After being dumped by two men in the space of five days, I began to reflect. Well, first I felt sorry for myself, but eventually I began to reflect. And what I reflected was that I missed Dean.
Which was really only natural—I had been dallying with Aaron, and Jed, and Daniel—lovely boys, all—to keep myself from thinking about Dean, whom I missed, and loved. Because I hadn’t cried much, and thought I had come to terms with the fact that we had no future together, I’d thought I’d put him behind me.
Since our breakup, we’d gotten together sporadically for dinner, and after the first, awkward meal, our dinners had been punctuated by lots of kissing and cuddling. I had, however, refused to sleep with him. My feeling was, if we didn’t have sex, there was no emotional danger. My feeling was, also, why should I have sex with him? If he wanted to fuck me so badly, let him attempt to get me back. Shallow, but true. So we hung out, and held hands, and he gently tried to cajole me into bed, which put me in the comfortable position of denying him and feeling superior—for either denying him or for not wanting to have sex with him, I didn’t know which.
But I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. Dean had cancelled on me on election night—we were supposed to watch the returns together, but instead he stayed in Atlantic City to play poker, and I’d been angry, unwilling to express my anger, and frustrated and lonely. When we finally did see one another, it was almost Christmas. This time last year, we’d been an official couple, planning to spend the holiday together.
“I didn’t realize that not wanting to get back together with him didn’t mean that I don’t miss him,” I announced to Ashley, the recipient of all my Dean-related musings.
“You haven’t really mourned him,” she pointed out obligingly.
So when we met to see a film, I was anxious. We had some time, so stopped for a drink at a sushi place first. I sat there sulking, wondering if Dean was seeing anybody else.
We discussed our Christmas plans. As usual, Dean was spending the holiday with his mother and one of his sisters, something he viewed more as penance than a cause for celebration. On the other hand, he was going to the resort where his family had spent the last umpteen Christmases, a place I’d visited with him last year. It was a wood and stone nineteenth century hotel about two hours from New York City. They had a spa, and the night we’d arrived, we’d sat in the outdoor hot tub overlooking the mountains, sleet melting on our warm faces. The hotel was still owned by members of the same family who’d founded it over a hundred years ago, and they ran it like a very lavish summer camp, with group activities and assigned dinner hours. We’d stayed in a room with a four poster bed and a wood-burning fireplace. Christmas had been like a Victorian dream, complete with tree-trimming parties and ice skating, and I’d loved the hotel so much I hadn’t wanted to leave.
“Well, on Christmas Day, I’ll probably go to the movies and out to dinner with my parents.” This is, of course, the traditional New York Jew Christmas.
“Do you want to come to the hotel?”
He’d asked me before, and I’d demurred – I’d loved being asked, but thought it a terrible idea. But now, I really wanted to go. “Do you want me to come?” I asked, like a passive-aggressive teenager.
Dean gave me a look. “Yes, of course.”
So probably he wasn’t seeing else. At least no one he expected to be sleeping with over Christmas. “OK,” I said sullenly, and tentatively stretched my hand towards him.
He clasped my palm and smiled.
**
I went up the day after Christmas, and Dean met me in the hotel’s lobby. He was wearing the same sweatshirt and jeans he always wore, and when he hugged me it felt like nothing had changed. He took my hand and we traipsed up the oak staircase to the room we would be sharing.
This room also had a fireplace, and the thin wooden shutters on the narrow windows were open to show an expanse of snowy lawn. “I have presents for you,” said Dean. He gave me a copy of Holidays on Ice, and a Scrabble travel edition. We started a game, and he ate some of the cookies I’d made him. But this was mostly a prelude to the energetic wrestling the queen-sized bed seemed to invite. We rolled around for a bit in the late-afternoon semi-dusk, nipping and kissing like a pair of kittens.
“I have an idea,” Dean whispered. He was lying on top of me.
“Yeah?”
“The winner—” he gestured to the abandoned Scrabble game nearby, “Gets to decide if he or she wants to sleep with the loser.”
“OK.”
“Did you say ‘why’?”
“What? I didn’t say why! I said ‘OK.’”
“Oh,” he kissed my neck.
“Really, Dean,” I gazed at the ceiling. “Of course I’m going to sleep with you.” I sniggered. “How churlish would it have been to accept your invitation and not have sex with you?!”
“Oh, so you’re going to have sex with me to be polite?” Dean looked skeptical.
“I wanted to come up here. If I had to sleep with you to do it, so be it,” I said virtuously. I buried my mouth in his neck.
**
Later we joined the rest of the party: his mother, sister, family friends—just like old times, I thought, half horrified, half delighted. At dinner, with his hands tugging my hair, and exchanging kisses and jokes like any happy couple, I wondered if the others knew or care that we were not actually dating, because we sure were acting like it. After dinner we all went for a walk in the moonlight, our feet crunching over the snow. Dean and I held hands in peaceful silence.
He was so familiar. But back in the room, making out, unbuttoning my cotton jersey and wrapping his mouth around my breasts, I felt detached, and I wondered if that was the price I was going to pay for having sex with Dean: I was going to be aware of just how stupid an idea it was not just after but while we were fucking.
But meanwhile his skin felt good against mine. He turned out the light, and started to go down on me. Then I froze: I was willing to fuck him but apparently oral sex was a bridge too far. “Stop,” I croaked.
“You don’t want me to—”
“No.”
“But you’re so yummy.” I shook my head. Dean licked his fingers, and rubbed his index finger across my clit. Suddenly, I was annoyed: he should know better. “Lighter,” I hissed.
And then it was all too familiar, the way he fitted his dick into me, the way he lay ¾ on his side, the way we pressed against one another. “Oh, sweetie,” he said, his voice hoarse. I waited.
“Oh, Lily,” he said. I clutched his shoulders. “Do you want to get on top?”
“No, it’s OK,” I said, but he insisted. I had no interest in coming: I wanted to stay uninvolved, which is probably something I should have realized before we started fucking. I rode him a bit but, even though he knows how, in order to come, I need my partner to stay as still as possible, moving only to lick my nipples or, you know, moan my name in a sexy manner—but despite all that, Dean clutched my breasts clumsily and jerked beneath me. Perversely, I was pleased. “It’s OK,” I said at last. “You come.”
We rolled back so that he was on top of me again. “I love you, Lily,” he said. This was what I’d been waiting for, and I forgave him everything, everything. “I love you, too,” I whispered.
**
Thus our weekend. The following night we sat in the hotel bar – a dimly lit place with plush seating and plum-colored cocktails, and Dean said, “Well, now that we’re having sex again—”
“Dean,” I said, taking his arm. “This is a one-off. I mean, this is wonderful, but.” We looked at one another. “This isn’t daily life.” I mean, again, if we weren’t dating, why should I have sex with him? Why should he have all the benefits of a relationship without any of the attendant requirements, like seeing the person on a regular basis?
“So we could come up on President’s Day weekend and have sex then?”
I admit, I was tempted: “We’ll see.”
And instead of articulating I miss you, this is hard, I just told him that I’d been having a rough time. Until recently, I hadn’t really had the chance to miss him—we’d been seeing one another. If I had called him and said I must see you, please come over, he would have done it. And I didn’t want to get back together with him but he smelled so good, and was so funny and kind and he loved me and I’d been happy with him.
That night again I wouldn’t let him go down on me, and when I rode him and he pushed up against me, interrupting my rhythm, I said, “Dean, you know how I like it,” in a distracted, irritable way. Then I ground myself against his cock until orgasm.
“I love you, Lily,” he said, jerking against me. I felt a wave of love and despair.
"Oh baby,” I said sadly, “I love you, too.”
Showing posts with label breakup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breakup. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Is the Universe Telling Me Something? And If So, Why Is It Being So Blunt?
NB: I am still catching up on old entries. This is (ahem) quite an old one.
I
I had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. I invited Ned and Olivia, and Sweetheart Daniel. We sat at my foldaway wood table from Target and ate roast turkey, baked sweet potatoes, cranberry applesauce, salad with pecans and goat cheese, string beans with shaved almonds and gingerbread. Not an exhaustive menu, but a reasonably expansive one for a Tuesday night dinner party of four. We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Dancing With the Stars (my new favorite TV show). After Ned and Olivia left, I settled into my new wooden bed next to Daniel.
Was he wearing cologne? Ever since we started hooking up again I’ve been puzzled by his scent. Because I remember being almost intoxicated with the sweet, musty smell of his neck, but now, while I still like how he smells, it unfamiliar. I sniffed him: “Are you wearing cologne?”
“No.” I think Daniel’s a little bemused by the amount of attention I pay to the hollow of his throat. It just seems important to me.
I curled up next to him and rested my head against his chest. Although I wanted to have sex, I felt sort of distracted—like maybe we could just go to sleep and fuck in the morning. I was tired. I kissed the side of his mouth, and then his mouth, keeping my mouth closed.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Daniel. I gave him an encouraging nod. “It’s not you or anything—” he squeezed my shoulder. “But I think I should take a break from casual sex.”
Well, that was unexpected. “You should?”
He grimaced. “Well.” He paused. “I’m trying to kind of get things in order, and maybe look for a serious relationship.”
“Oh,” I said. “OK.”
I mean, I was OK with it. Though I don’t think that having casual sex with someone precludes you from looking for a serious relationship with someone else. (My fellow blogger Badman has been discussing this here.) But if that’s how Daniel sees it, then that’s reasonable.
We settled back against my headboard, in talking rather than making out mode. “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.
I sighed. Besides Daniel, and Aaron and, one occasion, Jed, “I see Dean,” I admitted. “And it’s sort of hard.”
And it is hard, but not cause it’s a constant battle to keep from tearing his clothes off or anything. It’s hard, I explained, “Because he gets my jokes and we get along and he’s smart and nice and we’re comfortable,” I said glumly. I know there’s no future and since we’re not sleeping together—despite his persistent, not very strenuous efforts to get me naked, which I find flattering if uncompelling; we make out and he tries to feel me up—I feel then opportunity for inflicting emotional damage is limited. On the other hand, seeing him is distressing. Again, not because I miss him (which I do) but because, frankly, I think he’s throwing his life away and it’s heartbreaking to see an intelligent, talented, good natured guy squander his talents due to pique at not being as successful as his brother. He’s sacrificed a career to his ego. Which makes me want to hit him. Last time I saw him I told him he was going to end up bitter, which he took with good grace and every semblance of having heard me. But really I doubt it’ll have an effect. But, as my co-worker Ashley says, this is no longer my problem.
I said some of this to Daniel and he squeezed my shoulder again and told me I’d meet someone else soon. Well, yeah, probably. I don’t need that kind of reassurance, I want some other kind, I thought fretfully. Or maybe I just want sympathy. Or, you know, dick.
“Well Daniel,” I said. “I am sort of surprised that you waited until now to tell me.” I meant his decision regarding casual sex with me. All that time making conversation with Ned and Olivia! All the time he’d helped me glaze the gingerbread and watch The Simpsons. He’d known all along but hadn’t said anything. That felt weird, and I felt strangely embarrassed. As if I should have been embarrassed for not knowing.
“Well…” said Daniel. “It just didn’t seem like a good time.”
We sat there quietly for a bit longer, and then Daniel said he had to leave. I wasn’t sorry. When he left I curled up alone under my thin quilt, waiting to fall asleep. I didn’t feel like I had the right to be angry with Daniel, or the right to feel anything in particular.
II
On Sunday night my other twentysomething boyfriend, Aaron, came over. I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and I felt a little shy when he showed up at my door, his skin cold from the wind. He kissed me lightly on the mouth, and I was pleasantly flustered.
But over dinner we each had a drink and by the time we’d finished I was relaxed and looking forward to getting at his mouth—smelling his neck, sucking him off—all the tings I like to do to boys I find attractive. We ambled back to my apartment and sat on my bed, and then Aaron said, “Are you seeing a lot of people?”
