Read Online What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristin Newman - Free Book Online
Authors: Kristin Newman
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big group dinner, and, without my knowledge, he had also been invited. (Coincidence! Fate!) He was late, and so I was nibbling on a salad when this friendly, boisterous guy walked in and shouted, “Hello!!!!” The guy had an entirely shaved head, save for two small, round patches of three-inch-long black hair that were sprouting out of the top, a little off-center, apparently the result of a bet. He certainly stood out, but not in a hot way. Just in a jolly and poorly coiffed way. The stranger sat down, and offered me his hand:
“Hi! I’m Ferris Bueller.”
And there he was.
While fireworks did not exactly go off, it really didn’t matter. I had already decided the truth based on “Ferris Bueller: The Myth”: we were meant for each other. And The Real Ferris Bueller was certainly cute enough aside from the hair polka dots on his skull, and likable as hell. But that didn’t really matter.
Because after all these months, and all these people telling me he was perfect for me, I had fallen in love with him. Like, really in love, in a way that made my friends hold interventions since I
had never met him.
Like, in love likeI’ve written TV shows for major networks with characters based on him. More than one. In love like I eventually flew to Europe to try to kiss him.
And, finally, here is that story:
A couple of months into my Ferris-stalking fever, Ferris organized the first of what would be yearly New Year’s Eve trips that I spent the next decade going on. The trips usually consist of twenty to sixty people going wherever in the world Ferris tells them, and having the most ridiculous, high-profile, memoir-worthy adventures imaginable. There was even an article about Ferris’s usually costume-bedecked excursions in the
New York Times.
He’s taken us to chalets in the Alps, jillionaires’ estates in Punta del Este, beach houses in the Dominican Republic, twenties masquerade balls in San Francisco, Brazil, Portugal, the Bahamas. Last month, he and his merrymaking right-hand man Thomas sent out an e-mail to hundreds of people, telling them to show up on a Thursday night with a passport and three hundred dollars for a mystery three-day international adventure. Sixty people ended up on a bus to Mexico.
This first trip was to Paris, where Ferris’s brother was an Episcopal minister at the American Cathedral, which is located just off the Champs-Élysées. Ferris was throwing a party
in the cathedral
on New Year’s Eve. And while I was not “invited” per se, the friends who had first suggested I date Ferris on that weekend in Mammoth were, and promised it was a “come one come all” sort of affair. So the nexttime I ran into Ferris, I informed him that I was going to be in London, by coincidence, and he said of course I should come to the party in Paris, and then I grabbed my cousin Emma, and she grabbed her awful friend Sally, and we bought tickets to London and Paris.
A little on my travel partners: my cousin Emma is two years older than I am. Growing up, she had an amazing Dorothy Hamill haircut and I wanted to be just like her. She married her first college sweetheart at twenty-five, when I was living with my first college sweetheart, Vito, in Vail, working three ski-town jobs to afford my six months as a “ski bum.”
It was these similar starts—long-term relationships with guys we both met at eighteen and both thought we would be with forever—that made what happened with Emma so resonant for me. Basically, while I had a wrenching breakup after six years with my guy, she married hers (thereby breaking my “don’t choose your spouse young” rule). But after thirteen years, she found that he had become just a best friend. So they officially separated.
She got back out there, single and living alone for the first time at thirty-two, and met men who woke up something in her that she had never even realized existed. And she found me again. Just as I was breaking up with Trevor, single at thirty for
“Hi! I’m Ferris Bueller.”
And there he was.
While fireworks did not exactly go off, it really didn’t matter. I had already decided the truth based on “Ferris Bueller: The Myth”: we were meant for each other. And The Real Ferris Bueller was certainly cute enough aside from the hair polka dots on his skull, and likable as hell. But that didn’t really matter.
Because after all these months, and all these people telling me he was perfect for me, I had fallen in love with him. Like, really in love, in a way that made my friends hold interventions since I
had never met him.
Like, in love likeI’ve written TV shows for major networks with characters based on him. More than one. In love like I eventually flew to Europe to try to kiss him.
And, finally, here is that story:
A couple of months into my Ferris-stalking fever, Ferris organized the first of what would be yearly New Year’s Eve trips that I spent the next decade going on. The trips usually consist of twenty to sixty people going wherever in the world Ferris tells them, and having the most ridiculous, high-profile, memoir-worthy adventures imaginable. There was even an article about Ferris’s usually costume-bedecked excursions in the
New York Times.
He’s taken us to chalets in the Alps, jillionaires’ estates in Punta del Este, beach houses in the Dominican Republic, twenties masquerade balls in San Francisco, Brazil, Portugal, the Bahamas. Last month, he and his merrymaking right-hand man Thomas sent out an e-mail to hundreds of people, telling them to show up on a Thursday night with a passport and three hundred dollars for a mystery three-day international adventure. Sixty people ended up on a bus to Mexico.
This first trip was to Paris, where Ferris’s brother was an Episcopal minister at the American Cathedral, which is located just off the Champs-Élysées. Ferris was throwing a party
in the cathedral
on New Year’s Eve. And while I was not “invited” per se, the friends who had first suggested I date Ferris on that weekend in Mammoth were, and promised it was a “come one come all” sort of affair. So the nexttime I ran into Ferris, I informed him that I was going to be in London, by coincidence, and he said of course I should come to the party in Paris, and then I grabbed my cousin Emma, and she grabbed her awful friend Sally, and we bought tickets to London and Paris.
A little on my travel partners: my cousin Emma is two years older than I am. Growing up, she had an amazing Dorothy Hamill haircut and I wanted to be just like her. She married her first college sweetheart at twenty-five, when I was living with my first college sweetheart, Vito, in Vail, working three ski-town jobs to afford my six months as a “ski bum.”
It was these similar starts—long-term relationships with guys we both met at eighteen and both thought we would be with forever—that made what happened with Emma so resonant for me. Basically, while I had a wrenching breakup after six years with my guy, she married hers (thereby breaking my “don’t choose your spouse young” rule). But after thirteen years, she found that he had become just a best friend. So they officially separated.
She got back out there, single and living alone for the first time at thirty-two, and met men who woke up something in her that she had never even realized existed. And she found me again. Just as I was breaking up with Trevor, single at thirty for
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