Four Blondes

“Noooo,” I said, although I had just broken up with a man who refused to marry me after six months of dating. I believe his actual words were “I do want to get married someday, but I don’t want to marry you.”

Okay, maybe I did rush him a little. But on the other hand, he used to sit at home in the evenings watching Kung Fu movies. And when I tried to talk to him, he would say, “Shhhhh. Grasshopper is about to learn an important lesson.” After this happened a few times, I realized that “Grasshopper” had indeed learned a lesson: By the time you get to Grasshopper’s age, there is absolutely no reason to be with a man who watches Kung Fu movies unless you are married to him.

But there was no reason to tell the English journalist this.

“How . . . interesting,” she said. “I’ve been married for six years.”

“Is that so,” I said. I took a sip of my Bloody Mary and wondered if I was getting drunk. “Well, if you lived in New York,” I said, “you wouldn’t be. In fact, if you lived in New York, you’d probably be living in a small one-bedroom apartment, agonizing over some jerky guy you slept with three times.” Ah yes. Grasshopper was just getting warmed up. “You’d think that maybe you were going to have a relationship, but then the guy would call to tell you that he didn’t want any obligations. He would actually say, ‘I don’t want to check in.’”

I ordered another Bloody Mary. “Commitment is a mystery here,” I said.

“Not in London,” the English journalist said. “Men in London—Englishmen—well, they’re better than American men. They’re rather. . .” Here her face took on a sort of disgusting look that I could only call “dreamy.” Then she continued, “Steady. They’re interested in relationships. They like them. Englishmen are . . . cozy.”

“You mean like . . . kittens?” I asked.

The English journalist gave me a superior smile. “Now, let’s see. You are . . . how old now?”

“Forty,” I whispered.

“That’s right. So you must be at that point where you’ve realized that you’ll probably be alone for the rest of your life.”

And so it was that a month later, Grasshopper found herself on a flight to London. In the tradition of many American heroines before her, she was off to England in search of something she hadn’t been able to find in New York: a husband.

That, of course, was my secret plan.

Being one of those clever American women who are so clever that they manage to trick themselves out of having relationships. I naturally needed some kind of cover-up. And I’d found it: This big English newspaper was paying me a ridiculous amount of money to find out about sex in London. If there actually was such a thing.

It was the kind of assignment that would involve copious amounts of alcohol and quite a lot of late-night bar crawling, the kind of activities I specialized in. Which was probably the reason I didn’t have a husband in the first place.

But there were two things that worried me: Sex and Death.

You see, years ago, I had actually dated a couple of Englishmen. Unfortunately, both had tried to kill me—one by “wave-jumping” ten-foot waves in Australia in a twenty-five-foot Chris Craft, which he then crashed into the dock (he was drunk); and the other by suffocating me with a pillow (he was sober). Indeed, when I called Gerald the Suffocator to tell him that I was coming to England, his response was “Good. Now I can finish the job.”

My second fear was, naturally, sex. Over and over again I had heard how horrible Englishmen are in bed. The conventional wisdom was that they failed miserably on three counts: One, their willies were really small. Two, foreplay didn’t exist. And three, they came in about two minutes. In other words, they were all premature ejaculators, and if they lived in New York, some sensible woman would have put desensitizing cream on the tip of their willies and then made them have sex for three hours, which would probably cause the poor man to go running to his shrink—but, hey, that’s not our problem. But maybe they don’t have desensitizing cream in England. Or maybe they don’t really care that much about sex.

I decided to begin my “research” by staying at the home of a man known as The Fox. The Fox was one of London’s most prominent theatre directors, and also one of the most notorious womanizers in London. Years earlier, The Fox’s wife, whom, I was told was known in London as The Saint for putting up with him, had divorced him for something like egregious adultery and outrageous behavior. The outrageous behavior including turning up at four in the morning naked and clutching an American Express card over his privates. And so, on a Tuesday afternoon, I arrived at The Fox’s house with three Louis Vuitton suitcases, stuffed, rather inexplicably, with Prada, Dolce & Gabbana, and Gucci evening clothes, plus one pair of combat pants. The Fox wasn’t there, but his housekeeper, a woman who didn’t speak English an

d was ironing towels, was. Through a series of hand motions, I began to understand that, as there were only two bedrooms and the “guest” room was, at that moment, occupied by a large man and an even larger case of wine, I was supposed to sleep in The Fox’s bed.

Aha.

Luckily, as I was about to open a bottle of wine and proceed to get drunk in order to deal with the situation, The Fox’s assistant, Jason, arrived. Jason was twenty-five, cute, and of some sort of inderminate nationality, although he claimed to be English. When I quizzed him about the so-called “sleeping arrangements,” he grabbed me and said, “Don’t have sex with The Fox. Have sex with me instead. I’m sure I’m much better in bed.”

“Jason,” I said patiently. “Have you ever even had a girlfriend?”

“Well, I’m having some romantic trouble right now,” he said. Then he proceeded into a long-winded story about some girl he was in love with, whom he’d had sex with once, nine months ago. He met her at a pub, and even though she was a lesbian and with her girlfriend, he had somehow convinced her to go off to a hotel room with him, where she handcuffed him to the bed and had “amazing” sex with him. The next morning he realized that he’d never felt this way about a woman before, had fallen madly in love with her, and since then, hadn’t even looked at another woman although the object of his affection refused to take his phone calls and refused to see him. And then she’d changed her cell-phone number.

“So what do you think I should do?” he asked.

For a long time, I just stared at him like he was insane. Then I said patiently, “Jason. You had a one-night stand. You don’t fall in love after a one-night stand with a lesbian sadist.”

“You don’t?” Jason said.

“No,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because,” I began, but at that moment, the door flew open and The Fox himself arrived. He ran across the room to the window and looked out fearfully.