My AA friends tell me that you have to hit rock bottom before you can ascend again. I was fairly certain that having an overweight, hairy Canadian stranger curled up naked and snoring on my dead grandmother’s Persian-style area rug was definitely my rock bottom.
I began kicking him in his fat, hairy side. When he finally woke up I told him it was time to go.
Apparently I’d offended him. “Are you always this nasty?” Steve asked as he walked out of the apartment. I yelled after him, “If things don’t work out with the Russian oligarch, I’ll let you know about the piano. Maybe you can buy it for your ex-girlfriend!”
I called Hanna at like nine the next morning. “Come over. Now. Please.”
When she got there, I was like, “Your friend Steve is the most disgusting person I have ever hooked up with in my entire life.” By the time I got to the end of the story, she was doubled over laughing. “I want you to know that I hold you responsible for this. You know I shouldn’t be around people right now.”
Hanna, still laughing: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! You’re right. I’ll make it up to you.”
Me: “I can’t imagine how you’re going to make this up to me.”
Hanna: “I can make it up to you right now. I have a few stories I think might cheer you up.”
Me: “This better be good.”
Hanna: “It is.”
Me: “Well, get to it.”
Hanna: “Okay. Okay. I met someone.”
Me: “Oh my God! You did? Last night?”
Hanna: “No, no! When I got home last night. I was bored and I went on Craigslist . . .”
Me: “This is already a great story. I love it when you meet people on Craigslist. Go on.”
Hanna: “I met an Indian guy who wants to shave me.”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Hanna: “I’m serious.”
Me: “What do you mean, he wants to shave you? He wants to shave your legs? He wants to shave your pussy?”
I do not believe I would let a stranger near my genital area with a razor blade. But then, too, I do not believe I would allow a masseur to stick his fingers in my anus, but either way.
Hanna: “He wants to shave my tits.”
Me: “Oh. My. God. You just made my fucking day.”
Hanna: “Hmm. I did? You really should get out more.”
Me: “I should get out more? You’re trolling Craigslist and talking to some Indian guy who wants to shave your tits and you’re telling me I should get out more? Who ever even heard of such a thing?”
Hanna: “Maybe Indian women have hairy tits?”
Me: “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
Hanna: “And then, there was another guy I talked to who wants me to nurse him.”
Me: “What do you mean, he wants you to nurse him?”
Hanna: “He told me that he’s been fantasizing about suckling from a woman’s breast for years and he doesn’t care if there is milk or no milk but if there isn’t milk, he is willing to work at suckling to see if by doing so, I will start to produce milk.”
Me: “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
Hanna: “I’m not! He even said we could get a breast pump! I don’t know how these people find me!”
I was beginning to think that maybe Hanna actually might have the same brain disorder that Dr. Zarkin, who carved his initials into his patients, had. I mean what would it take to realize that she was the common denominator here.
Me: “So are you going to have sex with one of these people?”
Hanna: “I don’t think so.”
Me: “Why not?”
Hanna: “I don’t know any of them. It would be too weird.”
Me: “You didn’t know your masseur either.”
Hanna: “That wasn’t having sex.”
Me: “Well, neither is letting someone shave your tits!”
Hanna: “I know. But still, I don’t think I want to do that. And anyway, this hot guy, who I met last year, e-mailed me.”
Me: “Yeah? How did you meet this one?”
Hanna: “Match.com.”
Me: “Why did I even bother asking? And . . .”
Hanna: “And we had e-mail sex.”
Me: “You had e-mail sex? What the fuck is e-mail sex?”
Hanna: “It’s like phone sex, but over e-mail. I thought we were going to hang out in person, but after e-mail sex, he was done. I told him I wanted to see him, and he promised that we would meet, but then he couldn’t even commit to that!”
Me: “How did this all begin, please?”
Hanna: “He e-mailed me but hinted that he didn’t want to or have time to date. So basically, he was e-mailing me because he wanted to get laid.”
Me: “So that would have been perfect, if all you want to do is get laid.”
Hanna: “I know but it kind of pissed me off that he said that. I was going to send him the perfect ‘fuck you’ e-mail and then I changed my mind. And so, for a few nights, we had e-mail sex. I was sending him pictures of myself, he was sending me pictures of himself, we were talking about what we would do to each other, and then when I told him I wanted to see him, he disappeared. I guess he was satisfied with that. I must give good e-mail sex.”
Me: “Hanna, I know I’m not really in a position to judge and don’t get mad, but I feel it incumbent upon me to say this: maybe you should consider the fact that if what you want is to have an actual relationship, or even actual sex, maybe, just maybe you shouldn’t be having virtual sex with a virtual stranger.”
Hanna, missing the point as usual: “He wasn’t a stranger. I met him last year.”
Me: “Whatever. Fine. You know what I’m saying. Fine, he wasn’t a perfect stranger. I’m not trying to argue semantics with you.”
