How to Be Single

by Liz Tuccillo

  I nodded. I had managed to remember my room key and my room number. Thomas pressed the second-and third-floor buttons and the doors closed. When they opened again, Thomas gave me a polite kiss on both my cheeks and said, “Good night, my dear Julie. Sleep well.” I walked out of the elevator and down the hall to my room.

  Back in the States

  Georgia knew exactly what she was supposed to do. Dale was coming over in a few minutes, and she knew the cardinal rule that everyone, no matter how romantically inept, knows: you always try to look extremely hot when you are meeting with an ex. But on this particular morning, Georgia had said “fuck it.” She wasn’t going to bathe and blow-dry for Dale. Fuck him. She wasn’t trying to woo him back. Fuck. Him. He can go live with his underage samba dancer.

  Georgia and Dale were meeting to talk about how they would officially share custody of their children. No lawyers, no fighting. Two adults with no agenda except for the well-being of their kids.

  When she opened the door, Dale walked in looking, well, hot, unfortunately, but fuck him. The first thing he did when he came in was look up and see that the little door of the smoke alarm was open, and the battery gone.

  “Jesus, Georgia, you didn’t get a battery for the smoke alarm yet?”

  “Shit, no, I’ve been meaning to.”

  “Well, don’t you think that’s kind of important?”

  “Yes, I do, but I’ve been kind of busy around here, you know.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t you think that should be high on the list of priorities? A battery for the smoke and carbon monoxide detector in the house our children live in?”

  Georgia knew that this could blow up right away into a fight, and that hip, well-educated New Yorkers don’t have to have fights with their exes over stupid things. But she didn’t care.

  “If you’d like, you can turn around right now and go to the hardware store and get a battery for the smoke and carbon monoxide detector that’s in the house our children live in. You are welcome to do that if you like.”

  “I’ll do it after we’re done talking, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks so much.”

  They both took a breath. They walked over to the kitchen table and sat down. There was a long silence.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Soda?”

  “I’ll have a glass of water,” Dale said, as he got up from his chair. But Georgia was at the refrigerator. This was her house now and Dale knew better than to get up and help himself to a glass of water. As Dale sat back down, she poured a glass of water from the Brita, then walked over and handed it to him. He took a sip. Georgia sat down across from him, her hands folded on the table in front of her. She felt that if she just kept her hands folded in front of her, things couldn’t get that out of control.

  As it stood, Georgia had full custody of the kids, with Dale seeing them whenever they both agreed to it, and whenever Georgia needed a break. But they knew it was time to set up some rules.

  “I was thinking that maybe you could have the kids during the week, and I got them on the weekend.”

  The sarcasm leaped out before Georgia even had a chance to stop it.

  “That sounds great. I get to get them to school and help with their homework and make sure they have dinner and go to bed and you get to go out and have fun with them?”

  Georgia didn’t even know what she was fighting for; it actually sounded like a good arrangement. Let Dale take the kids on the weekend so she could go out and have fun. Dale didn’t need the weekends to go out and have fun because he was home with his samba dancer having hot samba sex every night of the week. But she didn’t feel like agreeing with him yet. She felt like being pissy, and she felt like getting one thing perfectly clear.

  “She can never be with my children. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Georgia.”

  “Seriously, if I hear that she was around the kids, I’ll go apeshit on you.”

  “We’ll talk about this later,” Dale said, his head down, trying to sound neutral.

  Georgia’s hands were no longer folded. They were now flapping around, helping her make her points.

  “What do you mean we’ll talk about this later? Like I’m going to change my mind? Like two weeks from now I’m all of a sudden going to be like, ‘Hey, can you please bring that Brazilian whore around my children to show them who broke up their mommy and daddy’s marriage?’”

  “She didn’t break up our marriage, Georgia.”

  Georgia got up, the civility of sitting down to discuss something at the kitchen table now broken.

  “Oh, like you would have left on your own with no safety net? Right. You left the minute you knew you had someone else to be with.”

  Dale didn’t wait to respond. “Maybe that’s true, but that doesn’t mean that our marriage wasn’t over long before that.”

