“Is he okay?” I say. He is gray-faced and sleepy and she looks exhausted.
“He said he’d call his girlfriend to pick him up,” she says without actually answering the question. I can’t decide what’s most distressing right now: the fact that he’s called me his girlfriend or the smell of baby powder deodorant seeping through the woman’s skin and clothes. It’s an intense, childish sweetness but it effectively obscures the look of her body so that she is two totally conflicting things at once: a little girl and a powerhouse bodybuilder.
“I’m not his girl—” I start. I’m usually the worst with strangers when it comes to oversharing. My throat basically fills with words and thoughts and things I’d like to scream at the top of my lungs the second I meet someone new.
“Bea. Thanks for coming.” Beck interrupts before this girl has a chance to hear what I have to say. “Penny was just walking me out. . . . ”
“Don’t let him lie to you,” Penny says, placing a pair of fingers on Beck’s wrist like she’s checking for a heartbeat. “He overdid it. I’d rather he go to the doctor, but if you can keep him hydrated and resting, he can wait on it.” Beck has a huge, family-size bottle of water in his hands and every time Penny looks his way he gulps some down.
“Oh, sure,” I say. Penny’s obviously itching to get inside. She holds a wagging finger in Beck’s face and tells him to be careful, then sprints back into the gym, leaving me and Beck in the parking lot with a whole bunch of crazy between us.
“What the hell?” I say to start. “Are you okay? You called me your girlfriend? You look weird. Are you sick? Is she a doctor or anything? She seemed pretty serious. Did you fall or something? I don’t know anything about, like, gym injuries; I’ve never even been to a gym. I swear to God.” I spill out every thought I can until I really let myself look Beck in the face, and he looks awful. His face is a pasty, sweaty white and his eyes have a hazy, glassy look to them. His fingers are shaking, and tapping eight times, over and over, one finger at a time, on his thigh.
“You’ve got to let me wash my hands,” Beck says. “Do you have anything with you?” It’s like an alternate-universe drug deal. He’s itching for some antibacterial soap and will pay good money to get it.
“I don’t think I have anything in—” I start. Beck is having another panic attack. And the realization inside himself that he’s having one (eyes widening, then tearing up, then focusing only on me) makes the panic even worse. The gym bathroom is probably just yards away, but there must be a reason he didn’t already go in there so I take it out of the running as an option. “Gym bag!” I say, and I hold out hope that somehow Beck is freaking out enough to have forgotten about some stash he might have in there. I grab the duffel out of his hand, unzip and dig through it.
It’s oversize and full of pressed shirts and notebooks and packets of Muscle Milk and protein powder. No soap. No wipes. Meanwhile, there’s sweat coming out of every one of his body parts. Strangers watch, think about helping, go about their business, take the long way around us, take a shortcut to get closer to us, listen in, shut us out.
Finally, I find a Ziploc bag of baby wipes. And hand them over like a nurse to a surgeon and wait for him to clean off the disease.
He doesn’t.
He opens the plastic bag, and then presses it closed again.
“Crap,” he says.
He stamps each foot eight times. I can’t help blushing. The attraction is still there, but the gesture makes him look more like Jenny or Rudy and less like a hot, mysterious dude I want to kiss. I try not to think: This is how I look when I pinch my thigh or take notes in Dr. Pat’s waiting room or drive like an old lady on the highway.
“Crap crap crap crap crap crap crap.”
“Oh my God, dude, wipe your hands. Don’t try to get through it now. If you want to fight the urge to clean off, do it on Dr. Pat’s time.” I barely recognize the chill in my voice. “For now just, you know, compulse the hell out of yourself. Seriously.”
“There’s only four wipes left,” Beck says. I immediately wish I’d hidden my frustration much better. ’Cause now his anxiety is mixing with some serious shame. And between the anxiety attack and the dehydration and who knows what else is going on in that perfect-looking body of his, we’re going to end up in the hospital if I don’t solve at least one of these issues right now.
