“I wasn’t totally honest with you about the work conference.” He rubbed his chin and heat blazed through me when I saw the hospital bracelet. “I needed some time to think about us, and then when I started, I didn’t want to think about us, so I started playing World of Warcraft.”
“And you forgot to take your insulin?” I said. He nodded. “You had phone reminders.”
“I just sort of ignored them telling myself I’d take it later and then I forgot.”
“You nearly died because of a stupid video game.” I clutched at the edge of the table until my knuckles turned white. “Again?”
“I wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t gone slutting it up in Goa.”
Red veiled my vision. He was an adult and responsible for his own actions. I owned up to mine. He couldn’t blame me for his. But what upset me the most was that he had never before said such disrespectful things to me. Maybe it was always there, but I never saw it because we had never really tested our relationship.
I felt like I no longer knew who he was. This wasn’t the man I fell in love with.
“I can’t do this,” I said. I was barely able to keep myself together. I couldn’t bear the responsibility of keeping him together, too. “You have an addiction, and you need help. I’m not going to marry someone who I’m scared I’ll have to bury because of a video game overdose.”
He had to find a healthier way to deal with his grief than escaping into that fantasy world.
“You can’t be done with us.” His voice became desperate. “I love you.”
“Adam,” I paused as all of the emotions I had been holding back, all of the thoughts I had been fighting not to think about, burst forward. “I love you, too. But I can’t marry you.”
Tears pooled in my eyes, as I knew I couldn’t stay in this relationship any longer. As much as it broke my heart, we had become different people and wanted very different things out of life.
With his pained sobs pulsing through the earphones, I pressed my hands to my heated face, and the moment I stemmed the tears with my fingertips, the cartoon-like bloop of the call disconnecting sounded. As I opened my eyes and stared at the blank screen, an odd feeling washed over me. More of a lack of feeling, total and complete numbness. Perhaps it was because I had used up all of my allotted emotions for the week, or perhaps it was because I had finally made a good decision.
The latter would really be a welcome change.
I turned the key into the doorknob as quietly as I could, but the girls were awake. The moment I set foot in the door, the inquisition began. After confirming that I was, in fact, emotionally stable and not in some bhang-induced delirium, Lana, always seeing the silver lining, clapped and beamed, “So you’ve come to the single side, just in time for Southeast Asia.”
Chapter 13
Date: February 18, 2010
Chiang Mai, Thailand
It is a truth universally acknowledged by travelers that when you set off into exotic locations, you will get sick. It’s not if, but when. No matter how careful you are, your body will be introduced to new microbes in a variety of manners: touching strangers, touching things strangers with unwashed hands have touched, improperly cooked food, animals, insects, contaminated ice, tap water. Given that I had made it through India physically unscathed, save for the odd upset stomach here and there, I was lucky. But two days into our stay in the city of Chiang Mai, tucked away in the jungles of Thailand, my luck ran out.
After a few nights in the hot and sticky capital of Bangkok, we flew north and settled into a basic guesthouse across the street from the Tha Phae Gate, a relic of ancient Thailand that separated the old city of Chiang Mai from the new. Chiang Mai was a charming little city with cute boutiques, cosmopolitan cafés, and friendly people who proved why Thailand was called the Land of Smiles. Our days were spent wandering through the pagodas and temples, hunting down the city’s best Nutella crepes, buying handicrafts at the night market and getting massages each day. No, no happy endings for us. But on our third day, I woke up wracked with nausea, a raging headache, aching joints, fatigue, and fever. My next three days were spent bedridden on a thin, lumpy mattress on a creaky frame, alternating between chills and sweats, convinced that I was going to die of malaria. As I lay in our basic little room that had no other furniture than a double bed and cot, listening to the hum of voices from the street two stories below, I watched the ceiling fan turn. And I had nothing but time to feel sorry for myself and debate whether I had made the best decision of my life or worst.
