“What do you mean?” he winced, incredulous. “Where is this coming from?”
“It’s not coming from anywhere. I just think that if we were meant to get married we would’ve done so a long time ago. Don’t you?”
“Yeah, but we’ve had a few bumps along the way, babe,” he protested softly. “You haven’t liked any of the churches, and then you changed jobs, and, well, shit happens. It just hasn’t been the right timing for things.”
I didn’t know how to tell him that the right timing comes along when you make the effort no matter how great, and if I’d wanted to, a white dress on clearance would’ve been purchased and we would’ve been married in court two days after he proposed. The truth remained that I didn’t need a circus wedding at all, only that the details it took to plan one had delayed the process of shooting a gun whose trigger I knew I’d never pull in the first place.
“I love you, Vincent,” I said to him and meant it. “Believe me, I’ve been thinking about this for months and it isn’t just an idea that suddenly popped into my head. This has been a long time coming.”
He grabbed my hands tightly and tried to knock some sense into me, exclaiming I was just confused and needed more time to process big changes. When he pulled away to look at me, his face was too marked with tears and a reflection of the pain I’d secretly been harboring on my own.
“I’m sorry, V,” I whispered and remained bawling against him for so long I eventually ran out of tears. I slid off the engagement ring and placed it on his pinky. He looked down at it and grimaced, asking me to consider keeping it. I pointed out that one day someone would come along who really did deserve it, and that keeping it would just be a constant reminder of yet another thing I had failed at.
“You deserve everything,” he breathed.
I kissed his lips one final time and declined with a heavy heart, concluding that people often cheat or desert lovers because doing the right thing is an agonizing venture we’re all not cut out for. In an effort to build a final divide between us, I removed myself from him and sat on my bed. “Please go,” I said, resting my head on the headboard and closing my eyes, the hopes of being alone and drowning in a pathetic pool of misery the most enticing thing in days. “Seeing you walk away is going to kill me and that’s not the last memory I want of you.”
Vincent stayed in the room for a few more minutes and eventually sat on the bed. I thought for a moment he’d plead for me to rethink things, but instead his brown eyes looked through the windows of my soul and he kissed me. I shut my eyelids and conjured up the memory of the night we met, just a boy and a girl with a common interest in rock brought together by a design beyond their comprehension.
I wanted to tell him that in spite of everything, I’d do it all over again if given the chance. I wanted to say just how much crossing paths with him had meant, and how blessed I felt to know someone of his kind. I wanted to tell him how good he was and all the magnificent things he was capable of, but instead, I refrained from speaking at all. Emotion overcame me when his lips left my own and, in an instant, he was gone, locking the door shut behind him and never looking back. I allowed the pain to split me wide open and all my mistakes to pour out one by one. I prayed that a clean break would eventually come and hugged my knees in a sitting position as the night set in and turned everything to black. When the daylight arrived, it found me in the same position, my dog resting his head at my feet and crying in his sleep for what I assumed was the incertitude of the unwritten.
An Uncontrollable Itch
As much as it pains to admit it, I was abstinent from a lot more than sex during the seven months I purposefully did away with possibly the most enjoyable part of being a homo sapien. I guess that when it came to my celibacy, I reasoned that if I didn’t take care of the lady parts the way a woman should, the chances of being tempted to break if I were to encounter a Ryan Gosling look-alike would be slim. It all started innocently enough, I assure you, with one waxing appointment missed a month into my vow and then a second and then, before I knew it, I was giving Playboy models from the 70s a run for their money with my lovely bush.
I blinked my eyes and six months had passed me by. A day before “the end,” I remembered being long overdue for a wax but was mortified beyond words for my usual lady to see me in such a state, so I shaved it all off. Immediately after, I was painfully reminded why a girl should never resort to shaving that area. A maddening itch seemed to follow me everywhere I went, and although my mom swore by baby powder and cotton panties, I couldn’t get rid of it for the life of me.
