How to Build a Boyfriend from Scratch

“All of our ice is made using water unlocked from the melting polar ice caps,” he informed her, sliding her a glass. “It’s the purest water on Earth. Twenty-three dollars.” Kelly dragged out some cash.

Just once she would love to be at a fancy bar or restaurant and have an unfamiliar cocktail delivered to her table, like in the movies. No, make that a fancy dessert with some sort of froufrou chocolate thingamabob on top. “Oh, I didn’t order that,” she would say.

“I know, mademoiselle,” her waiter with the pencil-thin mustache would reply as he gestured across the restaurant. “That gentleman did.”

And she would look across and see, smiling mysteriously at her, the most dapper, debonair, dashing—

“Is this seat taken?”

Kelly turned to see the most dapper, debonair, dashing man she had ever seen.

Well, not quite the most dashing man, but this guy was certainly cute, with hazel eyes and rounded lips. Kelly stuttered.

“No, I’m alone,” she said. Probably unnecessarily.

Hazel Eyes laughed, slinging himself onto the stool. “Well, that’s lucky for me.” She blushed vibrantly enough to be visible even through the neon-suffused gloom of the bar’s atmosphere. He nodded at her drink. “Did you get the line about the ice caps water too?”

“I did.”

“To global warming. It may kill us all, but at least it tastes good.” He raised his glass and clinked it against hers with a mischievous grin. Kelly restrained herself from swiveling to look behind her and make sure he was really smiling at her. Was it possible that all she had to do was show up at a bar and within minutes, she’d found a man who was cute, charming, and interested?

“I’m Kelly.” As soon as she offered her hand, she regretted it, recognizing that it was cold and clammy from her drink. But he shook it without hesitation.

“Reece,” he said.

Kelly nervously switched her crossed legs and, in the process, kicked Reece in the shin. “Sorry!” she blurted.

“No worries—wow, killer shoes. Mind if I take a look?”

“Um …”

He bent and lifted her foot, nearly placing it in his own lap, examining her high heel with a practiced eye. “I love women’s shoes.” Kelly felt her bubble burst. Of course. The good-looking guy who was actually expressing interest in her had a foot fetish. She had a sudden vision of Reece sitting next to her at the family table at Clara’s wedding, calmly conversing with her mother while holding her foot in his lap and stroking it.

She pulled her foot back, and Reece looked up, surprised. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—” But he cut himself off as another cute guy, this one with shoulder-length black hair, approached, smiling. Kelly found herself momentarily distracted. Priya was actually right. This wasn’t so hard. She straightened, smiling back at him.

But then Reece stood up and turned to Black Hair and gave him a long, deep kiss. Very long. Very deep.

He turned back to her, smiling every bit as broadly as he should after a kiss like that. “This is my boyfriend, Marco. Marco, you have got to check out Kelly’s shoes.”

Kelly stood from her stool, setting her feet, or rather, her shoes, which were apparently her chief attraction—and they weren’t even her shoes—firmly on the polished concrete floor.

“I’ve got to go,” she said abruptly.

“Okay—oh, wait, did you think—oh, no, honey, I’m sorry.” Reece laughed.

“You shouldn’t give people mixed signals,” Kelly responded hotly, before she could stop herself.

“It’s just small talk,” Reece insisted, but Kelly was already pushing her way into the crowd, away from the bar, slipping on her heels as she went. “Try putting your weight onto the fronts of your feet!” he called after her.

Kelly managed to locate Priya and extricate her from within the recesses of a dense knot of men. “There you are!” Priya said. “Did you meet any cute boys?”

“Yeah, but they got to each other first. Can we go yet?”

“Have you found a date yet?”

“Can’t you just find one for me?”

“Can’t you stop being a pussy?”

“Priya.”

“Kelly.”

“I really just want to go home.”

The serious look that Kelly was giving Priya must have translated through the gloom because Priya took her by both hands. “We’re not going home. You need a date, and I want to see you have some fun for once! You work so hard, you deserve that! Live your life!”

“Okay, okay,” Kelly acquiesced.

“Look, this is a tough crowd. And they all take themselves way too seriously anyway. The last guy I met just went on and on about how he only uses free-trade mustache pomade.”

