“The holidays will be here before you know it,” he said. “I can’t imagine wanting to spend them with you and knowing I can’t.”
His elbow rested on the bar, a tattooed snake winding fully around the forearm muscle, consuming its own tail—shades of red and purple I’d never seen in a tattoo. For some reason, probably just my selfish need to keep seeing him, I had trouble believing he was as vulnerable as he claimed.
“Are you saying we have to stop right now?” I asked.
“No. But soon.”
As he paid the tab, he looked at me with a mixture of desire and control. “So, are you coming home with me?” he asked.
I followed him to his friend’s condo not far from the bar. Perched on the steep hillside of Twin Peaks, the wide living room windows looked down over the entire illuminated grid of the city, its piers, the water, and beyond, all the way to Oakland. Instead of taking me into the bedroom, Alden turned off the lights and sat on the couch. He placed a pillow on his lap and patted it. I lay down and he silently unzipped my jeans, removing them along with my panties. “Just relax,” he said, letting his left hand rest on my pubic bone. “Just breathe.”
Almost imperceptibly, he began nudging his finger, as if petting the tiniest, most fragile newborn animal. He kept it at the surface a good quarter inch from my clitoris, and only moved in closer as my legs gave way, stroking more slowly than seemed possible. He didn’t say a word. Eventually my knees splayed and then my arms. My right hand fell to the floor. My eyes closed and my head rolled to the right as my jaw unhinged. The entire surface of my skin shimmered bright and awake, drenched in a pleasure devoid of urge or tension. I couldn’t even call it arousal. It was more an oceanic tranquility, one I’d never been able to reach through drugs, meditation, or yoga.
The next night was Alden’s last before leaving town. I showed up at the door fresh from dinner with my friends, tipsy and hoping for a repeat performance, with my iPod blasting Wolf Parade into my headphones. When he answered, I took one earbud out and handed it to him. He listened a few seconds, then put the iPod on the entryway table, kissed me, turned me against the wall and lifted up my skirt. He fucked me once like that in the hallway, then again a few feet away on the guest bed. As we lay in the dark afterward, our clothes scattered across the floor, he said, “Please remember how I feel about you.”
I should have known then that I wouldn’t see him again, but I had overestimated my effect on him, and completely underestimated his on me.
* * *
When Alden returned from Death Valley, I asked him to come see my new studio, but he declined. His texts became friendlier and less flirty. During the 2008 vice presidential debates, which I watched with my coworkers in a crowded hotel bar downtown, we exchanged jokes and rooted for my fellow Scrantonian Joe Biden. When it ended, I texted, So can I come over now?
I’m afraid not.
As Alden distanced himself, I became preoccupied by the fact that we’d had so much unsafe sex. When it had first happened, he’d told me not to worry, that his recent physical showed a clean STD panel. He even had a printout of it somewhere in his home office. “I’ll show it to you if it makes you feel better,” he’d said.
“Sorry to be such a stickler, but I need to see it, for my peace of mind.”
Rationally, I didn’t think Alden had HIV or anything else, but how could I be sure? I barely knew him. My underlying guilt over breaking the condom rule attached itself irretrievably onto the obsessive worry that I’d infect Scott with a disease. I found I couldn’t rest until I knew for certain. I asked my doctor for a full STD workup, but she said I needed to wait eight weeks, since it took that long for certain markers to show up. Alden and I chatted online and he said he’d send me a copy of his test results to reassure me in the meantime. He also asked me to mail back the literary journal in which his story was published, as it was his only copy. That’s when it dawned on me that I’d never see him again, and even though he’d warned me it was coming, I couldn’t bear the reality of it. I called him and got his voice mail.
“Alden, hi, it’s Robin. I know you don’t owe me this, but do you think we could meet one last time, in public if you want, just to say goodbye? I don’t know … I think I’m a few weeks behind you in this letting go process. I didn’t realize that night in Twin Peaks would be the last time I saw you. I can give you your journal and you can show me the test and then we’ll be done. Even if you can just spare fifteen minutes, it would help me a lot. Let me know, okay?” I hung up, shaking.
