Alone

by Michelle Parise

  The Farm Boy kisses me good at midnight, close to the spot of that memory, then lights a cigarette and looks away. I know he’s thinking of The Brazilian Girl just like I’m thinking of The Man with the White Shirt. I know and it’s okay. This is our undeclared agreement.

  In the new year we continue on, seeing each other once a week or so, not really dating, but spending time together. I don’t like going to his place, which is cramped and messy and in a house with a million other people. So Farm Boy comes to my apartment, with its spaciousness and cleanliness, and we order in Thai food and watch movies and smoke weed on my balcony. I listen to him talk for hours until finally we go to bed.

  We don’t go out for dinner or go to the art gallery or have expensive cocktails or go dancing like I would do if I was actually dating someone. Instead, our relationship is about hanging out. I’m fine with it that way. As long as I can have regular good sex with one person, I’m halfway to happy.

  It’s something for right now, me at forty-three, tired of dating and being disappointed, tired of texting and being ghosted, and not at all interested in swiping some app where men my own age will ignore me or send me dick pics. So I choose this instead. For now I will hang out with this sweet twenty-seven-year-old, who calls to make sure I’m doing okay and cooks me amazing meals and gives me, finally, a body I want to sleep beside on a regular basis.

  If he’s had a lot to drink, he snores, and I kind of like it, because it makes me feel like The Man with the White Shirt is there beside me. I don’t even put my ear plugs in like I normally would. I turn away, and pretend White Shirt is at my side. Even though Farm Boy feels and smells different, his snores are White Shirt’s snores and I feel no guilt pretending. And I know he wouldn’t mind anyway, because he’s dreaming about his Brazilian girl and the magic only she can give him.

  So we go on like this for a long, long time. We are friends and lovers and pretenders together. It works for us. It’s just this, it isn’t something else.

  MONOGAMISH

  After a time I’m seeing both of them, The Farm Boy and yes, occasionally, The Man with the White Shirt. Here I am with two lovers, two men who care deeply for me, but neither of whom is my boyfriend. And together, they don’t add up to one, either. In this rare case, one plus one equals negative one to me. Negative one real partner.

  It bugs me that this is my love life. That my only choice is polyamory or celibacy. So what can I do? Sex is one of the main reasons I want a monogamous relationship, honestly. I want to have safe, good sex, regularly and often, and the best way of getting that is in a committed relationship. For The Man with the White Shirt, and others like him, variety is important. Being able to pursue whomever you’re interested in, whenever you want. Something about the energy you get from a new relationship. Which all sounds great, I’m not going to lie. And he and I have talked about it, a lot. But I’ll tell you what I told him: the scales are tipped waaaay in his favour in this arrangement.

  White Shirt and I are both in our forties now. And that means he is still young, and I am old. Even though we’re the same age. White Shirt is a handsome and charming man. He is kind, sweet, and very non-threatening to women. I am as threatening as you get to men. I own my own home. I have a successful career. I’m often smarter and funnier than them.

  And let’s not forget the baggage. I have a child and an ex-husband and a gigantic hole in my heart caused by the gigantic trauma that was The Bomb. White Shirt has no such baggage. He has no ties or responsibilities. He can be light and easygoing and spontaneous, all attractive qualities in a person. I am bound by a complicated co-parenting schedule and mortgage payments and a gigantic hole in my heart.

  Lastly, there’s danger. When White Shirt sleeps with other women, the worst that happens is that maybe it wasn’t that great. When I sleep with other men, I am rolling the dice every single time. Even the nice, smart, educated, handsome ones can turn into monsters, remember? I remember. So there’s nothing equal about non-monogamy to me. It’s a totally different game for each of us, and I am so tired of playing it.

  WILDWOOD

  I’m in Mexico. By myself. In a small apartment in the old town of Puerto Vallarta, a city I love and know well. I was first here in 1998, backpacking with my boyfriend at the time, The Musician. We stayed in a little hotel for eleven American dollars per night, eating fish, freshly caught and cooked on the beach, served on sticks. It’s always been one of my top vacation memories, the freedom of it, the fun.

  In 2015, I was here with The Man with the White Shirt. Eight days of heady bliss, staying in an apartment on the bank of the river, buying groceries like locals, our days filled with sun, cerveza, and sex.