  Georgia was now pacing and her voice had gone up a couple of decibels in volume. “Really? Okay. How long before? How long was our marriage over before you met the samba dancer? A couple months? A year? Two years?” Georgia stopped right in front of Dale, who was still sitting. “How long!?”

  There’s an expression that if you have to go through hell, the best way is to drive right through it. Dale decided to do just that.

  “Five years. It started going bad for me five years ago.”

  Georgia looked as if she had just been electrocuted.

  “You mean right after Beth was born? Then?”

  “Yes, if you must know, then. Yes.”

  Georgia began pacing again. She was a wounded animal now—wild-eyed and unpredictable.

  “So you’re telling me that for the past five years that we’ve been living together, you didn’t love me anymore?”

  “Yes.”

  Before Georgia was able to stifle it, she let out a little yelp. She tried to swallow it, hoping Dale might have only heard it as a gasp. She walked over to the kitchen counter, shaking. But being a strong, wild animal, Georgia gathered her wits and went right back on the attack.

  “Well, bullshit. You’re just saying that to make yourself feel better, so you don’t have to actually deal with the truth. And the truth is that you got lucky enough to find someone really hot who wanted to fuck you and so you ditched your marriage and your children for it. You’re going to tell me that you haven’t been in love with me in five years? I say bullshit. You weren’t in love with me when Gareth rode his bike for the first time without his training wheels and you picked me up and twirled me around in your arms and kissed me? You weren’t in love with me when you got your promotion and I got the kids to write cards that said ‘Congratulations, Daddy’ and we papered them around the house and had a big dinner for you when you came home?”

  “I loved you, but no, I wasn’t in love with you anymore. We never had sex, Georgia. Ever. Our marriage was passionless. It was dead.”

  Georgia was holding on to her hair at the roots, trying somehow to compose herself. Since the breakup of their marriage, there were tears, there was shouting, but they had never had the “face-to-face” talk. This, apparently, was it.

  “So that’s what this is all about? Hot, sweaty sex? That’s not what a marriage is, Dale. That’s what an affair is. A marriage is two people building a life together and raising children and sometimes being bored.”

  “And sometimes having sex, Georgia. WE NEVER HAD SEX.”

  “THEN WHY DIDN’T YOU TALK ABOUT IT WITH ME?” Georgia shrieked. “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME THAT YOU WANTED MORE SEX? WHY DIDN’T WE GO TO COUNSELING OR GO AWAY FOR A FUCKING WEEKEND? I THOUGHT EVERYTHING WAS FINE.”

  Dale got up from the table.

  “HOW COULD YOU THINK EVERYTHING WAS FINE? WE DIDN’T HAVE SEX. I’M TOO YOUNG NOT TO HAVE SEX, GEORGIA. I STILL WANT PASSION AND FIRE AND EXCITEMENT IN MY LIFE.”

  “FINE. LET’S HAVE SEX. IF THAT’S ALL IT IS LET’S HAVE SEX RIGHT NOW.” Georgia stood with her greasy hair and her sweatpants, her arms outstretched. Dale started backing up, shaking
his head.

  “Georgia, come on.”

  “What? You don’t think it’ll be all hot and sweaty right now? You don’t think you can find fire and passion with me?” Georgia was sobbing between bursts of fury.

  “You don’t just want sex, Dale, you want new sex. If you wanted sex with me, you would have tried to have sex with me. But all you want is new, hot sweaty sex.” Georgia was poking him as she spoke, jabbing at his shoulders and his chest.

  Dale put his jacket on. “This isn’t going anywhere. We were supposed to be talking about the children.”

  “Yes.” Georgia followed him, standing very close. “The children you left because you need to have HOT, SWEATY SEX.”

  Dale spun around and grabbed Georgia by the shoulders. “I HATE TO TELL YOU THIS, BUT I LOVE MELEA, GEORGIA, AND YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE TO GET USED TO THE IDEA THAT SHE’S GOING TO BE IN MY LIFE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME.”