“Don’t you know any other bars? Like, preferably somewhere where there’s absolutely no pressure to be cool?”

Priya’s eyes lit up. “Girl. I’ve got this.”

One Uber ride later, they arrived in a visibly grimier part of town outside a club named, with an impressive show of shamelessness, Bodies. Kelly gestured to the sign, where the “i” flickered repeatedly. “This bodes poorly,” she said.

Priya gave her side-eye.

The interior was eerily similar to how Kelly imagined it would be to shrink down, Magic School Bus–style, and travel to the inside of one of her own organs. The atmosphere was dark, humid, and hormonal.

As difficult as it was to hear over the bass-charged soundtrack, Kelly and Priya found themselves approached by guys almost as soon as they wedged themselves next to the bar. But no guy who talked to them got further than three sentences before making some dubious claim about the down payment he had just placed on a condo in Los Altos Hills, or his app’s stratospheric IPO. They were the sort of statements that were off-putting enough in broad daylight, but were made even worse when shouted incongruously over lyrics that were mostly thinly disguised metaphors for fellatio. Everything in Kelly was telling her to flee again, to throw in the towel—after taking a thorough shower—but she truly wanted to make this work. All she needed was someone she could see enough times over the next month and a half for it to not be bizarre to invite him to her sister’s wedding. Was that really so hard?

Priya turned her back to the bar and rested her elbows on it, gazing out over the heaving dance floor. Finally she pointed to a guy with spiky black hair. “Him,” she declared. “Go get him.”

Kelly crinkled her nose. “Why him?”

“Because I want his friend,” Priya said, eyeing the guy next to him. Kelly shook her head, smiling.

“How am I supposed to ask this guy for a date when we can’t even talk?” Kelly yelled. The music would only be louder on the dance floor, the belly of the beast.

Priya spotted the platform where a rainbow-haired DJ was hunched over a laptop, zoned out and nodding. “Chillax, I’ll take care of that. All you have to do is get yo’ man.”

While holding a real conversation was impossible, it seemed that approaching within five feet of another person and making eye contact was all that was required of a courting ritual at Bodies. Kelly pursed her lips, furtively eyeing the movements of everyone dancing around her, assessing how to imitate them—her past few attempts at dancing had left her with as much faith in her own skills as in the structural integrity of a sandcastle. Fortunately, the courting ritual had been half the battle, as dancing at Bodies also seemed to consist mostly of proximity. But her partner came closer and closer, gyrating, running his hands repeatedly around her hips and over her jeans. Kelly gulped, but told herself to just go with it. Dancing was actually less awkward than any of her conversations had been. She smiled at the guy and he smiled back. Maybe she should give him a chance. It was time she moved in and completed her task.

“I’m Kelly, what’s your name?” she asked Spiky Hair. She couldn’t call him that forever.

“Totally,” he nodded.

“I’m Kelly,” she shouted.

He leaned in close to her neck, his nose on her collarbone. Kelly flinched instinctively, but then tentatively leaned her own nose toward him, attempting to mimic the bizarre dance move. But then he sniffed deeply and shook his head. “You smell fine to me,” he yelled. This was not working.

Suddenly the bass halted mid-pound. As a slower, less ear-rattling selection began, Kelly glanced at the DJ’s stand to see Priya there, giving Kelly a thumbs-up. Kelly smiled as Priya swayed, getting into the jam, a throwback Mariah Carey tune. Now this Kelly might be able to work with.

She turned back to her guy. “I’m Kelly,” she tried again.

This time he got it. “Stan.” He nodded, pointing at himself. Kelly cleared her throat.

“Do you—” But just when Kelly was about to make her proposition, a new voice entered the fray, battling Mariah’s and losing very, very badly. Priya had apparently gotten too deeply into the jam. Having somehow procured a mic, she was singing along, loudly, joyfully oblivious to the melody.

“This isn’t a karaoke bar!” some guy shouted at her.

“It is tonight!” she cried, soliciting a smattering of laughs and cheers. “Come on!” A few people started singing along halfheartedly.