Dean had gone AWOL recently, which was just as well, and Daniel had cut me loose; I’d been on one date with a guy I’d met online. We’d met at a bar and he’d left his belt hang loose around his pudgy waist after a trip to the bathroom. This man had recently sent me an unsigned text message on my phone, and I’d had to thumb through my date book to find out who it was.
“Um, sort of,” I said finally. “Never mind. Are you?”
“Well,” said Aaron, “I’ve been seeing about four people…” He went on to talk about having all these sexual experiences (with Jefferson and others). I nodded emphatically, but it took me a good three or four minutes to realize what he was getting at: he was dumping me! I was being dumped again!
“Listen,” I said at last in my most mature, woman-of-the-world voice, “We don’t have to hook up.”
He smiled, looking mighty relieved. “See, one of the people I’ve been seeing … she never said she wanted me to stop seeing other people, but now I feel guilty … and you know, even if you only see someone once a week…”
I tried to look like I was listening hard, but I was thinking, “I’m not going to get laid again?!” And frankly, part of me though he could have done this via email. By traipsing out to my apartment, he’d gotten my hopes up for sex and a fun evening, even though the visit showed he was trying to do the right thing by breaking things off in person. And of course if he had just disappeared, or dumped me via email, that would have been really disrespectful and I’d have been offended. But here we both were, all awkward, and me sexually frustrated to boot. So we hugged and when he left I stared at my face in the mirror, having been dumped by two younger men in the space of five days. If I keep this up, I’m going to start to think I’m undesirable. I grinned at myself hideously.
III
I told my co-worker Ashley about this. Ashley is a genius. She is extremely pretty, with long, fine blond hair, deep blue eyes and perfect, poreless skin, with what Fitzgerald would have called “a lovely high color” (pink cheeks). When I first met her, she was so well-groomed I pegged her as a former Delta Gamma pledge chair, but in fact she is not very sorority-like, though she does play beer pong and occasionally says “Dude!” in all seriousness. Anyway, mostly we chat about our boyfriends and our diets. She’s awesome.
I relayed to her the demoralizing dumping by two younger men. She gave me a you should know better look: “The universe is telling you to date someone age-appropriate,” she said.
“I don’t want to date,” I said, horrified. I want to meet someone, fall in love, plan my low-key, semi-formal afternoon wedding and have a few kids (one boy, one girl)—not make small talk and worry that I’ve got something orange in my teeth. Then I sighed: “You’re probably right.”
If my interlude of casual sex with amiable younger men was over, it was time to get serious. It was time to go after what I claimed to want. It was time to go back online, to cut Dean loose, to polish my manners and shoes. “Urfh,” I told Ashley.
She looked up and gave me a crooked smile: “I know,” she said.
I
I had a pre-Thanksgiving dinner. I invited Ned and Olivia, and Sweetheart Daniel. We sat at my foldaway wood table from Target and ate roast turkey, baked sweet potatoes, cranberry applesauce, salad with pecans and goat cheese, string beans with shaved almonds and gingerbread. Not an exhaustive menu, but a reasonably expansive one for a Tuesday night dinner party of four. We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Dancing With the Stars (my new favorite TV show). After Ned and Olivia left, I settled into my new wooden bed next to Daniel.
Was he wearing cologne? Ever since we started hooking up again I’ve been puzzled by his scent. Because I remember being almost intoxicated with the sweet, musty smell of his neck, but now, while I still like how he smells, it unfamiliar. I sniffed him: “Are you wearing cologne?”
“No.” I think Daniel’s a little bemused by the amount of attention I pay to the hollow of his throat. It just seems important to me.
I curled up next to him and rested my head against his chest. Although I wanted to have sex, I felt sort of distracted—like maybe we could just go to sleep and fuck in the morning. I was tired. I kissed the side of his mouth, and then his mouth, keeping my mouth closed.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Daniel. I gave him an encouraging nod. “It’s not you or anything—” he squeezed my shoulder. “But I think I should take a break from casual sex.”
Well, that was unexpected. “You should?”
He grimaced. “Well.” He paused. “I’m trying to kind of get things in order, and maybe look for a serious relationship.”
“Oh,” I said. “OK.”
I mean, I was OK with it. Though I don’t think that having casual sex with someone precludes you from looking for a serious relationship with someone else. (My fellow blogger Badman has been discussing this here.) But if that’s how Daniel sees it, then that’s reasonable.
We settled back against my headboard, in talking rather than making out mode. “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.
I sighed. Besides Daniel, and Aaron and, one occasion, Jed, “I see Dean,” I admitted. “And it’s sort of hard.”
And it is hard, but not cause it’s a constant battle to keep from tearing his clothes off or anything. It’s hard, I explained, “Because he gets my jokes and we get along and he’s smart and nice and we’re comfortable,” I said glumly. I know there’s no future and since we’re not sleeping together—despite his persistent, not very strenuous efforts to get me naked, which I find flattering if uncompelling; we make out and he tries to feel me up—I feel then opportunity for inflicting emotional damage is limited. On the other hand, seeing him is distressing. Again, not because I miss him (which I do) but because, frankly, I think he’s throwing his life away and it’s heartbreaking to see an intelligent, talented, good natured guy squander his talents due to pique at not being as successful as his brother. He’s sacrificed a career to his ego. Which makes me want to hit him. Last time I saw him I told him he was going to end up bitter, which he took with good grace and every semblance of having heard me. But really I doubt it’ll have an effect. But, as my co-worker Ashley says, this is no longer my problem.
I said some of this to Daniel and he squeezed my shoulder again and told me I’d meet someone else soon. Well, yeah, probably. I don’t need that kind of reassurance, I want some other kind, I thought fretfully. Or maybe I just want sympathy. Or, you know, dick.
“Well Daniel,” I said. “I am sort of surprised that you waited until now to tell me.” I meant his decision regarding casual sex with me. All that time making conversation with Ned and Olivia! All the time he’d helped me glaze the gingerbread and watch The Simpsons. He’d known all along but hadn’t said anything. That felt weird, and I felt strangely embarrassed. As if I should have been embarrassed for not knowing.
“Well…” said Daniel. “It just didn’t seem like a good time.”
We sat there quietly for a bit longer, and then Daniel said he had to leave. I wasn’t sorry. When he left I curled up alone under my thin quilt, waiting to fall asleep. I didn’t feel like I had the right to be angry with Daniel, or the right to feel anything in particular.
II
On Sunday night my other twentysomething boyfriend, Aaron, came over. I hadn’t seen him in a few weeks and I felt a little shy when he showed up at my door, his skin cold from the wind. He kissed me lightly on the mouth, and I was pleasantly flustered.
But over dinner we each had a drink and by the time we’d finished I was relaxed and looking forward to getting at his mouth—smelling his neck, sucking him off—all the tings I like to do to boys I find attractive. We ambled back to my apartment and sat on my bed, and then Aaron said, “Are you seeing a lot of people?”
Dean had gone AWOL recently, which was just as well, and Daniel had cut me loose; I’d been on one date with a guy I’d met online. We’d met at a bar and he’d left his belt hang loose around his pudgy waist after a trip to the bathroom. This man had recently sent me an unsigned text message on my phone, and I’d had to thumb through my date book to find out who it was.
“Um, sort of,” I said finally. “Never mind. Are you?”
“Well,” said Aaron, “I’ve been seeing about four people…” He went on to talk about having all these sexual experiences (with Jefferson and others). I nodded emphatically, but it took me a good three or four minutes to realize what he was getting at: he was dumping me! I was being dumped again!
“Listen,” I said at last in my most mature, woman-of-the-world voice, “We don’t have to hook up.”
He smiled, looking mighty relieved. “See, one of the people I’ve been seeing … she never said she wanted me to stop seeing other people, but now I feel guilty … and you know, even if you only see someone once a week…”
I tried to look like I was listening hard, but I was thinking, “I’m not going to get laid again?!” And frankly, part of me though he could have done this via email. By traipsing out to my apartment, he’d gotten my hopes up for sex and a fun evening, even though the visit showed he was trying to do the right thing by breaking things off in person. And of course if he had just disappeared, or dumped me via email, that would have been really disrespectful and I’d have been offended. But here we both were, all awkward, and me sexually frustrated to boot. So we hugged and when he left I stared at my face in the mirror, having been dumped by two younger men in the space of five days. If I keep this up, I’m going to start to think I’m undesirable. I grinned at myself hideously.
III
I told my co-worker Ashley about this. Ashley is a genius. She is extremely pretty, with long, fine blond hair, deep blue eyes and perfect, poreless skin, with what Fitzgerald would have called “a lovely high color” (pink cheeks). When I first met her, she was so well-groomed I pegged her as a former Delta Gamma pledge chair, but in fact she is not very sorority-like, though she does play beer pong and occasionally says “Dude!” in all seriousness. Anyway, mostly we chat about our boyfriends and our diets. She’s awesome.
I relayed to her the demoralizing dumping by two younger men. She gave me a you should know better look: “The universe is telling you to date someone age-appropriate,” she said.
“I don’t want to date,” I said, horrified. I want to meet someone, fall in love, plan my low-key, semi-formal afternoon wedding and have a few kids (one boy, one girl)—not make small talk and worry that I’ve got something orange in my teeth. Then I sighed: “You’re probably right.”
If my interlude of casual sex with amiable younger men was over, it was time to get serious. It was time to go after what I claimed to want. It was time to go back online, to cut Dean loose, to polish my manners and shoes. “Urfh,” I told Ashley.
She looked up and gave me a crooked smile: “I know,” she said.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
The Cycle of Grief: Boring and Probably Lengthy
It’s been just over three weeks since Dean and I broke up. After the first four days, I didn’t even cry. Which is unlike me. For about two weeks my emotional state would best be described as detached. I thought of him, but it was along the lines of “Well, this is for the best, now I can date someone with an actual job.” Or: “He doesn’t want kids.” Then a few days ago I thought of him, and I decided he probably wasn’t thinking of me. This made me angry.
I remember what he said to me the night we broke up, regarding our future: “I’ve been meaning to talk to my shrink about this…” meaning, he knew that I’d been thinking about the future, and he wanted to discuss his feelings with his shrink and then bring it up with me. Only he never did, and all of a sudden, this statement infuriated me. He’d been meaning to discuss it? It just never came up in conversation with the person he discusses his emotional life with? Of course not, he was too busy talking about poker! It just underlined how low on his list of priorities I was. And to top it all off, then he went and told me he hadn’t gotten around to talking about it, like I would understand that this was a chore he’d been putting off. And I think of him now: maybe missing me a little, but mostly just relieved that it’s over and he can go back to playing poker online and trying to stop his mother from decimating the family fortune.
He emailed me a week after we broke up. He wrote, “I don’t know if you want to hear from me right now, but I’m thinking of you…” and signed it Love, always, Dean. I was relieved, pleased to hear from him. We exchanged a few emails but then I stopped—it didn’t seem like a good idea. Then, that weekend, I forwarded him a New York Times article I wanted him to see, because that’s the kind of thing I’d done in the past and it seemed harmless enough. He didn’t respond. I hope he didn’t get it, because a) it’s not like him to ignore an email and b) that would really be mean, wouldn’t it? We haven’t been in touch since.
But he has some of my clothes and I have several books and a power strip of his. And I know, just know, it will be up to me to initiate this exchange. He’s not going to contact me, because he’s in the process of putting me away. This is what I started thinking a few days ago. And now tears well up in my eyes and I want to wring his neck and although I haven’t actually wept, I’ve come close.
I looked up the cycle of grief during a breakup and it goes like this:
I remember what he said to me the night we broke up, regarding our future: “I’ve been meaning to talk to my shrink about this…” meaning, he knew that I’d been thinking about the future, and he wanted to discuss his feelings with his shrink and then bring it up with me. Only he never did, and all of a sudden, this statement infuriated me. He’d been meaning to discuss it? It just never came up in conversation with the person he discusses his emotional life with? Of course not, he was too busy talking about poker! It just underlined how low on his list of priorities I was. And to top it all off, then he went and told me he hadn’t gotten around to talking about it, like I would understand that this was a chore he’d been putting off. And I think of him now: maybe missing me a little, but mostly just relieved that it’s over and he can go back to playing poker online and trying to stop his mother from decimating the family fortune.