I checked my messages in Bangkok, and Adam had progressed from the shock and denial stage to the bargaining stage of grief and loss. I imagined him at his computer, tears flooding his cheeks as he pled with me through message after message to give him another chance. It took all of my strength not to reply. I didn’t trust myself enough not to balk and say yes. I had to stick to my decision. I could no longer feel the same kind of love I used to feel for him. Even though I was scared that I would never find love again.
This was my first break up, and I had no idea what to do. It was yet another moment in my life where I needed the guidance of my big sister, and I thought back to the desert, wishing there was a way I could find her again.
As I sat up and blew my nose, finishing off my fourth roll of toilet paper, I thought of the first time I got sick after Adam and I officially labeled ourselves a couple, and he insisted on taking care of me. I was stricken with the cold to end all colds. My eyes were puffy and red, my skin was the pallor of a zombie, and my hair had been hair uncombed for days. I scared myself each time I passed a mirror. Seriously, I kept thinking the ghost from The Ring was haunting my apartment. At first, I refused to open the door to Adam, terrified that he wouldn’t be attracted to me anymore, and that every time he saw me after I recovered, the image of how I looked while sick would be burned into his memory.
“Open up, you know I’ll always see you as the most beautiful girl in existence,” he said through the door as I leaned against the cool wood.
He had come all the way to my apartment in the middle of a blizzard to see me and, given the city had practically been shut down, he had to walk over fifteen blocks to get to me. I sighed and opened the door.
“You,” he stepped in, dusted with snow, and kissed me, “have never been so lovely.”
“I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and sneezing into his warm chest.
He shrugged off his coat, and when he pulled off his beanie he replaced it with a Halloween costume nurse’s cap and in a silly accent said, “Nurse Adam at your service, m’lady.” Then he pulled out a container of chicken soup and a stack of DVDs from a canvas bag.
That was the moment I fell in love with him.
The rattling of the door pulled me back to the present. As the door swung open part of me hoped that Adam was about to stride in with that nurse’s cap and cradle me until I felt better. Instead, Jade appeared, then Lana, both carrying plastic shopping bags.
“How did things go with the tailors?” I asked, pulling the sheet up to my chin as a chilly spell shuddered through me.
Jade dropped the shopping bags on the floor and nodded. “Good, but I think we’ll wait until Hoi An in Vietnam to get the pieces made.”
“We brought you some noodle soup from downstairs if you’re feeling up for it,” Lana said, placing a container on the foot of the bed.
I was beyond grateful for my girls, and I had to accept that Adam would never nurse me back to health again.
***
Date: February 19, 2010
The next day, I felt more human, more like myself again, and good enough to get back out into the world, but all I wanted to do was go back to bed. I missed Adam. I missed him so much, and I was so very sorry for hurting him. But I knew deep down that we couldn’t go on. The painful realization had set in that we weren’t supposed to be together. Adam helped me to sew up the hole in my heart that was left after A
udrey’s death, and the thought of being without him tore another hole. But I he was still alive, and in time, I would stitch this new hole up on my own.
To help me feel better, Jade offered to perform Reiki on me. After her break-up with that asshat Cliff, she was convinced that she was supposed to be a Reiki healer, so she took a course but never brought it up again after I joked that she was finally giving into being a hippy. Truthfully, I didn’t really believe in Reiki. I mean, people paid actual money to lie down and have someone hover their hands over different body parts and “balance their energy”, but I said yes, mostly so I could lie in bed some more, and she looked excited to put her skills to use.
While Lana popped out for her daily Thai massage, I cleared my mind and let Jade believe she was actually doing something beneficial to my body. An hour later, I sat up feeling almost as if I were in a lucid dream, and Jade wore an odd expression.
“What?” I asked, shaking the sleepy feeling from my body.
She paused with a weird combination of a frown and a smile. “Nothing, it’s just…”
Before she could finish her sentence, Lana strode into the room glowing.
“Alright, sickling,” Lana said, looking at me, “you’re looking much better. Let’s go get you over this break up the normal and healthy way: eating comfort food until we burst.”