  Dale then basically picked Georgia up by her shoulders and moved her out of his way, practically sprinting to the door. Georgia was officially unhinged.

  “SHE’S NOT GOING TO GET NEAR MY KIDS, DO YOU HEAR ME??”

  She followed him into the hallway, as Dale flew to the staircase, clearly not wanting to wait for the elevator. Georgia shrieked down at him as he raced down the stairs.

  “WHAT? AREN’T YOU GOING TO COME BACK WITH BATTERIES FOR THE FUCKING SMOKE DETECTOR THAT YOU’RE SO CONCERNED ABOUT?”

  Dale stopped at the bottom landing and looked up at Georgia glaring down at him from three floors above.

  “Get it yourself, Georgia.” And he slammed the door.

  Back in Rome

  While Thomas had business meetings, he had thoughtfully arranged little appointments for me to meet with some of his female friends to talk about love and men and relationships. I was here, after all, for research.

  Right away, I learned some very important things about these Italian women. First of all, none of them had slept with Thomas. That might not have been the most monumental cultural or anthropological discovery, but it was pretty interesting to me. I never asked outright; all you have to do is ask a woman how she knows someone and you can usually tell from the expression on her face what’s up.

  The second thing I learned is that they seemed a little shy, which was surprising. In the land of Sophia Loren and…actually, there aren’t a lot of new Italian actresses who come to mind, which come to think of it, might support my argument…I was surprised at how reticent they were in talking about their feelings. Of course it could have just been the women I met, but it was striking. But soon enough, I started noticing another trend.

  In their conversations about their relationships, Italian women often mentioned slapping. For example, “Oh, I got so mad that I had to slap him.” Or, “I slapped him and then I walked out the door, I was so angry.” It seems these timid women weren’t so retiring when it came to a little bit of physical abuse. Of course, I only spoke to a few Italian women, and I normally don’t like to generalize, but what would stories about a trip around the world be without generalizing? Even so, I don’t want to perpetuate a stereotype. But it was of note.

  On my third day, I met Cecily. She was just five feet tall, weighed about eighty pounds, and barely spoke above a whisper. And yet in that whisper, she casually let slip that her last boyfriend got her so mad at a party that she slapped him and went home.

  “Um, you slapped him right there? At the party?”

  “Yes, I was furious. He was talking to this one woman all night long. It looked like he was going to kiss her, they were so close. It was humiliating.”

  “You’re about the fourth woman I’ve talked to who’s mentioned slapping her boyfriend.”

  Her friend Lena chimed in, “That’s because they make us so mad. They don’t listen.”

  We were sitting at a busy café right near the Trevi Fountain. I was eating a chocolate-filled croissant that was covered in powdered sugar.

  Cecily tried to explain. “Julie, I’m not proud of this, I don’t think I should slap. But I get so upset. I don’t know what else to do!”

  “I understand, I do,” I said, completely lying. Because the truth was, it’s something I would never dream of doing. Yes, because I was taught hitting is bad, and that one must learn how to control one’s more violent impulses. But also, I could just never imagine the audacity. Not that I would want to, really. But still, I’ve been beaten down to the point where I wouldn’t ask a man to put lotion on my back for fear of seeming too needy. So the thought of feeling comfortable landing the palm of my hand across some guy’s face was beyond my imagination.

  Lena added, “We can’t help it. We get so angry, we need to slap.”

  Cecily understood the expression on my face.

  “Do women slap in the United States?”

  I didn’t want to sound superior, but I didn’t want to lie, either.

  “Um…I’m sure some women do, but it doesn’t seem as common as it is here.”

  Lena then asked, “Have you ever slapped?”

  I shook my head, picked at my sugary croissant, and said no. They both took this in, quietly.

  After a moment, Cecily asked, “Julie, but certainly a man has made you so angry that you wanted to slap him, yes?”

  I looked down at my cappuccino. “No.”

  They both looked at me with pity. I looked back up at them with envy.

  “Then you have never been in love,” Lena said.

  “You might be right.”

  They both looked at me as if I had revealed the most tragic secret in the world.