He emailed me a week after we broke up. He wrote, “I don’t know if you want to hear from me right now, but I’m thinking of you…” and signed it Love, always, Dean. I was relieved, pleased to hear from him. We exchanged a few emails but then I stopped—it didn’t seem like a good idea. Then, that weekend, I forwarded him a New York Times article I wanted him to see, because that’s the kind of thing I’d done in the past and it seemed harmless enough. He didn’t respond. I hope he didn’t get it, because a) it’s not like him to ignore an email and b) that would really be mean, wouldn’t it? We haven’t been in touch since.
But he has some of my clothes and I have several books and a power strip of his. And I know, just know, it will be up to me to initiate this exchange. He’s not going to contact me, because he’s in the process of putting me away. This is what I started thinking a few days ago. And now tears well up in my eyes and I want to wring his neck and although I haven’t actually wept, I’ve come close.
I looked up the cycle of grief during a breakup and it goes like this:
- Shock and Denial
- Great Emotion
- Acceptance, Reorganization, and Reintegration
I guess I was in shock and denial and now I’m inching towards Great Emotion (in my case, anger). For a while I felt OK, knowing that I will never sleep with him again, never have him pull his fingers through my hair; call me sweetie; insist I snuggle with him; drink kirs with his father and stepmother; listen to him complain about his brother; play Scrabble; trade entrees; hear his name on my voice mail. But maybe that was the Shock part. And now I’m furious that he couldn’t love me enough to even think about marrying me. Or pretend to. Furious that his priorities didn’t really include me, even though we made each other happy. I thought that our romantic contentment ought to be appreciated as a rarity. I mean, it is in my life. I’ve had a number of boyfriends and have loved several of them, but we’ve rarely made one another happy. At least not on a regular basis.
But I bet Dean’s not going through any Great Emotion now. He’s not thinking about me when he can’t sleep, he’s not considering under what circumstances he could possibly call me in the middle of the night. (Last night while I wasn’t sleeping I determined that if one of my parents died, I would feel comfortable calling him. He’d be good about that.)
I have to avoid his neighborhood. I was there recently, and of course there were memories attached to every store, ever street corner. Unfortunately my therapist’s office in on the edge of neighborhood, and my shrink’s office is literally three blocks from his apartment. Luckily I only have to see my shrink once a month. Still, I think. Still.
Saturday, August 02, 2008
Reunion
To GMG
The train platform looked right out of a movie – a romance set in the 1940’s, maybe, where women with hairsprayed curls and tailored suits fling themselves into the arms of tall, handsome men with crew cuts.
The train was late, but last it chugged up, and its honk was the exact same bullhorn whine that I remembered from the Long Island Railroad and the Metro North, the sound of commuter dads arriving in Croton-on-Harmon on a summer evening. I forced myself not to run to the platform.
He was one of the last to get off the train, and he looked just as I’d imagined, in his red sweatshirt, blue jeans and baseball cap, lugging a bag over his shoulder. Our eyes met and I waved, and when he reached me I wrapped my arms around him and he picked me up.
“Dean,” I said. I hadn’t seen him in two weeks. I’d missed the smell of his neck. He kissed me, and then he kissed me again.
***
I was attending a writing program at a college some hours’ drive from New York. Dean and I had parted in Las Vegas after the 4th of July weekend, which we’d spent sneaking into hotel swimming pools and wandering through air conditioned lobbies. Dean had played poker in tournaments and cash games, while I’d visited the hotel gym, read novels, and won a cool $45 at blackjack.
I don’t think we had been apart this long since we started dating. In fact, we’d be dating a year this weekend.
We checked into the bed and breakfast decorated in Early English Tchotcke, and then I drove us into town, where we had a few drinks at the lavish old hotel on the main street. The college was in a Victorian spa town, and it was heavy on the charm, with gingerbread houses and expensive antique stores.
After a late dinner I drove back to the B and B. I undressed and I climbed into the queen-sized bed with its many, many throw pillows.
Dean slid on top of me and it was such a relief to have his body against mine, the long, lean length of it. I buried my face in his shoulder.
Often when he kisses me he mashes his mouth against mine, but this time he kissed me softly, teasing me, and I was grateful as well as excited. He bent over me and instead of plunging his tongue inside me, his nose just brushed against my clit. I gasped, and wriggled up against him. Thank God Dean has such a long, aquiline nose. “I love you, Lily,” he said in hoarse, tender voice he gets when we’re having sex.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. He held my hands down as I shook beneath him. I missed you, I thought, but I didn’t say it. After all, he hadn’t.
***
On Saturday morning I rubbed my head against his shoulder, like a cat. We lay facing one another, blinking at the sun slanting through the too-thin curtains. He slid inside me.
“Can I put my finger in your ass?” he whispered.
I nodded. “Go slow.” He did and we lay with our legs entwined, fucking. “You like to penetrate me?”
“Uh huh!” When he came I felt a little cheated. Huh!
“Let me get on top,” I said, and we rolled over. I pushed myself against him. “Lick my nipples,” I ordered, thrusting my tits at him.
He started to buck beneath me. “No,” I said. “You already came. Now it’s my turn.” I rocked back and forth, measuring my breath. “That’s right, suck them. Like that.” I came almost immediately, and we lay clasped together in the bed, my face clamped against his chest.
***
In the afternoon we went to a nearby county fair. I beat him at the whack-a-mole and we spent close to $20 on an addictive arcade game in which you insert quarters, which are supposed to then push previously inserted money over the edge of a metal ledge and into your hot little hands. We found this game terrifically compelling. We were the only adults on the bumper cars, and a foray into a partially-closed house of mirrors ended after just a minute when we easily picked our way through the maze. We stood outside the fun house, dazed at how easy it had been. “As a metaphor,” I said, mindful of all the short stories whereby couples get lost in the fun house, “That sucked.”
We got on the ferris wheel, and I was reminded of our first trip to Atlantic City, soon after we met last summer. We’d held hands on the boardwalk, which I’d found disconcerting, though I’d liked it, and I’d gone on my first ferris wheel. We kissed in the pastel-colored car as it gently swung back and forth. We kissed on this ferris wheel, too, and I looked out at the green fields below.
In the evening we drove back into town and ended up at the same Victorian hotel we’d had drinks at the first night. We headed out to the back garden, seated ourselves in Adirondack chairs, and ordered drinks. Dean studied the paper while I read one of my classmate’s short stories.
On my second planter’s punch I took the plunge, figuring I’d rather bring this up when drunk. “Dean, I have to talk to you about something,” I said. It was a beautiful evening, dusk just falling, the air mild and clear.
“I know,” said Dean. “You’re afraid I’ll give you advice about your writing at the reading on Sunday.” Writing students had been invited take part in a reading the following afternoon. In a fit of boldness, I’d signed up. And I’ve been very wary of having Dean read my writing. He can be a harsh critic—I’ve seen the notes he’s written on other people’s work, and I’m not anxious to submit myself to his tutoring, however good or well-meaning it is. My feeling is that as my boyfriend, he should keep to a cheerleading role. As in: “Lily, your writing is great!” rather than “No, sweetie, this doesn’t make any sense.” That’s what editors and instructors and writing classes are for. Honeys are for unmitigated moral support. In my opinion, anyway.
“No, no,” I said. “It’s not that.” I swallowed.
“Do you want to talk about it back at the B and B?”
As I was drunk and feared my nerve would not withstand the onslaught of sobriety, no. “Let’s talk about it now,” I slurred. He put down The New York Times.
I gulped more of my drink. Dean’s face blurred. “You know,” I dipped my head, meeting Dean’s eyes and then looking away, “We’ve been dating for almost a year now…”
Oh, God, I was actually saying it. “I love you, and I’m really happy with you, but, I want. I want,” I paused. “I want to have children.” Lest he get the wrong impression, I rushed on: “I mean, not now. I’m not ready now, but in, like, five years, and I want to know…”
Dean took my hands. “I know,” he said. “I know you’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it too, and I’ve wanted to bring it up, too.”
Seriously, he had thought about it? Had he discussed it with his therapist? I’d had the distinct impression that I did not come up much during the course of Dean’s four-times-a-week therapy sessions.
On one hand, this galled me. I talk about Dean all the time with my sainted therapist, Caroline. On the other hand, Dean had a lot of stuff to work on, in part because he’d apparently spent the first 35 years of his life avoiding therapy. I figured I was a source of happiness for him, and he wasn’t bringing me up with his shrink because our relationship didn’t need the help of a licensed psychotherapist. I mean, Dean does have serious issues to deal with. Like his mother, who, in my wholly unscientific opinion, suffers from one or more Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, or erratic) personality disorders, as per the DSM-IV. Like his father, whom Dean resents. Like his older brother, who is successful and not very interested in Dean, and whom Dean really, really resents. (I suspect his brother dominates a good portion of Dean’s sessions). Like the sister with a lot of problems. Like his stalled career. Like his poker strategy, the discussion of which also allows him the opportunity for personal reflection. For instance, if Dean loses money at poker, does it mean he’s sabotaging himself because he doesn’t have enough self confidence? Does his future lie in tournaments or cash games? And other interesting questions.
“I mean, I’m not ready for kids now,” I reiterated, in case he hadn’t got that part, “But I want to be in a relationship with someone with whom that can happen…”
“Lily,” said Dean. “I love you, too, and I want you to be happy.” And then I realized what was happening. “I’m not going to be ready to have kids in five years. And maybe not at all.”
Our heads were bent close together, and our hands were clasped. I was close to tears. “Dean,” I said.
“Sweetie,” he said, and his face kind of collapsed. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Then I covered my mouth with my hand, as though this would keep me from talking, or crying. “I know you love me, but I’m not a priority for you.” He nodded. “I want to be a priority.” Dean’s current priorities include trying to become a professional poker player and dealing with his mother. I wanted our relationship to be more than a pleasant distraction to him.
“Don’t cry,” I said, and then I started to cry, too. This had not been how I planned this discussion, not how I planned it at all. Then I changed my mind: “Thank you for crying,” I wept. “I didn’t think you’d have any tears for me.”
“I’m ambivalent,” Dean wiped his eyes. “And you deserve to be with someone who’s not ambivalent.”
“Oh, Dean.” I clung to him, and the garden swam in front of my eyes.
Thus our breakup.
We left the hotel and walked along the main street. It was dark but warm, and people were everywhere. I felt raw and stiff, like my chest was sandwiched between two pieces of plywood. I was afraid if I breathed too deeply, or moved too much, I would start to cry again. I gripped Dean’s hand, and he gripped back. We swam among the crowds. “What’s that noise?”
A crowd had gathered outside of a Borders, where a young boy stood in the lamplight. I squinted; he was playing the guitar. “Layla,” he cried in a heartfelt, off-key tenor, “You’ve got me on my knees!”
Dean and I looked at each other. The crowd appeared impressed, not by his singing, which was atrocious, but by the very fact of a kid not more than 14 crooning Eric Clapton’s heartbreak classic with technique-less abandon, and playing with some skill. “He’s got a terrible voice,” said Dean, with some admiration.
“But he’s a good player.” And, indeed, if he wasn’t just playing Guitar Hero but was instead really strumming, he was a talented guitarist. After a moment, we started walking again. It occurred to me that there were lots of literary metaphors here, after all.
We were seated at an outdoor café, where I promptly started to weep again. “Sweetie,” Dean began, then bent over, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose into a paper napkin. I was relieved not to be the only one crying. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through the meal without breaking down every five minutes, but I only cried intermittently, which was something.
Afterwards Dean drove us back to the B and B. I took a shower, letting my tears mingle with the cool water, and then I climbed into bed, naked. Dean showered. I thought we’d have break up sex. In fact I was looking forward to Dean being inside of me one last time, of him whispering, “I love you, Lily,” while I tearfully clung to him, but instead I lay chaste and sad underneath the chenille bedspread. I thought I might go to sleep early. I turned off the light, while Dean stared at his laptop.
