by Lisa Daily
10
The next morning I look and feel sleazy, like a walk of shame after a one-night stand. Well, I suppose that’s what it feels like, I’ve never actually had a one-night stand. I’ve only ever had Michael.
I should hate him for what he did to me, but I spent all last night laughing with him and supporting him. I feel so dirty. And now I can’t take it back.
Now Michael assumes we’re still friends. And he will not be convinced otherwise.
11
Michael and I fly back to Sarasota on Monday morning, leaving at 6:00 A.M., which means dragging ourselves out of our hotel at four-thirty in the morning, after just two and a half hours of sleep. I’m nauseated from too many dirty martinis last night and the massive shocks of adrenaline my body keeps pumping into my gut just to keep me upright. On the ride to the airport, Michael confesses all his past encounters, admitting to several one-night stands in college, and anonymous sex when he traveled. Way more information than I want to know. I don’t want these awful images in my head, so every time he drops another detail I close my eyes and picture Voldemort from the Harry Potter movies. It helps in a weird way.
“I thought that I was protecting you by keeping the truth from you,” he says. “I didn’t want to hurt you—please believe me. I’ve just realized that it will hurt you more if you have to learn the truth piecemeal—that every revelation will feel like a new betrayal, and I don’t want to do that to you. Please know that I’m sorry for everything, I’ll always love you, and I’ll never dishonor our relationship again by lying to you.”
It’s awful, but it’s a relief. I cry and cry, and Michael cries too. Hearing it all at once makes me number to the details, but at last I feel like the worst is over. He’s gay. I’m not a man. What are you gonna do?
When we get to the airport that morning, I tell Michael I have a migraine, which mercifully keeps him from talking to me anymore. He dotes on me, brings me some ibuprofen and a liter of water from the airport gift shop, and carries my laptop bag onto the plane. The flight home is only an hour and a half, but I’m sleep deprived and wiped out in every sense. We haven’t even taken off yet before I pass out in my seat, and I’m out cold until my own foghorn-quality snores wake me up. So ladylike.
Yesterday felt like an out-of-body experience, or one of those nightmares you wake up from sweating and howling, clutching your vibrator like a samurai sword. Once Michael and I arrive at the Sarasota airport, it hits me all at once—the shame, the devastation, the anger, the betrayal. The fact that I might never be loved, that I’d never really been loved—not all the way, at least. Or have sex again. Or have a baby. It’s almost too much to bear. I’m wrung out and exhausted and I can’t wait to go home and bury myself under my duvet and sleep until it doesn’t hurt anymore.
“So…,” says Michael, as he stands beside my car in short-term parking, fidgeting awkwardly.
“You should go to a hotel,” I say.
Throwing my suitcase in the backseat, I pull out of the space, leaving him just standing there in the parking garage.
12
Thirteen hours later, I wake up pissed as hell and launch myself out of bed. How dare he! The elastic from my purple satin sleep mask is tangled in my hair, and after ten minutes standing in front of the bathroom mirror trying to work it free, I’m exasperated and decide to just leave it hanging there. I can’t be bothered, I’m on a mission.
High on adrenaline and fury, I stuff all of Michael’s suitcases and his stupid sports team duffel bags full of dirty laundry, and grab an old box of condoms we’ve had in the nightstand since college, and dump them in too. Yanking his beautiful designer ties from the rack in his closet, I viciously wad them up into wrinkly little balls and cram them all in the various pockets of the suitcases and duffel bags. Ha! That will make him crazy, he’s always been so freaking meticulous about his clothing. Like a beauty queen. Yes, I just heard myself. Dragging the bags out the front door, I leave the whole mess for him out on the front porch. The sleep mask still stuck in my hair flaps casually in the evening breeze. I debate adding some of Morley’s cat litter to the suitcases for ambiance, but decide against it at the last minute.
But I’m not ruling it out.
I don’t care where he goes, I just want him the hell out of the house.
Jackass.
“Looks like you’re busy this evening,” says my neighbor Zelda from the sidewalk. Her silver hair is pulled up in an elegant chignon as usual, and topped off with a sparkly barrette. Her tiny white Chihuahua, Gabbiano, is tucked under her arm.