“We will get more. But use four for now. There’s a pharmacy nearby.” Beck kind of nods but he can’t get his hands unshaken enough to actually do any of the compulsive cleaning. I take the bag out of his hands and before I know it the baby wipes are in my hand and I’m cleaning him, washing his hands carefully, one wipe at a time. It’s a familiar smell, the sweet cleanness mixed with a twinge of acid and alcohol.
I used to know a lot about changing babies’ diapers. I was a really good babysitter, actually, until I saw a Lifetime movie about a sweet nanny who went crazy and hurt the kids she was caring for. It got me so freaked out that I fired myself and gave all the families to Lisha and pretended she needed the money more than me. I think of calling Lisha now, but I’m sure Beck would hate that. It’s bad enough that I’m seeing him like this, I’m sure. I try to do what Lisha would do for me, though. Speak in a quiet voice, rub his back, act like I do this kind of thing all the time.
Beck’s hands aren’t nearly as soft as the dimpled thighs of a newborn, but it’s okay. That’s okay. I’m just happy to feel the rate of his heart start to drop, the rhythm of his breathing still fast but more functional. I uncap his water bottle and hold it up to his mouth to have him drink more.
I want the color back in his face.
Water spills down his chin as he drinks. It’s a sloppy thing, turning from careful to desperate.
I’ve got to get him more wipes before the panic comes back at an even higher, more intense pitch.
I WOULDN’T EXACTLY CALL OUR second date A “date” either. I’m still the same amount of disheveled as I was the first time: uncombed hair and a sweater my mother knit from pale yellow yarn back when she thought she might be good at knitting. She wasn’t. I have on argyle socks with ballet flats, and the oversize glasses I wear to school. Pink skinny jeans. The kind of outfit that screams I go to an all-girls school.
And Beck is zoning out from taking a Xanax that Dr. Pat recently prescribed. He’s still sweaty and gray like he was when I picked him up from the gym an hour ago. But I guess it qualifies as a date because we’re thigh-against-thigh on the couch in my TV room and I am playing nurse to Beck’s worn-out self. It doesn’t classify as a date in the traditional sense, but then what would you call this?
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Thank you. Seriously,” Beck keeps saying. It’s an endless loop, but not in his usual compulsive eight-times way. This is just a regular run-of-the-mill apology. It’s also unnecessary.
“I know how it is,” I say. I’m stirring protein powder into a huge mug of skim milk, per Beck’s request. It seems like an okay concession to make, since at least the shake will help his body recover from whatever craziness he put it through at the gym. The smell is horrible: a curdling, breast-milk sourness that is so thick in odor I can practically taste it through my nose. It’s thick, stirring it is basically like churning butter, and it cannot possibly qualify as food.
And as eager as Beck is for me to make the concoction, his face contorts as he chugs it down without coming up for air. There is nothing comfortable in watching someone torture himself so deliberately. I can hear the clicking sound of forced swallowing, and when the mug is emptied he emerges with a milk and protein powder mustache that needs cleaning up immediately so that I don’t vomit right here.
“Sorry, sorry,” he says again. He just can’t get enough apologies in. The TV drones in the background, some movie I’ve half-seen a dozen times, but Beck is stuck in his own head. “I know how gross that is. How gross I . . . am.”
“Seriously. I get it. I mean, I’m like you. Except without the resulting hot body. But you know, this
isn’t weird to me.”
“But you don’t get like this,” Beck says. “Not really. You don’t have disgusting habits. You’re not like the rest of us. I didn’t think I was like those other people in group—but look at me. I am. I’m not better than Jenny or Rudy. But you’re . . . you’re fine. You just have a couple little quirks.”
He will not think I am “just quirky” if I turn randomly violent one day, or if I have to start hiding all sharp objects, from scissors to tweezers to toothpicks. He will not think it’s cute when being around me is as high-security as going to the airport.
My mind flashes to the bruised part of my flesh. I keep pinching the same spot over and over and it’s funny how quickly the skin responds to the repetition.
“Funny” is probably the wrong word.
