Matchmaker Matchmaker

Do you believe in fixing people up?  I don’t.  I learned my lesson in high school when I fixed my funniest male friend up with my cutest girl cousin.  I thought they’d hit it off swell.  We doubled and the next morning, my baby blue Princess telephone trilled bright and early.

“Is that what you call cute?” demanded my outraged buddy.

“Is that what you call funny?” huffed my cousin.  Both had been insulted by what they perceived as egregious slurs on their sex appeal.  (Remember in “Sex and the City” when Charlotte fixed Anthony up with Stanford Blatch?  Well it was like that- except both parties involved this time were even more angry about my feeble attempt at playing Cupid.)

I swore that I would never do it again.  And I’ve kept my promise.

But my ex had made no such promise and years ago, he fixed up a very eligible bachelor friend with a very steamy sex kitten of a Playboy Bunny.  (In defense of my then-spouse I must say that this hook-up was supposed to be a hook-up.  It was for “recreational use” only.  He did not have matrimony in mind.)

Neither did I.  The first time I met the kitten- and for lawsuit’s sake, let’s call her Ivana- she was wearing a see-through blouse.  And no bra.  I was more of a schoolmarm type, and I’m sure I was wearing something turtle-necked or at least, opaque, as we four joined up at Gene and Georgetti’s for a double date.  But even though it was winter in Chicago, Ivana was dressed- or not- for the Folies Bergere.  My eyes popped out of my head when I saw her, um, them, um her.  I mean, she was naked from the waist up.  In public.

This was kind of a hint that she wasn’t supposed to be thought of as good wife and mother material but the guy- let’s call him Donald- didn’t get the hint.

And he married her soon after.

Soon after that, my husband and I were invited to a cozy little dinner party at their new apartment.  The bride wanted to show off her cooking skills and the groom wanted to show off the bride. She had prepared an elaborate Greek-type feast and the bride had invited a girlfriend over to help with the prep work.  All evening long they both kept darting back into the kitchen to stuff grape leaves or flame saganaki or something. They were always gone a long time and we heard a lot of giggling coming out of the kitchen, but my ex and I both wrote it off to an excess of high spirits and high spirit ouzo.

We never gave it a second thought until we heard shortly thereafter, that Ivana had dumped Donald- for the girlfriend in the kitchen.  Who had immediately dumped her.

We were shocked by this sexual rondo but that didn’t begin to cover Donald’s reaction.  He was devastated. He was blown away by her callousness, greed, non-traditional choice of bed partner, and the fact that she wasn’t into sharing.

He took to his bed for weeks.  This was a blow to his masculinity, ego, the whole nine yards.  And he blamed my ex for the whole ugly debacle.  Big time.

“How can Donald be mad at me?” my then husband would fume.  “He was never supposed to marry her.  She was a good time.  Nothing more.  Any idiot could see that.”

But this idiot had missed the signals and he sulked.  And wouldn’t speak to us.  After tons of pleading, my ex and I finally convinced him to meet us for dinner.  Donald hadn’t ventured out on the social scene for months and we thought he could dip his toe in the water in a safe environment surrounded by friends.

He agreed.  Roger Greenfield, the restaurateur du jour, had just opened his latest venture- 50 East.  Donald was a good friend of Roger’s and he dearly loved a new hot spot.  So we enticed and begged and finally he said okay.  We agreed to rendez-vous there.

That Saturday night at eight o’clock we all met in a VIP booth that Roger reserved for his best customers. (Donald, not us.)  There we were treated like pashas and were wined and dined and plied with enough yummy amuses–bouches to entertain the most jaded of palates.  And under all this celebuatant Kardashian treatment, Donald started to revive a little.  But he kept bemoaning his loss.

“She was so beautiful.  I miss her so much.  How could she do this to me?”  Yadda yadda yadda.

Finally I got fed up with the yadda-ing.  I decided to give him a good talking-to.

“Look, you’re the one who has everything to live for.  You can love again.  She’s the one who is not capable of decent human feeling.  Only a truly heartless person would have married someone in cold blood for his money. You will be happy again, I promise.  Tonight you’re here with good friends at this lovely restaurant.  She is at home alone in her dingy apartment sitting in her grubby bathrobe eating ice cream from a tub.”

Donald revived a little more.  He actually lifted his head up off the table and started to gaze around.  Like a bird dog, Roger was over at our table like a shot.  “Are you having a good evening, guys?” he asked solicitiously.  “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

We assured him that everything so far was peachy.

“How would you like to see the rest of this place?  I’m really proud of it.  Would you like a tour?”

It seemed that Donald would.  So the three of us, shepehered by our convivial host, were shown the kitchen, the rest of the main floor, and then Roger escorted us up the staircase into a more intime environment.  It was cozier up there- and sexier.

And there, upstairs, being wined and dined and laughing and preening for all the world to see, was Ivana.  A jeroboam of champagne on the table and an obviously-smitten sucker at her high-heeled feet.  Just when I had Donald convinced that she was at home in her bathrobe, too.

At the sight of this, he collapsed again.  And stopped talking to us again.

The moral of the story?  Never ever fix anyone up.

And if you do, never accompany them to a second location.

It’s always fatal.