I turned onto my side but tears leaked out of my eyes. “Sweetie, don’t cry,” murmured my ex-boyfriend.
“I wish,” I sniffled, turning on the light, “I wasn’t quite so in touch with my emotions.” I started to cry in earnest once again.
“Lily,” said Dean. “Lily.” He wrapped his arms around me. His voice cracked. “You know we’re going to have a lifelong friendship.”
That sounded very, very unappealing, as well as weirdly formal. “I don’t want to be your friend,” I wept. “I love you.” I wanted him to be jealous of other men I dated. I didn’t want us to be companionable.
“I love you, too.” He stroked my hair.
“I guess I think that if you loved me more, you’d want to try.” And that, to me, was the crux of the matter. He hadn’t even had to think about it when I brought it up. I hadn’t gotten a chance to say the rest of my spiel, which was, This isn’t something you have to decide now. Think about it, and let’s talk in a few weeks. And what that meant was: I love you. I don’t want to break up. But as soon as I brought up the idea of the future, he jumped right to the break up, like he was relieved. He’d already made up his mind. He’d sooner break up with me than even consider the possibility of us getting married and having a family. That hurt.
“It’s because I love you that I don’t want you to miss the boat on this. Having a family.”
“I know.” And that’s true. But. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t convinced you’re going to get married and have kids.” Because I am. I think he’ll do just as his brother did: meet a woman 15 or so years his junior when he’s close to 50 and grown up enough. And because she’ll be so smart and beautiful and accomplished and he’ll be so aware of how lucky he is, when she says, “I want to have children,” he’ll realize he’s onto a good thing and ought to land her quick. So they’ll get married and have children. And I swear to God, if he does this before I do, I won’t be responsible for my behavior.
He shook his head. But I think that’s what’ll happen. “I wish I could have made you happy,” I said in a small voice.
“Don’t say that,” he said, almost harshly, and then he started to cry again. “Don’t say that. You’ve made me really happy.”
What I meant was: I wish that you’d loved me enough to be unwilling to let me go. I wish having children with me didn’t seem like too high a cost for keeping me by your side. I wish keeping us together was your priority.
Here’s a story. I work with this woman named Lara. She’s 42. She met her now-husband a few years ago. She told me that after they’d been dating for six months, she asked him, “Where are we going?” He’s ten years her senior, childless, and divorced. He said to her: “I don’t love you, I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want any kids.” (How incredibly harsh!) So Lara said, “Well, you’re giving me nothing to work with. I guess we’re breaking up.”
Two days later he showed up on her doorstep, red-eyed, and begged her to take him back. “So he got some therapy,” concluded Lara—the optimistic ending to most healthy modern romances, it appears. They wed a year ago, and last month she had a baby.
The point isn’t that she got her way, or even that what Lara wanted wasn’t too high a price for Jim who, despite not seeming to want anything that Lara did, eventually agreed to everything Lara desired. The point is that Jim seems really happy now. She had to convince him, but he seems pleased with how things turned out.
“I’ve just broken up with two women who made me happy,” Dean continued. “Lily, I’m fucked up.” Well, I knew that already, and plus, I wanted to say, This isn’t about you! This isn’t about your issues! And anyway, how could his ex have made him really happy? She wouldn’t sleep with him! Of course, she is younger and prettier than I. And I think she went to Harvard. But anyway, what was the point? Maybe, for Dean, this was just another anecdote on his journey to adulthood. Maybe this would be a stick he could beat himself with in therapy. Maybe, for Dean, the real point was why, as a fortysomething with a degree from an Ivy League college and no serious drug problem, he lives the life of an independent teenager.
***
The next morning we checked out of the bed and breakfast. “Did you have a good stay?” asked one half of the polite, mustached male couple who ran the place.
“We had a great time,” Dean said.
“Except for the breaking up part,” I whispered as we edged out of the chintzy living room towards the door.
Outside, it was overcast. I was glad; I didn’t want to see the sun today. We walked to the car and once more, tears welled up in my eyes. “Sweetie,” Dean said helplessly. “Sweetheart.”
I blinked. He’s called me Sweetie since the night we met. He won’t call me sweetie anymore, I realized. Or if he does, it will only make me want to cry.
**
When I pulled up in front of the train station it was raining lightly, and I followed him to the entrance to the station house. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I burst into tears for what felt like the twentieth time in less than 24 hours. “Sweetie, sweetie,” Dean said again, earnestly, and I could see my tears might get a little wearing. “I love you. You’ll be fine. I’ll call you in a week or two,” he said firmly, kissing me, and I knew I’d be waiting for his call.
He went into the station and I went back to the car but I didn’t drive away. I sat there, watching the rain beat on the windshield. What if his train was really delayed, like it had been on Thursday night? Maybe I should offer to drive him back to the B and B. Only now I was no longer his girlfriend, and there was no rationale for me to think like that, to take his comfort and convenience into consideration. Eventually I turned the engine on and drove around to the parking lot, where I watched the train pull up.
Dean was easy to spot – he was undoubtedly the tallest person there; he is probably the tallest person wherever he goes. I watched him climb on board, and then there was nothing else to do, nothing else to wait for. I turned on the engine on again and edged the car towards the exit. And it occurred to me that for weeks I’d hear his laugh from stranger’s mouths. Then I drove off into the rain, waiting until I started to cry again.
The train platform looked right out of a movie – a romance set in the 1940’s, maybe, where women with hairsprayed curls and tailored suits fling themselves into the arms of tall, handsome men with crew cuts.
The train was late, but last it chugged up, and its honk was the exact same bullhorn whine that I remembered from the Long Island Railroad and the Metro North, the sound of commuter dads arriving in Croton-on-Harmon on a summer evening. I forced myself not to run to the platform.
He was one of the last to get off the train, and he looked just as I’d imagined, in his red sweatshirt, blue jeans and baseball cap, lugging a bag over his shoulder. Our eyes met and I waved, and when he reached me I wrapped my arms around him and he picked me up.
“Dean,” I said. I hadn’t seen him in two weeks. I’d missed the smell of his neck. He kissed me, and then he kissed me again.
***
I was attending a writing program at a college some hours’ drive from New York. Dean and I had parted in Las Vegas after the 4th of July weekend, which we’d spent sneaking into hotel swimming pools and wandering through air conditioned lobbies. Dean had played poker in tournaments and cash games, while I’d visited the hotel gym, read novels, and won a cool $45 at blackjack.
I don’t think we had been apart this long since we started dating. In fact, we’d be dating a year this weekend.
We checked into the bed and breakfast decorated in Early English Tchotcke, and then I drove us into town, where we had a few drinks at the lavish old hotel on the main street. The college was in a Victorian spa town, and it was heavy on the charm, with gingerbread houses and expensive antique stores.
After a late dinner I drove back to the B and B. I undressed and I climbed into the queen-sized bed with its many, many throw pillows.
Dean slid on top of me and it was such a relief to have his body against mine, the long, lean length of it. I buried my face in his shoulder.
Often when he kisses me he mashes his mouth against mine, but this time he kissed me softly, teasing me, and I was grateful as well as excited. He bent over me and instead of plunging his tongue inside me, his nose just brushed against my clit. I gasped, and wriggled up against him. Thank God Dean has such a long, aquiline nose. “I love you, Lily,” he said in hoarse, tender voice he gets when we’re having sex.
“I love you, too,” I whispered. He held my hands down as I shook beneath him. I missed you, I thought, but I didn’t say it. After all, he hadn’t.
***
On Saturday morning I rubbed my head against his shoulder, like a cat. We lay facing one another, blinking at the sun slanting through the too-thin curtains. He slid inside me.
“Can I put my finger in your ass?” he whispered.
I nodded. “Go slow.” He did and we lay with our legs entwined, fucking. “You like to penetrate me?”
“Uh huh!” When he came I felt a little cheated. Huh!
“Let me get on top,” I said, and we rolled over. I pushed myself against him. “Lick my nipples,” I ordered, thrusting my tits at him.
He started to buck beneath me. “No,” I said. “You already came. Now it’s my turn.” I rocked back and forth, measuring my breath. “That’s right, suck them. Like that.” I came almost immediately, and we lay clasped together in the bed, my face clamped against his chest.
***
In the afternoon we went to a nearby county fair. I beat him at the whack-a-mole and we spent close to $20 on an addictive arcade game in which you insert quarters, which are supposed to then push previously inserted money over the edge of a metal ledge and into your hot little hands. We found this game terrifically compelling. We were the only adults on the bumper cars, and a foray into a partially-closed house of mirrors ended after just a minute when we easily picked our way through the maze. We stood outside the fun house, dazed at how easy it had been. “As a metaphor,” I said, mindful of all the short stories whereby couples get lost in the fun house, “That sucked.”
We got on the ferris wheel, and I was reminded of our first trip to Atlantic City, soon after we met last summer. We’d held hands on the boardwalk, which I’d found disconcerting, though I’d liked it, and I’d gone on my first ferris wheel. We kissed in the pastel-colored car as it gently swung back and forth. We kissed on this ferris wheel, too, and I looked out at the green fields below.
In the evening we drove back into town and ended up at the same Victorian hotel we’d had drinks at the first night. We headed out to the back garden, seated ourselves in Adirondack chairs, and ordered drinks. Dean studied the paper while I read one of my classmate’s short stories.
On my second planter’s punch I took the plunge, figuring I’d rather bring this up when drunk. “Dean, I have to talk to you about something,” I said. It was a beautiful evening, dusk just falling, the air mild and clear.
“I know,” said Dean. “You’re afraid I’ll give you advice about your writing at the reading on Sunday.” Writing students had been invited take part in a reading the following afternoon. In a fit of boldness, I’d signed up. And I’ve been very wary of having Dean read my writing. He can be a harsh critic—I’ve seen the notes he’s written on other people’s work, and I’m not anxious to submit myself to his tutoring, however good or well-meaning it is. My feeling is that as my boyfriend, he should keep to a cheerleading role. As in: “Lily, your writing is great!” rather than “No, sweetie, this doesn’t make any sense.” That’s what editors and instructors and writing classes are for. Honeys are for unmitigated moral support. In my opinion, anyway.
“No, no,” I said. “It’s not that.” I swallowed.
“Do you want to talk about it back at the B and B?”
As I was drunk and feared my nerve would not withstand the onslaught of sobriety, no. “Let’s talk about it now,” I slurred. He put down The New York Times.
I gulped more of my drink. Dean’s face blurred. “You know,” I dipped my head, meeting Dean’s eyes and then looking away, “We’ve been dating for almost a year now…”
Oh, God, I was actually saying it. “I love you, and I’m really happy with you, but, I want. I want,” I paused. “I want to have children.” Lest he get the wrong impression, I rushed on: “I mean, not now. I’m not ready now, but in, like, five years, and I want to know…”
Dean took my hands. “I know,” he said. “I know you’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about it too, and I’ve wanted to bring it up, too.”
Seriously, he had thought about it? Had he discussed it with his therapist? I’d had the distinct impression that I did not come up much during the course of Dean’s four-times-a-week therapy sessions.
On one hand, this galled me. I talk about Dean all the time with my sainted therapist, Caroline. On the other hand, Dean had a lot of stuff to work on, in part because he’d apparently spent the first 35 years of his life avoiding therapy. I figured I was a source of happiness for him, and he wasn’t bringing me up with his shrink because our relationship didn’t need the help of a licensed psychotherapist. I mean, Dean does have serious issues to deal with. Like his mother, who, in my wholly unscientific opinion, suffers from one or more Cluster B (dramatic, emotional, or erratic) personality disorders, as per the DSM-IV. Like his father, whom Dean resents. Like his older brother, who is successful and not very interested in Dean, and whom Dean really, really resents. (I suspect his brother dominates a good portion of Dean’s sessions). Like the sister with a lot of problems. Like his stalled career. Like his poker strategy, the discussion of which also allows him the opportunity for personal reflection. For instance, if Dean loses money at poker, does it mean he’s sabotaging himself because he doesn’t have enough self confidence? Does his future lie in tournaments or cash games? And other interesting questions.
