“It’s okay, Sarah, I understand. We can still be friends.”
“Friends? Oh my God, you’re so young and innocent! You can’t be friends with someone that you’re in love with! Believe me, I know.”
“If you’re in love with me, why are you breaking up with me?”
“No, you’re in love with me.”
“Um, I just kind of thought—”
“I’m sorry, but this is the way it has to be,” I interrupted. “I have to go.” I walked away dramatically.
I usually find that if I end a relationship, I’m more devastated than if the other person ends it. If I make the decision not to be with someone, I’m closing the door on a future with them, but it’s my choice. So if it’s the wrong choice, that’s on me. If they break things off with me then I don’t have to feel responsible, and I don’t have to question whether I just walked away from the perfect guy, since I wasn’t the one doing the walking. Don’t get me wrong; it still hurts but it’s somehow more reassuring. I had broken up with Steven, but in this case I knew I wouldn’t have any regrets.
The next play I was in was called Bus Riley’s Back in Town. It’s a play about a guy named Bus Riley who is back in town. My co-star was a guy named Nick. Nick liked to drink whiskey.
Nick lived with his girlfriend but he was miserable with her. Really everything made him miserable, but he covered it up with moments of what seemed like joy. I assumed that I could make him happy. I can’t say for sure that he was manic-depressive, but I can say for sure that he reminded me a lot of my Uncle John, who was manic-depressive. John was someone who when I was younger I thought was one of the happiest people that I’d ever met. I later found out that my parents just didn’t let me around him when he was having an “episode.” When they did finally decide that I was old enough to be told that he was sick, I insisted on seeing him. My dad made arrangements and we paid Uncle John a visit in Sacramento. I was about thirteen and we met him at a diner. It felt like he didn’t want us to see where he lived, which turned out to be the case because he didn’t have a home. My grandma was secretly harboring him even though she’d been told over and over that she was enabling him; everyone else kept him at a distance since he refused to stay on his medication and get the help he so desperately needed. She didn’t care. A woman that will take the bus cross-country to see her grandkids has a lot of dedication in her. And she was his mother.
John was really nervous when we all sat down in the big red booth; my dad had told him that my sister and I now knew about his condition. He tried to overcompensate with humor. When I asked him how he was doing, he said, “Just trying to stay away from the chain saws,” and laughed.
I was, and still am, terrified of chain saws. I won’t even set foot in a haunted house because I’m convinced that the person holding the chain saw is an actual serial killer using Halloween as their excuse to go nuts. All year they wait for the night they get to dress up and act like it’s all fun and games, then when the moment is right people who just thought they were out for a good scare will get their heads sliced off. The movie Halloween really fucked me up. Uncle John’s joke made my head spin.
The most attractive thing about Nick was that he was a complete mess and an adult. He started classes then dropped them. He wanted to be an actor but felt like he was too smart for it and should probably teach English. All of his noncommittal bullshit made me really horny.
After Andy, I didn’t think I would ever fall in love again, but it was happening. Nick made me feel incredibly safe and incredibly insecure at the same time. There isn’t anything more tempting than that combination. It’s like someone offering you a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich right after you start a diet.
Nick flirted with me, but I couldn’t decide if it was real flirting or if he was just researching his role of Bus Riley. He seemed to be taking his acting seriously during those few weeks, and I liked it. I was starting to find guys in my classes hotter than the guys from the fraternity houses. Frat guys were fun for a night, but brooding actor guys had me really interested, and Nick was an amazing brooder. It wasn’t until my late twenties that I figured out the guys I had been labeling as brooding were probably just alcoholics.
One night after a long, emotional rehearsal where my character agonized over the return of Bus Riley, Nick and I decided to go for a drink. We were physically exhausted from what our characters were going through. We decided that a pitcher of beer at Fuzzy’s was the perfect way to unwind. As a bonus, Max was working that night. He was too dumb to figure out that since I never returned any of his calls he should start charging me for drinks.
One free pitcher led to another, and the next thing I knew Nick and I were in my shitty Mustang on our way to the same place Andy and I had gone the night we decided to give “us” a try. I guess my car just knew that when it was time for me to break the make-out ice with someone, it should head to the park. We pulled over, parked discreetly underneath a giant lamppost, and shoved our tongues into each other’s mouths.
It didn’t take long for a cop to pound on the window. I put my shirt back on and asked him what I could do for him.
“You can get out your ID and step out of the car, that’s what you can do for me.”
I obliged, but in the back of my mind I was trying to figure out how the hell I could keep from getting arrested.
Luckily I was an actress; the tears immediately started streaming down my face. I began telling the cop all about the huge fight Nick and I had just had.
“We’ve been together since I was fifteen!” I told the cop. “A few months ago I found out that he cheated on me and we broke up. He felt so bad. You know, like when you screw up and then you realize that person was the best thing that has ever happened to you? Like that song ‘Don’t Know What You’ve Got (Till It’s Gone)’ by Cinderella. That’s what happened with us. So now we’re making up. Do you think I’m making a mistake?”
“I don’t know. I mean, sometimes guys screw up, you have to consider—wait, what are you two doing at the park this late?”
