by Theresa Alan
I’m officially in a crappy mood when I get to Will’s place. It’s about 9:30, too early for bed, so after we kiss and hug for a minute or two, we park our asses on the couch and Will pops in a DVD. We’ve hardly watched any of it when Will starts kissing me.
A little voice inside my head says, “Just tell him you’re not in the mood.” Then another voice says, “You’ve only been dating a few months. What’ll he think if you are already squirming out of sex? You have to be a perfect girlfriend, always voraciously ready for sex.” Voice number one then retorts, “Don’t be a fucking idiot. You’ve got to learn to speak up. How are you going to have a successful marriage if you can’t communicate how you feel over such a minor thing? What are you going to do when a real problem rears up?”
By now we’ve been kissing for several minutes. I let my hand skim lightly over his penis to see what’s going on down there. He’s fully hard, and now I feel I really can’t say no. I should have pulled away a few minutes ago, I’m a tease. Voice number one, the voice that took Gender and Society classes in college and is good friends with Gabrielle Leveska knows that his hard-on is not my responsibility, but somehow logically knowing that doesn’t lessen the guilt I feel.
Why can’t he just realize I’m not really into this? I’m showing none of the enthusiasm I normally have over such activities.
Will pulls off my shirt, unbuttons my shorts, and I help him take them off. He takes off his own clothes and then moves to go down on me. I grab him by the shoulder. He looks up at me.
“Just come inside me,” I say. Because I want to get this over with. Really, I don’t want it at all. Why don’t you know that?
He’s kneeling on the floor and I’m awkwardly splayed on the couch. He uses his fingers to lubricate me.
It’s not terrible, even though I’m not into it, but out of nowhere, I decide I want to break up with Will. I don’t want to do the whole relationship thing. Will will do like so many husbands I’ve known: Once they get the ring on their finger, they know there’s nothing to work for, so they let the women cook, clean, and do the bulk of the work in child-rearing, even though they, too, work hard at jobs outside the home. I imagine that Will will never go down on me again after we get married. He’ll belch rudely and publicly. The romance will die, the sex will all be like this, and nothing good can possibly come of us actually getting married. We can live together. That will be much better and far less terrifying. We won’t have to get divorced.
There is the knowledge somewhere in the back of my mind that my thoughts are ludicrous. I would love to blame this torrent of emotions that has walloped me out of nowhere on PMS, but my mood swings can plummet by the minute and can come at any time of the month, any part of the day. Something bigger is going on. I feel like some God is playing with my emotions like He’s trying to get the shower temperature just right, but every now and then it goes from scalding hot to bitingly cold for no apparent reason.
Will finishes and we go upstairs to bed.
The next morning I wake up feeling completely fine, utterly happy. I wrap my arms around Will’s sleeping form, smiling, feeling like the luckiest woman in the world. This is my reality: Mood swings of seismic proportions one second that calm just as abruptly for no particular reason.
Chapter 9
W ith Will moving in, the house is a mess. Boxes are strewn everywhere. I silently mourn the loss of my closet space.
Will comes over every night after work with a load of stuff, and then he works on unpacking it. He’s so easygoing, letting me dictate exactly where I want him to put things.
My house has three rooms. They aren’t huge, but we have a master bedroom, the guestroom that will double as Will’s study, and my office. Still, with all of Will’s stuff being added to the fray, the house seems smaller by the second.
The weekend after we get back from Mark and Sienna’s, Will’s friends will help him move the last of his furniture in, and then it will be official: Will and I will be roomies at last.
W ill is at his place tonight and I’m at my place packing for my trip to New York, when I call Gabrielle and ask her how things are going with Jeremy.