The time was now. If they didn’t get out of here soon, Priya’s “singing” was liable to get her arrested for a noise violation.

“Do you want to hang out sometime?” Kelly tried again. Just as she got the words out, Priya unleashed a howl so resounding, so soulful, so reckless in its treatment of pitch, that Kelly worried every glass and eardrum in the place might break. Kelly turned to look at her friend, who had one arm raised in the air in triumph, swaying to the music.

She turned back to Stan only to find there was no Stan. She wheeled around and worked her way through the pulsing couples around her, wondering if they had just gotten separated, but he was nowhere to be found. A hot wave of embarrassment flooded her. As soon as she had finally gotten up the courage to ask a guy out, he had vanished.

Another man, this one wearing a vest with nothing under it, slinked up to her. “Girl, are you from Mars?” he asked, “Because—” He stopped and just stared at her, sipping his drink, apparently trying to remember the rest of the line. He found himself a spot and sat on the floor of the club to think it over.

“Please go home,” Kelly instructed him wearily. It must have taken some pretty potent substances to give him worse conversational skills than her. Looking around, she realized that half the club was now singing along with Priya, cheering her on. Kelly gave a moment of silent admiration to her friend. Priya had truly pulled a Priya.

As she wailed the last note, Kelly pulled her off the platform to the mingled cheers and boos of the crowd.

“Why aren’t you dancing with someone?” Priya shouted.

“Because I’m unattractive and have no social skills,” Kelly said.

“What?”

Kelly just shook her head, not wanting to repeat herself. “Spiky Hair vanished.”

“I’m going to get a drink, you want one?” Priya shout-asked.

Kelly shook her head no, but Priya held on to her. “Can you spot me some cash?” she asked. “I’ll pay you back at work.”

Kelly reached into her jeans pocket, where she had slipped some cash at home, not wanting to carry a purse all night. But the pocket was empty. Frantically, she checked all her pockets, turning them inside out—nothing.

“What’s wrong?” Priya asked.

“Is it normal for a guy you dance with to keep feeling you up around the hips?” Kelly said.

“It is when you’ve got an ass like that!” Priya swatted her playfully.

But Kelly sighed. “I think that jerk pickpocketed me when we were dancing.”

“What? No way. Where is he?”

Priya shouldered her way through the masses, trying to spot the culprit, the fire of justice in her eyes, but Kelly stopped her. “Can we please just go?” She wasn’t sure which was worse, being ghosted because a guy didn’t want to go out with you or because he had just robbed you blind.

Kelly wrestled with herself as she sat in front of her laptop that night, unable to fall asleep. Logically, she knew that online dating had long been destigmatized. Everyone did it. Normal people. Non-murderer people. She knew two separate couples who had gotten married after meeting online. But something about it still felt to her like giving up. Like admitting that even though she lived in the man-mine that was Silicon Valley, the traditional means by which humans had found mates for millennia had failed her. Or, more accurately, she had failed them.

Then again, she knew it was unwise to make assumptions about something without verifying the reality of those assumptions. Suspicion was the enemy of knowledge. Could she justify ruling out online dating without testing her hypotheses against it?

After all, she reasoned, signing up didn’t mean she actually had to go on dates. She could make a profile just to see what was out there, from the safety of her home sweet browser. She never had to actually even talk to anybody, come to think of it. And most of them probably wouldn’t trace her IP address and come to her house to hack her apart with an axe, right? What the heck, she thought. She was feeling reckless.

Kelly found a site that offered a free trial membership and had the least painfully posed stock people on its homepage. The first thing the profile asked for was a picture. She took a selfie, then uploaded it before she could scrutinize it and think better of it.

The first few questions were pretty simple—basic physical attributes, religious and political affiliations, education and career highlights. Then it asked what she did for fun. Into Kelly’s mind immediately flashed an image of herself at home in a Slanket, eating a cake she’d made for one person in a mug in the microwave, watching one of the terrible, wonderful movies Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen made before they became eccentric old ladies of the Upper East Side. Even Kelly sensed that this was probably not the impression she wanted to give a man. She wracked her brain for anything that normal people might do for fun. Biking. Bicycling? She put down biking.