“I will say your protein crap is borderline grotesque. But come on. You know you’re cute.” Beck basically winces at the word. His eyes are even more beautiful than usual: watery and blue and unfocused. It’s sexy—the compromised, drugged-out state he’s in.
I like how safe and broad and sturdy he is, but I guess I like the hint of weakness, too. He could crush me with one arm but he’s distracted easily by shiny objects and errant germs. He’s impenetrable and scared in the same breath. He is that perfect amount of fucked up. I touch his cheek like a test and he smiles. It’s lazy, it’s Xanax-induced, but it’s right there on his lips, and then his dimples appear and I have to kiss him.
He gives in easily. It’s not passion or desperation but that’s okay because we both have enough of those things. It’s easy and sweet and sort of milky-soft. Which isn’t to say it’s not the kind of kiss you can get lost in. I’m absolutely lost in it. His mouth seems to already know mine, his lips take their time, and there’s a heat coming off of him that I have to press right up against. I have been cold for ages, and I can finally warm up.
Those hands—the ones that aren’t smooth or well kept or soft—they are strong and big enough to grab a lot of me at once. And they do. They’re everywhere. His hands hold me on top of him and they wander my body, but without a goal, without an endpoint, and I can sink into the kissing without wondering what will come next.
It’s possible we are kissing like that for an hour or two. Love Story was on TV when we started and by the time we’ve ended it’s got to be at least halfway through Psycho. The familiar vamping soundtrack has been rising and falling and sort of haunting the whole make-out session, but when we break apart, it’s way too much, so I turn it on mute.
I don’t think I could ever just turn Psycho off. It’s too high on the list of awesome movies. Lisha and I used to beg my mother to rent us the scariest films. She’d usually comply, if we promised not to tell Lisha’s parents that we were spending our Saturday nights with The Exorcist and Scream and The Shining.
I don’t want to have to turn the movie off, but I also know I shouldn’t be watching it. I miss those Saturday nights and they weren’t even that long ago.
“I’ll be right back,” Beck says. It’s him who stopped the kissing. Not abruptly, not in a way that would be totally obvious to someone less hyperaware than me. But he sort of eased me off of him, and then slowed down the whole pace, and then turned the make-out into just kissing and the kissing into looking each other in the eyes, and the gazing into sitting side by side on the couch. Beck gets up and starts toward different corners, different doors, but he’s never been here before and he seems to remember that at the most awkward moment, when he’s already left me on the couch and tried to make a swift, temporary exit.
“Sorry,” he says. “Bathroom?” I point him in the right direction.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass. The faucet runs and runs and then the shower, and then the faucet again. I’m getting washed off of him.
Half an hour passes.
In any other circumstance I’d knock on the door, but I know what’s going on in there and anything I do will just slow the whole thing down. Also: The possibility occurs to me that if I went near that door I would break it down and shove him under the water and drown him. Part of me knows that’s obviously not going to happen, but I stay back anyway. Sit on my hands. Avoid the possibility of danger. There’s the scene from Psycho that we didn’t see because we were too busy making out to worry about the screaming blonde on screen. But I know the movie well enough to play that over and over in my head. The knife, the blood, the implicit violence of a shower.
Forty-five minutes pass.
I try Dr. Pat’s breathing exercises but they’re not working because my entire mind is focused on keeping myself glued to the couch. I don’t want to move any closer to the bathroom just in case. But I hate myself for the thought. I know it’s not right or normal. I know I’m not simply some cute quirky girl like Beck says, and every moment I can’t get off the couch is a moment that makes me one level crazier. That heavy, precrying feeling floods my sinuses and I drop my head from the weight of it. Cover my face with my hands for long enough to get out a quiet cry or two. Because there is nothing, nothing worse than not being able to undo the crazy thoughts. I ask them to leave, but they won’t. I try to ignore them, but the only thing that works is giving in to them.
Torture: knowing something makes no sense, doing it anyway.
