In This Exclusive Excerpt From Her New Book, There Are No Grown-ups, Pamela Druckerman Reflects On How She Ditched Boys And Found A Man
In my 20s, I made an important life decision: If I can’t be a grown-up, I’ll sleep with one.
I dated men who were, if not wiser than me, then at least quite a bit older. I was especially drawn to foreigners who read newspapers in exotic languages. I embarked on a romantic world tour, dating a German-speaking genius in New York who was unable to make eye contact and a Hungarian psychiatrist who—when dumping me—explained that I simply wasn’t emotionally wounded enough for him.
My pool of eligible foreigners expanded when I was hired by a newspaper to cover Latin America. During a stint in Brazil, I made a tear through the Jewish men of São Paulo, ending up with a DJ who lived with his mother and—judging by the dirty looks she gave me at breakfast—had recently had a fling with his live-in maid.
I was easily dazzled by worldliness. A Russian suitor of mine spoke four languages fluently; it took me nearly a year to realize that he didn’t have a sense of humor in any of them.
I knew it was a bad sign when a Mexican banker brought nothing to read on our beach holiday except a bond-trading manual. I ended things after I gave him a leather-bound journal for his birthday and he asked what to do with an empty book.
When I finally went American and dated a lawyer’s son from the Chicago suburbs, he decided that I wasn’t exotic enough for him. “Sometimes I think you’re just a Jewish girl from Miami,” he confessed. I feared the same thing.
This story is from the June 2018 edition of Marie Claire - US.
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This story is from the June 2018 edition of Marie Claire - US.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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