“I mean, I’m not ready for kids now,” I reiterated, in case he hadn’t got that part, “But I want to be in a relationship with someone with whom that can happen…”
“Lily,” said Dean. “I love you, too, and I want you to be happy.” And then I realized what was happening. “I’m not going to be ready to have kids in five years. And maybe not at all.”
Our heads were bent close together, and our hands were clasped. I was close to tears. “Dean,” I said.
“Sweetie,” he said, and his face kind of collapsed. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” Then I covered my mouth with my hand, as though this would keep me from talking, or crying. “I know you love me, but I’m not a priority for you.” He nodded. “I want to be a priority.” Dean’s current priorities include trying to become a professional poker player and dealing with his mother. I wanted our relationship to be more than a pleasant distraction to him.
“Don’t cry,” I said, and then I started to cry, too. This had not been how I planned this discussion, not how I planned it at all. Then I changed my mind: “Thank you for crying,” I wept. “I didn’t think you’d have any tears for me.”
“I’m ambivalent,” Dean wiped his eyes. “And you deserve to be with someone who’s not ambivalent.”
“Oh, Dean.” I clung to him, and the garden swam in front of my eyes.
Thus our breakup.
We left the hotel and walked along the main street. It was dark but warm, and people were everywhere. I felt raw and stiff, like my chest was sandwiched between two pieces of plywood. I was afraid if I breathed too deeply, or moved too much, I would start to cry again. I gripped Dean’s hand, and he gripped back. We swam among the crowds. “What’s that noise?”
A crowd had gathered outside of a Borders, where a young boy stood in the lamplight. I squinted; he was playing the guitar. “Layla,” he cried in a heartfelt, off-key tenor, “You’ve got me on my knees!”
Dean and I looked at each other. The crowd appeared impressed, not by his singing, which was atrocious, but by the very fact of a kid not more than 14 crooning Eric Clapton’s heartbreak classic with technique-less abandon, and playing with some skill. “He’s got a terrible voice,” said Dean, with some admiration.
“But he’s a good player.” And, indeed, if he wasn’t just playing Guitar Hero but was instead really strumming, he was a talented guitarist. After a moment, we started walking again. It occurred to me that there were lots of literary metaphors here, after all.
We were seated at an outdoor café, where I promptly started to weep again. “Sweetie,” Dean began, then bent over, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose into a paper napkin. I was relieved not to be the only one crying. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through the meal without breaking down every five minutes, but I only cried intermittently, which was something.
Afterwards Dean drove us back to the B and B. I took a shower, letting my tears mingle with the cool water, and then I climbed into bed, naked. Dean showered. I thought we’d have break up sex. In fact I was looking forward to Dean being inside of me one last time, of him whispering, “I love you, Lily,” while I tearfully clung to him, but instead I lay chaste and sad underneath the chenille bedspread. I thought I might go to sleep early. I turned off the light, while Dean stared at his laptop.
I turned onto my side but tears leaked out of my eyes. “Sweetie, don’t cry,” murmured my ex-boyfriend.
“I wish,” I sniffled, turning on the light, “I wasn’t quite so in touch with my emotions.” I started to cry in earnest once again.
“Lily,” said Dean. “Lily.” He wrapped his arms around me. His voice cracked. “You know we’re going to have a lifelong friendship.”
That sounded very, very unappealing, as well as weirdly formal. “I don’t want to be your friend,” I wept. “I love you.” I wanted him to be jealous of other men I dated. I didn’t want us to be companionable.
“I love you, too.” He stroked my hair.
“I guess I think that if you loved me more, you’d want to try.” And that, to me, was the crux of the matter. He hadn’t even had to think about it when I brought it up. I hadn’t gotten a chance to say the rest of my spiel, which was, This isn’t something you have to decide now. Think about it, and let’s talk in a few weeks. And what that meant was: I love you. I don’t want to break up. But as soon as I brought up the idea of the future, he jumped right to the break up, like he was relieved. He’d already made up his mind. He’d sooner break up with me than even consider the possibility of us getting married and having a family. That hurt.
“It’s because I love you that I don’t want you to miss the boat on this. Having a family.”
“I know.” And that’s true. But. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I weren’t convinced you’re going to get married and have kids.” Because I am. I think he’ll do just as his brother did: meet a woman 15 or so years his junior when he’s close to 50 and grown up enough. And because she’ll be so smart and beautiful and accomplished and he’ll be so aware of how lucky he is, when she says, “I want to have children,” he’ll realize he’s onto a good thing and ought to land her quick. So they’ll get married and have children. And I swear to God, if he does this before I do, I won’t be responsible for my behavior.
He shook his head. But I think that’s what’ll happen. “I wish I could have made you happy,” I said in a small voice.
“Don’t say that,” he said, almost harshly, and then he started to cry again. “Don’t say that. You’ve made me really happy.”
What I meant was: I wish that you’d loved me enough to be unwilling to let me go. I wish having children with me didn’t seem like too high a cost for keeping me by your side. I wish keeping us together was your priority.
Here’s a story. I work with this woman named Lara. She’s 42. She met her now-husband a few years ago. She told me that after they’d been dating for six months, she asked him, “Where are we going?” He’s ten years her senior, childless, and divorced. He said to her: “I don’t love you, I don’t want to marry you, and I don’t want any kids.” (How incredibly harsh!) So Lara said, “Well, you’re giving me nothing to work with. I guess we’re breaking up.”
Two days later he showed up on her doorstep, red-eyed, and begged her to take him back. “So he got some therapy,” concluded Lara—the optimistic ending to most healthy modern romances, it appears. They wed a year ago, and last month she had a baby.
The point isn’t that she got her way, or even that what Lara wanted wasn’t too high a price for Jim who, despite not seeming to want anything that Lara did, eventually agreed to everything Lara desired. The point is that Jim seems really happy now. She had to convince him, but he seems pleased with how things turned out.
“I’ve just broken up with two women who made me happy,” Dean continued. “Lily, I’m fucked up.” Well, I knew that already, and plus, I wanted to say, This isn’t about you! This isn’t about your issues! And anyway, how could his ex have made him really happy? She wouldn’t sleep with him! Of course, she is younger and prettier than I. And I think she went to Harvard. But anyway, what was the point? Maybe, for Dean, this was just another anecdote on his journey to adulthood. Maybe this would be a stick he could beat himself with in therapy. Maybe, for Dean, the real point was why, as a fortysomething with a degree from an Ivy League college and no serious drug problem, he lives the life of an independent teenager.
***
The next morning we checked out of the bed and breakfast. “Did you have a good stay?” asked one half of the polite, mustached male couple who ran the place.
“We had a great time,” Dean said.
“Except for the breaking up part,” I whispered as we edged out of the chintzy living room towards the door.
Outside, it was overcast. I was glad; I didn’t want to see the sun today. We walked to the car and once more, tears welled up in my eyes. “Sweetie,” Dean said helplessly. “Sweetheart.”
I blinked. He’s called me Sweetie since the night we met. He won’t call me sweetie anymore, I realized. Or if he does, it will only make me want to cry.
**
When I pulled up in front of the train station it was raining lightly, and I followed him to the entrance to the station house. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I burst into tears for what felt like the twentieth time in less than 24 hours. “Sweetie, sweetie,” Dean said again, earnestly, and I could see my tears might get a little wearing. “I love you. You’ll be fine. I’ll call you in a week or two,” he said firmly, kissing me, and I knew I’d be waiting for his call.
He went into the station and I went back to the car but I didn’t drive away. I sat there, watching the rain beat on the windshield. What if his train was really delayed, like it had been on Thursday night? Maybe I should offer to drive him back to the B and B. Only now I was no longer his girlfriend, and there was no rationale for me to think like that, to take his comfort and convenience into consideration. Eventually I turned the engine on and drove around to the parking lot, where I watched the train pull up.
Dean was easy to spot – he was undoubtedly the tallest person there; he is probably the tallest person wherever he goes. I watched him climb on board, and then there was nothing else to do, nothing else to wait for. I turned on the engine on again and edged the car towards the exit. And it occurred to me that for weeks I’d hear his laugh from stranger’s mouths. Then I drove off into the rain, waiting until I started to cry again.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
I Gird My Loins and State My Case
The minute I left Dean’s apartment I placed a phone call to my sainted therapist: “Caroline?” I bleated to her voice mail. “This is Lily. I’ve precipitated a crisis with Dean. Can you call me back as soon as you get this?”
Then I went to work in the (mild) November rain, where I did what I always do when faced with romantic confusion: I emailed Jefferson. I had confided my crush on Dean to him some months ago, and he had been unfailingly kind in allowing me to blather on about it. Jefferson has also been the patient recipient of my more inane ramblings, like my astonishment at coming across a reference to Lesa Aldridge in an old Smithsonian magazine (kind of obscure: Aldridge is the onetime girlfriend of Alex Chilton -- he of the super-awesome Big Star, The Box Tops, and that Replacements song) as well as my disgruntlement at my sister’s choice of name for my newborn nephew (she named the baby after our grandfather. But that name was earmarked for my as-yet-unborn son!) Best of all, Jefferson always responds to my emails, and in a timely manner. Truly, yea, he is a paragon. And then, after some cathartic whining, I composed an email to Dean.
It was a very nice email, but it said that I was dumping him on the grounds that I didn’t think he wanted to be my boyfriend, and the casual nature of our relationship was turning me into a nervous wreck. I waited for Caroline to call me back before I sent it, since I never do anything without her approval. When she phoned I recounted my conversation with Dean. She suggested that perhaps instead of dumping him as a preemptive strike, I should instead ask Dean if he wanted to date me seriously.
“I don’t want to do that,” I whined. “That gives him the chance to reject me.” Also, it would make my email an ultimatum, which meant I was the kind of woman who gave ultimatiums: manipulative, scheming ... female. I preferred to see myself in a more flattering light.
But Caroline prevailed, since she is the therapist and I am the neurotic. I thanked her and then I sent the following email:
Dear Dean,
Hi. I cannot tell you how much I regret our conversation last night. I revealed information I suspected you did not want to hear and painted myself into a corner. But I learned my lesson, and that lesson is Lay off the pinot grigio. I'm still hungover. Jesus.
But the corner. As I said, I want to date you seriously, exclusively, whatever. But you said you weren’t sure you were capable of being in a relationship, which, alas, didn’t sound like a yes to me.
I think that the more I see you, the more I will want that kind of intimacy. So there are two options. One is I stop seeing you. Frankly, my nerves are shot and if we continue to date casually, there is a strong likelihood of a repeat of last night’s theatrics. I’m not up for that. The other option is you give some thought to us dating exclusively. And then you say, ‘OK, sounds good.’ That means we take our personals profiles down and you think of me as your girlfriend and when we get together we make dumb jokes and have sex.
…
Anyway. I’m sorry I haven’t got the nerve to talk to you about this in person. I will be disappointed if you don’t want to give it a go, but I will understand. (This part was not really true: I would have a hard time understanding. For once I was the victim of high self-esteem; I thought he ought to want to date me). I will miss you. I like you tremendously and think you’re lovely and, if this is it, I really hope everything turns out well for you. Take care. Many kisses.
Lily
I sent it and decided I would not check my email until the following morning. To facilitate this, I went home and went to bed. It was not yet 7:00 pm, but I’d had a trying 24 hours.
The following morning there was an email in my inbox from Dean. He too apologized for the conversation, said he liked me very much, and needed to discuss my proposition with his therapist. See? I thought, We have so much in common!
So then I settled down to wait for his answer. I didn’t cry, though. I’m done with that. At least I hope I am.
