SelfAbsorbed.ME : ‘It’s Your Life, We Just Write it Funnier’

Those of you who followed last month’s “The Happiest Place on Earth” saga will remember a man (Mr. LC – the Life Coach) that I met in Capri. He left the island earlier than I did for the greener pastures of Positano and I received a polite, formal text from him, which under my interpretation implied we’d probably never see each other again. Considering I’d told him my life story while bawling like a cracked-out hyena, I thought this a good thing.

Yet I had assumed wrong. A week and a half later, LC and I were ferociously texting one another about how we could meet up next. I had rather enjoyed my free therapy session and sincerely hoped to get to know the man behind the shiny-advice spewing exterior I’d witnessed in Capri. Someone so knowledgeable, so stable, so genius at their chosen professional of helping others could only inevitably be fucked up to the extreme, right? In my mind, this man was way too functional, and I wanted to tear away the layers and discover his true train wreck of a self. At the same time, another part of me prayed this wouldn’t prove to be the case; that this man was actually as inspiring, motivational and kind as he seemed – my long-awaited knight in shining armor. Proof that the almost- extinct concept of the perfect man did indeed insist.

Life Coach didn’t have a home in the traditional sense of the word. Instead, he had a large black suitcase and resided in a few select five star hotels around Europe. His closest thing to a home base was a villa in the Venetian country side which he visited every six weeks and a flat near Hyde Park in London, which he chose to rent out soon after we met. The concept of permanently living in hotels was a bit mind boggling, although not entirely unappealing, to me. After Capri I was driving around the south of France with a group of girlfriends, a trip that would ultimately end in Paris. Since I was booked to fly out of London back to the states, I cut my scheduled time in Paris short a day and took the absurdly expensive, super fast train from Paris to London to see LC. In London, we went to many fabulous, healthy dinners (LC was a vegetable freak), many intellectual parties and conferences on subjects ranging from neurolinguistic programming to the raw food movement and took leisurely walks around London’s parks discussing the meaning of life. Life Coach was a text book narcissist, intensely neat, germ-a-phobic and painfully set in his ways. Nevertheless, he remained consistently charming. His boyish grin made me not want to hit him when usually my hand would be already flying toward such a self-righteous face. I viewed him as Luke Skywalker did Yoda – with the utmost respect and awe for his seemingly-unending knowledge on what it meant to be alive and live a life that mattered. As previously mentioned, I was a childhood nerd. I love learning. And every breakfast, tea, and stroll with LC was like time spent in a spiritual classroom. I ate better, moved better, and generally felt better when I was around him. Was LC mysteriously born perfect? Or was there some sort of missing link, a secret I had yet to unravel?

Shortly after our time in London, LC came to New York for a brief vacation before heading out to California to act as leader of the Italian group of trainers in Tony Robin’s seminar in Hawaii. I was in the process of transferring between apartments and was thrilled to crash at his hotel suite for a few days. I’m not sure exactly how, but while fooling around in the hotel’s plush, king size bed I ended up asking him when he’d last had sex. Why did I ask this? I have no idea. We’d been apart for perhaps three weeks and romantically involved for under a few months. It was a stupid question, but I don’t regret asking it because I received one hell of a response.

LC pleasantly looked me in the eyes, contemplated, performed some mental calculations and answered, “Two weeks ago. In Milan.” This seemed like a reasonable enough answer, yet I pressed further.

“With who?” I asked nonchalantly.

LC stopped kissing my neck to answer, “With my girlfriend.”

Hold the phone. Girlfriend? I don’t do guys with girlfriends. Never have. It’s a principle thing. Just like guys who are married. I stay as far away as possible. How in all the time he and I had spend together, in several different countries, could he have failed to mention the fact he has a girlfriend. How could he even fulfill girlfriend level obligations with his insanely busy travel schedule and limited desire for physical intimacy? I was floored and quickly sat up in bed and started firing questions, a heated glare across my face.

“How long have to been together?”

LC: “About two years.”

“Do you live together?”

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it serious?”

“Yes and no.” LC paused at this point and moved around the hotel room to open a bottle of sparking water which he poured and calmly drank. “She’s married. To someone else.”

My heart did another three sixty in my chest as I tried to rationally digest this information. I guess it made sense, LC only had time for women who lived in foreign countries and were interested in rendezvousing not relationship-ing. Sounds ideal for a bored, married, Milanese aristocrat.

“She has an eight year old daughter,” he continued. That bothered me. I just don’t get how couples with children find the spare time to have affairs. “We’ve been to Egypt, Morocco, all of Italy together. The Ritz in Paris is our special place. We’d go there for weekends all the time.” I imagined this woman’s adorable daughter miserable at home playing with a broken doll.

“How did you meet her?”

“She was one of my patients,” he stated as if this wasn’t a huge conflict of interest. This story was getting more inappropriate by the minute. “I did a motivational seminar at her husband’s company. He introduced to me to Leila. She’d been depressed.”

Huh. Well I guess LC cheered her up, I wonder if her husband knew to what extent.

“The problem is she’s too much in love with me. She worships me. Like a teacher does a student. It’s not healthy for her. In fact, it’s ending.”

OK, so they were breaking up. I asked the next logical question: “Why?”

LC: “Because she’s pregnant.”

I thought I understood. Then that boyish grin spread across his face….

To Be Continued…