“This is our spot! It’s where we first kissed. He wanted to come here to make up, like a fresh start. Isn’t that romantic?” The tears were flowing. I was so excited that I could cry on cue that I almost forgot to focus on my lie.
The cop let us go home with a warning. He told me to get home safe and “be careful with my heart.” I was in college. I didn’t listen to cops.
Nick and I kept seeing each other for a while. He and his girlfriend eventually broke up, most likely because I dropped him off at 4 A.M. several nights a week. At the time I was sure that hearts had to be followed—no matter the circumstances. That’s what the girl who walked down the aisle throwing rose petals at her dad’s wedding only months after her family fell apart believed. That was just the way things worked. The other side of me, the grown-up girl who believes in commitment, now knows that during that time I was a selfish asshole and so was Nick.
Nick decided that I was now his girlfriend and we continued to be really fond of each other during play rehearsals. My feelings for him intensified my character’s joy that Bus Riley was back in town. People started saying that I was a really good actress. Co-star dating was great for my career.
When Nick and I would go out, we’d get drunk. He liked to drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes. I was already on board with the whiskey, so I just needed to take up smoking again. I had smoked a little in high school, which traced back to Austin Cooper. Austin had ridiculous dimples and looked amazing in a pair of Wranglers. I don’t care what you say, the Arkansas girl in me will always find that look attractive. With him I had discovered that if you were talking to a guy and he wanted a cigarette, the best way to get some one-on-one time with him was to also want a cigarette. This can even apply to female friends, but the payoff isn’t as rewarding. Nick actually reminded me a lot of Austin, without the Southern accent. Nick was from Virginia and liked to read Jack Kerouac. Austin was from Prairie Grove and couldn’t read.
Austin smoked Marlboro Reds, so my throat suffered more than my heart did when he broke it. He’s been arrested a few times in the past couple of years for something to do with meth. Just like Garth Brooks said, sometimes it’s good when things don’t work out with somebody you think you love.
While Nick and I were dating, my roommates graduated and I had to find a new place to live. I moved in with these girls Amanda and Heather from my acting classes. Amanda was a big lesbian. Lesbians loved me in college. Flattering at the time, but in retrospect that was probably less about me and more about my haircut.
Amanda and Heather had been friends for years and I really liked them. I was excited that my new roommate situation would be as fun as my previous one. Heather and Nick were also close, maybe a little too close. I can’t say for sure if anything ever happened between them, but it seemed like something had happened between them. At first I attributed their bond to their similar moodiness. Heather used to lock herself in her room, light candles, and cry, while Amanda and I sat in the living room playing the drinking game Quarters. Heather also wandered into the kitchen at night and would guzzle an entire carton of milk. Then she’d claim that she didn’t remember doing it, blaming it on “sleepwalking.” I’m sure she has incredibly strong bones now, but the whole time I lived with her I had to eat dry Cocoa Puffs.
Shortly after moving into our new place, we decided to have a party. Nick had been acting strange, and I was pretty sure I needed to break up with him. He’d been blowing off school and was starting to seem really irresponsible. My mom has always scared me into believing that if I pay my gas bill one hour late I will never be able to get a home loan, so I can be a bit uptight. The things I had loved most about Nick were that he had similar interests as me, and had aspects of being responsible, but was still fun. I’ve found throughout my life that that is a hard combination to find: Guys tend to be one or the other, but rarely both. Now that the responsible side of him seemed to be fading, I was getting sick of his brooding. I got enough of that living with Heather. I just wanted a roommate who would twirl broomsticks again and a boyfriend who finished his classes. The night of the party, he couldn’t keep it together. He was drunk and rambling, then he went outside, set a bush on fire, and brought it into the house. It was a direct slap in the face to my fire department roots.
I was pretty sure he was in a blackout at the party so I decided to wait until the morning to tell him that it was over between us. I explained that we were just going in “different directions,” which I’d heard someone use as an excuse to leave a woman with amnesia on General Hospital.
About three weeks later, Nick announced that he was moving back to Virginia. He told me he didn’t want to lose contact with me, and promised that he would write. I liked the idea of a guy writing me letters. It seemed really romantic. For a while I got a letter every week. He claimed to write them while he was on his porch drinking his whiskey and smoking cigarettes and he referred to himself as a poet. I don’t know what the deal is with me and guys that I break up with deciding to write poems to me, but at least Nick’s were legible and he didn’t make up words like Bucky did. He also never called me his “ho” in any of them. My standards had risen.
I was still having fun living with Amanda. She was great at being a lesbian—she brought home lots of girls. But one night I pulled into the driveway and caught her making out with this guy Rob in his car, which was confusing for me. I didn’t want her to fuck things up. Having a lesbian roommate made me feel really open-minded for a girl who grew up in a town with one thousand people. She apologized for making out with a guy and assured me that she was really a lesbian.
“I was drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“It’s okay,” I comforted her. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
Eventually Heather decided to move to another state. I would miss her but was excited to finally be able to keep a carton of milk in the house. Now we needed a replacement roommate. Amanda asked her friend Misty, who was also a lesbian, to move in. Now I was a straight girl living with two lesbians. I could see my sitcom developing and I hadn’t even moved to California yet.