This girl never ceases to amaze me. It’s like it’s one thing if what you want to do is have e-mail sex, which, to begin with, sounds like the biggest waste of time in the world, but fine. If all you want to do is have e-mail sex, then God bless you. But Hanna didn’t want to have e-mail sex. Hanna wanted to have actual sex. And then she goes and does something like this and then she’s disappointed that she’s not having actual sex. Or she’s having casual sex with someone and then she’s disappointed that whoever she is having casual sex with doesn’t want to be her boyfriend. It’s like you can’t do one thing when what you really want to do is something else. If you want to have e-mail sex, then have e-mail sex. But have e-mail sex because that, in and of itself, is what you want. If you want to get laid, then for the love of God, go out and get laid. If you want a boyfriend, I don’t know what to tell you.
Actually, I take that back. If you want a boyfriend, stop wanting a boyfriend. Life doesn’t work like that. If you want a boyfriend, start with forming a good relationship with yourself instead of looking to other people to fulfill you. Stop accepting things you don’t want. Stop settling. If you don’t wait for what you want, you’re never going to get it. That may sound like some sort of new age garbage but it isn’t and I know it isn’t because I’m not into new age garbage. These are just facts. Have some fucking self-respect. Have a little faith in yourself. Have a little self-esteem.
And for the love of God, know that you’re not going to find a boyfriend in the Casual Encounters section of fucking Craigslist. Or shit, I don’t know. Maybe you are, but it seems unlikely at best. I don’t know what to tell you. That’s been my experience at least. You find things in the most unexpected places. Specifically, when you’re not looking for them. And sometimes, dare I say most of the time, things don’t work out how you think they will.
If only I could have taken this advice myself, I would have been golden. But hindsight is always twenty-twenty. At the time, I was blind as a fucking bat.
6
Off the Deep End
As though my
debacle with Steve weren’t bad enough, it was child’s play compared to what happened next. I took self-destructive to a whole new level. There is a reason they say that the quickest way to end a friendship is with sex—because it is.
Nico was, well, everything. He was my best friend, my closest confidant, and technically he was even sort of my boss. We had been attracted to each other from the moment we met, but I was still with Noam and nothing had happened. But from the moment we started to work together we pretty much became inseparable.
Nico, among other mogulesque things, owned a major ad agency. He had offices in New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo. He was born in South Africa and grew up between Johannesburg and London and was now based in New York and Paris. He had convinced me to do some freelance consulting, which was kind of a dream come true. I was writing copy and designing for major ad campaigns without any of the commitment that usually accompanies working for a major corporation. And because it was Nico’s company, he could do whatever he wanted. And what he wanted was me.
This went on for three years until Noam and I broke up—at which point Nico almost immediately made his move. Maybe, if the timing and circumstances had been different, we would have stood a chance and things would have worked out, but that’s not what happened. We were kind of doomed from the get-go. Nico adored me as much as I adored him, but he just wanted to have a good time. I, being in a deep, dark depression, was looking for someone to save me. And I was hoping it would be him. This, of course, was a recipe for disaster. And the harder I tried, the more of a mess it became.
I’d be just as happy, if not happier, if I could forget that any of this ever happened, because quite frankly it was fucking mortifying. In short order, I was crazy, I was depressed, and I was obsessed. For all intents and purposes, I was also sleeping with my boss. Nico, for his part, was trying to temper my insanity by distancing himself from me whenever he could but it wasn’t working. In fact, it was entirely possible that he was making it worse. He made it abundantly clear from the beginning that he was not interested in getting into a relationship, but he was also sending me mixed messages.
I nevertheless adored him. He was smart and funny and successful and stylish and he knew what I was about to say before I said it and we cracked each other up. And we drank together and we partied together and we just had fun together. He knew everyone and he traveled all the time and each day was a new adventure. And while sometimes that’s awesome, sometimes it’s not.
When everything else in your life is up in the air, taking one of your most stable relationships and turning it into a hot mess is not the best move. And I may have been a disaster, but Nico wasn’t helping. One minute he was all over me and the next minute he was telling me he didn’t want to be accountable to me. Any normal person would have headed for the hills, but I had some deluded notion that he would eventually come around and his actions weren’t helping, so I just couldn’t let it go.
We’d be out, having a great time, and we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. And I would always think that tonight—whatever night tonight was—would be the night that he would tell me how in love he was with me. But it was the same story every time. At the very last second, Nico would make up some nonsensical excuse about how he had to go home or be up really early or he had a meeting or he was really tired or he had a hangnail. One night I actually pulled him aside and was like, “Listen, I know that you’re in love with me and you’re just scared.”
And he was straight up like, “Uh, not really, P. To be honest, I’m not really sure what I want.”
You would think that with all the advice I had been doling out to Hanna that I would have been less of a fool. You’d be wrong.
The debacle started a few months after Noam and I broke up. Nico and I went to a big industry event together. There was a photo booth there. And in the pictures of us we’re sticking our tongues out; we’re laughing. In one of the photos, he is biting my nose. The sexual energy is almost tangible. This was typical behavior.