Then I went to work in the (mild) November rain, where I did what I always do when faced with romantic confusion: I emailed Jefferson. I had confided my crush on Dean to him some months ago, and he had been unfailingly kind in allowing me to blather on about it. Jefferson has also been the patient recipient of my more inane ramblings, like my astonishment at coming across a reference to Lesa Aldridge in an old Smithsonian magazine (kind of obscure: Aldridge is the onetime girlfriend of Alex Chilton -- he of the super-awesome Big Star, The Box Tops, and that Replacements song) as well as my disgruntlement at my sister’s choice of name for my newborn nephew (she named the baby after our grandfather. But that name was earmarked for my as-yet-unborn son!) Best of all, Jefferson always responds to my emails, and in a timely manner. Truly, yea, he is a paragon. And then, after some cathartic whining, I composed an email to Dean.
It was a very nice email, but it said that I was dumping him on the grounds that I didn’t think he wanted to be my boyfriend, and the casual nature of our relationship was turning me into a nervous wreck. I waited for Caroline to call me back before I sent it, since I never do anything without her approval. When she phoned I recounted my conversation with Dean. She suggested that perhaps instead of dumping him as a preemptive strike, I should instead ask Dean if he wanted to date me seriously.
“I don’t want to do that,” I whined. “That gives him the chance to reject me.” Also, it would make my email an ultimatum, which meant I was the kind of woman who gave ultimatiums: manipulative, scheming ... female. I preferred to see myself in a more flattering light.
But Caroline prevailed, since she is the therapist and I am the neurotic. I thanked her and then I sent the following email:
Dear Dean,
Hi. I cannot tell you how much I regret our conversation last night. I revealed information I suspected you did not want to hear and painted myself into a corner. But I learned my lesson, and that lesson is Lay off the pinot grigio. I'm still hungover. Jesus.
But the corner. As I said, I want to date you seriously, exclusively, whatever. But you said you weren’t sure you were capable of being in a relationship, which, alas, didn’t sound like a yes to me.
I think that the more I see you, the more I will want that kind of intimacy. So there are two options. One is I stop seeing you. Frankly, my nerves are shot and if we continue to date casually, there is a strong likelihood of a repeat of last night’s theatrics. I’m not up for that. The other option is you give some thought to us dating exclusively. And then you say, ‘OK, sounds good.’ That means we take our personals profiles down and you think of me as your girlfriend and when we get together we make dumb jokes and have sex.
…
Anyway. I’m sorry I haven’t got the nerve to talk to you about this in person. I will be disappointed if you don’t want to give it a go, but I will understand. (This part was not really true: I would have a hard time understanding. For once I was the victim of high self-esteem; I thought he ought to want to date me). I will miss you. I like you tremendously and think you’re lovely and, if this is it, I really hope everything turns out well for you. Take care. Many kisses.
Lily
I sent it and decided I would not check my email until the following morning. To facilitate this, I went home and went to bed. It was not yet 7:00 pm, but I’d had a trying 24 hours.
The following morning there was an email in my inbox from Dean. He too apologized for the conversation, said he liked me very much, and needed to discuss my proposition with his therapist. See? I thought, We have so much in common!
So then I settled down to wait for his answer. I didn’t cry, though. I’m done with that. At least I hope I am.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Argh!
Will was out of town last weekend and on Tuesday I emailed him asking if he wanted to get together. I got an email back later that night saying he’d just arrived home, and with no mention of getting together.
I was put out and considered not writing back. But then I wrote a brief email, carefully not suggesting that we get together. Then I waited.
This was two days ago. By this morning I was pretty sure I had been dumped, and was offended to discover that he wasn’t going to email me at all! Did he not think I was even worth an email? The bastard! Et cetera, shades of Jeremy all over again.
Work was stressful and demanding in all the wrong ways. After work I met Daniel and could not have been a bigger killjoy. I felt so irritable about my stupid job, about my lack of a good job, about the way my face looked in the mirror on the wall in the restaurant, you name it -- that I had to spend all my energy on not whining and was therefore nearly silent. I was not a very good dining companion. Even Daniel himself was getting on my nerves, and I resented the fact that he loves his job and that everything’s going well with the Virgin Girlfriend. On the train home he practically leapt off the subway car a stop early, presumably to get away from me, and I ended up feeling guilty for being so self indulgent with my bad mood, and abandoned that he had not tried harder to make me feel better.
I thought I had dismissed Will from my mind and was simply brooding, but I’m all about closure and I succumbed after much agonizing. This evening I sent him another email. It was polite and friendly, and closed with “I haven’t heard from you about getting together. Let me know what’s going on.”
So Will just called. And he didn’t fall in love with a bridesmaid during the wedding he went to over the weekend, and I wasn’t misreading the signs: he said he was looking for a serious relationship, and he didn’t think we had a future together.
“Well,” I said, “I would never try to convince you otherwise.” What I meant by that is I don’t want to have to convince a guy to date me. “I wouldn’t want to see you against your will.”
“I’m not seeing you against my will!” Will protested, half laughing. “I have a good time with you. I just … I’m looking for a serious relationship and I don’t see us together.”
“Um,” I crossed my room to turn off the air conditioner so I could actually hear the conversation I would prefer not to be having. “Was this because of what I said? About my social life and not being monogamous?” (I had given him a brief precis of my current, rather complicated, social life).
“No, no…” Will insisted. “That’s not it, you can see whoever you want … I just don’t see us together …”
“Oh. OK.’ I was shaking. “Fair enough.” My voice was steady, though. I mean, it was fair enough. At least he’d bothered to call.
“So,” Will went on, “If you wanted us to see each other, it wouldn’t be seriously, like in a relationship.”
Oh. So we could have sex but I wasn’t to expect anything from it. “Huh.” I get folksy when I’m nervous. I considered, trailing around my room and looking for something to occupy my hands. Then I said, “I don’t know. See, I think of you as more boyfriend material than not, so maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.” This is true: Will is serious and adult and solvent. But, alas: apparently not that interested in me. There are a number of men I have sex with but do not expect emotional commitments from, but Will’s declaration of intent, or non-intent, sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I think I demurred in part because I was piqued that he wasn’t interested! It’s not as if I’m in love with Will. But I was hurt, or my vanity was wounded. And I might have liked Will a lot, given a little more time and long mornings in his bed: I was prepared to like him a lot.
“Yeah, OK, I thought you might feel that way…” Will said, and I think he was relieved.
What, you think I’m so fragile I couldn’t possibly see you? I’m not that into you! I wondered if Will had decided we weren’t relationship material because I wasn’t smart enough for him or, alternatively, because I am the kind of girl who sleeps with men on the first date or because, given the slightest encouragement, I will talk incessantly during sex or because I don’t have a real job or any prospect of one. These are interesting questions to which, unfortunately, I will never get the answers.
“Well, listen,” I said, full of gentle good cheer, ’cause I wanted him to be sure to regret the good thing he was giving up, “Take care of yourself.” I was also polite because I take pains not to seem like the stereotypically neurotic New Yorker that I actually am. After all, Will is from the Midwest and probably expects all New York women to be unmarried, anxious and in therapy… which would be spot on, in my case. Anyway.
“Yeah, you too,” said the man with whom I had nothing in common, and now not even sex. “… Keep in touch if you want.”
That’s just not going to happen, is it?
“Well, have a good night,” I said with a little laugh in my voice, as though I wasn’t really bothered. And who knows, maybe I wasn’t.
“You too.”
Then I hung up the phone and thought: This has been a terrible day.
I was put out and considered not writing back. But then I wrote a brief email, carefully not suggesting that we get together. Then I waited.
This was two days ago. By this morning I was pretty sure I had been dumped, and was offended to discover that he wasn’t going to email me at all! Did he not think I was even worth an email? The bastard! Et cetera, shades of Jeremy all over again.
Work was stressful and demanding in all the wrong ways. After work I met Daniel and could not have been a bigger killjoy. I felt so irritable about my stupid job, about my lack of a good job, about the way my face looked in the mirror on the wall in the restaurant, you name it -- that I had to spend all my energy on not whining and was therefore nearly silent. I was not a very good dining companion. Even Daniel himself was getting on my nerves, and I resented the fact that he loves his job and that everything’s going well with the Virgin Girlfriend. On the train home he practically leapt off the subway car a stop early, presumably to get away from me, and I ended up feeling guilty for being so self indulgent with my bad mood, and abandoned that he had not tried harder to make me feel better.
I thought I had dismissed Will from my mind and was simply brooding, but I’m all about closure and I succumbed after much agonizing. This evening I sent him another email. It was polite and friendly, and closed with “I haven’t heard from you about getting together. Let me know what’s going on.”
So Will just called. And he didn’t fall in love with a bridesmaid during the wedding he went to over the weekend, and I wasn’t misreading the signs: he said he was looking for a serious relationship, and he didn’t think we had a future together.
“Well,” I said, “I would never try to convince you otherwise.” What I meant by that is I don’t want to have to convince a guy to date me. “I wouldn’t want to see you against your will.”
“I’m not seeing you against my will!” Will protested, half laughing. “I have a good time with you. I just … I’m looking for a serious relationship and I don’t see us together.”
“Um,” I crossed my room to turn off the air conditioner so I could actually hear the conversation I would prefer not to be having. “Was this because of what I said? About my social life and not being monogamous?” (I had given him a brief precis of my current, rather complicated, social life).
“No, no…” Will insisted. “That’s not it, you can see whoever you want … I just don’t see us together …”
“Oh. OK.’ I was shaking. “Fair enough.” My voice was steady, though. I mean, it was fair enough. At least he’d bothered to call.
“So,” Will went on, “If you wanted us to see each other, it wouldn’t be seriously, like in a relationship.”
Oh. So we could have sex but I wasn’t to expect anything from it. “Huh.” I get folksy when I’m nervous. I considered, trailing around my room and looking for something to occupy my hands. Then I said, “I don’t know. See, I think of you as more boyfriend material than not, so maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.” This is true: Will is serious and adult and solvent. But, alas: apparently not that interested in me. There are a number of men I have sex with but do not expect emotional commitments from, but Will’s declaration of intent, or non-intent, sort of rubbed me the wrong way. I think I demurred in part because I was piqued that he wasn’t interested! It’s not as if I’m in love with Will. But I was hurt, or my vanity was wounded. And I might have liked Will a lot, given a little more time and long mornings in his bed: I was prepared to like him a lot.
“Yeah, OK, I thought you might feel that way…” Will said, and I think he was relieved.
What, you think I’m so fragile I couldn’t possibly see you? I’m not that into you! I wondered if Will had decided we weren’t relationship material because I wasn’t smart enough for him or, alternatively, because I am the kind of girl who sleeps with men on the first date or because, given the slightest encouragement, I will talk incessantly during sex or because I don’t have a real job or any prospect of one. These are interesting questions to which, unfortunately, I will never get the answers.
“Well, listen,” I said, full of gentle good cheer, ’cause I wanted him to be sure to regret the good thing he was giving up, “Take care of yourself.” I was also polite because I take pains not to seem like the stereotypically neurotic New Yorker that I actually am. After all, Will is from the Midwest and probably expects all New York women to be unmarried, anxious and in therapy… which would be spot on, in my case. Anyway.
“Yeah, you too,” said the man with whom I had nothing in common, and now not even sex. “… Keep in touch if you want.”
That’s just not going to happen, is it?
“Well, have a good night,” I said with a little laugh in my voice, as though I wasn’t really bothered. And who knows, maybe I wasn’t.
“You too.”
Then I hung up the phone and thought: This has been a terrible day.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
It's Poignant, It's Moving, It's Over
On Monday night Daniel came over. He’d got a haircut – short back and sides, with a funny looking little tuft in the front. I’d forgotten all about it, but Michael once had a haircut just like that. “Oh, it’s cute,” I exclaimed, and stroked his hair. It was stiff with gel. “Ah!” Daniel looked sheepish. I giggled.
In my room he stretched his long body out on my bed. I cuddled up to him, and he started to laugh. “What?” I said.