  This time, in 2018, I’m in an apartment on my own, high up the hill overlooking the ocean. I’m so burnt out from work and life’s demands that I don’t care that no one is here with me. Okay, I care, but it isn’t debilitating. It hasn’t stopped me from coming all this way and enjoying myself. Leading up to it, I even mentally prepared that I might cry the entire time, but at least I’d be in Mexico. And this is the most progress I’ve made in the six years since The Bomb, to be on vacation by myself and to love it.

  In truth I’m not all by myself. Each night I hang out with a large group of gay men that I met through a cool guy I know from Vancouver. He’s in Puerto Vallarta with his husband, a thing I only discovered on Instagram after I booked the trip, delighted to see photos of his manicured toenails on the beach, painted the same blue as my own. He told me to text him when I arrived, and I thought maybe I’d have dinner with them one of the nights and that would be nice, since the idea of eating all those meals alone was daunting. But instead, he and his husband have folded me into their large group of fellas, taking me along to bar after bar, drinking and doing karaoke and dancing, not a woman in sight.

  One of their friends is a young Portuguese guy I instantly click with. We become fast friends and hang out all night together, calling each other Little Brother and Little Sister, even though I’m more than a decade older. Little Brother lives in Puerto Vallarta part of the year and Toronto the other part. He’s more subdued than the other guys, who are all making the most of their vacation in a manner I can only describe as hedonistic.

  The night we meet, we all dance at a popular gay bar until 2:00 a.m., and when all the guys in our group disperse, Little Brother says to me, “Okay, you wanna go to a place with good music now?” and we go across the street to another bar where I don’t know any of the music but it is good, really good. We dance for two more hours and in that time, I am free, more free than I’ve felt in all my forty-three years. I don’t think about The Man with the White Shirt. Or The Ex-husband, or even Farm Boy. I don’t think about work or Birdie or my family or the leaky faucet in my kitchen or the baseboards that need painting or how my car needed an oil change six months ago and I still haven’t done it yet. I don’t think of any of it. I just dance.

  I just dance in Mexico at 4:00 a.m. in an open-air bar and don’t have to worry about skeezy guys hitting on me because they’re all gay here, and I am free. Free to move my body however I want, free to smile at people without that being an invitation to unwanted attention. Free to dance with Little Brother and not have a care in the world. In these few hot hours in this tiny bar in Puerto Vallarta, all of the last six complicated years of my life evaporate.

  And this is it: unfiltered, actual happiness.

  Each night I hang out with the guys and spend my days alone. I paint watercolours and read and listen to podcasts and swim in the pool that is right below my apartment window. I cook myself lunch and eat it on the tiled balcony overlooking the ocean. I nap for as long as I like. It’s perfect, and I don’t cry. Not once. I’ve finally severed The Lonely from its conjoined twin, Alone. Loneliness and being alone are no longer one and the same for me. I can be one without feeling the other. Holy fuck, finally. I finally feel like I’m going to find my way out of the wildwood.

  I begin to shore up. I fight hard
, daily, to face that dark pit of despair, that well I’m so afraid of falling down. But in order to fight it, I really have to concentrate on finding the silver lining, that thin, silvery thread that keeps me in this world. It’s lucky that no matter what, I always manage to find something sparkling out of the corner of my eye, something to hold fast to. Like a flower that sprouted up in a parking lot, right there in the middle of concrete and garbage. Or the sound of a friend’s big laugh — huge and deep and infectious. Or the smell of a baby’s head. No, even better, the smell of a co-worker’s baby’s head, a baby I can hand back as soon as the crying starts.

  Once I start to look, I find silver linings everywhere — in the way Birdie rolls her eyes just like I do. Or the way all the women I know elevate one another. Or the fact that we humans ever invented airplanes. And photography. And birth control. I decide to believe that there’s a silver lining with me always, underneath me, inside me, because I can’t lose hope to despair. If I do, despair will swallow me whole and not even taste me.

  Instead, hope takes its time. Hope holds my hand.

  Hope throws daggers at despair and shouts fuck off! and runs down the street in fits of giggles with her girlfriends.

  Hope glints in the sun. It’s a text that says, I have your back.

  It’s Birdie’s voice calling out from her room at night, piercing the silence, “Hey, Mom? I loooove youuuu! Have a good niiiight!”

  It’s the glowing centre of me that’s been dampened, sure, but will never be extinguished.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I have so much love and gratitude. With special thanks to:

  Frank Parise for lifelong lessons in writing, optimism, and meatball making.

  Tom Allen, my mentor, friend, Borg, and earliest champion of this book.

  Antonette Blanchard for igniting my childhood writing and lifting me through difficult times.