“It’s good, but it’s hard, you know, because of the kids,” she says. “It’s hard on me that he sees his ex-wife every other week. I’d really rather that she lived in Alaska and they didn’t have kids together. I was supposed to meet his kids for the first time this weekend, and Jeremy and his ex got into a fight while he was over there, and it turned out that he was over there for more than an hour. The whole time this was going on I was sitting at my house, wearing nice clothes and trying not to rub my lipstick off, waiting expectantly. By the time he got the kids, he was so wound up that he called and said he didn’t think it was such a good idea if I met them that day after all and that he’d call and tell me the details later. He didn’t call me all weekend, so then I felt like an idiot and called him on Monday and he gave me this abbreviated story, you know the way men do. I’m sure so much more happened, but I couldn’t get any details from him. It’s so hard that I don’t get to see him every other weekend, and his work schedule is already really crazy. Relationships are hard enough without an ex-wife and two kids and child support payments and eighty-hour work weeks. But I don’t know, I really love the guy.”
We talk a little more and I tell her about how Will and I are leaving for New York in the morning. When we hang up, I’m instantly restless. I realize that I’ve gotten used to spending every night with Will and I’m not used to being by myself anymore. I had lived alone for more than two years before Will came along and I was happy enough with that arrangement at the time, but now being alone feels strange. It’s amazing how quickly new patterns can be established.
I can’t stand the silence, so I call Rachel. “Hey, Rach, what’s up?”
“Nothing.” She expels a long and weary sigh, so I know that there is, in fact, something up. “What’s going on with you?”
“I’m just packing. Will and I are going to New York for the weekend to visit Sienna. I’ve never seen her new place. And Will will be meeting her for the first time.”
“I’m so jealous. I wish Jon and I could get away for the weekend.”
“Is something wrong, Rach?”
“It’s Jon’s mother. She can’t meet her medical expenses, but she doesn’t qualify for Medicaid. Jon wants us to make up the difference. It’ll be about eight hundred dollars a month. We’ve got seven hundred dollars worth of student loans per month that we should be paying off, but we’re deferring those loans as it is. We can’t afford the bills we already have, let alone new ones.”
“Can’t one of his siblings help out?”
“Beth and Sandy make even less than we do, if you can believe it. We’re still trying to pay off the money we borrowed to help Sandy get through rehab.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have a clue.”
“Can I help?”
“Yes. If you win the lottery, give me some of the money.”
“I will. Absolutely. You can count on it. But if I don’t win the lottery, what then?”
“The only way you can help is to listen to me bitch. You’re doing a commendable job. What’s up with you?”
I tell her about the dinner with Will’s mother, making Doris out to be this evil villain and me to be a put-upon heroine boldly facing the injustice and adversity flung my way. I’m the one telling the story, so I’ll be heroic and valiant in my version of the tale if I want to.
“She’s acting like I’m denying Will fatherhood for my own selfishness or something,” I say.
“I don’t understand how she can be upset with you. Obviously, Will didn’t want to have kids or he would have had them the first time he was married.”
“Well, that’s not true. His first wife wasn’t able to have kids, so it simply was never an issue. Who knows? Maybe I can’t have kids either. Maybe all these years of birth control pills and condoms have bee
n a giant waste of time.”
“Maybe,” she laughs. “I better let you go. I’m meeting with Shane.”
“Shane? Really? Why?”
“Oh, you know, just for lunch.”
“Just the two of you?”
“Yes, just the two of us. It’s lunch, Eva. That’s all.”
I squirm. I get the distinct feeling that that’s not all. “Well, have fun. I’ll talk to you later.”
After Rachel and I get off the phone with each other, I wonder what would happen if Will and I did get married and he lost his job and suddenly his mother got sick and we needed to pay for her to have hospice care or go into a nursing home. Or maybe she’d come to live with us, and since I work from home, what then? Would she finally begrudgingly show me affection, or would the remainder of our lives be an endless stream of conflict? These aren’t the typical things you worry about before you agree to spend your life with someone, but maybe they should be.