“No, you just nuzzle up so close,” he said. It was true, may face was buried in his neck. My turn to be sheepish. “I like it,” he reassured me.
“How’s Wendy?” I asked. Last week his roommate had been broken up with by her boyfriend of a year and a half, without warning. This reminded me of my break up with Michael, so I felt particularly sympathetic. And because I believe that the best way to get over one man is to get under another, I had had a brilliant idea: she should come to an orgy, and have sex with Jefferson! I’d promptly emailed Jefferson and he’d been game.
“They got together; I think they had sex,” Daniel said.
“Really? Jefferson didn’t tell me that.” Sometimes he is so discreet. “I’m so glad,” I went on. “I think it’s really important to have sex with someone else as soon as possible after a breakup. I think it really takes your mind off the breakup and reminds you that you are attractive.”
“Yeah, well,” and here Daniel smirked, “Wendy and I had sex last week.”
“Daniel!” I socked him on the arm. “You did?”
“Yeah, we were just hanging out in my room, lying on my bed together and…”
“But Daniel,” I said, mortified, “Last week the whole time I was going on about how important it is to have sex after a break up you’d already had sex with her?”
“No, that was later.”
“Oh,” I said mollified. But still. The thought of Wendy’s post-breakup sex life, and my efforts to encourage it, somehow seemed less appealing now.
We lay there for a minute, not talking.
After a few moments Daniel said, “I think this woman I’ve been dating and I are getting serious.”
I didn’t move, but I felt tears prick my eyes.
And then I felt guilty because it wasn’t so much that Daniel was ending it, but that, coming on top of my debacle with Evan, not to mention my still-simmering misery over Jeremy, I felt I was owed a little karmic good will. Now this?
I hadn’t cried before, when Daniel had been in tears and I’d comforted him. I wiped my cheek.
“OK,” I said. And sniffled.
Then Daniel started to cry, too. So there were the two of us, weeping and cuddling and nodding emphatically at one another. Eventually I had to go to the bathroom for a roll of toilet paper. I handed him a hank of paper, and noisily blew my own nose.
“It’s just sad,” Daniel cried. “I don’t want you to think I’m choosing her over you. It’s not like that. I wish you could love two people at once.”
Well, of course some people do that. And maybe Daniel is one of them. I’m not, however.
“It’s OK,” I kept repeating, even though I couldn’t stop crying. And I think he was right – we don’t have a future together, and he wants a serious relationship, and he’s attracted to someone new. But still.
And, hesitating, I said, “Was it because I want children? Was that the reason?” I had refrained from asking that question before, because I make it a policy not to ask for information I may not like. But now I was risking my pride in the hope that he would say yes, the only reason he was choosing this new girl was because I want kids and he doesn't. But what if it was because he felt something for her he'd never felt for me? What he just didn’t see us together? I didn’t see us together, for that matter, but still.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t know if that was all of it. I do know that knowing that about you [that I want kids] made me hold myself back.”
“You made yourself hold yourself back?” I said, distracted.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know it was hard for you. I didn’t know you had to hold yourself back. That makes me feel a little better.” I started to cry again, sad, relieved tears. “And that’s why I couldn’t respond to your emails right away,” I went on, emboldened. “That was my way of holding myself back.”
“I know,” he said.
“You knew?” I hadn’t figured Daniel for that much insight. I squirmed in his arms. “The whole time I was trying to be detached and you knew it was just a front?”
“Well, not the whole time,” Daniel admitted. “But I caught on eventually.”
“Oh,” I said again, embarrassed.
There was more in this vein – tears interspersed with cuddling and kissing and as our clothes came off, I half-whispered, passionately, “Listen, tonight I want you to let me say all the things I haven’t let myself say to you, OK?”
“OK.”
I climbed on top of him in the dim light and started to cry again. “I love you,” I declared, my voice clogged with tears.
“I love you too,” he said.
We had sex and the funny thing is, I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I think I came. I think he did. And then I think we cried some more, and then we went to sleep.
In my room he stretched his long body out on my bed. I cuddled up to him, and he started to laugh. “What?” I said.
“No, you just nuzzle up so close,” he said. It was true, may face was buried in his neck. My turn to be sheepish. “I like it,” he reassured me.
“How’s Wendy?” I asked. Last week his roommate had been broken up with by her boyfriend of a year and a half, without warning. This reminded me of my break up with Michael, so I felt particularly sympathetic. And because I believe that the best way to get over one man is to get under another, I had had a brilliant idea: she should come to an orgy, and have sex with Jefferson! I’d promptly emailed Jefferson and he’d been game.
“They got together; I think they had sex,” Daniel said.
“Really? Jefferson didn’t tell me that.” Sometimes he is so discreet. “I’m so glad,” I went on. “I think it’s really important to have sex with someone else as soon as possible after a breakup. I think it really takes your mind off the breakup and reminds you that you are attractive.”
“Yeah, well,” and here Daniel smirked, “Wendy and I had sex last week.”
“Daniel!” I socked him on the arm. “You did?”
“Yeah, we were just hanging out in my room, lying on my bed together and…”
“But Daniel,” I said, mortified, “Last week the whole time I was going on about how important it is to have sex after a break up you’d already had sex with her?”
“No, that was later.”
“Oh,” I said mollified. But still. The thought of Wendy’s post-breakup sex life, and my efforts to encourage it, somehow seemed less appealing now.
We lay there for a minute, not talking.
After a few moments Daniel said, “I think this woman I’ve been dating and I are getting serious.”
I didn’t move, but I felt tears prick my eyes.
And then I felt guilty because it wasn’t so much that Daniel was ending it, but that, coming on top of my debacle with Evan, not to mention my still-simmering misery over Jeremy, I felt I was owed a little karmic good will. Now this?
I hadn’t cried before, when Daniel had been in tears and I’d comforted him. I wiped my cheek.
“OK,” I said. And sniffled.
Then Daniel started to cry, too. So there were the two of us, weeping and cuddling and nodding emphatically at one another. Eventually I had to go to the bathroom for a roll of toilet paper. I handed him a hank of paper, and noisily blew my own nose.
“It’s just sad,” Daniel cried. “I don’t want you to think I’m choosing her over you. It’s not like that. I wish you could love two people at once.”
Well, of course some people do that. And maybe Daniel is one of them. I’m not, however.
“It’s OK,” I kept repeating, even though I couldn’t stop crying. And I think he was right – we don’t have a future together, and he wants a serious relationship, and he’s attracted to someone new. But still.
And, hesitating, I said, “Was it because I want children? Was that the reason?” I had refrained from asking that question before, because I make it a policy not to ask for information I may not like. But now I was risking my pride in the hope that he would say yes, the only reason he was choosing this new girl was because I want kids and he doesn't. But what if it was because he felt something for her he'd never felt for me? What he just didn’t see us together? I didn’t see us together, for that matter, but still.
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I don’t know if that was all of it. I do know that knowing that about you [that I want kids] made me hold myself back.”
“You made yourself hold yourself back?” I said, distracted.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know it was hard for you. I didn’t know you had to hold yourself back. That makes me feel a little better.” I started to cry again, sad, relieved tears. “And that’s why I couldn’t respond to your emails right away,” I went on, emboldened. “That was my way of holding myself back.”
“I know,” he said.
“You knew?” I hadn’t figured Daniel for that much insight. I squirmed in his arms. “The whole time I was trying to be detached and you knew it was just a front?”
“Well, not the whole time,” Daniel admitted. “But I caught on eventually.”
“Oh,” I said again, embarrassed.
There was more in this vein – tears interspersed with cuddling and kissing and as our clothes came off, I half-whispered, passionately, “Listen, tonight I want you to let me say all the things I haven’t let myself say to you, OK?”
“OK.”
I climbed on top of him in the dim light and started to cry again. “I love you,” I declared, my voice clogged with tears.
“I love you too,” he said.
We had sex and the funny thing is, I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I think I came. I think he did. And then I think we cried some more, and then we went to sleep.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Melodrama!
Everything with Evan has gone up in smoke!
Last night, after much arguing with myself over the wisdom of calling the man I liked rather than waiting for him to call me, I dialed his number. It was 10:30.
“Hi Evan. It’s Lily.”
“Oh … hi.” He sounded unenthusiastic. Even though I am hypersensitive and can feel rejected over almost anything, I was pretty sure I wasn’t imagining his lukewarm response.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” I asked. This is a way of saying “Do you want to talk to me?” without actually saying it.
“No … I have a few minutes to spare.”
This was looking grim indeed. Our conversation stuttered along for a few minutes until finally I said, “Well, it doesn’t sound like this is the best time for you, so I’ll let you go.”
“Why do you say that?” He was using his psychotherapist’s techniques on me! Making me answer questions! Also, why was he saying “Why do you say that?” instead of saying “Well, yes..” or “No, don’t be silly…”
“Well,” I swallowed, and played with the edge of my quilt. I was lying in bed. “You didn’t sound very happy to hear from me, and I’d rather not bother you if that’s the case.”
“You don’t want to bother me? Why not?” For the first time this evening I heard warmth in Evan’s voice.
“Why don’t I want to bother you?” What kind of a conversation was this? “Well, I’d never want you to pick up the phone and think, ‘Oh no, not her.’ I … wouldn’t want to contribute to your unhappiness. I’d rather not talk to you in that case.”
“Well,” Evan said at last. “I’ve been upset about our talk on Saturday night. And I didn’t know if I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh.” I said, taken aback. “Were you planning to tell me this?”
“I’m telling you now,” said Evan flatly, and my hackles rose.
“I’m sorry if I offended you,” I began.
“You did offend me,” Evan said. “My job and Group X is very important to me. John Smith is a very important person in my life, and it offends me when people refer to him as a cult leader.”
Had I done that? Well, sort of. I’d expressed my fears about Group X. I’d tried to do it politely and with respect for his intelligence and allegiances, but. Evan continued, “I want to know why it is why people feel free to give their opinions on something they know nothing about.”
But—
You’re so hostile, I thought, and grimaced at my own use of psychological clichés as Evan went on: Why is it that people think I’m in a cult?” His voice rose. “I’m obviously an intelligent young man—” yes, certainly, “You would think that people might not make assumptions about things they’ve read on the Internet.”
“Evan, by people, do you mean me?” Because seriously, I thought I’d behaved fairly well, trying to understand his involvement with Group X without dismissing him as kind of nuts. And I thought he’d thought so too, judging by the lovely and passionate things he’d said to me later that night.
“Yes, I do mean you.” Oh. “You did offend me—“
“I never meant to offend you—“
“I don’t care that you didn’t mean to offend me,” Evan snapped. So I saw. “You did offend me. What about that?”
There was a long silence. At last I said, “Like I said, I’m sorry that I offended you.” Then: “I think I’m going to go now.” I hung up.
I stared at the display screen. We’d been on the phone for 16 minutes and 33 seconds. My heart was pounding. Evan didn’t call back.
I lay there, my heart still pounding and the phone not ringing and I thought, The things I said didn’t bother you when you were fucking me, did they? And I concocted this theory:
Sometime after we’d had sex that last night, Evan had decided that he no longer wanted to see me. I played with the idea that he felt so strongly about me that he’d deliberately pushed me away – an explanation favored by the romantic and easily injured everywhere – but eventually I decided that I didn’t know the reason for his decision. But he didn't want to see me. And because Evan is used to feeling defensive about Group X, it’s easy to continue to feel defensive about Group X and my doubts about something so important to him were a good enough excuse to dump me if he wanted to blame me for his decision. Which I think he did. I think Evan felt he had to get mad at me in order to justify dumping me. But he didn’t: he only had to tell me he’d changed his mind.
And I wasn’t quite angry, though I was close. On Saturday night, when I’d been near tears, insisting, “I don’t want to have this discussion with you now,” Evan had said, “Look, this talk tonight might end things between us, but I’m not unkind.” And I’d relaxed, because I believed this was true, that Evan was kind. And later, after our talk, when we’d been inching closer together, our limbs touching, he’d said, “I give myself a lot of credit, I think I’m more honest than most guys. You’re very honest too,” he admitted, “But I feel like I deserve more credit because I’m a guy and I think that in general women are braver and more honest than men.”
