In Search Of Mr Darcy : Lessons Learnt In Pursuit of Happily Ever After

Prologue

How Did I Get Here,

and Who Can I Blame?

‘I know not all that may be coming, but be it

what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.’

Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

I once heard that we are the sum of all our choices. If that’s true, then I need to reflect

on the plethora of men I’ve dated, loved, hated, tolerated, fucked, envied, liked

enough, settled for, failed to understand, was unable to love, or loved too much. Because if that

doctrine does stand true, I think I owe you guys a debt of gratitude, for your collective

contributions have all added up to someone I’m pretty frickin’ happy with me.

When I look back at my life, I don’t tend to remember the exact years or what month

something happened, I go by relationships. The Brandon years. The Jackson experiment. The

Edward decade. You get the picture. I bet right about now you are thinking, Is she really defining

herself by the men in her life? And if so, what a lackluster feminist, but hear me out. It’s not about

the men per se; it’s about who I was at that time, my choices, and, of course, the influences

surrounding me.

So, permit me to unpack the one influence that has most continuously messed with my

head, has confused my heart, and has set the bar so incredibly high when searching for that

1perfect man that one would need to be an Olympic pole-vaulter to clear that thing. I’m talking

about the profound and super unsettling lifelong aftershock that comes from reading books. You

heard me, readers. Let me be more specific. I’m talking about being lulled into a blissful, naive

childhood sleep with classic fairy tales like ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Snow White’ and ‘Sleeping Beauty.’

We were told tales of handsome princes, fabulous castles, and, well ... happily ever after.

The heroines were beautifully illustrated with their impossibly tiny waists, perfect facial features,

and long, blown-out, big, bouncy hair. Often, amid their strife, they’d burst into uncontrollable

songs of longing. Sometimes, nearby friendly woodland creatures would sing along in perfect

three-part harmony.

These fictional young women of disproportionate beauty believed that ‘one day their

prince would come’, and would carry them off to new-found wealth and opulence. And guess

what? It happened. Hell, they even looked daisy-fresh despite having spent the day sweeping

cinders from the hearth or gathering nuts and berries in a dark and scary forest. In my only

attempt to clean my fireplace, I can honestly say I looked like a charcoal briquette with blonde

hair, and strangely, not once did I feel the urge to break into song. And where the hell are her

girlfriends during all of this abusive, domestic, unsanctioned labor? Are they also dipped in

Disney, singing solos in rural isolation?

When I was a child, I had a disconnect with the heroine who always seemed to need

rescuing. I wasn’t dreaming of Prince Charming, white steed, and happily ever after. Admittedly,

a fairy godmother would certainly have come in handy on multiple occasions, and those enviable

glass slippers were no less practical than some of the other fabulous footwear taking up space in

my closet. But I could not identify with a girl whose sole source of happiness revolved around

this one thing: being plucked out of her shit-show of life by a super-rich guy with great hair. I

2would be full-out lying, though, if I said that as I grew up, those romantic fairy tale notions didn’t

plant an acorn of hope in my slightly jaded, well-used heart, one of enduring love, a financially

solvent man with a full head of hair. Why? Because we’re told over and over in books and movies

that it can happen. It’s the single girl’s Holy Grail, the infamous brass (I mean gold) ring topped

with a honking big, brilliant round-cut solitaire.

Not once did we, as readers, get a glimpse of that happily ever after ten years down the

line. The story stopped in modern-day terms with handfuls of confetti thrown in the air outside

the church. If we fast-forward a decade, the chances are that our beautiful heroine has had a

messy litter of children. Her hips have spread. Her boobs, empty of any former life from

breastfeeding, will be hovering just inches above that not-so-tiny waist of hers, and she’ll be too

tired to even think about having sex or shaving her legs, for that matter. As for our Prince

Charming, he’s lost half his hair and no longer fits into his suit of armor. He’ll probably be

complaining that since slaying dragons and rescuing damsels are on the decline, they will have to

have some serious cutbacks in the castle. The only heated action in the bedroom is the two

arguing about the temperature setting on the thermostat because the doctor has just told our

princess that she’s perimenopausal. Where’s that story, Disney?