How would Rachel’s life have been different if she hadn’t gotten pregnant at eighteen? Would she have married Jon? Would she and he have broken up, dated other people, and ultimately end up with each other because that’s the way it was supposed to be? Or maybe Rachel would have fallen for an eccentric millionaire who didn’t want children. Or maybe she would have become a career-oriented lawyer and ended up on the Supreme Court. Would another path in life have been a happier one for her? Less happy? Or just different?
How would Gabrielle’s life have been different if she hadn’t been married to Dan? Were those years she spent with him a mistake? Of course, wondering about these things can’t change anything. We each have our personal histories that shape who we are.
I think about Evil Bitch Woman Lisa from Jon’s birthday party who bragged about getting married right on time at the age of twenty-five. When I was twenty-five, I was going back to school to change my career and my future completely. I’ve always been a mature person, but I needed several more years before I was at a place in my life where I could even begin to consider marriage. Will and I needed a little more time to rack up life experiences, sex partners, and mistakes before we were ready for each other. Our histories are messy, but they’re ours. But now we are in the places we need to be to make things work for us. That’s the important thing.
Chapter 10
S ienna and Mark live in a cute but microscopic studio apartment in Brooklyn. Will and I have made reservations at a hotel close by since their place is too small to entertain visitors.
After dropping off our stuff at the hotel, Will and I walk the few blocks to Sienna and Mark’s place so we can get a tour of their apartment before we head downtown.
Sienna screams and squeezes me in a tight hug when she opens the door and sees us. When we finally stop crushing each other, she backs away and says, “Will, it is so good to finally meet you.” And she gives him a hug, too, though not of the internal-organ squishing variety that she gave me.
Mark is standing behind her, and when she’s done having her way with us, he embraces me and shakes Will’s hand.
“I’ll give you the tour,” Sienna says. She stands in the middle of the room and spreads her arms out. “This is the living room, bedroom, home office, study, and, if occasion calls for it, the guest bedroom. Through that door you’ll find the bathroom, and this,” she walks into the kitchen, which is only demarcated from the living room by a counter with stools on one side, “is the kitchen. It’s small, but we just need it to store our beer and leftover Chinese takeout, so it works out fine.”
“Please tell me you don’t work at this desk,” I say. Sienna works from home as an administrative assistant to a best-selling author, answering her fan mail and scheduling her speaking tours and trips to writing conferences. Sienna’s desk is clearly made for an extremely tall man and not for five-foot, four-inch Sienna. Her desk chair is a five-dollar wood hunk of junk, and I’m certain that any amount of sitting at it would cause severe neck and back pain, not to mention a supremely sore ass. And because the chair and desk are completely not at the right levels for her height, she’s created an elaborate set up using cardboard boxes and phone books to adjust the heights to something resembling an ergonomic working environment.
“I know. I’m an ergonomic mess. You ready to head out?”
Sienna is modest about her place, but it really is cute. She has a way with decorating the exposed brick wall and wood floors with bright colored touches that add up to a decidedly cute little space.
“Ready,” I say. I take Will’s hand and follow Sienna and Mark out.
We have to walk several blocks to catch the bus that takes us to the subway and then catch another bus, then we get out and walk several more blocks.
“Ah, so where is this place exactly, Canada?” I wouldn’t mind except I stupidly wore my new shoes that aren’t broken in yet, and I can feel the blisters forming with every pinching step.
“When you’re going from between boroughs or from the west side to the east side, it can take awhile,” Mark says.
“That’s one thing I love about when I visit you in Denver,” Sienna says. “It’s so amazing to just get in your car and drive exactly to where it is you want to go. Point A to point B, just like that.”
“There are advantages to living in cities that are like hick towns in comparison to New York,” I say. I always try to play up the good things about Denver when I’m around Sienna. I want Sienna to succeed at her goal of being a comedian, but I also want her to come back to Denver. I’m hoping that she gets so famous she can be based anywhere she wants, and she chooses Denver. The important thing, to me, is that she gets this New York crap out of her system and comes back to me. I want to live near my sister, but there is no way I’m going to move to New York, unless I become a multibillionaire. Even if I were wealthy, I’m not sure I could ever bring myself to spend four hundred thousand dollars on a condo the size of an Easy Bake Oven, which seems to be about all you can find in the city.
