts-bred sports fan who worked in the paper’s advertising department, was thirty-seven when we met and seemed to share my lack of interest in marriage and kids. He’d managed to avoid marrying two decades’ worth of girlfriends, and still lived in a Brookline condo he’d bought after graduating from Holy Cross. He enjoyed his status quo, just like me.

  It all started when he approached me in the cafeteria to tell me he liked my writing, specifically my stories about nightlife and things to do around the city.

  “I’m Patrick, from the advertising department,” he said with a big smile. “I liked your story the other day.”

  He was blond with broad shoulders and looked like the kind of guy who had masculine nicknames in high school. Like Champ. Or Kicker.

  After a few more inevitable run-ins around the building, we started to email. Then we traded phone numbers and began texting. Months later, we shared our first meal outside of work.

  It took us even more months to admit that our regular dinners, most of which were at the Cheesecake Factory, were probably dates. I began sleeping over, sometimes wearing his oversized Timberwolves T-shirt.

  I’d never dated the kind of guy who had a Timberwolves T-shirt. I didn’t care enough to ask why he was a fan of a team in Minnesota—I didn’t even know what sport the Timberwolves played—but I was happy to wear the uniform.

  I fell hard for Patrick and adored all of the ways he was one hundred percent himself—and my opposite. He refused to try new foods, loved the Pogues, and liked to vacation in places like Las Vegas. When bad things happened, he’d spit out one of his many catchphrases: “Sucks to suck.”

  People at work were shocked to find out we were dating. Patrick, who was beloved at the Globe, was Catholic, stoic, and kept a stack of baseball biographies on his nightstand, whereas I was a Jewish over-sharer who slept near a copy of Harry Potter. It didn’t matter, though; on nights we were both free, we could be happy together, ordering fast food, my feet in his lap as we watched television.

  The thing I liked most about our relationship was that it was always about respecting each other’s separate routines as opposed to combining them. I’d text him while he was out at bars with friends, but never expected to come along. I never felt bad going to a party without Patrick because he never worried about missing out. We could always get together after and talk about the highlights.

  While other couples I knew took big next steps, Patrick and I stood still. I started to believe that we could maintain our noncommittal cable watching for the rest of our lives—that
perhaps two people who weren’t fond of change were meant to stay exactly the same, together.

  When he broke up with me, a move I hadn’t seen coming, he sat me down on his beige Jordan’s Furniture couch, under his framed 2004 Boston Red Sox World Series championship mementos, and said something like, “I just don’t see this going anywhere,” and I thought, “Me neither!”

  I didn’t want to go anywhere with Patrick. That was the point.

  But it turned out Patrick was looking for a lot more. He was interested in new experiences and considered his lifestyle to be temporary. He wanted a real partner—maybe a wife—and I wasn’t even close to what he imagined for himself. He just hadn’t said so.

  I didn’t know where that left me, but I feared the answer was: alone.

  After it was over, something changed in me. I stayed home a lot because I didn’t want to hang out with couples. I also avoided single people because they depressed me. I became a mediocre friend.

  At night, I re-watched every season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because Buffy had been through worse, and it made me feel like I had a destiny. Sometimes I’d watch the same episode a few times in a row while eating frozen waffles in bed.

  If I ran into Patrick at work, face-to-face, my instinct was to bolt before he could talk to me. On rare occasions, though, I’d confront him, looking for more answers.

  One time I spotted him in the parking lot, near the rows of green Globe delivery trucks, and approached him, telling him that he’d “ruined the Cheesecake Factory for me.”

  That is something I said out loud.

  “I can’t even go there anymore,” I told him. “The Cheesecake Factory was our thing, and now I can’t even set foot inside without getting upset.”

  “Nope,” Patrick said, not letting that one pass. “I’m going to have to stop you right there. I did not ruin the fucking Cheesecake Factory for you, and you know it. You go to the Cheesecake Factory with everyone you know. You were going to the Cheesecake Factory long before I was around.”

  He was right. I went to the Cheesecake Factory with everyone.

  “But now the Cheesecake Factory makes me think of you,” I whined, and then grimaced, because I was embarrassed by the person I’d become.

  I was self-aware enough to know that with my blubbering and begging, I was one pint of ice cream and a flannel blanket away from becoming a more sedentary Bridget Jones, but I couldn’t stop myself. Sometimes breakups turn you into the kind of person you wouldn’t befriend in a million years. Sometimes they turn you into a caricature.

  In other words, sucks to suck.