As I got older, I started examining the books and movies that had deliciously lured me as a

youth, the well-respected writings of authors such as Jane Austen or the Brontës – esteemed

writers of literature whose books I’d devoured or their film adaptations I’d obsessively wept over.

But at some point, the penny dropped ... DANG. There it was. These highly regarded literary

works were fairy tales too, with an eternal romantic pursuit of the near-perfect man and ‘happily

ever after’.

3In London, I have access to a private gated garden outside my flat in Marylebone – think

Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant in the movie Notting Hill. It’s picturesque and overgrown with

dense leafy hedges and flower beds meticulously and lovingly tended. Inside gardens like these

are often park benches. A functional romantic memorial, if you will, engraved with messages of

remembrance and devotion, most often from a surviving loving spouse. Carved deeply into the

wooden back or engraved on a brass plaque read messages like:

To the world, you might have been one person,

but to one person, you were the world. Henry.

Alice, come rain or shine, I sit here every day, so

never am I far away. With all my heart, George.

And this one really got me.

Remembering you is easy. I do it every day.

But there is an ache within my heart

that will never go away.

I did not see you close your eyes

or hear your last sigh.

I only heard that you were gone,

too late to say goodbye.

For Daisy.

Damn, that’s sad.

Could this be it, evidence of the fairy tale ending, a love so profound and transcendent it is

worthy of a park bench? Or is it just the work of guilty poets and old lovers? I mean, did ‘bench-

worthy’ Alice ever lose it so badly that she wanted to throw plates at George’s head? Could a

4bench ever read, ‘Max, you old goat, at least the room will no longer be filled with your night

farts. Yours, Sue’?

So, let’s discuss the fictional man who truly fucked with my romantic expectations. In

what O describes as ‘arguably the greatest romance novel of all time,’ Jane Austen’s Pride and

Prejudice, spunky heroine Elizabeth Bennet meets the wealthy, handsome, and proud Mr Darcy.

At first, the two are at odds and have outward disdain for each other. By the end of the story, they

have not only discovered they have misjudged each other, but they have fallen madly in love

(sigh). Mr Darcy marries Elizabeth Bennet, whisks her off to his incredible grand manor house in

the English countryside, and, you guessed it ... they live happily ever after. I’d put big money on

the hunch that Austen was read fairy tales as a child, and it might be significant to note at this

point that Austen never married. Hmmm?

And to permanently tattoo this story onto my somewhat romantic, slightly jaded heart,

Pride and Prejudice was made into a mini-series in 1995, with Colin Firth cast as the handsome

Mr Darcy. Immediately, I fell hopelessly, deeply, and forever in love with Colin Firth, as did

millions of women viewers and, I suspect, quite a few men.

Helen Fielding, the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary, admits she stole the plot of Pride and

Prejudice for her book. And she was so captivated by Colin Firth’s portrayal of Mr Darcy that she

insisted he played Mark Darcy in the film adaptation. The name is not coincidental. Side note: I

take objection to how anyone could describe a young 30-something single girl like Bridget as a

loser when she has an awesome group of friends, a career, and can afford her own flat in Central

London. Goddamn it (I’m incensed here!), she’s nothing short of aspirational! If that were a

description of a guy instead of Bridget Jones, we’d be calling him ‘marriage material’.

5I can identify with so many Elizabeth Bennet types. In fact, if I had to pick one fictional

woman to describe me best, I think it would be her. OK, I don’t play the pianoforte, but that’s not

to say I couldn’t learn. But does Mr Darcy exist? Are we, the practical and cautiously optimistic

romantics, doomed in our pursuit of the unobtainable fabricated man, the modern-day Prince

Charming? I have to say, maybe. But that doesn’t stop us from searching for Mr Darcy, does it?

