She could tell I was genuinely upset and she softened and said, “I’m laughing because your ticket is a standby ticket and the day after tomorrow is Yom Kippur! The flight today is overbooked by twenty people and so is every other flight for the next seven days.”
Now I started to laugh. I was like, “You’re kidding, right?”
She stopped laughing and said, “Why would I be kidding?”
Apparently, traveling to and from Israel around Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, was akin to traveling during Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s. In other words, no, she wasn’t kidding and yes, I was stuck, for lack of a better word, again, in Tel Aviv for at least another week.
Guy, upon hearing this, immediately perked up. The sparkle returned to his eyes and he had a huge grin on his face. He picked me up, kissed me, spun me around, and said, “This is excellent.”
For the next seven days, I had absolutely nothing at stake, nothing to lose, nothing to fear, nothing to even think about other than the fact that I was enjoying every single moment of my existence for the first time in I couldn’t even remember how long. I basically spent the next week half-naked, drinking, smoking, and fucking my brains out. I was having the time of my life.
But as we all know, all good things must come to an end. Alternately, as the great poet T. S. Eliot pointed out, “The end is where we start from.”
Part III
12
The N From N-I-C-E
A few weeks after I returned to New York City, I was sitting on my (still enormous-looking) pink couch, sans plastic cover. It was a testament to my mental health that I had finally removed the plastic cover. It was also much more comfortable this way. So I was lounging on the couch, talking to Guy on the phone about his impending visit in a couple months. After our weeklong romance, we had decided that he would come visit me and I was really excited. I was like, “I really can’t wait to see you.”
To which he replied, “Me too. By the way, I’ve decided I’m not going to have sex with anyone else until I see you.”
That caught me off guard. “You did? Why?”
Guy said, “I think I’m in love with you.”
I started stammering and stuttering. He started laughing and interrupted me. “Relax. I said I think I’m in love with you. I didn’t say I was sure.”
When we got off the phone, I started pacing around my apartment. In love with me? How could he be in love with me? I mean, I was definitely kind of crazy about him, but in love? We’d spent all of eight days together. Certainly he was having some sort of delusion. The week we spent together had been magical but it was, well, a week. The I LOVE YOU magnet he gave me was on my refrigerator but that didn’t freak me out anymore. I had rationalized that giving someone a magnet is totally different than saying, “I love you.”
As I was processing all this, I walked over to my window and stared blankly at the street below. I don’t know why I walked over to the window. There was no reason to. I could have just as easily continued pacing. But I walked over to the window and was just sort of absentmindedly staring when I suddenly saw Noam. For a second, I literally thought I was hallucinating. I had looked out this window thousands of times and I had never, ever seen anyone I knew. I started to open the window and was about to scream his name. I had no idea what I would even say. I hadn’t spoken to Noam in months.
But then I thought better of it, realizing my instinct was really more of a reflex, like when the doctor hits your knee with a hammer and your leg jumps. It took me a second to register all of this, and it was very strange to just let him go but I realized it was the right thing to do. It was sort of a profound moment because that singular act was so loaded. And even though it broke my heart, my just letting Noam walk away made me realize that I really had let him go.
I realized, too, that Hanna had been right all along. Despite the fact that she had made a string of bad decisions in her own life, she was still capable of giving me very good advice: you can never move forward if you still have one leg in the past.
It occurred to me in that moment, as well, that part of why I’d been holding on to Nico was because I couldn’t hold on to Noam and maybe a psychologist (a halfway decent one, anyway) would have told me I was transferring my emotion from one situation to the next. Maybe it was easier to be obsessed with Nico and go psycho from that than to deal with the loss of Noam.
They say if you don’t deal with your shit in one relationship, you’re just going to repeat it in your next one. Regardless of what would or would not happen with Guy, I was planning on dealing with my life from here on out with a very clear head.
Time moved forward, as it is wont to do, and Guy’s visit eventually rolled around. Soon enough it was December and I was on my way to the airport to pick him up. Although we talked on the phone fairly frequently I hadn’t seen him in more than two months and I began to think that it was entirely possible I had completely lost my mind. What in the world would we do for sixteen days in the dead of a New York winter, trapped in my tiny apartment? It’s one thing to have a love affair in a foreign country. It’s another story entirely to invite someone into your home—especially when your home is the size of a rabbit cage. The only thing I had to go off of was how I felt while I was with him when I was in Israel. It was not lost on me that it was entirely possible that my fondness for Guy could have been brought on by some sort of sex- and pheromone-induced state of mind.
Because I am a total narcissist, I am constantly seeking instant gratification. On account of this, I often get really excited about something and then when I’ve found something that I think might gratify me more or better or more quickly, I lose all interest in the first thing.