  * * *

  It was shortly after the Cheesecake Factory meltdown that my Boston Globe editors considered an idea I’d floated just before the breakup. After covering entertainment, nightlife, and social trends for years, I told my bosses I wanted to write a local advice column. Something focused on romantic relationships.

  I explained that as a young person in Maryland, I’d read Carolyn Hax, of the Washington Post, and that when I discovered the world of alternative press, I’d fallen in love with the brilliance of Dan Savage. The Globe ran a few syndicated advice columns—Annie’s Mailbox and Dear Margo, written by Ann Landers’s whip-smart daughter, Margo Howard—but those writers had a national fan base. They were big names.

  I told my editors that people in Boston needed their own, local advice column—a more intimate feature that would make them feel as though they were reading about someone down the street, maybe someone they knew.

  I said I wanted the column to be written for an online community—with a robust comments section—so that it felt like a chat room. I would ask commenters to weigh in with their own advice to make the experience something like group therapy.

  I was confident that I was the right person to launch the new feature. I didn’t have any psychology degrees, but most advice columnists started their careers as writers and reporters. I was deeply interested in writing about the way people lived now—the expansion of Facebook, the dawn of text messaging, and the rise of online dating—and this kind of project seemed relevant.

  Also, I’d sort of been an advice columnist for decades, at least to my family and friends.

  In my youth, I’d counseled my mom when she started dating again in her early forties. She didn’t have any single friends who could make sense of her post-divorce life, so it was up to me to help, and my mom listened as though I was the expert.

  I helped her write dating profiles, first for the tiny print ads in Washingtonian magazine, before the internet, and then for online sites that made it much easier to find love in the suburbs. Once I was old enough, my mom’s questions became more…specific.

  I remember her calling me at college to ask whether she could have a man sleep over if she wasn’t ready to have sex with him.

  “You can do other things. You can fool around for a while and then just fall asleep,” I told her, clutching my landline phone, covered in blankets in my freezing apartment at Syracuse University.

  “I don’t think adults sleep in the same bed without having intercourse,” my mom said.

  “You’d be shocked,” I replied. “Get creative.”

  When I wasn’t debating the rules of dating with my mom, I was watching my older sister. Whereas my mom had always been a hopeless romantic—a classical musician looking for true love like some Jane Austen character—my sister, Brette, who’s more of a Bette Midler character, preferred big experiences and excitement.

  From the time she was old enough to know what sex was, Brette had sexual chemistry with almost every human she met. She lost her virginity when she was sixteen to one of the hottest guys at our high school. They did it in her twin bed while my mom was sleeping down the hall. Then they went outside and had sex on our swing set.

  Brette didn’t care that the hot popular guy was only offering a one-night stand, and that her peers would hear about it and judge. My mom found out about my sister’s virginity loss because Brette wound up doubled over in pain with a urinary tract infection. Even then, Brette had no regrets.

  Counseling my sister was always different than advising my mom.

  “Do you really need to do that?” “Are you sure you should be pursuing someone else’s boyfriend?” “Was it really a good idea to sneak alcohol on that school band trip by hiding it in a bag of maxi pads?”

  With Brette, I honed my skills at advising without judgment. I learned that recklessness can sometimes yield beautiful results. I learned that women can live on their own terms, without giving a shit about rules that someone else set for them.

  As I got older, my friends benefited from my instinct to talk things through, although it didn’t always feel like a plus. When one of my closest guy friends from college got married, I was asked to be a “groomsmaid,” but I wasn’t invited to the bachelor party. I asked why, arguing that my being a woman should not prohibit me from attending the celebration.

  “It’s not that,” he explained, looking pained. “Everybody knows that if you come, we’ll all wind up sitting around and talking about our feelings.”

  I let it go, knowing he was right. Sitting around and talking about feelings was kind of my thing.

  * * *

  My editors were hesitant about the advice column idea at first. In 2008, they were slashing budgets; whatever resources and labor remained needed to go to important departments like the Metro desk and the Spotlight team.

  But one editor of the website wanted to give it a try. The news business was changing, and he needed stories that would make people want to stay online all day. An advice column with a comments section was starting to sound like a good idea.

  I panicked, because the breakup with Patrick had altered my brain. How could I be helpful to readers when it had become clear that I could no longer help myself?

  I can attribute my rally—in part, at least—to Lisa, an acquaintance from work who was around my age. We had dinner one night, before the launch of the column, because I wanted to check up on her. Lisa’s husband had died recently in his sleep because of some rare genetic problem that no one would have been able to prevent. Lisa had real troubles and had experienced genuine loss. All of a sudden she was alone in a condo in the suburbs trying to figure out how to start over without her life partner.