And it didn’t stop me.

I’ll admit my search hasn’t exactly gone the way of Austen or Disney, and the only thing

my mirror assures me with blasted regularity is that I’ll not be shimmying into my skinny jeans

any time soon. In fact, I’ve found myself on more than one occasion brushing off the dust and

gravel from some unfamiliar road, asking myself, How did I get here, and who can I blame? But

whether I measure my relationships in years or hours, something wonderfully unexpected has

occurred, a surprising discovery that taught me about life, love and, most of all, myself. So, to all

the men whom I’ve stumbled upon in my search for Mr Darcy, thank you.

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Book of

Alan8CHAPTER 1

Thick-Skinned Children

‘If you’re not embarrassing your children, you’re missing out on

one of the ultimate pleasures of being a parent.’

My father, Alan Dixon

Before I delve into my assorted stories of love, men, and seriously questionable

behavior, I thought it might be prudent to provide you with a bit of background on

me and the most unusual, unorthodox influence on my life, my father. There is some nugget of

theoretical wisdom floating around out there. It says that girls marry their fathers. Women

subconsciously are drawn to guys who remind them of their dads, with similar traits, good, bad or

socially frowned upon. Well, I don’t think that’s what happened in my case. In fact, it’s a little

more dramatic than that. I didn’t marry my father. I became him. This snuck out of nowhere. I

was so busy not becoming my mother that this just slipped under the door like smoke. One day all

is normal, and the next, I’m quoting the Marx Brothers, Steve Martin and Oscar Wilde. Of course,

I’m not exactly like my dad. There’s a bucket-load of things about him that I never understood or

even attempted to understand: his left-wing politics, why he refused to attend my wedding, or his

reasons for kicking me out of the house for getting my ears pierced, even though I was eighteen –

at an age, I reminded him, I could’ve been called up to the army if we’d been at war or had the

draft. But where he does reside in me is in my passion for writing, my love of fashion, and the

absolute joy I find in a side-splitting, knee-slapping, tears-rolling-down-your-face laugh. If this

book is a thank-you letter to all the men who taught me something incredible about myself, then

9of course, I’d have to acknowledge my father, Alan Dixon, an unusual, introverted man of wit,

poetry, and disarming charm.

I was born exactly nine months after my parents were married, leading my father to cite

my conception to my three younger sisters and me as a warning about the frequent failings of

contraception. My mother, reframing the story, called me her honeymoon baby. As a young girl

raised in the seventies, I wanted the same things that other girls of that generation wanted:

embroidered bell-bottom jeans, to marry David Cassidy, and the right to burn my bra (once I

required one). Fun was simple, uncomplicated and could last all day. I never tired of the pure

pleasure of running through the sprinkler on our front lawn on a hot day, an orange popsicle split

in half, or finding a full day’s worth of imagination in a box of colored chalk. I was utterly

content with my two main modes of transportation, my CCM banana-seat bike or skipping down

the street. Friends would show up at my house after dinner and wait on the front lawn until I’d

finished mine. There was no texting, no tracking locations, no social media showing us how

inadequate our lives were compared to everyone else’s. There was no ‘everyone else’. The only

people I knew were the ones who were waiting on my lawn to play hide and seek.

I believed in the magic anticipation of shaking a Polaroid picture, creating forts with

secret passwords out of large appliance boxes, and in the summer, I could stay out until the street

lights came on. I also imagined a fabulous career, reminded by Gloria Steinem and my mother

that ‘girls can have it all’. I dreamt about having two adorable babies, one boy and one girl, that

always smelt of Johnson’s Baby Powder. This all made perfect sense to me, and I never

questioned it ... Well, maybe the David Cassidy bit as I got older, but that was just to make room

for Rick Springfield.