I’ve always thought the name Zelda Persimmon sounded like it belonged to a witch, or an old vaudeville star. But Zelda is a formerly world famous circus performer—a beautiful flying trapeze artist who stunned and delighted audiences as the first woman in history to do a triple somersault in midair. There’s even a plaque with her name on it among the other circus luminaries on St. Armands Circle.
“I’m so sorry, dollface,” she says kindly as she approaches my porch. “Your grandmother called me this morning.” She offers up a plate of muffins wrapped in plastic wrap.
“Did you know about Michael too?” I ask, dragging one of the duffels to the far side of the porch so it won’t block my front door.
“Doll, I spent my entire career around men wearing purple satin leotards and sequined velvet capes trimmed with feathers. I’m not exactly the best judge of these things.” She laughs.
Zelda always knows just what to say. I smile at her and she hands me the plate of muffins.
“Leave this for now,” she says, motioning toward the door. “Let’s have a treat.”
“Thank you,” I say.
She follows me inside, and I offer her a drink. “Milk, coffee, water, something stronger?”
She sets Gabbiano down on the floor and he skitters off to find my cat Morley. They’re best friends. It’s weird. Morley doesn’t like anyone except Gabbiano.
“You look like you could use a glass of wine,” she says.
“Probably so,” I admit. Zelda makes herself comfortable on the sofa as I head to the kitchen to grab the wine, corkscrew, glasses, plates, and napkins for the muffins. Suddenly I’m starving; I haven’t eaten anything since the airplane eggs this morning. Returning to the living room, I set down the plates and glasses.
I pour the wine while Zelda places muffins on the plates.
“To a fresh start,” she toasts. I raise my glass and take a slug of the wine, and then bite into the chocolatey muffin. It’s delicious, maybe the best muffin I’ve ever tasted. She reaches over, and gently untangles the sleep mask from my hair. I’d forgotten it was there.
“Thanks. Did you make these?” I ask. “They’re yummy.” I’m already halfway through the oversize muffin. It’s like I’ve never tasted food before.
“You’re welcome. Go easy on the muffins, doll,” she says. “They’re strong.”
“I haven’t eaten all day,” I answer nonchalantly. “This is lunch. And dinner. Wait, what do you mean, strong?”
“You’ve had a rough couple of days. They’re a special recipe,” Zelda says with a mischievous grin.
“Huh?” I ask, taking another bite. These suckers are addictive.
“My sister takes a little cannabis for her glaucoma. Medical grade, of course. Good stuff,” she says.
It takes a second to register.
“Are you saying these muffins have pot in them?” I ask incredulously. Suddenly, I start cracking up. Am I really eating chocolate pot muffins with my eighty-year-old neighbor? Yes, I am. And it’s not even the weirdest thing to happen to me this week.
Zelda starts giggling when I start cracking up, and before long we’re just roaring with laughter. We laugh ourselves silly between bites, and I’ve downed two muffins by the time the marijuana starts making my brain fuzzy.
I’ve barely processed what’s happened, nothing makes any sense to me. But I’m apparently too stoned to care. I start laughing again when I tell Zelda th
at the only time in my whole, measured life that I’ve ever tried pot is with my eighty-year-old party animal neighbor. Zelda and I are rolling around on the floor with our feet propped up on the coffee table, laughing so hard I’m in danger of wetting myself.
“So you didn’t have a clue about Michael?” she asks.
“Nope. Honestly, I always figured our sex life was so, um, let’s say comfortable because neither one of us ever had any practice before we got married.”
Zelda snorts, and takes another bite.
“Also, I didn’t really want to open that can of worms if it turned out I was just the worst in bed ever and Michael was just being nice all these years. Of course, what would he know?”
I didn’t tell her what I’ve really been thinking: I’m thirty-one years old, for fuck’s sake. A psychologist. How did I not notice that my husband is gay? Am I an idiot?
“Don’t you dare tell my grandma Leona that we ate pot muffins!” I say, trying to look serious, but completely unable to keep a straight face. Zelda and my grandma hit it off at a barbecue Michael and I had a couple of years ago. They’ve been really tight ever since.