He didn’t call back that day, or the next. Self-control left me by the minute. As I pulled up to my studio in the dark, I texted to ask if I could come by to drop his journal off, see his test, say goodbye, and leave.
No, Robin. Please just mail my journal back.
I stiffened. Was he trying to sucker punch me? I couldn’t tell because the coldness of his words short-circuited my brain. A malevolent heat spiraled through my chest and up the back of my neck. The car interior twisted in around me, and the SoMa alley beyond the windshield suddenly looked like Pennsylvania: a desolate street, night falling quickly, everyone and everything erased by the sweep of a blurry hand. The closest I could come to naming the feeling was abandonment, and that was a guess. It was too enormous and went too deep to fit behind any word. I’d been trying my entire adult life to master it, yet it remained unaltered, big enough to swallow me whole.
I started the car and headed down Bluxome and up Fifth Street. I’d drive to his house.
No, Robin. Pull the car over.
Turn around. Re-park. Go upstairs.
I closed the door of the studio behind me, sat on the bed, and took out my phone. I typed, I will return it, as soon as I get a copy of your test.
The phone rang.
“What are you doing, Robin?”
“I was asking to say goodbye in person, that’s all.” With these words, I shrunk to three feet tall.
“I told you I don’t want to see you. I want the journal back.”
My whole body went cold. Terrible danger hovered within inches.
“Fine, you don’t have to see me. But you also said you’d show me your test, remember?”
“You can’t hold that journal hostage…”
“I’m not holding anything hostage.”
“You have no respect for my boundaries. Your need to tie this all up with a pretty bow is narcissistic.”
“What are you talking about? Why are you suddenly treating me like some kind of stalker?”
“That’s what you’re acting like, a stalker!”
“And you’re acting like a fucking lunatic!” I screamed, loud enough to hurt his ears. Rage helped. It pushed some of the suffocating pain from my chest out into the room.
He hung up. When he called back I didn’t answer. The pain was locking down now behind a steely reserve. I lay awake in the studio all night, listening to the fountain five stories below, facing down the gaping hole inside me. If I could just sit with it, stare into it without flinching, maybe I could finally grow large enough to contain it. I kept telling myself that, and then recoiling each time I imagined the scene minus my husband waiting for me at home. What kind of masochist creates abandonment outside her stable marriage after the marriage itself has stopped producing such drama?
The next morning I had an email from Alden saying he’d send me the test. “Thanks,” I responded. “55 Bluxome. I’ll send the journal today and you’ll never hear from me again.” I deleted the email, then his email address, then his texts and voice mails, and finally his phone number. I unfriended him on Facebook and blocked him on Nerve.com. I slipped his journal inside a manila envelope along with a note that said, “I’m trusting you to send that test. Goodbye.” Each closure gave me back a modicum of control, sealing shut the vacant, silenced chambers of my heart.
Two days later, an envelope arrived at Bluxome. Inside was a handwritten note—“Sorry things got ugly, Robin. I hope you find what you’re looking for”�
��along with a photocopy of his blood work. He had no diseases. I looked at his full name, birth date, address, height, and weight, tangible symbols attesting to the existence of at least one man on the planet who knew how to handle me. I ripped up the test and threw it away. I folded the note and put it into the small box where I stored prayers and worries. The only tethers I had now were this note and his street address. I bowed my head and said a silent prayer for the strength not to chase him.
I tucked the prayer box into its drawer. So this was the flip side of passion, the price for it. I understood why he had to leave, but I couldn’t understand why so abruptly, and why, if he knew that night in Twin Peaks would be our last, he didn’t just come out and say so. Or maybe that’s exactly what he meant by “Please remember how I feel about you,” and I just couldn’t accept it. Maybe he imagined I held all the cards, being the married one, the dangerous one, and thus he couldn’t afford another goodbye. That explanation made sense and soothed me. What hurt me most was the possibility that this intense diving in and pulling away was not even all that difficult for him, that it was something he’d perfected over time with lots of women.