After the event, we went back to my apartment and were lying on Grandma’s couch playing around when suddenly something switched. He looked at me and touched my face in a way that he never had before and seconds later we were kissing. In that moment, I remember feeling something I hadn’t felt in months—hope. It was the first time since Noam and I had broken up that I felt something other than utter despair. In that moment, Nico became my life raft. I would have fucked him right then and there but he slowed me down—which, incidentally, was also fairly mortifying.
Nico, like Noam, was a good deal older than I was. And he had the foresight to know that I was in a very dark place. He also knew that unless two people have a conversation to ensure that they are on exactly the same page, hooking up with your best friend is usually not a good idea under the best of circumstances. He also knew that hooking up with your best friend who you work with and who just broke up with her boyfriend of ten years is just plain stupid.
For my part, I had replaced all of the misery that goes along with a breakup with total mania. I was elated. In other words, I pretty much went off the deep end. It was much easier to be obsessed with this new “relationship” than it was to mourn the loss of my last one. The problem, of course, was that there was no new relationship. Nico had made it very clear that the last thing he wanted to do was to be my boyfriend. But I wasn’t interested in pesky things like facts. I was certain that he was the solution to all my problems. And so each time he would call me and tell me he was in town, I would jump like a small lapdog, convinced that sooner or later he would see the light.
It was pathetic.
I was pathetic.
I began writing him the kinds of letters psychologists recommend you write but never send. The only difference was I was actually sending them.
Nico,
There is no other way to say this . . . I’m leaving.
It’s an incredibly difficult decision, but I think it’s the right one. Or maybe it’s not the right one, but it’s the only one. Most simply, around you is not a healthy place for me to be. I don’t want to, but I’m leaving. A few months ago, when you said you don’t know what you want, I told you I didn’t believe you. I said, I think you do know what you want, that I believe you know exactly what you want, but that you’re scared. Now, I’m not sure I was right. I think I may have overestimated how well I know you, or, more likely, I was blinded by belief—in you, in me, in us. I see now, that you were telling me the truth—you really don’t know what you want. Or, you do, but it’s not me, it’s not us, it’s not the vision I’ve had in my head. I think I’ve filled a very important void for you. And you filled one for me, too. But I don’t want to keep filling your void because it makes mine bigger. So there really is nothing else to do—but leave. I’m sorry to, because I’ve so very deeply enjoyed our time together. And I wish you nothing but happiness, but not at the expense of my own. It makes me so sad because I deeply believe that we could have been so great together or, rather, that we are so great together, but the truth is, that we’re not together. And it seems clear to me, very clear, that we’re not going to be. So I wish you the best of luck. And I hope we can, one day, reconnect.
It was like the theater of the ridiculous, because less than a week after sending these nonsensical letters, it would be as though nothing happened and I’d be right where I started.
During the height of all of this drama, Nico was going to have knee surgery. He had just sold his apartment in New York and was in the process of buying a loft in Tribeca, so he was living in a hotel on the Upper East Side. Two nights before his surgery, we were having dinner there and we had a big fight. I was adamant that I wanted to take him to the hospital and stay with him during his surgery so I could nurse him back to health. And he was adamant about not wanting me to take him to the hospital and not wanting me to stay with him and not wanting me to nurse him back to health. And I was irate. So after dinn
er, in the lobby of his hotel, I said, “I’m leaving.” I was hoping he would say, “No, stay.” But, of course, he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything close to that. In fact, he was probably thrilled to get rid of me.
Instead of leaving, like anyone with even a shred of self-respect would have, I announced, “You know what? Actually, I’m going to stay. I’m spending the night.”
And so I spent the night with him. Again. I woke up the next morning thinking everything was just peachy, thinking that because he went down on me all of our issues had dissipated into thin air. And when the subject of the hospital came up again, I just assumed that he had changed his mind. When he articulated, for the ninety-seventh time, that he still did not want me to take him to the hospital the next day, I flipped. I was like, “I don’t know what the fuck your problem is, but I’m sick of this bullshit.”
I marched out of the hotel room and swore to myself all day long that I would never speak to him again. By the time I fell asleep that night I almost had myself convinced.
At six o’clock the next morning, I woke up to my phone ringing. It was Nico.
Nico: “I’m sorry I acted like an asshole. Will you please come meet me at the hospital?”
Me: “I’m sorry, who is this?”
Nico: “Come on, P, really. Please.”
Me: “You’re breaking up. I can’t hear a word you’re saying. I think I heard an ‘I’m sorry’ but I couldn’t really make it out . . .”
Ten minutes later, I was in a taxi on my way to the hospital. Then, while he was in surgery, I went to go fill his prescriptions and buy him chicken soup. By the time he woke up, I was sitting at his bedside like a wet nurse, stroking his hand.
There was something about Nico allowing me to see him in such a vulnerable state that just melted my heart. There was also something extremely manipulative about how I inserted myself into this situation. Nico kept saying he didn’t want me to be there and I kept pushing him to say yes, knowing that eventually he would cave. Somehow in my twisted logic I figured if I could just get him to say yes more times than he said no, then he’d be my boyfriend and I’d be able to avoid dealing with my life—which, I admit, is psychotic.
On My Knees Page 7