“Who do you think gave me the recipe?” she roars.
Zelda and I hang out, wasted like college students, for another hour or so, and then she calls for Gabbiano and the two of them head out the door. She’s buzzed too, so I watch her from my front door to make sure she’s okay, until I see her go inside her house and turn on her porch light.
As soon as she’s home, I text Michael and tell him to come get his crap, and that I don’t want to see or hear him.
I’m sitting on the couch in my pajamas, as my muffin buzz starts to dissipate, watching house porn on HGTV, and wondering if my life would suck less with a renovated kitchen.
It would definitely suck less if that Property Brothers guy Jonathan Scott were renovating my kitchen.
A laugh gurgles up out of nowhere. Jonathan Scott renovating my kitchen sounds like a euphemism for sex. The sweaty kind. Hmmpf. Not that I would know.
Two hours later, the suitcases have disappeared from the front porch, which is devastating and a relief at the same time. I haven’t left the couch, except to peek out the window.
Michael being gay has nothing whatsoever to do with me, but it burns like the worst sort of rejection.
I want to be loved. I want to be ravaged. I need validation that I’m still desirable, that I’m not frigid or stupid. I have an aching, sickening feeling that no straight man will ever want me. Or love me. I feel like I have something to prove.
Which is how I end up downloading Closr at the stroke of midnight, and texting with some stranger at one in the morning, while simultaneously raiding my refrigerator in a mad search for something topped with bacon. I know, pathetic. In my defense, I’m probably still pretty wasted. At least that’s what I’ll tell Darcy and Samantha if this goes terribly, terribly wrong. Closr is a dating app that connects singles with potential matches in their immediate proximity. The app notifies you if there’s a compatible singleton nearby, and then their photo appears on your phone or tablet. If you think they’re attractive, and they think you’re attractive, the app makes a match and encourages the two matches to send an introductory text from a multiple-choice selection of casual, racy, and pithy openers—and even suggests nearby places to meet up, such as a dance club, a coffee shop, or a bookstore. When my first match appears on my phone, I’m surprised. Markmatics, as he calls himself, looks fairly normal. Cute, even. Well, cute-ish. Maybe cute-adjacent. Early forties, short brown hair, dark eyes, toothy grin. And then the Closr app suggests we meet up nearby. At the gas station. Because really, what sparks romance like fluorescent lighting and microwave burritos? And how convenient that you can nuke your dinner, pick up some fishing lures, and get beer and prophylactics all in one place.
Why are you up so late? comes the text from Markmatics.
Jet lag, I respond, feeling oddly guilty, like I’m cheating on Michael or something.
Europe? Asia? texts Markmatics.
New York, I write back.
Yeah, the New York–Florida time difference is a killer, he writes. Okay, so he’s almost sort of funny.
Long day yesterday, long night, early flight. Is there a word for NYC-lag?
No but there should be, he texts. Hey—is Closr suggesting to you that we meet up at the Exxon station too? Or is the Closr algorithm just making some unkind assumptions about my level of sophistication?
Yes. Kind of weird.
No, it’s cool. I take all my dates there.
Seriously?
No. But they do have one hell of a Slushee bar.
It’s surreal to me that you can be sitting in your pajamas with a sleep mask dangling from your hair one minute, and semi-flirting with a complete stranger in the middle of the night the next. We text back and forth for an hour or so, and then I beg off and tell him I need to go to bed. He tells me he’s a mathematics professor at New College, and is up late grading papers. I slept all day, but there’s work I need to do, and it feels weird and rude to text a stranger so late. We agree to meet the next day for drinks, which seems like a good idea at two o’clock in the morning. Maybe it isn’t. It is completely pathetic, and honestly, this guy could be a serial killer or something—but is it so wrong to want some kind of validation that a man, any man, any straight man, could possibly find me attractive? Everyone else apparently looks up all their exes and old high school boyfriends online after getting their hearts broken. But how pitiful am I? I don’t even have that.
I can’t just sit around letting my ovaries curdle. I’m taking charge of my love life.