Unfortunately Misty was out of her mind. She used to write mean things about Amanda and me on pieces of paper then leave them in odd places. I’d lift up a Q-tip box or a plant and read that I lived like a pig and had fat arms. I was very clean and prided myself on it, so the living like a pig part really pissed me off. Each time Amanda or I found a passive-aggressive note, Misty would act surprised and say that she didn’t write it. It made no sense. If she didn’t want us to find them, she’d have thrown them away. She was like a mean note hoarder. I do think if she would have lived there for much longer she would have killed me. Amanda and I had daily meetings, trying to figure out how to ask Misty to leave without incident. Luckily one day we came home and she was just gone. She’d taken all of her stuff. Angry notes were left uncovered everywhere. She really hated us. I guess she couldn’t take me or my fat arms anymore. I was relieved that she had left without murdering me in my sleep, but now Amanda and I needed a third roommate yet again.
A week later, Nick wrote me one of his drunken letters and told me he was coming back to finish school. Amanda thought this was the perfect situation—he could just move in with us. I was hesitant. I was over him at that point, but I hated his mood swings. Those are only fun when you really like someone. I wasn’t quite comfortable with the idea of him being our roommate. So he moved in.
He and Amanda had sex a few times, which was pretty confusing. I didn’t even really care that she and I had had sex with the same guy who was now living with us; I just cared that she was a lesbian. I was sure we had talked about this behavior when she made out with Rob. I asked her to stop having sex with Nick, which surprised her because she didn’t think I knew about it.
“You guys are my roommates. Of course I know.”
“I’m sorry. Are you upset? I thought you didn’t have feelings for him anymore.”
“I don’t. I don’t think I do anyway. It’s just weird, mostly because you’re a lesbian. It feels like you’re losing focus. You’re in COLLEGE! This is the time of your life to be a lesbian.”
“I know. You’re right. I don’t even like guys. Sometimes I just slip up,” she explained.
“Okay. Just don’t let it happen again. I can’t lose another friend.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked back. I knew I was talking about Andy, but I didn’t know if she knew I was talking about Andy. I also didn’t feel like crying.
“No, I mean when you said you can’t lose another friend. Who are you talking about?”
“What?”
“This game sucks,” Amanda conceded.
“Who do you think, Amanda?” Tears started to stream down my face, but they weren’t the kind I mustered up on cue. “Andy. I lost Andy. And now we barely hang out and when we do we both act like fucking morons. It’s so dumb.”
Amanda hugged me. I wept like a baby. If I’m even kind of upset and then someone hugs me, I lose my shit.
Fuck. It was my senior year and my heart still belonged to Andy. I didn’t understand what the problem was. I’d had a few boyfriends since, even ones that I really had feelings for, like Nick. But somehow, no matter what, my heart still skipped ten beats when I was around Andy, even though those times were few and far between.
A couple of weeks later Andy asked me to meet him for lunch. I was usually the one who instigated us getting together, so I was particularly excited at his invitation. I put on my lucky toe ring and did the best I could with my hair.
Andy wasn’t much for small talk, so he got to the point right after the chips and queso arrived.
“I’m moving to Little Rock.”
I stared at him. Little Rock was four hours away, probably fourteen hours in my Mustang.
“That’s really exciting,” I lied. “What are you going to do there?” I felt the tea
rs coming up and fought them with everything that I had. Not here, I thought. Not at Chili’s.
“I’m not sure. I just need a change … are you okay?”
“I’m great! This queso is just so spicy.” My face does sweat when I eat spicy food, so it wasn’t a total lie.
“Are you sure?”
“Oh, shit. I forgot I have a test in an hour!”
“But it’s Saturday.”
“I know! Rude, right? I’ll see you later.”
I bolted home, into my room, and cried into my pillow, hoping not to stir the neighbors. Any hope that I had in the back of my mind that we would end up together had just fizzled. I knew that I was planning on moving away, but I wanted to leave first. I didn’t want him to leave me. Suddenly it didn’t feel easier to have someone make the final decision for me. That previous theory was so stupid. This was so much worse. I wondered if this was how my mom felt when my dad made the decision for them.
I guess I cried myself to sleep because the next thing I knew, Nick was sitting on the side of my bed rubbing my back.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I rolled over and looked at him. “I’m fine. Why?”
“Well, I got home a little while ago and it sounded like you were playing one of those whale sounds CDs in your room, but I know your CD player is broken. What’s up?”
I was taken aback by his concern. Even though we were roommates I hadn’t felt the friendship that we had once shared. I had really distanced myself from him. I’d let him move in after a long discussion about how I didn’t want it to be weird between us and I assumed he understood part of it “not being weird” was not fucking our lesbian roommate.
The Nick I used to love was back, if only for that afternoon. He comforted me. He spoke about Andy and me in ways that confused me, because they hadn’t spent much time together.
“How do you know so much about this?”
“You love him,” he said to me.
“Why do you think that? Why do you know that? I’m supposed to be over him, and you’re all supposed to think that. Oh God, do you think that he knows …?”
Life As I Blow It Page 8