“You’re just going to have to live through it, hija,” she told me over the phone while I complained for the 50th time. “Just give it two weeks and you should be fine. Why didn’t you go to your usual wax lady in the first place?”
I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, so I just said, “I was lazy.”
I knew all too well that explaining my abstinence and the reasons for it would open up a therapy session with my mother I wasn’t in the mood for that afternoon.
Two days later, I was at my local Wal-Mart trying to buy some essentials when, suddenly, the itch struck. Now, if you’ve ever had this particular problem, then you know how hard it is to keep from scratching. It’s as if the more you try to cast it out of your mind, the harder the need to reach down there becomes, until you’re rabidly clawing at your skin in front of a thousand gawking strangers.
As I searched for an open cashier, the itch was in full force and begging me to slip a helping hand inside my pants and go to town. I wanted nothing more than to go to the bathroom and leave my cart outside, but that meant risking some asshole taking it, and carrying a 50 lb. bag of dog food was a task I felt no desire to repeat that morning. As a result, I did what any respectable young lady would do: got my ass in line and waited, praying the heavens would part and, for once, it would move along quickly.
The customer before me was one of these loud Cubans, who obviously was in the process of learning English and wanted to practice with whomever was game. She started talking to the cashier about how the weather was so “hat,” but thankfully the attendant seemed to be in no mood for chit chat.
When it was time to pay, this lady pulled out the largest wad of cash I’d ever seen, counting slowly and enunciating all the numbers like a preschooler practicing their 1, 2, 3s.
I can only assume her daughter was a stripper and pay day had come because there’s no other reason a regular person should have so many singles readily available.
What seemed like a light year later, Blondie finished, and I zipped through that line like I was running a triathlon in which the top prize was a naked Channing Tatum covered in vodka sauce. I jogged to my Camry with cart in tow and threw my groceries in the trunk, shoving the cart by the grass and quickly shutting my door. I sat in the driver’s seat and, in a rage, undid my pants, making sure there was no one around to take pictures, seeing as one day I hoped to reach famosity and all that jazz.
When I confirmed the coast was indeed clear, I began clawing away furiously at the top of my nether regions, ecstatic to be able to somehow alleviate the agony I’d been feeling up until that very minute.
I don’t know how much time passed as I moaned in ecstasy and finally felt soothed, but when I looked up, there was a young boy staring at me as he pulled a cart away – the same one I’d been too lazy to properly store in the cart lane just a few minutes before.
I studied him as he looked away, uncertain if he’d caught me red-handed as I gathered what remained of my dignity and pulled out of the parking lot, finally convincing myself that he hadn’t.
But he definitely had, guys. He definitely had.
Outerlude
Three years had passed since I’d broken things off with Vincent, somehow managing to emerge whole after a few months lost in a sea of perpetual darkness. After navigating my lowest points, I realized there was nowhere to go from there but up and that I’d made the right choice for the both of us
. Life swayed me to better days that gradually brought me back to the person I was before meeting him. Once that was through, I came across beings so magical I began to believe in fairy tales once again, and the possibility of actually grasping a love that was real and eternally mine being completely within my reach if I simply allowed myself to fall.
It was in moments like these I chose to let go of my cynicism, welcoming the notion that there are multiple shots at happiness granted by the universe to lonely people everywhere. I submerged myself in an ocean of optimism and let its waves wash over me, despite the many times it ended in my almost drowning. Ironically, it was also at times like these when life slapped me in the face with a curve ball, usually in the shape of a lover who evaporated into thin air or apparently forgot how to use the telephone in an effort to dial my number. Not one to be irrational (shut up), I understood when someone I dated went back to their ex or contracted bird flu and could no longer see me because he was concerned about my health. What I did not understand, however, was the phenomenon of men who claimed to love me one moment and absconded without so much as a goodbye the next, leaving me to wonder if I called him someone else’s name during sex or if he was mauled by a pack of polar bears at the nearest gas station.