And now a new image flashed into Kelly’s mind: a new version of her. This New Kelly was biking down an idyllic sun-washed street, the folds of a colorful dress swashing over her knees, her naturally wavy hair lifting in the wind and looking, for once, impeccable. She was pedaling expertly and easily. And she was smiling. Beside her on his own bicycle was a man. Kelly couldn’t get a clear visual of his face, but she knew that he was smiling too. They pedaled along in perfect synchronicity, passing simultaneously under the same shadows and the same golden patches of sun.

Real Kelly found herself smiling too. While she had no actual desire to take up biking, she had to admit that it would be nice to have someone to pedal with. What if this was it? What if tonight was the night she found not just a wedding date, but something much more?

Her heart was beating entirely too fast as she navigated to the next section. Then the site started asking questions that she found increasingly unreasonable. She scanned the list: Where do you see yourself in ten years? Clinging to a raft, stranded in the glacier melt that used to be San Jose. What do you want out of a relationship? To prove to my mom that I’m not single. And sure, it would be kind of nice to be curling up in bed with someone right now instead of sitting here alone, answering these questions. What makes you happy? Uh … does the fun night in the Slanket count?

Kelly paused. She was not accustomed to failing a test, but she knew that she didn’t have the right answers for any of these questions. Say the perfect man really was waiting for her on the other side of this questionnaire. What did she expect to happen? That he would fall for her immediately and they’d bicycle away into the sunset? Kelly’s heart began to thump more slowly, more painfully, as she realized that more likely, she would send him pedaling as fast as possible in the opposite direction—like Dr. Masden, like Martin, like everyone else. Best-case scenario, it would happen immediately. Worst case, it would happen after she’d fallen for him just enough to really, really not want for that to happen.

It was time to enter her qualifications for a man. Kelly rationalized that it was necessary to be specific. A whole host of unpleasant potential eventualities lurked on the other side of this page: awkward mismatches, wasted time and energy, heartbreak. The only way to reduce the odds of these potentialities was to provide the most robust possible data for the website’s algorithm. The site suggested writing something simple and friendly like “Looking for a guy who works hard, plays hard, and loves to laugh. Must love dogs!” Kelly almost laughed aloud. That could describe literally anyone.

Height: 5'10"–5'11". Athletic build. Symmetrical smile. Master’s degree in a scientific field. Ambitious professionally but laid-back personally. Sense of humor. Love of animals. Love of movies. Love of Twinkies. Close to his family emotionally, but not physically. She didn’t need another mother breathing down her neck. Good at board games, but not better than her. Likes mountain vacations. Likes Harry Potter. Likes the Talking Heads. Knows how to cook but can afford to eat out. Prefers hand-drawn animation to CG. Wears V-necks. Wears boxer briefs. Doesn’t wear yellow. Drinks martinis and knows how to make them. Has been to at least three different countries. Has been to at least ten different states. Cares about his friends but not more than about her. Doesn’t eat prunes. Has a good heart.

Something manic had taken over Kelly. Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was a subconscious knowledge that the more difficult she made it to find someone, the less likely it was that she’d have to face whatever might come next. Because anything could come next.

She finally finished her list, clicked Submit, and waited while the site spun its wheel.

five

While Kelly waited for her results, she realized that she didn’t even know how this was supposed to work. Would the dating site find her perfect match immediately? She had a fleeting image of a guy materializing at her door. She tried to calm herself: she would probably never go on a date with a stranger from the internet anyway. She probably wouldn’t have the guts to even contact him. But there went her heart again.

“No match found,” the site said in unnecessarily large letters. “Try deselecting some of the attributes you’ve chosen in your ideal partner.”

There it was in crystal-clear pixels: written proof that her perfect person did not exist. No woman could be expected to find this mythical man if even a computer couldn’t. Kelly sighed, a sound edged with both disappointment and relief. Here was another flood to douse her flicker of illogical hope that love might be out there for her. Even if the site had presented her ideal partner, would she be the ideal partner for him? If she’d never seen a true model of love, it stood to reason that she would never be able to replicate it herself. It was easiest to just close out of the site and forget the whole thing. Yet up rose the tiny flame again, still flickering. She still wanted love, maybe even needed it on some encoded biological level. The physical and lifestyle devastation of loneliness is astonishing … She grimaced as her own words to Anita came back to her. Even Dr. Masden had said that her research was relevant to her own life.

