Photo courtesy of Emily Lodish

I’d like to say right off the bat that I can’t take credit for that line. I wish I could, because I think it’s a great line, but I can’t. It is the title of a song in a musical written by a friend of the person who has come to be known unto me as Dating Disaster #3. I’m not even sure he would consider us as having dated. But that’s not the point.

The idea behind being a Bette Davis in Boston, for those of you born in the '90s, is that while a young lady of a certain age may find it difficult to meet an eligible suitor in such lively locales as, say, New York City, she will in fact find that her odds are smiling in dear old Boston. You may be this side of an ass sandwich in Brooklyn, the reasoning goes, but here in Beantown, you just keep getting cuter.

Or so they say. I have not, precisely, found that to be true.

But let us begin at the beginning with Dating Disaster #1. Isaac, whose name I have changed to protect his privacy, though why I’m prioritizing his needs is beyond me, was someone I actually knew from college. But not someone I knew very well, which will soon become abundantly clear.

Isaac was foxy and smart and full of energy. The kind of focused energy that makes you feel like the whole universe is tipping so you can walk downhill. It’s not hard to get hooked on a ride like that.

We got reacquainted at a wedding toward the beginning of my time here in Boston. Isaac was a guest at the wedding, like me, but he was also a member of the band. Let us say that I began to groove to Isaac’s tunes.

He lived in LA, though, so I was trying not to think too far ahead or get too excited. But I’ve never been very good at that, and besides, these were the kind of temporal and spatial barriers that were fluid (red flag) to Isaac, and, he assured me, easy to overcome. We could do it. It felt like a beginning to him. Every day is a new beginning, Isaac, when you’re a goldfish.

But I was into it. I liked him more each day, and frankly, I’m a sharer. I was getting addicted to sharing my life with Isaac, in whatever electronic and unorthodox way was permitted us. Things heated up quickly and soon we were communicating more than a dozen times a day.

There was good morning and good night. There was “Hey, do you think a cast iron skillet is a must-have?” And there were things I can’t repeat that were texted while I was at work and he was lecturing before hundreds of college students. He would send me photos of what he was having for dinner. I wrote several raps, which is something I only do when entirely excited. It was a major part of my day, these connections to Isaac. It was becoming a major part of my life.

Plus, there was the semblance of an end in sight. He was looking at a job in Boston for the following year, and it seemed possible, I was starting to let myself think it might actually be possible, that all of this was going to work out. The distance would force us to take it slow, but just when it was starting to strain things, it would be over and I would finally get to start an awesome life with an awesome guy who was the same age as me, and who lived in the same place as me and who also liked to eat tomatoes like fruit. He played the frigging sax. (Red. Flag.)

So, a day before I am meant to pick him up at the airport for our much-anticipated visit, Isaac emails me. He’s devastated, but he’s canceling. He’s prepared to make dozens of mix CDs and send them to me via iTunes, but he’s canceling. He’s so sorry. There’s been a family crisis (he called it a small crisis, to be fair) and he has to go to San Francisco, where he’s from, to deal with the apartment his family rents out of their house.

“I’m not going to lie,” I told him, “I’m disappointed. But you’ve gotta do what you gotta do. Whenever we see each other it will be great.”

Isaac is devastated. He tells me this all weekend from San Francisco, where he is at an Internet café, but really wants to be with me in my apartment. Where he is talking to the Polish couple out on the street, but really wants it to be over so we can talk, etc. Please, I said. I release you from this guilt. Let’s just reschedule.

Sunday rolls around and I get a call from his phone. I answer with the coy but inviting “Is it your pocket calling me again?” (because that had happened once before), and am met with something that certainly hadn’t happened before: the sound of a woman’s voice. She asks, simply, “Are you dating my boyfriend?” Now. I don’t know who you are, but since I don’t think I am dating anyone’s boyfriend, I am going to go with no. No, I don’t think I am dating your boyfriend.

We chat for a little while and I finally muster up the courage to say, “Listen, I don’t think we should be speaking. I think you should talk to Isaac. I’m going to hang up the phone now.” I try not to jump to conclusions or derail my plan to run errands, but I’m wondering many things, including who this person is and why she has Isaac’s phone. (Large flowing banner of crimson.)

When I returned home later that day, I had an email that started with (I just double checked) “Em. Let me come clean as best I can.” Isaac had lied to me about being in San Francisco and lied to me about being single. He had lied about it all. I’m not even sure he ever had a plane ticket to come visit me, but rather needed to tell himself a story in which I believed he did.

It was a horrible and humiliating thing to contemplate: having fallen for someone who was lying to you about the fundamental premise of who (and where) they were. It was hard to understand at first, and harder to digest after that. It was a betrayal that landed in my stomach, and settled there for weeks but wasted no time in pointing me toward the neighborhood bar, where I met, you guessed it, the guy who would later come to be known unto me as Dating Disaster #2.

On second thought, perhaps I underestimated my kinship with Bette Davis. Bette established herself as a leading lady without the benefit of beauty and despite many professional setbacks along the way. Her films were derided as often as they were praised, but she became known as someone who asserted herself even, and perhaps especially, when the material was mediocre. On her tombstone it is written: “She did it the hard way.”

ODDS FACT: The odds an ever-married or cohabiting man has cheated during the relationship are 1 in 4.76. The odds an adult will tell a lie in a day are 1 in 2.49.

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