I’d never know exactly why he couldn’t give me fifteen more minutes of his time. But it didn’t surprise me that the one man I’d chosen to surrender to was the same one who showed no mercy. Every banal self-help book I’d ever read had predicted that.
* * *
The Virgin America gates at SFO were a sparkling white oasis amid the usual dull airport gray, quieter and more upscale. Jude sat on a rounded white bench with bright red cushions, waiting for me. I was flying home for yet another godchild—my goddaughter’s wedding this time—and stopping in New York City for a few nights beforehand. Jude happened to be leaving for New York on the same day, so we’d booked the same flight. When I saw him in his jean jacket and beanie, a small black canvas bag at his feet, my stomach dropped.
“Hi there,” he smiled as I bent to kiss his cheek.
“Hi,” I said. “Um, I’m going to run to the bathroom before we board.”
I lingered in the stall as long as I could. At the sink, I ran warm water over my hands repeatedly. I noticed they were shaking. I glanced up into the mirror and immediately looked away. I stood at a touchless hand dryer for three long rounds of soothing hot air. I checked my phone; we’d start boarding in five minutes. I walked as slowly as possible back to Jude. The bathroom ritual hadn’t worked. The sight of him made me want to curl into a corner and cry.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as I sat down. I was seized by the urge to run, straight out of the airport and home to my bed on Sanchez Street.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Flying always makes me nervous, but…” I searched for the words. He looked straight at me, calm, listening. “Traveling together feels weird.”
Jude and I hadn’t slept together for months. The dinners I’d cooked him, the songs he’d sung to me, our talks about childhood and religion all proved less intimate than sitting next to him on an airplane for five hours. Food, music, and hushed talks fell within the purview of sex. Traveling through airports together was real life, and I only wanted to do real life with Scott.
“I get it,” he said. “We can just be quiet on the plane, or read or something. We don’t have to talk much.” Even that—sitting side by side reading together—was something I reserved for Scott. I found it impossible, as well, to hold any other man’s hand or to sit on a lover’s lap. At home, if I was cleaning up, I routinely went to sit in Scott’s lap while he worked on the computer, swinging my legs over to one side, resting my head on his shoulder, and clasping my hands around his neck.
Other than making me quiet and sad, the flight turned out okay. When we landed, Jude and I gathered up our bags. He was heading to Brooklyn. He gave me a big hug.
“You going to be okay?” he said.
“Yeah, thanks, Jude. I’ll see you back in San Francisco.”
I boarded the train to Penn Station, then hailed a cab to take me to my hotel in Chelsea. The moment I told the driver the hotel name, a wave of nausea washed over me.
Nine times out of ten, my experience of nausea did not originate in or stay confined to the stomach. It was a direct effect of the vagus nerve going haywire. I knew this because I’d spent a lot of time researching the chicken-and-egg symptoms of panic in order to better manage it. The vagus is a maze of ganglia twisting from the brain stem down around the esophagus and into every organ in the body. Certain triggers, such as seeing blood or experiencing intense pain, can cause the vagus to overreact, which usually results in fainting. Blood, needles, and impact to bones had caused me to faint since I was a child. As an adult, it was usually a panic attack or emotional hit that sent me into vasovagal distress.
It starts with an intense burst of heat in my upper back, spreading up my neck like poison. Something in my chest collapses, making it hard to breathe, my stomach clenches, and my ears block. I begin sweating intensely, and, in order to compensate for the extreme blood pressure drop, my heart pounds about 150 beats a minute. I must lie flat to avoid passing out, and all functions vanish. I cannot sit up, speak, or move until it passes. I cannot dial the phone or call out for help. It’s like one of those dreams where you’re trying to scream and no sound comes out. No matter how often it happens, it’s difficult to believe I will survive. I cannot rise to make it to a toilet, so I turn on my side in case I vomit, but I rarely do. I just lie there trying to slow my breathing until my system rebounds. It can last a minute or continue in waves for more than an hour.