We were one of a small handful of Gentile families in a predominantly Jewish

neighborhood. The Yiddish term for us was shiksa, which I had no issue with, although in general

10it wasn’t meant to be flattering. I always assumed I’d marry a good Jewish boy, which both my

parents were completely fine with. As for the parents of the Jewish boys I came to know – that

was a whole other kettle of gefilte fish. We shiksas were acceptable to date, sleep with and even

introduce to the family, but when it came time to marry: ‘You, my son, are marrying a Jew.’ My

Jewish friend Benjamin, who was in love with me from early high school, reassured me he’d get

me on his second marriage, when his parents would be dead or simply have given up. Looking

back, I think that might have been one of my earliest lessons about men: sometimes there are

other factors at play.

Alan and my mother, Elena, were like most parents who made up my youth’s colorful

tapestry. Optimistic immigrants, a British journalist and a Russian beauty queen, a first-generation

family who’d come to carve out a better life than the one they had left behind. They raised four

daughters in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood, and to the best of my knowledge, there

were no epic parenting fails. We weren’t sold into white slavery, we still have all our limbs firmly

attached, and we managed not to kill each other during our homicidal, hormonal teenage years.

Extra kudos to Elena, for as my sisters and I were raging, hormonal teenage nightmares, with few,

if any, likable qualities, Elena was standing on the threshold of Hell, dealing with puberty’s evil

older sister, menopause. A hormonal shit-storm if ever there was one, slamming hard against the

walls of a split-level bungalow on Castlefield Avenue.

Alan gleefully and rather chauvinistically supported the Prince Charming fairy tale

concept. He repeatedly declared to me and my sisters, ‘Girls, it’s just as easy to fall in love with a

rich boy as it is a poor one, maybe even easier,’ and suggested to my sister Victoria that she might

want to forego university to become a stewardess, so she could find herself a businessman

husband.

11There was a particularly twisted torture my father seemed to thrive in, and the verbal

comedic spew he’d fire off to the unsuspecting was nothing short of legendary. If you hadn’t

developed a ‘thick skin’ – and show me a ten-year-old who has – those scars could be borne for

years, leading to hours upon hours of well-justified talk time with a therapist. To give you what

I’d consider a tidy example of the thick skin required, I share this one parenting story with you.

As small kids out shopping at some store or mall, my father frequently said, ‘Now, girls, hurry up,

or you’ll be left behind like Little Freddy.’

‘Who’s Little Freddy?’ we inquisitively and innocently asked, the first time we heard his

name.

‘You don’t remember Little Freddy?’ my father replied. ‘Well, Little Freddy was your

brother, and we were out years ago, someplace very much like this. And I said, “Little Freddy, if

you don’t hurry up, you’ll be left behind ...” and we’ve never seen Little Freddy since.’ This was

my father’s idea of street-proofing us.

Years later, I told Benjamin the Little Freddy story, likely to try and prove my father was

weirder than his — an argument he’d have to go pretty far to beat. The first time Benjamin met

my dad, he reached out his hand to shake my father’s, smiled and said: ‘Nice to meet you, Mr

Dixon, I’m Freddy.’ My father, without missing a beat, pulled Benjamin into his arms and, with

joyous exuberance, said, ‘Freddy, you’ve come home.’ From that day forward, and for years to

come, Benjamin sent him Father’s Day cards.

Alan’s humor, both weapon and armor, had its highs and lows, particularly when boys and

dating were introduced. We were the only girls whose father had a ‘Hit Wagon’. This was Alan’s

dark green convertible Cadillac Eldorado – a tank of a car. The Hit Wagon was basically an

assassination tool at the ready any time a boy did one of his daughters wrong. My dad’s solution

12for teenage heartache was simple and effective, although I don’t recall that car ever being

deployed for that reason.

It must’ve been challenging for my father during that time. My sisters and I were shedding

our childhood skins, entering the world of boys, drinking and overall atrocious (a word my father

favored) behavior. If Alan hadn’t had a sense of humor, a parenting tool that’s as essential as a

Swiss Army knife on a camping trip, I believe he would’ve run from the house screaming.

Perhaps we all would have.

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