To Canadian gals like us, no food could be more comforting than waffles and bacon, and thankfully there was an all-day breakfast joint around the corner ran by a fellow Canadian who served his waffles with thick, juicy Canadian bacon and good old-fashioned syrup tapped from the maple trees of Quebec.
“So how did Reiki go?” Lana asked as gobs of waffle rolled in her mouth. “Is she all balanced and back to normal?”
“Well,” Jade said with the smile-frown returning. “I noticed that her energy was all off on her second chakra.”
“Give it to me straight, doc, am I going to live?” I held my hand over my heart and feigned concern.
“What was your sex life with Adam like?”
I stopped chewing. Bacon hung from my lips. I did not want to have this talk.
“It was fine,” I said. “So we should go check out jungle zip-lining.”
“Just fine?” Lana asked, getting excited. “Not earth-shatter-scream-his-name-until-you-black-out-from-sheer-pleasure.”
I was never into the whole screaming his name thing.
“It was fine, yes fine. Beautiful, sweet, connecting, loving. Our relationship wasn’t defined by sex.” It was based on something deeper. Mutual respect, love, and understanding for the trauma we both had gone through. We had been each other’s lifelines, and that meant more than just some primal act. “We loved each other and that was more important.”
Lana narrowed her eyes seeming to search for the next question in her sexual inquisition. “Did you do it often?”
“Everyone’s definition of ‘often’ is different,” I said, straightening my back.
“That’s a no.” Lana swept her glossy locks from her shoulders as she gave some cute guy passing by a smile.
It was so easy for her.
Hot tears began to pool in my eyes. It didn’t happen often because I didn’t want to do it. Since my hormones had set in at puberty, and through my teen years, I did have lusty feelings, just no one to act on them with. Then one night at the end of my first year in university, I let them get the best of me. I made a regretful decision with a crush when I was nineteen, and afterward I was so put off by men, I never bothered with anyone else. And then when Audrey died, my depression broke me and took everything from me. My joy, my spark, my mojo. It was my fault that we used the bed for sleeping more than sex. And he suffered for it.
“No, we didn’t. And it’s my fault,” I sputtered dropping my cutlery on the ceramic plate. “Because I’m broken.”
Jade rubbed my shoulder as I pressed my napkin to my eyes. “No. No, you’re not broken, Harper. Everyone is different. We can’t be all hot and wet at the flick of a switch like this one over here. Perhaps you’re more of an energy reader like me, and as much as you loved Adam, maybe you just didn’t have any chemistry, but you and Xavier did. Besides, sex only matters if it matters to you. It’s okay if it doesn’t.”
Since Goa, I questioned my belief about being broken, and about how much the primal act meant to me. Before it didn’t matter so much, mostly because I had believed that I lost my mojo forever, but after my mojo seemed to make a comeback with the chemistry I felt with Xavier, it felt as if my eyes had been opened, and I could never close them again.
“Wait,” Lana said. “Was Adam your first?”
I took a sip of coffee and kept my eyes on the table. “Yes.”
“Uhh, Harper?” Jade said.
I glared at her. “Yes,” before giving a quick forced smile to Lana. “He was my first. So how about we check out the jungle zip-line tours?”
“That explains this. I know what you need.” Lana narrowed her eyes at me and clutched her knife as syrup dripped from the shiny metal. She leaned over and whispered something in Jade’s ear. Jade’s eyes shot open and her mouth stretched into a huge smile. Turning back to me Lana said, “We’re going out tonight. I won’t tell you where, but you have to trust me. Do you trust me?”
“Put the knife down, and I’ll consider it,” I said, equally intrigued and terrified.