  Joshua Loberg, my philosopher cowboy, steady with love and intelligence, and for consistently cooking me the best eggs ever.

  Kim Reeves for friendship and loyalty unparalleled — at recess and in life.

  Carla Vincenzi, my anchor, no matter the distance between us.

  Sergio Abegão for the fireworks and the circles, the magic and the drama.

  Garvia Bailey, Nana aba Duncan, Lauren Hancock, and Reuben Maan for real talks, big laughs, tea and tears, purse tequila, all the dancing, and late night bike rides.

  Marc Apollonio, the king of story structure, friendship, ear-splitting sneezes, and deep conversations.

  The Ships, Vanessa Caldwell, Elizabeth Bowie, and Nora Young for being there with a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, wisecracks, and wise words as I wrote this story.

  Daemon Fairless for reading the first ten thousand words I wrote and telling me to keep going.

  Scott Sellers for reminding me I was a writer, pushing me to dig deeper, and insisting that people needed to hear what I had to say.

  Samantha Haywood, my cheerleader, champion, agent, and friend.

  Everyone at Dundurn Press for their enthusiasm and support. And to Jess Shulman for editing with clarity, care, and humour.

  Everyone at CBC Podcasts, especially Veronica Simmonds for being a magical machine, Fabiola Carletti for making the internet (and world) a better place with her generous spirit, and Leslie Merklinger and Arif Noorani, who gave me the platform to adapt this story into something people all over the world would listen to and connect with.

  The fans of the podcast for your messages, tweets, and actual paper letters, proof we are never really alone. Especially to the one who designs kick-ass stickers and pins, the one who sent me hand-painted art from the crater, the one who found me while lying under a bed of desert stars, and the kindred spirit who had me in their ears as they waited for chemo … I’m grateful for the modern-day pen pals we’ve become. Hazak v’ematz!

  Finally, to Birdie and to My Rogue for supporting this telling of our story.

  Forza e coraggio,

  Michelle, 2019

  Intimate, alive, and accessible, the story flows like a conversation with your most interesting, wise, and exciting friend.

  — EMILY URQUHART, author of Beyond the Pale

  The church wedding, the new house, a beautiful baby … Michelle was sold a dream and bought into it. But one day, nine years in, she wakes up in an empty bed, and The Husband isn’t there. Then, he drops The Bomb — he was having an affair with a woman at work.

  Adrift and on the edge of forty — fuelled by grief, booze, and one-night stands — Michelle battles the monster she calls Loneliness, juggling being a part-time parent and part-time partier. Though dangerously close to rock bottom, Michelle takes a chance on love again with a dashing but complicated man — The Man with the White Shirt.

  Michelle, an expert in “emotional forensics,” dives into the wreckage with candour and humour, uncovering a story about falling in and out of love, divorce, single parent hood, and the messy world of dating. What she finds, beneath it all, is life and the courage to face it alone.

  The storytelling is exemplary.… She walks the tightrope between hope and despair, darkness and light.

  — SHARON BALA, author of The Boat People, on the podcast Alone: A Love Story

  MICHELLE PARISE is an award-winning journalist, writer, and performer. She has worked for the CBC for more than two decades, in everything from radio news and children’s television to music programming and documentary making, as well as at the helm of many national radio programs. She’s also a soccer player, parent, and champion campfire builder. The daughter of Italian immigrants, she was born and raised in Toronto where she still lives today.

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  Beautifully and powerfully written, Alone: A Love Story left me heartbroken and inspired at the same time.

  — TERRY FALLIS, bestselling author of Albatross

  Michelle Parise is the best company.

  Her passion and humour leap off the page.

  — CAMILLA GIBB, internationally acclaimed author

  A lyrical tribute to the intoxicating, dramatic, destructive nature of love. I could not stop reading Michelle’s story, and now I cannot stop thinking about it.

  — ANNA MARIA TREMONTI, acclaimed journalist and broadcaster

  A courageous and full-throttled confessional.

  — DAEMON FAIRLESS, journalist and author of Mad Blood Stirring

  Brave, resonant, and oh so raw.

  — ANDREA SILENZI, host of the podcast Why Oh Why

  Michelle takes us into the heart’s dark corners with dark humour and deep honesty, pouring out her story like a funny, fierce friend.

  — CHRISTA COUTURE, author of How to Lose Everything

  Addictively, heartbreakingly great. She will inspire you and she will devastate you, and you will be better for it.

  — KATIE BOLAND, actor, writer, and filmmaker