13
Closr is a pain in the ass. I meet Markmatics at six for drinks at Marina Jack on the bay, and as I’m walking into the bar, my Closr app dings repeatedly with a slew of potential new matches. Slipping into the ladies’ room, I swipe up (for yes) and down (for no) to clear them from my phone, otherwise the damned thing will keep making that appalling noise—aah-OOH-guh, aah-OOH-guh, like an old-fashioned car horn. The wails of a Richter 7 orgasm would be more subtle, but I can’t figure out a way to change it without turning off my ringer completely, and that’s a nonoption. There are not one but two different shirtless men wearing furry unicorn masks on my Closr feed, which weirds me out in a way I can’t begin to describe. Is this a thing? Eighteen photos later, mostly no’s, and a few oh-hell-no’s, I readjust my push-up bra, touch up my lip gloss, and make my way back into the restaurant to meet Markmatics. He’s at the bar, and waves to me as I enter. At least I think it’s him. Otherwise, some stranger is very happy to see me. Okay, he looks nice. A little pudgier than his photo, but nice.
“Hey, Alex, good to meet you in person,” he says, standing as I near the bar. He leans forward like he’s going to kiss me on the cheek, and then turns a bright shade of fuchsia, like he’s thought better of it.
“Nice to meet you too,” I say. He motions to a stool on his right and I sit down. I feel awkward—very, very awkward. And guilty as hell, which I do not understand. My husband is gay. We’re getting a divorce. Why the guilt? The bartender comes by and I order a glass of rosé. Markmatics is already drinking a dark beer of some kind.
“So, Closr…,” he says. I nod. That’s not really a question. “You’re pretty,” he says, and then adds unsubtly, “Why are you single?” Which feels to me like he’s really asking What’s wrong with you?
“I have webbed feet,” I crack.
“Really?” he asks.
“No.” I laugh, and he smiles.
So I tell him about Michael cheating on me, leaving out the part about him being gay. I’m not sure why. The cheating is humiliating enough. Besides, Markmatics is clearly already wondering which part of me is defective. I don’t exactly want to drop bread crumbs. The bartender brings Markmatics another beer, and me another glass of wine, and a plate of mini–crab cakes for us to share. He’s a really good listener, and before I can stop myself, I end up spilling the whole w
retched story.
“Oh, that guy Michael Miller from ESPN who screwed around with Bobby Cavale? I’ve seen that guy,” he says. “I love basketball.”
Oh goody, a fan. Even as I see the inappropriateness of my oversharing in his eyes, I can’t help it, I just keep talking and talking. And then I’m crying. Right there at the bar in front of a mortified stranger, dabbing my eyes with my used napkin and trying not to get any remoulade in my eyes.
“Uh,” he says
“I’m so sorry, this is the first time I’ve ever been out with anyone.” I sniffle.
“Ever?” he asks. I nod yes and a look of panic flashes in his eyes.
“Really, I’m sorry.” I sniffle again, trying to pull myself together. “I was just thinking about … how much I really love the curly fries here.” Crap, this place is pretty nice; I don’t know if they even have curly fries. But I have bigger problems. I smile fakely and brightly and take a big swig of my wine. “So, Mark, tell me about your five-year plan.” I’m acting crazy, I know I’m acting crazy. And yet I can’t seem to stop myself. Stop! Stop! I can’t stop. What’s wrong with me?
“My what?” he asks.
“Your five-year plan. Where do you see yourself in five years? Married? Having kids? Still teaching at the college? You know, your plan for your future?”
He looks at me like I’ve just told him I have a radioactive STD, and stands up from his bar stool without warning. Quick as a flash, he rummages around in his wallet for some cash and drops a fifty-dollar bill on the bar.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just remembered I have to be somewhere else.”
“Oh, really?” I ask.
“Um, yeah. My pet ferret, his name is Arnold. He’s … um, brown. He had surgery today at the pet hospital and I just remembered that visiting hours are about to end. It’s pretty serious. We’re not sure if he’s going to make it.”
“Oh my goodness,” I say. “I’m so sorry. What happened to him? Do you want me to come with you to the pet hospital for support?” Losing a pet can be very traumatic.