“You do, eh?” I smirked. “You think you deserve special credit?”
“Yeah,” he said sheepishly, then laughed.
And as I stared at the ceiling I thought, You’re neither honest nor kind. I don’t believe Evan picked a fight with me because I was disrespectful of something that’s important to him. He picked a fight with me because he needed an excuse to be angry.
Hmmmph, I thought. Is there something lacking in my judgment? First Jeremy, now Evan. At times like these it’s good to be reminded that some people don’t find me totally unpalatable. That is, attractive people: Jefferson and Daniel. Then I felt sorry for myself, wondering if I would ever find someone who returned my feelings, was kind, not in a cult, and wasn’t opposed to possibly having children with me one day.
The thing is, I don’t think his about face (or volte-face, as I believe the French call it) can be attributed to the cult. I think he made this decision all on his own.
It’s also instructive to note that while I am unhappy about this turn of events, I haven’t completely lost it, as I did over Jeremy. Part of the reason is because I didn’t know Evan as long, nor did I like and admire him as much. But I think an important part of the reason I’ve managed to retain (mostly anyway) my equilibrium is because he was so passionate, however unreasonable. He wasn’t lukewarm, at least. I can dismiss this failure more easily because Evan’s behavior was so disturbing and, in my opinion, so out of order that I can hardly regret the fact that I won’t be seeing him any longer.
So I guess this is it with me and Evan. I feel totally sideswiped: I didn’t see this coming.
Last night, after much arguing with myself over the wisdom of calling the man I liked rather than waiting for him to call me, I dialed his number. It was 10:30.
“Hi Evan. It’s Lily.”
“Oh … hi.” He sounded unenthusiastic. Even though I am hypersensitive and can feel rejected over almost anything, I was pretty sure I wasn’t imagining his lukewarm response.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” I asked. This is a way of saying “Do you want to talk to me?” without actually saying it.
“No … I have a few minutes to spare.”
This was looking grim indeed. Our conversation stuttered along for a few minutes until finally I said, “Well, it doesn’t sound like this is the best time for you, so I’ll let you go.”
“Why do you say that?” He was using his psychotherapist’s techniques on me! Making me answer questions! Also, why was he saying “Why do you say that?” instead of saying “Well, yes..” or “No, don’t be silly…”
“Well,” I swallowed, and played with the edge of my quilt. I was lying in bed. “You didn’t sound very happy to hear from me, and I’d rather not bother you if that’s the case.”
“You don’t want to bother me? Why not?” For the first time this evening I heard warmth in Evan’s voice.
“Why don’t I want to bother you?” What kind of a conversation was this? “Well, I’d never want you to pick up the phone and think, ‘Oh no, not her.’ I … wouldn’t want to contribute to your unhappiness. I’d rather not talk to you in that case.”
“Well,” Evan said at last. “I’ve been upset about our talk on Saturday night. And I didn’t know if I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh.” I said, taken aback. “Were you planning to tell me this?”
“I’m telling you now,” said Evan flatly, and my hackles rose.
“I’m sorry if I offended you,” I began.
“You did offend me,” Evan said. “My job and Group X is very important to me. John Smith is a very important person in my life, and it offends me when people refer to him as a cult leader.”
Had I done that? Well, sort of. I’d expressed my fears about Group X. I’d tried to do it politely and with respect for his intelligence and allegiances, but. Evan continued, “I want to know why it is why people feel free to give their opinions on something they know nothing about.”
But—
You’re so hostile, I thought, and grimaced at my own use of psychological clichés as Evan went on: Why is it that people think I’m in a cult?” His voice rose. “I’m obviously an intelligent young man—” yes, certainly, “You would think that people might not make assumptions about things they’ve read on the Internet.”
“Evan, by people, do you mean me?” Because seriously, I thought I’d behaved fairly well, trying to understand his involvement with Group X without dismissing him as kind of nuts. And I thought he’d thought so too, judging by the lovely and passionate things he’d said to me later that night.
“Yes, I do mean you.” Oh. “You did offend me—“
“I never meant to offend you—“
“I don’t care that you didn’t mean to offend me,” Evan snapped. So I saw. “You did offend me. What about that?”
There was a long silence. At last I said, “Like I said, I’m sorry that I offended you.” Then: “I think I’m going to go now.” I hung up.
I stared at the display screen. We’d been on the phone for 16 minutes and 33 seconds. My heart was pounding. Evan didn’t call back.
I lay there, my heart still pounding and the phone not ringing and I thought, The things I said didn’t bother you when you were fucking me, did they? And I concocted this theory:
Sometime after we’d had sex that last night, Evan had decided that he no longer wanted to see me. I played with the idea that he felt so strongly about me that he’d deliberately pushed me away – an explanation favored by the romantic and easily injured everywhere – but eventually I decided that I didn’t know the reason for his decision. But he didn't want to see me. And because Evan is used to feeling defensive about Group X, it’s easy to continue to feel defensive about Group X and my doubts about something so important to him were a good enough excuse to dump me if he wanted to blame me for his decision. Which I think he did. I think Evan felt he had to get mad at me in order to justify dumping me. But he didn’t: he only had to tell me he’d changed his mind.
And I wasn’t quite angry, though I was close. On Saturday night, when I’d been near tears, insisting, “I don’t want to have this discussion with you now,” Evan had said, “Look, this talk tonight might end things between us, but I’m not unkind.” And I’d relaxed, because I believed this was true, that Evan was kind. And later, after our talk, when we’d been inching closer together, our limbs touching, he’d said, “I give myself a lot of credit, I think I’m more honest than most guys. You’re very honest too,” he admitted, “But I feel like I deserve more credit because I’m a guy and I think that in general women are braver and more honest than men.”
“You do, eh?” I smirked. “You think you deserve special credit?”
“Yeah,” he said sheepishly, then laughed.
And as I stared at the ceiling I thought, You’re neither honest nor kind. I don’t believe Evan picked a fight with me because I was disrespectful of something that’s important to him. He picked a fight with me because he needed an excuse to be angry.
Hmmmph, I thought. Is there something lacking in my judgment? First Jeremy, now Evan. At times like these it’s good to be reminded that some people don’t find me totally unpalatable. That is, attractive people: Jefferson and Daniel. Then I felt sorry for myself, wondering if I would ever find someone who returned my feelings, was kind, not in a cult, and wasn’t opposed to possibly having children with me one day.
The thing is, I don’t think his about face (or volte-face, as I believe the French call it) can be attributed to the cult. I think he made this decision all on his own.
It’s also instructive to note that while I am unhappy about this turn of events, I haven’t completely lost it, as I did over Jeremy. Part of the reason is because I didn’t know Evan as long, nor did I like and admire him as much. But I think an important part of the reason I’ve managed to retain (mostly anyway) my equilibrium is because he was so passionate, however unreasonable. He wasn’t lukewarm, at least. I can dismiss this failure more easily because Evan’s behavior was so disturbing and, in my opinion, so out of order that I can hardly regret the fact that I won’t be seeing him any longer.
So I guess this is it with me and Evan. I feel totally sideswiped: I didn’t see this coming.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
The Waiting Game
Patience is not my strong suit. It is not, in fact, any suit of mine at all. I decided that, if I hadn't heard from Jeremy by Wednesday, a week after his email, I'd send him a brief note. Which, assuming I am clean, would read as follows:
Hi Jeremy,
I just wanted to let you know that all my tests came back clear. I just didn’t want
you to think I’d given you something.
I get the distinct impression you’ve dropped me. That’s OK, though obviously
disappointing for me, since I like you. What is not so OK is that you haven’t
actually told me this. I can take a hint, but it’s far preferable that you actually
communicate your feelings to me. It’s a much kinder way to end things.
It was sort of pointed, but we'd had five dates, and three of those were marathon sex sessions, complete with cuddling, boozy dinners and whatnot. I think that if you have sex with someone, even if that someone is a self-declared slut, you ought to end it with her in person. Or at the very least end it. By, you know, email or something.
But, like I said, patience is not really something I excel at. So this morning I emailed him and merely asked if he wanted to get together.
I emailed him at around 9:30. It's now 2:21, and I haven't heard back. I know, that's not very long in the scheme of things, but considering the context -- he never responded to the email I sent him over a week ago, in the past when I've heard from him in the affirmative it's usually within an hour or two and, oh yeah, I might have given him an STI -- well, I think the odds are against me here.
I'm so disappointed.
Of course, this is a lesson to me: don't develop elaborate domestic fantasies about men you don't know very well, even if they appear to be nice Jewish boys who have their own apartments and want serious relationships. Oops, too late. But the thing is, any guy who doesn't at least write to tell me he's breaking it off is not actually a nice boy, Jewish or otherwise, and is therefore not worthy of my bourgeois dreams of marital bliss. Unfortunately, this sort of knowledge is not intuitive on my part, and usually takes a while—like, months!—to sink into my brain. In the meanwhile, there'll be a lot of Why doesn't he like me? and I'm not attractive. And, oh, I hate this sort of lesson! I want my lessons to be benign and pleasantly surprising! Grr.
Five minutes later…
The minute I wrote that last entry I checked my inbox. My face went hot when I saw there was an email from Jeremy: Did I want to see a movie?
Maybe I overreact in order to prepare myself for rejection, so that way if it comes I don't feel so bad.
But. I have to have a very delicate chat with him. Namely: I don't mean to be pushy, but I don't hear from you. If you do want to see me, you should be contacting, me, too. Of course, I s’pose it’s a double standard since I'm the girl who never emails Daniel!
I am so relieved. And ashamed of how happy I am to have heard from him.
Hi Jeremy,
I just wanted to let you know that all my tests came back clear. I just didn’t want
you to think I’d given you something.
I get the distinct impression you’ve dropped me. That’s OK, though obviously
disappointing for me, since I like you. What is not so OK is that you haven’t
actually told me this. I can take a hint, but it’s far preferable that you actually
communicate your feelings to me. It’s a much kinder way to end things.
It was sort of pointed, but we'd had five dates, and three of those were marathon sex sessions, complete with cuddling, boozy dinners and whatnot. I think that if you have sex with someone, even if that someone is a self-declared slut, you ought to end it with her in person. Or at the very least end it. By, you know, email or something.
But, like I said, patience is not really something I excel at. So this morning I emailed him and merely asked if he wanted to get together.
I emailed him at around 9:30. It's now 2:21, and I haven't heard back. I know, that's not very long in the scheme of things, but considering the context -- he never responded to the email I sent him over a week ago, in the past when I've heard from him in the affirmative it's usually within an hour or two and, oh yeah, I might have given him an STI -- well, I think the odds are against me here.
I'm so disappointed.
Of course, this is a lesson to me: don't develop elaborate domestic fantasies about men you don't know very well, even if they appear to be nice Jewish boys who have their own apartments and want serious relationships. Oops, too late. But the thing is, any guy who doesn't at least write to tell me he's breaking it off is not actually a nice boy, Jewish or otherwise, and is therefore not worthy of my bourgeois dreams of marital bliss. Unfortunately, this sort of knowledge is not intuitive on my part, and usually takes a while—like, months!—to sink into my brain. In the meanwhile, there'll be a lot of Why doesn't he like me? and I'm not attractive. And, oh, I hate this sort of lesson! I want my lessons to be benign and pleasantly surprising! Grr.
Five minutes later…
The minute I wrote that last entry I checked my inbox. My face went hot when I saw there was an email from Jeremy: Did I want to see a movie?
Maybe I overreact in order to prepare myself for rejection, so that way if it comes I don't feel so bad.
But. I have to have a very delicate chat with him. Namely: I don't mean to be pushy, but I don't hear from you. If you do want to see me, you should be contacting, me, too. Of course, I s’pose it’s a double standard since I'm the girl who never emails Daniel!
I am so relieved. And ashamed of how happy I am to have heard from him.
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