So cocooned was she in her own thoughts that when her phone rang in the silent apartment, she jumped a full inch off her chair. Kelly squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled. Since her date with Martin, her phone held seven unanswered calls, ten texts, and four e-mails from her mom. If she didn’t satisfy Diane’s curiosity soon, either her mother or her phone might combust.

“Kelly, why do you have a phone if you’re not going to answer it?” her mom asked as soon as she picked up. “Why aren’t you answering my calls?”

“I just haven’t had a chance, I’ve been busy with work.”

“You’re always busy with work. One day you’ll be at the office and wake up with ovaries the size of currants and realize you’re dying alone.”

“That’s not how ovaries work, Mom.”

“I didn’t call you at this hour for a physics lesson.”

Kelly cupped her forehead in her hand. “You want to know what happened with Martin? It didn’t work out.”

“What did you do?” Diane asked.

Kelly bristled. “Why do you assume I did something? He was the one who got too personal.”

“It was a date, not a bank transaction!”

“It was a first date, and he crossed a line.” Kelly hesitated. “It was embarrassing, okay? It was bad enough the first time without having to talk about it again.”

Diane’s tone softened. “Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. All right, you don’t have to tell me the details.”

“Thank you. Now I’m kind of trying to get to bed.”

But Diane wasn’t finished. “But what will I do with you, dear? You’re already twenty-nine. You can’t go on like this forever.”

“I think you mean only twenty-nine.”

But Diane was on a roll. “By your age, I was married with two kids, and a third on the way! Gary was married at twenty-seven. Your sister will be married in less than two months, and she’s only twenty-five. I’m getting worried for you. Who will take care of you when you’re old and alone?”

“Socialized medicine or the apocalypse, whichever gets there first. I can take care of myself, Mom. For someone who talks about me being twenty-nine like I’m some Bronze Age corpse fished out of a bog, you don’t seem to realize that I’m an adult.”

“All right, then, who are you bringing to the wedding?”

“I don’t know! The Jolly Fucking Green Giant!” Kelly threw her left hand up in exasperation.

“Kelly Suttle. Do you think this is all a joke?”

“I think it’s a party, not a Navy SEAL operation, and you’re taking it way too seriously.”

“Oh, so it’s just a party. The biggest day of your sister’s life and my life’s work is just a party.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“When I started in the wedding industry here, this was just another middle-class town,” Diane forged on. “Now it’s one of the most expensive zip codes in the country. Everyone expects the moon! Last week a bride demanded that I find her a dress that changed color according to her mood. I’m not Merlin. These people think that I’m a Google and they can just enter their dreams into me and I’ll spit back whatever they want—”

“I met someone,” Kelly blurted out.

“You met someone?” Diane was utterly confused. “Do you mean on LinkedIn again?”

“No, a guy. I went out tonight with Priya and met this guy and we really hit it off.” Kelly winced, biting her lip. Palliating her mother might buy her some time. Or she might have just royally screwed herself.

“You met someone!” Diane’s tone was suddenly full of sunshine. “Who? What’s he like? What’s his name?”

“His name is—” Kelly drew a panicked blank. She looked wildly around the room. A spotlighted billboard caught her eye through the window—eSan, for all your hardware cleaning needs.

“Esan. I mean, Ethan. His name is Ethan.”

“Ethan, Ethan. I like it, it’s a good name. What does he do? Where does he—”

“I really have to go, Mom, it’s been a long night.”

When Kelly got off the phone, she threw her head down tiredly on her desk. If only it were so easy to create a boyfriend out of thin air.

Kelly didn’t sleep long that night, but she slept hard. Her lower back aching from the heels, she tossed fitfully between dreams of Anita hovering over her shoulder while she tried and failed repeatedly to build a tower of blocks, and a laughing Mariah Carey advancing menacingly toward her, brandishing a shoe like Priya’s, but with the gold studs grown to lethal, torturous spikes.