It was after a scenario such as this – the disappearance of a man I’d shared something with, not the polar bears – in which I went for drinks with one of my best friends in an attempt to make sense of his behavior. I sat at the bar that night with a feeling so heavy it seemed I’d swallowed a bag of rocks, as I pondered what in the world I’d done wrong.
“Did you hear me?” Aria said with a look of concern on her face. “You haven’t taken a sip of your wine and we’ve been here for hours.”
I held up the glass and examined its contents, no longer interested in temporarily numbing my thoughts with pinot noir. A vibration to my left startled me and my phone fell to the floor. When I lifted it to see his name, I immediately perceived God was playing a cruel joke on me as I rubbed my eyes for focus. I’d often wondered what I’d say if he ever reached out to me again, but despite a storm of emotions emerging on my inner horizons, I let Jonah go to voicemail. Aria tapped my glass suddenly and I lifted it to drink all its contents without hesitation.
I guess this means goodbye, he’d told that afternoon in Vegas and turned away, never bothering to say anything again for so long I really did wonder if he was dead. The flashback gave me shivers and I attempted to catch the waiter’s attention.
“We should order another round,” I told Aria and came back to the present. “I think I’m tired of questioning men. They will always return if they want to, right?”
“Of course they will,” she patted my hand and smiled, but when I looked in her eyes there was no trace of reassurance in them.
I spent two weeks making love to a mountain of turmoil as I navigated the waters of initiating contact with Jonah once again. Simultaneously, I rid myself from all traces of Liam, the master manipulator who was also great at pulling an impromptu Houdini act on what I thought was the beginning of something solid. Two weeks later, I stumbled upon the reason he’d retreated so suddenly without explanation; it had been sitting across the table from me that very night disguised as friendship, under a cloak of betrayal and envy named Aria.
It was then I learned that when you keep your friends close and enemies closer, you give them the capacity to comfort you just as they insert a knife in your back and turn it. I inadvertently allowed her to stab me when I lay my trust in her, screwing my guy in the process and also a friendship that’d lasted so long I didn’t remember existing without it. Three months later life dealt her a stabbing of its own when he left her for someone new, yet I wouldn’t be there to comfort her as I’d done so many times before. Right around the same time, her ex-boyfriend invited me out to “catch up” and discuss the fallout of a 20 year friendship. I guess it should not have come as a surprise that revenge had promptly been handed to me on a silver platter as he confessed over beers he’d always liked me.
“What are you talking about, Josh?” I said to him, incredulous.
“Just one date,” he quipped as I tried to close my mouth and failed, finishing my entire beer in one gulp to keep from screaming. I guiltily toyed with the idea of a victory so thick I could’ve sliced it with a knife and served it to Aria for breakfast but, alas, I’m not that kind of girl. Excusing myself from Josh, I told him I was going to the bathroom but instead carried my purse and dignity back to my car and closed the door shut. After a few moments of bewildered introspection, I grabbed my phone and resolved to call someone who’d tied my heart into so many knots it bended at the mere mention of his existence. I saw the letters on my phone, spelling his name in bright blue and carrying so many memories it was hard to contain them to merely three inches of screen.
“Hello?” someone picked up after the fifth ring and I swallowed hard.
Yet it wasn’t Jonah’s voice that greeted me, but instead a female’s I would later come to recognize as that of the girl he was marrying.
Survival of the Fittest
Sometimes you’re at a party drinking around a bonfire and you’re tipsy and jolly and your married friends are telling anecdotes about their kids and you think, Man, I really wish I had babies.
Other times, they tell you stories like the following and you’re elated to have that variety pack of Magnum condoms you bought at Costco on your nightstand, along with a little thing called reason.