***
We dressed for the evening and Lana and Jade couldn’t stop giggling every time they looked at me. As we prepared ourselves for the night, both of them were smug and smugger, giving me knowing smirks as I fingered through my wet hair and dabbed some lip-gloss on. It was too hot to bother with any more makeup than that. After closing the padlock on the door behind us I followed Lana and Jade as they pranced down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. Twilight had fallen, and the street lamps were warming from orange to yellow. Across the street locals and foreigners alike gathered in the paved area closed to traffic that ran from the sidewalk one hundred feet to the turreted red brick wall than enclosed the Old City. The ancient wall was broken by the open doors of the wooden Tha Phae Gate, letting pedestrian traffic flow from the Old City to the New.
Lana flagged down a tuk tuk, similar to those in India except these were blue and yellow, and as Jade and I slid across the worn blue leather of the backseat, Lana whispered something in the driver’s ear with a mischievous glint in her eye. My worries about where I was being taken to were made worse when he threw back his head and laughed in a way that I could only describe as an “unbridled guffaw”.
With the breeze tangling our hair, we weaved through the quiet city roads past tire shops and furniture stores, markets and restaurants away from the touristy side of the town until he stopped outside of a modern three-story building with the words “Adam’s Apple” glowing in neon lights. We slid out of the tuk tuk and handed over our Thai baht to pay.
“Have fun, girls!” The tuk tuk driver yelled with yet another guffaw before he puttered down the road.
“Where are you taking me?” I said with a nervous smile pulling at my lips.
Lana’s eyes glowed. “We’re going to see a show.”
Most of the shows I had heard of in Thailand involved Ping-Pong balls and impossibly controlled pelvic floor muscles, but I had a feeling that this wasn’t one of those shows.
The interior of the building was just as modern as the exterior. I ran my fingers along the cool gunmetal granite walls as we climbed the black tile stairs. When a firm-bodied Thai guy in his early thirties greeted us wearing nothing but dress pants and a bow tie, I figured out just what kind of show the girls had taken me to. I was relieved to realize that there would be no Ping-Pong balls involved in the night.
Everything in the room was black: the walls, the floor, the stage, the runway, the booths that lined the walls, and the bar on the opposite side of the stage. Male couples occupied three booths on the wall closest to the door, and six Asian tourists sipped highballs at the bar perched on black leather stools. W
e were seated in a booth on the wall opposite to the door, ordered cocktails, and were given a complimentary container of popcorn, which was quite nice of them. There’s nothing that adds to a performance quite like freshly popped and salted popcorn.
“To commemorate your new life in singledom,” Lana said, raising her glass.
As we clinked glasses, the lights dimmed, Ginuwine’s classic sex hit “Pony” pulsed through the speakers, and five men wearing nothing but tighty-whiteys and smiles walked on stage. Jade giggled, Lana whooped, and I knocked my drink back.
At the climax of the song, Lana yelled, “Take it off!”
At her request, the tighty-whiteys came off, and the hip gyrations increased. In less than five minutes I had seen over double the number of penises I had ever seen in real life. And it was something I could not unsee.
“Matches! Matches!” I called out our code word and laughed.
“Nice try! This is to warm you up for the new men to come,” Lana squealed in my ear.
We giggled, whooped and covered our eyes, peeking through our fingers as we watched such erotic tales including: the naked construction worker, the naked pharaoh who like to shower with his page boy, and a naked Count Dracula looking for a mate. Shakespearean stuff, really. Even though I was in no way shape or form aroused, I did laugh. I laughed a laugh, deep from my belly, a laugh I had long since forgotten I had, a laugh that made me remember that I had so many good times to come.
***
Still giggling, a little tipsy, and high on the ridiculousness we had just experienced, we slid into a tuk tuk and cut back to the Tha Phae Gate through the Old City. Spilling out of the tuk tuk, we crossed through the gate into the New City.
“I think I need a cigarette after tha…look up there,” Jade said, pointing up.
My eyes darted to the sky. Hundreds of flying lanterns glowed cool gold, floating in the sky like stars sent from Earth to find their place in the heavens. In front of us hundreds of people were lighting the little candles at the base and raising the paper balloons over their heads. Each one had writing scrawled into them. I had read that entire festivals were dedicated to sending them off with wishes written on them.
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