It’s not like this hadn’t happened to me before. The worst might have been back in college when David Grosenschmidt came to Arizona to visit me. David and I had met in Florence during our semesters abroad. Instead of all the Italian men I could have had a love affair with, I wound up sleeping with a Jew with a big nose from Long Island. At some point I found out that he had a girlfriend back home, the daughter of a mustard heiress, and I promptly broke up with him—at which point he declared his love for me and swore to me that he had broken it off with the mustard heiress. I took him back and we resumed our affair for the duration of our time in Italy. I was really into David, until he got off the plane when he came to visit me in Arizona.
The second I saw him and his big nose and his thin, wispy hair, I was completely revolted. I couldn’t even look at him, let alone have sex with him. I believed that all the gluttony of the pasta and the wine and the pot I had been smuggling from Amsterdam had clouded my judgment. Or, more likely, it was the fact that in the time that had passed, and in David’s absence, I had met and become smitten with someone else. Or maybe it was just that even though I had enjoyed him in Italy it didn’t necessarily mean I was going to like him in America. All of this is to say I had no idea how I would feel about Guy when I saw him in New York and I was not looking forward to a repeat of that experience. I don’t mind making mistakes. I just like to think that I actually learn from them.
I braced myself as I walked into the airport.
And the second I saw Guy, I knew. He walked out into the airport with a backpack and he looked like such a tourist and he was so cute and had come so far just to see me. It all came flooding back. When I hugged him, it was absolutely electric. Even after eleven hours on a plane, surrounded by hot, sweaty Middle Easterners, he smelled delicious.
We were both a little nervous in the taxi to my place and when we arrived he seemed kind of tripped out by my crazy Chinese whorehouse building. But by the time we got upstairs and he saw how cute and cozy and neat and clean the apartment was, I could tell he calmed down.
I gave him a glass of wine and was like, “Well, do you have them?”
Guy: “Yes, I do.”
Me: “In English?”
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br /> Guy: “Yes, in English.”
Me: “Well, can I see them?”
Guy went fishing around in his carry-on and pulled out an envelope and handed it to me.
Me: “Thank you.”
I opened the envelope and was pleased to see that he was officially not HIV positive.
You may think this is psychotic, but I’ll be real fucking clear here. No one and I mean no one is sticking his dick in me without a condom without my seeing some hard evidence that he is not infected with some disease. Men are dogs and like dogs, they need papers. And any woman who doesn’t require this from a guy is a fucking idiot. If you’re too shy to ask or if you think he’s not going to like you anymore, I have two things to say: (1) if he doesn’t like you enough to get tested for STDs, then you shouldn’t be fucking him to begin with, and (2) men are willing to do pretty much anything to get laid.
I was like, “This is great news. Mazel tov. There’s just one more thing we need to get out of the way.”
A look of consternation crossed his face.
“We are going to be stuck in this tiny apartment for sixteen days so we really can’t afford to get caught up in formalities,” I said as I handed him a book of matches. “I only have one bathroom.”
That sufficiently broke the ice and for the next two days the only time we stopped having sex was to sleep and eat. After we had fucked so many times that I could barely walk (not that I was complaining), I took Guy traipsing around Manhattan. Even though we went to places I have been to a thousand times, just being with him made it all exciting. I mean, being with him was exciting to begin with, but being with him and watching how excited he was to be with me and in New York was even more exciting. Plus, he was hot and I was horny, which even made things like riding the subway fun. He was so interested in every little thing and he noticed things I had never even paid attention to—buildings, parks, stores, architecture. It was like I was discovering the world with him anew. Plus, it was Christmastime in New York, so the city was even more majestic than usual.
I started to think that perhaps I had not been delusional at all. I started to think that I actually really, really liked him. In fact, I was becoming kind of crazy about him. He was almost too good to be true. He was sweet and thoughtful, he made me coffee in the morning, he cooked, he cleaned, he smelled delicious, he fucked me until I couldn’t even see straight, and he cracked me up. He was interested in music and art and good food and wine and on top of that he was incredibly snuggly.
Moreover, because he had no reference point for anything I was talking about, sharing my idiosyncrasies with him was amazing because his reactions were priceless. I felt like I was living in a comedy sketch.
For example, when I tried to share my love for Ice-T and his wife, Coco, I asked Guy, “Do you know Ice-T and Coco?”
And Guy said, in his hilarious accent, “Yes, I like iced tea and chocco.”
Chocco is the word for cocoa (chocolate milk) in Hebrew.
I was dying. I was like, “Not that iced tea and cocoa! Don’t you know Ice-T and Coco?!”
I showed Guy a bunch of pictures of Ice-T and he did, indeed, recognize him. He said, “Oh yes, he makes rap music.”
I was like, “Yes! He does make rap music. Ice-T is the OG!”
I could tell by the expression on Guy’s face that he had no clue what I was talking about.
I was like, “OG, Original Gangster. Ice-T is like the godfather of hip-hop. He’s very important, culturally speaking.”
Guy was like, “Okay, but then what is this Coco?”
I showed Guy a litany of images of Coco with her huge boobs and bubble butt in a variety of fluorescent g-strings. He was finally like, “I get it! Who is that?”
Me: “That’s Coco. She’s Ice-T’s wife!”