  “This is a tragedy. You must go out in Rome and fall in love immediately,” Cecily said, quite seriously.

  “Yes, tonight,” Lena said. “You’ve wasted too much time already.”

  “Is it that easy? To just walk out your door and decide to fall in love?”

  Lena and Cecily just looked at each other and shrugged.

  “In Rome, it just might be,” Cecily said, smiling.

  Lena added, “At least you should try and be open to it. Be open to losing yourself in love.”

  “Losing myself? I thought that was a bad thing.”

  Lena shook her head. “No. That’s where you American women have it wrong. Trying to be so independent. You have to be willing to lose yourself, to risk everything. Otherwise, it’s not really love.”

  Finally, these shy women had something they wanted to teach me.

  Later, when I went to meet Thomas for dinner, I was still rattled. Those women—those timid, passionate, jealous, temperamental women—made me feel so dry inside, so emotionally limited. How does one start believing in love? How do you turn off your brain and everything you’ve seen and heard in the past twenty years? How do I all of a sudden believe that these crazy large emotions are not just a bunch of hormones and illusions? How do I suddenly believe romantic love is a real, concrete thing and that I’m entitled to it? I was worried that I was starting to think like a self-help book as I walked into a small restaurant on the Piazza di Pietro. Thomas was already there at the bar, a glass of wine in his hand.

  The last few days spent with Thomas had been so simple, yet so extraordinary. Innocent, unbroken happiness. There had been dinners and drinks with his friends, and we’d seen a lot of Lorenzo, whose girlfriend had not returned any of his calls, and who was insisting he was ready to be hospitalized. There had been walks and talks and heated debates and lots and lots of laughter. There were more motorcycle rides, and late-night glasses of Prosecco. It’s funny how fast you can feel like you’re in a couple. It only takes a matter of days before you’re thinking “we” instead of “I.”

  And through all this, he had not made a pass at me once. Not once. For the past four nights, he politely kissed me good night on my cheeks and then went to bed. Not that I wanted him to make a pass. I mean. Not that I would have done anything. I mean. Not that…whatever.

  As I sat down, I asked him right out, “Have you dated an Italian woman, and d
id she ever slap you?”

  He laughed. “This is what I love about you, Julie—you’re not very good with the small talk, either. We share this trait.”

  All I heard was that he said he loved something about me.

  “I have been with a few Italian women, but they never slapped me. I think they know that a French man might slap them back.”

  “It seems like the Italian men take it in stride.”

  “I don’t know about that. I don’t think they like it. But I do hear of it happening quite often.”

  I shook my head. “Fascinating.” I was already getting a little tipsy off my one glass of red wine.

  Thomas’s cell phone rang. As he listened he began to look concerned.

  “Now please, calm down. You will do no such thing. Now stop it. I am coming right over. Yes.” I thought it might be his wife, wondering when he was getting his ass back to Paris. Thomas put down the phone.

  “It’s Lorenzo. He is threatening to throw himself off the balcony of his apartment.”

  I grabbed my jacket and purse and we were off.

  When we got to his apartment, Lorenzo was distraught. He was crying, and it looked like he hadn’t slept all night. There were a few broken dishes on the floor.

  “She called me today, Thomas. She wasn’t angry, she didn’t meet anyone else, she just doesn’t want to be with me anymore. She told me to stop calling her! It’s over! It’s really over!”

  He grabbed his long floppy brown hair, sat in a chair, and sobbed. Thomas sat on the chair’s armrest and tenderly put his hand on Lorenzo’s back. Then Lorenzo jumped up and ripped his shirt off, buttons flying, and threw it in a ball on the floor, leaving him in a white t-shirt.

  “I’m going to kill myself. Just to show her.”

  Why he needed to do it in just his t-shirt, I’m not sure, but it got our attention. He ran to the balcony and opened the doors. Thomas ran over to him and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him backward. Lorenzo broke free and went for the window again; Thomas caught him. They both fell to the floor and Lorenzo crawled toward the window while Thomas held on to his leg. Lorenzo tried to kick Thomas with his other leg, around his head and shoulders.