An hour has gone by. I have been working so hard not to do anything horrible that I didn’t realize I’d been biting the inside of my palm. It’s worse than the pinching. More barbaric. More evidence that I’m capable of terrible and unpredictable things.
It’s not bleeding. There’s no broken skin. It’s just the impression of my teeth in the soft skin.
I’ve got to get Beck to leave. Who knows what I’ll do next.
Psycho has turned to Ocean’s Eleven, which should not be on the classic movie channel because it’s the new one with George Clooney and not the actual classic, so I try to focus all my irritation on that instead of Beck’s disappearance.
When Beck finally comes out of the bathroom, he’s found a towel and it’s wrapped around his middle. The rest of him is all muscle and aggravated patches of scrubbed skin. It’s not just that the body-builder physique is hot. It’s also totally safe. From me, I mean. I’m not worried about being protected or whatever. But with him so strong, I can’t hurt him. Or it would be really hard to do.
“That was . . . a long shower,” I say. I assume my face has the telltale splotches of someone who had a quick cry and didn’t get to wash her face, but he’s not looking at me with anything but apology and shame.
“Yeah. Eighty-eight minutes exactly.”
“Eighty-eight,” I repeat, emphasis on the eight. “Do you do that every day? Or sometimes can you just take, you know, an eight-minute shower?” I do not ask why eight. That’s a question for group therapy, not for our second date.
Obviously, there aren’t accidents or coincidences with OCD. Or at least, not many. Not with someone as under control as Beck. Every minute that passes for him is careful, purposeful.
“I tried to just do eight. But, um, I sort of lost track of time for a second. You’re a distracting thought, you know?” He smiles sheepishly. Shirtless Beck is flirting with me.
The eighty-eight minute shower was weird, but I’m weird, right?
“I’m distracting?” I say. I wipe under my eyes in case errant tears have clung to my eyelashes.
“You are. But, I guess . . . I wasn’t ready for that,” he says. “With you. All the . . . touching. I mean, it was great. You’re great. But now I feel . . . ”
He wants to say dirty. He wants to say he feels dirty. He’s too polite to let the word out, so we just stand in the space where the word isn’t.
“Can you put your clothes on?” I say. “I don’t want to have this talk when you’re like a glistening half-naked Adonis in my living room, you know?”
“Right, sorry,” Beck says, but he doesn’t laugh even though I think I meant to lighten the mood with that.
“I mean, you can also stay like that, but not i
f you want to break up with me. Not that we’re together. You know what I mean. Don’t freak out and then dump me when you’re half-naked, okay?”
Beck does smile then. Dimples and all.
“Someday you’re going to have to be the messed-up one, and I’m going to get to be the normal one, Bea” is his reply.
I’m exhausted and grinning and feeling myself vanish into something scary. I pinch my leg to shake myself out of it as much as possible. Feelings are like blankets, covering you up so you can’t see clearly. Or like mazes you can too easily get lost inside. I am terrified of getting lost.
“Clothes. Seriously,” I say.
“Will you drive me back to the gym?” he says. I laugh at the thought. He’s taken a sedative, fought dehydration, taken the world’s longest shower, and spent hours lost in a totally blissed-out make-out session. It’s nearing midnight. A gym’s not even in the realm of possibility.
But he’s not laughing.
“I didn’t finish my workout,” he says.
“Yeah. ’Cause you got ill. From working out.” I keep a smile on. I badly want to keep it light, to say good-bye to him at the door to his parents’ house and know that we had a Good Time.
“Right. And now I’m fine.” Beck stomps to the bathroom with his gym bag and apparently there’s a whole change of clothes in there. (For just this purpose? Just in case he gets some girl’s sexy make-out germs all over him?)
“You should really rest. I’ll drive you home. Or you could even stay here—my parents wouldn’t mind if you slept in the guest room. Or we could drive around for a while if you want and you can decide later? But don’t be a total idiot.” It’s the last part, I’m sure, that makes him bristle the most. But the words tickled my throat too much so I spat them out.
So, okay, I’m not really making progress either.
OCD Love Story Page 11