But last night had scared me. I’d parked on a quiet, tree-lined street in Mar Vista, one of many I rotated through over the course of a month. It was one of my favorites—not a lot of foot traffic and few streetlights.
I’d burrowed into my nest of blankets, tucked behind tinted glass, the sunroof open just a crack to keep my windows from steaming up. Someone in the neighborhood was listening to Sting’s “Fields of Gold,” which my mother had loved. The music floated over me as I fell asleep, my muscles releasing, my mind easing into darkness.
I’d been yanked awake by the sound of someone trying to pop the lock on the passenger side door. Through the window I could see a huge, shadowy figure in dark clothing, a hood over his head, just a thin piece of glass separating the two of us. I’d acted on instinct, leaping from the backseat, grabbing my keys, and leaning on the horn as I jammed them into the ignition, peeling away from the curb and nearly hitting another parked car in my panic to get away.
It took an hour of driving aimlessly before my hands stopped shaking, before my heart stopped pounding, and I shuddered to think what would have happened if he’d gotten in. I kept imagining scenarios, each one more horrific than the last. A hand over my mouth. Being driven to a deserted location. Being dragged into a ditch.
My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep as I reread my dating profile, where only my name and age were true. Meg Williams, age 21. Profession: Marketing. Likes: live music, dining out, travel. I love to laugh and am always looking for adventure! Age range: 18–35. Looking for fun, not marriage. That last part was the line that kept me fed. I managed to get at least three dates a week, and I pushed hard for dinner and not coffee. When you live in a car, the last thing you need is more liquid. I said yes to every invitation, and I became a master of flirty online banter, giving the illusion that good things might happen after a sit-down dinner that included cloth napkins, appetizers, and a dessert menu.
A minimum of three dates a week saved me at least $50, money I’d hoped would grow until I had enough to afford a place to live. But something always set me back. Car registration. Rising gas prices. A parking ticket.
And so, on that rainy October afternoon, I finally gave up and admitted to myself I needed more than just a one-night reprieve every few days. I needed a safe place to live, and someone willing to give it to me. I wouldn’t find that from the men on my screen, all of whom were in their twenties and thirties. They were interested in casual dates. Hookups with no strings. Not an instant, live-in girlfriend.
I was going to have to go older.
I clicked over to my settings and slid the age range from thirty-five to forty. Would that be old enough? Forty-year-old women were over the hill, but men had longer shelf life.
“Fuck it,” I muttered under my breath and slid it up to fifty-five.
I thought back to my mother, a beautiful woman who had insisted on doing everything for herself, making my childhood ten times harder than it needed to be. She never accepted help when it was offered, and because there always seemed to be some poor fool in love with her, it was offered frequently. She said no when one of them wanted to buy me new shoes or to pay for a week at summer camp. She declined offers of a place to live when we needed one. Car repairs. An occasional meal at a nice restaurant or a day at Disneyland. It wasn’t like I wanted her to sell herself. Just agree every now and then to things that would have made our lives a little better.
But she believed women should stand on their own. She wanted to find a true partner, not a handout. She thought she’d found that partnership with Ron Ashton, never seeing the rotten core of him until it was too late.
A new page began to load profiles of men two or three times my age, many of them completely gray, and my breath hitched as I imagined sitting across a table from one of them, faking an attraction I was never going to feel.
I clicked through profiles, one by one. Too old. Too creepy. Usually, when I hit on a potential date, I’d try to find something we had in common, and if I couldn’t, I’d make it up. I love Steely Dan! A quick Google search would bring up their concert schedule. I even went to Vegas to catch their show last August. Epic! At the end of the night, if the guy seemed nice enough, it didn’t matter what the truth was.