This is what gripped me now in the cab on the way to Chelsea. I lay on the seat, which the driver didn’t seem to mind or notice, and when I could sit up, rolled down the window for air. By the time we got to the hotel, the first wave had passed. I walked slowly to the front desk, hoping there wouldn’t be a second.
“Hi. I’m checking in.”
The woman took my name and typed it in. “Sorry, your room’s not quite ready yet. I should have it for you in a half hour.”
I took a breath.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You look very green.”
“I’m not well. Can you point me toward the restroom?”
Thankfully, it was far from the lobby and deserted. I sat in a stall hunched over with my head between my knees, quietly crying for a good long time. Gradually I became aware of a new sensation: a familiar pinch tugging at my lower abdomen near the pubic bone. Was my period due? I checked the calendar on my phone. My last period was … six weeks ago.
Alden. Could it be, at age forty-four? A forty-six-year-old friend had just had her first baby without the help of technology. In the past month I’d had at least a dozen instances of unprotected sex with him, more than in any previous month of my life.
I sat in the stall until I was sure I could get up without fainting, then walked unsteadily to a pharmacy down the street and bought a pregnancy test, avoiding the brand I’d used the last time that had possibly produced a false positive. Once I checked into my room, I went to the bathroom, opened the package, peed on it, set it down on the sink, and went to wait on the bed.
You around? I texted Ellen. I’m in NYC, period is late, taking preg test right now. Kind of freaked out about everything.
Absolutely, she wrote. Standing by, LMK.
I didn’t even have Alden’s phone number or email. I envisioned mailing him a note that said only “I’m pregnant. It’s yours,” and an illicit thrill shivered through me at the prospect of it. Like my secret wish to live in the path of an impending hurricane. Blow me over. Churn this shit up. Let’s see what we’re all really made of.
I walked into the bathroom too exhausted to rouse much hope or fear either way. The test shook in my hand as I lifted it. One blotty pink line pressed itself up through the wet oval viewing window. The second line, the one that signaled the ascension of nature over willpower, was nowhere in sight.
Negative, I wrote to Ellen.
. It would have been kind o
f awesome if that’s how this whole thing turned out.
Would it? Was the project nothing more, at bottom, than a search for fresh, viable sperm? That could explain why I’d now let two men ditch the condom. I didn’t even know anymore. All I knew was that, once again, Ruby had lucked out, remaining safe on the sidelines of infinity instead of descending into my chaotic womb to be fathered by a man who didn’t know or want her.
17
Solitude in Motion
THE INTERNET BOOM of the late nineties changed SoMa from an industrial neighborhood of bland warehouses, furniture outlets, and bail bonds offices into a grid of soaring lofts dotted with the occasional trendy restaurant or brick-walled wine bar. A decade later, it was headquarters for the dot-com resurgence as well. Blanketed in concrete and devoid of trees, its wide intersections leading to various freeway ramps, it was a part of town I’d never want to live in permanently. But knowing I had just a few months to enjoy it, I quickly adapted to its rhythms.
On my way to work, I walked down Bluxome past the open garage doors of Station No. 8, where firefighters in navy blue pants and T-shirts washed their truck each morning. I grabbed a cheap coffee at a doughnut shop on the corner, then headed up Fourth Street. It took about fifteen minutes to get to Union Square, and at each corner, the crowd of black-clad thirtysomethings with messenger bags strapped across their bodies grew. As we waited for the Walk signal, everyone took a sip of coffee from one hand while checking an iPhone in the other. My phone held a continual stream of texts from recent and potential lovers—men I met at OneTaste, at work events, the last stray candidates from Nerve.com—so each glance at it induced me to either reverie or anticipation. I could pass much of my waking hours in one of those two states. While idly waiting in line at the supermarket or riding the train, I’d sink into a daydream, remembering the last sensual rush or looking forward to the next one.
The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost Page 12