Emily's Reasons Why Not Read Online Free
Author: Carrie Gerlach
idea. I mean, with Josh, at least I know he’s going to be my friend forever. He’s going to love me when my boobs are saggy, when I am PMSing and the baby is crying. I know that he’ll take the kids to soccer practice and cheerleading tryouts and he’ll help our daughter pick out the perfect prom dress. I mean, it seems a lot more reliable than believing that love, passion, and monogamy are going to last forever.
“Red or pink?” I hold up two lip liners as we wait in 10:00 P.M. gridlock.
“Definitely red. Red says take me, I need it, and I need it bad on my birthday,” Reilly laughs.
“For God’s sake, we’re heading out into the wilderness of Los Angeles on a Saturday night, wear the red,” Grace backs Reilly up.
I check the red lipstick in the rearview mirror as the Mustang waits on little Santa Monica Boulevard behind a convertible BMW full of twentysomething-backless-shirt-wearing model types and an oversized black SUV with a P. Diddy look-alike bumping to rap music behind us. We finally reach the valet stand outside the Beverly Hills YMCA.
Who knew they even had YMCAs in Beverly Hills?
We enter the Y and the doorman directs us to the gymnasium. We walk through the metal doors of the gym and immediatelynotice that it is decorated like a high school prom in the eighties. I start to itch.
I hated all the insecurity that came along with being a sixteen-year-old in braces whose breasts had yet to develop. I had hives all through my sophomore year and now I remember why. This gym has thrust me into the past and suddenly I am feeling like an awkward, knock-kneed geek. I am wishing I was home watching reruns of Magnum, PI . in my pajamas with Sam.
Scanning the room, I make out all the familiar faces, and it dawns on me that Hollywood is exactly like high school. There are the popular kids. The jocks. The freaks. And the annoying student council types trying to get ahead—only now they are agents, studio executives, managers, publicists, and lawyers.
They are all crammed together in Armani trousers, Hugo Boss sweaters, and backless shirts. They are the same two hundred people that I witnessed four nights ago pouring out of a premiere at the Director’s Guild theater as I sat in the Mustang at a stoplight watching them all smoke cigarettes and discuss the pros and cons of film noir.
Two hundred of exactly the same people, only now they are crouched together smoking cigarettes and trying to figure out who is more important than whom, which isn’t Reilly, Grace, or me.
We make a beeline for the bar. Reilly fires up her second Marlboro Light and blows her smoke into the chest of George Clooney.
Wow. George Clooney is a babe. Keep moving. I look over my shoulder at him and he smiles.
“Actors,” Reilly says with disdain.
“I don’t know, he has the sexiest eyes,” I defend him.
“He is the epitome of the American bachelor and makes no bones about it. He never wants to get married. Never wants kids.” Grace lays it out like it is.
“George is another example of perfectly good genes going to waste,” Reilly realizes.
George … I could love George, with his perfect hair, sly smile, and strong forearms, a perpetual prankster. I could fall madly in love with a man who professes to find marriage the ultimate death for men. George, a man whose longest caretaking relationship is with a potbellied pig. George, who would rather spend Sundays shooting hoops with his buddies or riding his Harley than lie naked with me watching The Way We Were . But I could change him. Teach him about the benefits of intimacy, nurturing, and commitment. JESUS! George is the exact type of man that I am attracted to for all of the wrong reasons. George easily has ten reasons why NOT to date him. How much clearer does a man need to be to me? He printed his disdain for monogamy in People magazine!
“But he’s so utterly, completely beautiful,” I say. We all nod in agreement as we watch his tight butt sashay away in
“Red or pink?” I hold up two lip liners as we wait in 10:00 P.M. gridlock.
“Definitely red. Red says take me, I need it, and I need it bad on my birthday,” Reilly laughs.
“For God’s sake, we’re heading out into the wilderness of Los Angeles on a Saturday night, wear the red,” Grace backs Reilly up.
I check the red lipstick in the rearview mirror as the Mustang waits on little Santa Monica Boulevard behind a convertible BMW full of twentysomething-backless-shirt-wearing model types and an oversized black SUV with a P. Diddy look-alike bumping to rap music behind us. We finally reach the valet stand outside the Beverly Hills YMCA.
Who knew they even had YMCAs in Beverly Hills?
We enter the Y and the doorman directs us to the gymnasium. We walk through the metal doors of the gym and immediatelynotice that it is decorated like a high school prom in the eighties. I start to itch.
I hated all the insecurity that came along with being a sixteen-year-old in braces whose breasts had yet to develop. I had hives all through my sophomore year and now I remember why. This gym has thrust me into the past and suddenly I am feeling like an awkward, knock-kneed geek. I am wishing I was home watching reruns of Magnum, PI . in my pajamas with Sam.
Scanning the room, I make out all the familiar faces, and it dawns on me that Hollywood is exactly like high school. There are the popular kids. The jocks. The freaks. And the annoying student council types trying to get ahead—only now they are agents, studio executives, managers, publicists, and lawyers.
They are all crammed together in Armani trousers, Hugo Boss sweaters, and backless shirts. They are the same two hundred people that I witnessed four nights ago pouring out of a premiere at the Director’s Guild theater as I sat in the Mustang at a stoplight watching them all smoke cigarettes and discuss the pros and cons of film noir.
Two hundred of exactly the same people, only now they are crouched together smoking cigarettes and trying to figure out who is more important than whom, which isn’t Reilly, Grace, or me.
We make a beeline for the bar. Reilly fires up her second Marlboro Light and blows her smoke into the chest of George Clooney.
Wow. George Clooney is a babe. Keep moving. I look over my shoulder at him and he smiles.
“Actors,” Reilly says with disdain.
“I don’t know, he has the sexiest eyes,” I defend him.
“He is the epitome of the American bachelor and makes no bones about it. He never wants to get married. Never wants kids.” Grace lays it out like it is.
“George is another example of perfectly good genes going to waste,” Reilly realizes.
George … I could love George, with his perfect hair, sly smile, and strong forearms, a perpetual prankster. I could fall madly in love with a man who professes to find marriage the ultimate death for men. George, a man whose longest caretaking relationship is with a potbellied pig. George, who would rather spend Sundays shooting hoops with his buddies or riding his Harley than lie naked with me watching The Way We Were . But I could change him. Teach him about the benefits of intimacy, nurturing, and commitment. JESUS! George is the exact type of man that I am attracted to for all of the wrong reasons. George easily has ten reasons why NOT to date him. How much clearer does a man need to be to me? He printed his disdain for monogamy in People magazine!
“But he’s so utterly, completely beautiful,” I say. We all nod in agreement as we watch his tight butt sashay away in
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