“Yeah. But there are a lot of great things about New York,” Mark says. “Is this your first time here, Eva?”
“No. I came here several years ago for a visit,” I say. “And you’re right. There are a lot of wonderful things about New York. I remember walking around Central Park and there was one outdoor concert after the other and all these plays and performances. I was staggered by how much there was to do all the time everywhere. And then the next day, my friend and I were just walking around checking out the city and we started seeing all these gay pride flags. We realized there was going to be a parade, and it turned out it was the Gay Pride Parade recognizing the thirtieth anniversary of Stonewall. We look up and we just happen to be standing in front of the Stonewall on Christopher Street, the freaking epicenter of where it all went down. We were witnessing history. It was so cool. There’s always something to do or see in New York. That’s definitely not the case in Denver.”
“Sometimes that’s a bad thing,” Sienna says. “Some nights I just want to stay home watching TV or reading a book, and in New York I always feel guilty if I don’t go out every night to enjoy all that the city has to offer.”
The place they take us to is a little Thai restaurant full of funky lighting, brushed stainless steel tables, and black lacquer plates.
When we go to order, Will asks if the green curry has any nuts in it.
“Oh, are you allergic to nuts, too?” Sienna asks him.
“Nope, he’s just looking out for me,” I say.
Sienna nods and smiles approvingly at me. Score points for Will!
We gorge ourselves on green curry, kung pao tofu, and plum wine.
“So, Mark, are you doing the comedy thing full-time?” Will asks.
“I’ve got a day job working at an art supply store.”
“Are you an artist as well as comedian?”
“No, but I am capable of ringing up art supplies for people who are artists.”
“How long have you been doing the comedy thing?”
�
�About five years total, but it has just been this last year that I really started getting serious about it.”
“I think that’s so cool that you’re brave enough to get out on stage,” Will says.
“What about you, Will? Eva tells me you’re a guitar player. Were you ever in a band?” Sienna asks.
“No,” he says, “These three buddies of mine also play instruments, so every now and then we’ll get some songs together for a party, but that’s about it. Like, for this Halloween party, we decided we’d play three or four songs, but change the lyrics. Like we took the Stray Cats’ ‘Stray Cat Strut’ and turned it into ‘Costume Rut’, about someone with no good costume ideas, that sort of thing.”
“Oh god, don’t bring up Halloween, I’m still feeling queasy from last Halloween,” Sienna says.
“The trouble began with spiked punch…” Mark says.
“As so much trouble does,” Will says.
“I seriously don’t know if I’ve ever been that ill in my life before,” Sienna says. “I don’t know what they put in that punch, but it tasted like Kool-Aid.”
“Sienna made an absolute spectacle of herself,” Mark says, affecting a lisp.
“Excuse me, was I a giant purple orc attacking Darren’s tree with a battle-ax?” she says.
“Ha, yeah, I guess I did do that,” Mark says. “I wanted to see how sharp my little sword thing was, so I started attacking the tree, and after a couple of minutes I turned around to see my friends Darren and Carlos. They’d been sitting behind me in lawn chairs, and they were just covered with wood chips.”
“And Darren’s poor tree had this huge bald spot on it; it looked so sad and pathetic. I don’t understand men’s attraction to weaponry. Will, do you have any experience with guns or knives or anything?”
I know this is another test for Sienna, and it is for me, too. Neither of us believe in having guns around the house.
Will thinks a moment. “The only thing I can think of is when I was in college, and I was living in the dorms. I had this bow and arrow and I wanted to see if an arrow would stick in the wall of my dorm room, so I let it rip. It went straight through the wall. A second later we hear this shrill scream, then footsteps thundering over to my room. Turns out it had gone through the neighbor’s wall and got stuck about six inches away from where my neighbor’s head had been.”