I Do
Several months oozed by since I’d last spoken to Jonah that nauseating night I called him and someone else picked up. Hours later, he sent me a text apologizing, explaining his fiancé sometimes answered his cell if he was showering or walking the dog. He expressed his desire to talk and said he’d call me over the weekend. I had a million questions bubbling over, yet I refused to open the Pandora’s box that was my heart when it came to him so like a child, I ignored his message and blocked his number. The next day, I called in sick from work and spent it crying on my bed while listening to Coldplay on repeat.
One balmy afternoon, I sat outside a café in South Beach having lunch with my best friend. I was trying to keep my face from melting off into my cleavage while Britt played with her food and sighed repeatedly in the most dramatic of manners. I knew her too well to even inquire what was up, so I let her be and pretended to be engrossed in my rib eye.
“Have you ever been to Texas?” she asked finally in a nonchalant manner that raised 20 red flags at once.
I downed the steak I was chewing and quirked up an eyebrow at her. “Have I ever . . .” my mind wandered off, mentally there already. “Yeah, I know Texas. Don’t you remember that neurosurgeon I used to date in Dallas?”
“I’d rather forget,” she rolled her eyes.
“Why do you ask?”
She looked at me sheepishly and bit her lip. “Well, do you remember that guy I was telling you about that I met online but lives in Houston?”
“Forget about it,” I replied vehemently, reading her intentions.
“Oh, come on, Annie,” she whined. “You didn’t even let me finish. We can just go for a weekend and it’ll be so much fun.”
I shook my head and wagged a finger at her. “Absolutely not, buttercup. I refuse to go to a city I’ve never even visited so you can meet some crazy who’s likely a serial killer or even worse, weighs 400 pounds and looks nothing like his pictures. Then, I’ll have to play wingwoman to his friend who looks exactly the same, and be totally miserable for a weekend when I could be watching TV in the comfort of my own home.”
“One, you don’t watch TV. Two, we’ve Skyped, you judgmental bitch. I know exactly what he looks like from head to toe,” she purred lasciviously and I gagged. “Besides, you don’t have to hang out with us the entire time if you don’t want to. Don’t you know people in Houston, anyway? I kind of feel like you mentioned something about a friend of yours that lived there.”
Jonah.
“I do
n’t know anyone there,” I swallowed my dishonesty, “but I’ll go for you. Because I’m a firm believer in modern romance, also known as, ‘you’re buying me a lot of drinks.’”
Two nights before our flight took off and at my best friend’s urging, I sent Jonah a message informing him of my approaching foray into the wild west. After pouring out the full Jonah chronicles on Britt – whose favorite book is Twilight and believes all things are founded in romanticism – I somehow felt exorcised of my past demons. It was the first time I’d ever spoken to anyone about all that had transpired. I wasn’t quite expecting a reply after my infantile antics, but just the act of reaching out felt utterly purifying. I was standing barefoot in the customs line when the phone alerted me to his call two days later. I answered, breathless, explaining I couldn’t exactly chat at the moment.
“Okay, so just tell me what the grand occasion is,” he drawled, not skipping a beat as he pretended nothing had changed in the course of 48 months.
I inhaled dramatically and snickered, “I think it’s a long story that merits cocktails and a face-to-face interview of sorts.”
“I guess you’re in luck then,” he offered quickly. “I happen to be in possession of a lot of liquor, a masterful bartender, and a serious craving to see you.”
Jonah made arrangements to have his driver pick me up the following day for lunch and drinks at his new place. I wasn’t sure what that meant, per se, but didn’t want to ask in fear of overstepping my boundaries. Texas was his turf, after all, and I was merely a tourist trying to avoid getting axed by a 400-pound guy who trolled the Internet for gullible girls in need of companionship. I sat on my hotel bed wearing a form fitting dress that flared at the waist in full-skirted glory, channeling Marilyn Monroe. Britt stood half naked in front of a mirror, trying on outfit after outfit, without finding any to her pleasure. Her online lover was coming for her in half an hour, and her long dark hair was still set in rollers. She didn’t seem the least bit worried about any of this as she hurled yet another rejected article of clothing to a growing pile on the floor.
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