Guy, in his adorable broken English: “She is singer like him?”
Me: “No.”
Guy: “So why she is famous?”
Me: “Well, she’s kind of a model and actress but she’s also famous for her camel toe.”
Guy: “What is camel too?”
I was bowled over at this point. I was like, “Not camel too, camel toe.” And then I pulled my jeans up as far as I could and showed him how my vagina was divided in half by the fabric and it looked like a camel’s toe.
And Guy said, “Oy yoy yoy. I thought maybe you say she is famous for music or because she make art. But no, she is famous for camel toe. Only in this stupid country can someone be famous for camel toe.”
I snuggled up next to him and pulled up my favorite video on YouTube, which is an interview with Ice-T where he talks about meeting Coco. They were on the set of a music video (he was wearing a red sharkskin suit) and he saw Coco and went right up to her and said, “Hey, baby, would you ever consider dating a gangster rapper?”
And she cooed, “Well, if he was niiiiiice.”
Ice replied, “If you take the N from N-I-C-E you get Ice.”
I started clapping. I was like, “I love that story! It’s so romantic!”
Guy looked at me like I was crazy.
Me: “Do you get it?”
Guy: “Yes, I get it. If you take the N from N-I-C-E you get Ice-T.”
And then he gave me a kiss on my forehead and told me I should be committed to a mental institution.
Right then, I decided: I love this boy.
And then we had our first fight.
It went down like this: Guy was trying to tell me that he loved having sex with me. But because he is a man, and men are retarded, instead of just saying that, he launched into some story about some girl he used to date who was crazy but also “really hot” and other than the fact that she was crazy, she couldn’t have an orgasm. The combination of the two, apparently, were real turnoffs and thus he dumped her.
This story made me feel homicidal. I have never been a jealous person, but I was actually seeing red. I was like, “First of all, I don’t know why you think I’m interested in hearing about girls you used to have sex with. Why would you even tell me that story? Are you trying to make me jealous? Do you want me to tell you the story about how I used to have sex with a twenty-four-year-old Dolce and Gabbana model? Would that be an interesting story for you to hear?”
Guy looked at me like I had lost my mind, which perhaps I had.
I continued, “What? You don’t want to hear about how I used to fuck a really hot twenty-four-year-old Dolce and Gabbana model?”
Guy was like, “Okay, okay. Enough. I get it.”
I was like, “That’s good. I’m glad you get it because I can’t tell you how little interest I have in hearing about how you’ve fucked really hot girls. I have news for you. I’ve fucked really hot girls, too. And if you keep it up, there’s a really cute hotel around the corner and you’re more than welcome to stay there.”
Thankfully, it didn’t come to that.
A few nights later at my favorite Italian restaurant, over a glass of wine and homemade fettuccini with ragu sauce, he said it again. This time straight to my face: “I love you.”
But this time he didn’t preface it with “I think.”
So while all of this was very intense, it was also really refreshing and part of what I liked so much about Guy. He wasn’t afraid to tell the truth—even if it was scary or crazy or made him vulnerable. He was very up-front about, well, everything.
He was also super laid-back about pretty much everything and other than that one fight, being with him was just easy.
My parents, of course, wanted to meet him. At least my mother did. She was all up in my shit about it, too. I suppose I could understand that after the year of insanity I had been through she was dying to see what I’d gotten myself wrapped up in. I wasn’t so sure I was ready for this—if for no other reason than just the sheer fact that I didn’t want to deal with a barrage of questions.
I knew my mother would love Guy. I wasn’t so sure about what my father would think. On a good day my father was doing you a favor if you managed to get more than a sentence out of him. But he had spent a good deal of time in Israel for work and he had a soft spot for Israelis. Plus, they actually sort of had a lot in common. They were both really into sports and they’d both served in the army. And they were both kind of quiet no-nonsense kind of guys, but once you got them going they had a really dry sense of humor and were actually really funny.
When I told Guy my parents wanted to meet him, he was like, “Okay. Let’s go meet them.”
I was way more apprehensive. In my world, introducing someone to your parents was a big deal. To begin with, it has all sorts of implications and I still wasn’t sure what this relationship was or where it was going—if it were going anywhere at all. As crazy as my parents drive me, they’re pretty much the most important people in my life and I didn’t want to introduce them to someone who was not going to be around for a long time. Plus, I knew I was going to have to field a million questions from my mother. And at this point, as into him as I was, there was really no way to know anything. I mean we were having a blast and we totally adored each other, but we lived like six thousand miles apart.
But Israeli culture is very family-oriented and Guy was so casual about the whole thing that I acquiesced. Before I did, though, I was like, “For the last time, are you sure you want to meet them?”
And Guy said, “Well, I’m going to meet them at some point, so why not now?”
I wasn’t sure where he was going with that, but his nonchalance was reassuring.
Uncle Bark was having a Chanukah party and my entire family was going to be there. I figured with so many people there it was a safe bet that we could get in and out within an hour and with minimal damage.
On My Knees Page 14