Girl on the Brink: Surviving Desperate Times with Desperate Measures

Just as I bought my airline tickets (on credit) to go to Antigua for sailing week in late April, an email zinged into my mailbox. The subject line read, “Enter to Win! A Chocolate Spa Getaway Contest!”

As usual, I read the rest of the promo too fast and skipped the fine print, which I’ll get to in a moment. My first thought was, a chocolate spa getaway? Does someone lick me afterward? Or, do I just shower and bathe? Turns out, I shower and bathe because if I win I get to take a gal pal, and I’m not a lesbian.

The only real gal pal I have lives in Aspen, and I doubt the National Association of Divorce for Women and Children, sponsor of this treat for stressed-out women like me, is going to pay her airfare to Hershey, Penn., where this big lavish Chocó-spa weekend will occur at none other than the famed Hershey Hotel from May 15 – 17.

I am not snubbing this opportunity. I’d get a poolside room for three days and two nights, with limo to and from the hotel, more than $400 worth of spa treatments, including a chocolate wrap, Swedish (as opposed to a Willy Wonka?) massage, a facial and lunch in the Oasis restaurant.

After all that chocolate is absorbed through my skin, I’ll be ready for some salad and soup. Oh, I also get admissions to Hershey Gardens and dinner and room service. No, there’s no Mr. Candy Man who will give me what I really need.

Okay, so to enter this contest, and this is where I skipped reading the fine print, my gal pal has to tell the divorced woman’s association in 300 words or less why I deserve truffles and turtles (the chocolate kind; I’m not that perverse).

But I sent this email to my ex, asking him to recommend me—and he did. I won’t share everything he wrote, but this is how he began his pitch for me: “Take my ex-wife, please! We were married until both hell and high water arrived at the same time. She deserves a new beginning….”

He then asked me if I read the fine print, and I said, no. He explained that if his story is chosen, he gets to go, too. If that happens, I’ll let him take his girlfriend. What I won’t do for love.