A half mile ahead, I spotted a lone runner in a green jacket, and I followed her like the North Star.
Left foot, right foot, breath.
Left foot, right foot, breath.
Follow the green jacket. The green lights. Go, go, go.
When the sun made its full appearance on the horizon, I stopped to stare at the blazing, defiant fist rising out of Lake Michigan. I shook my fist back at it. As I rounded the turn where Wacker meets Lake Shore Drive, I stopped, hands on my knees, and tried to slow my breath. Something was happening. My whole body felt inexplicably warm—from the inside.
Then, staring at that fist of light, I heard a voice. “You are okay.” I looked over my shoulder. There was no one. Whose voice was that? Never once in my life did I think such a seditious thought: that I was okay just as I was, even without a plus-one, a lover, a prospect, a beloved, a partner, a family of my own, a gleaming future filled with people who truly knew me.
Frost was forming on my nose, so I had to keep running. My pace doubled. The speed of a quiet surrender. I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay—with each thump of my pumping heart. It was a revelation. And they kept coming. Brandon didn’t own my okay-ness; neither did anyone else. Even Dr. Rosen. He couldn’t make me okay. All he could do was show up for the sessions and bear witness to all the shenanigans that composed my personal life, offering to hold me when the pain threatened to break me. I was okay, or okay enough, for the first time in my entire life. Because I said so.
I wasn’t going to mention these thoughts in group because I thought they were fleeting. But then it happened in the middle of group. Lorne was reading the latest court order related to his custody fight and that feeling came over me again—the sensation of okay-ness right here, right now.
“Y’all, something’s happening to me.”
Patrice touched my cheek with the back of her hand. “You’re freezing.”
“I had a revelation, but it’s hard to describe. It was like someone was talking to me, but it was me. I told myself I’m okay. Like right now, this very second, I’m okay.” Dr. Rosen’s face curved into a bemused smile. “Even if the Big Relationship never shows up, even if I have to adopt a child as a single woman, and even if I fail at every romance from this day forward—I’m okay. I get to live and go to work. And I get to come here.”
Dr. Rosen leaned toward me. “We’ve all loved you like that—just as you are—for a long time.”
They had always loved me. So did my Tuesday group. They stuck by me even when I raged, detonated self-pity bombs, keened, snotted, fought, and monopolized the sessions with my tribulations. I wouldn’t die alone. These people would surround me. They would help my family plan a proper burial. They would say nice things about me and explain Baby Jeremiah to my confused, grieving mother.
I visualized my heart and saw slashes from each group session I showed up for, from each man I dated, from each squabble with Dr. Rosen or with a group mate. Each “fuck you” to Dr. Rosen was a nick. Each screechy voice mail, each temper tantrum during a session, each dramatic hair pull and broken dish. Nicks, gashes, hash marks, chips, gouges, striations. My heart, a messy, pulpy thing, was scored from each attempt, each near miss, each lunge toward other people, those who loved me back and those who didn’t.
In addition to my policy of saying yes, I started expressing exactly what I wanted from other people as a way of making amends to myself for having been voiceless with Brandon. Never again would I abandon myself in a sexual situation. But to keep that vow, I had to start speaking up in nonsexual situations. I want to hang out this weekend, I e-mailed my friends, instead of the safer we should hang out. When a coworker, Anna, responded with a plan to see a Rusted Root concert at House of Blues, I filled in the blank calendar square. My voice, expanding into the void, began to shape my life.
Then I sent another e-mail. There’s a group of us going to a concert, and I want you to come. I hit send, and then laughed. Did I really just send an e-mail to John out of the blue? John was the guy from Skadden, the one I’d used to test Brandon. The e-mail was a voice lesson. Right before I’d hit send, I’d smiled at the line: I want you to come. I’d never said that to any man before.
I had no hidden marriage agenda, no secret hope that John and I might hit it off. He just popped into my head. After hitting send, I got back to work without compulsively checking my e-mail for a response. Honestly, I didn’t care if he joined us or not.
After I’d canceled dinner with John back in the fall, I thought I’d never hear from him again. But six weeks before Brandon and I broke up, John offered me an extra ticket to see Puccini’s Turandot at the Lyric Opera. When I told Brandon about it, he of course was unperturbed. At that point, I wasn’t testing him—we’d already brunched at the Peninsula. But then, three days before I was supposed to go out with John, Brandon called me at work to ask if I had plans for the evening. It was a Wednesday night in the snowy dead zone of early January—my plan was to swaddle myself in flannel and curse Chicago weather patterns. He asked if I wanted to see Turandot that night. His parents’ season tickets. Fourth row center. In our typical dysfunctional way, neither of us mentioned that I was seeing the same opera on Saturday night with John. I smiled through the conversation because Brandon was showing me that he cared about me. About us. Maybe he felt a little bit threatened by John.
Three nights later, I watched the same opera from the second balcony with John and his two friends. After the opera, John’s friend Michael drove us all home, the CD player blaring “Nessun dorma.” From the backseat, I listened to Michael and John discuss the best dessert places in Chicago. All night I’d been thinking John was more attractive than I remembered, but then it crossed my mind that he might be gay.
Asking a potentially gay guy to join an outing to a concert: low stakes.
I’d love to see the concert. Let me know what time.
Six hours before the concert, I went to group in a foul mood. Embracing my new life, the way I was doing it, was exhausting and expensive. Concert tickets, a new sleigh bed, sushi dinners for one—none of it was cheap. I was so tired of all of it, I was so frustrated. I yelled at Dr. Rosen. Lots of fuck you’s and this doesn’t work and why can’t you admit you can’t help me? Nothing Dr. Rosen or the group members said got through to me. A single thought pounded through my mind: I hate how fucked up I am.
After group, I stormed back to my office, dreading the concert where I’d have to paste on a smile and be social. Six o’clock came and went. I remained at my desk. Then it was almost seven. I was supposed to meet everyone, including John, in twenty minutes. I called Rory from my office and cried as the sun melted behind the Chicago River, leaving my office dark save for the glow of my computer. No one was around other than the cleaning crew. “I’m sick of saying yes.”
“Can you go for an hour? Just one.” Rory stayed on the phone until I agreed.
Before leaving work, I went into the bathroom to check the damage from an hour of crying. All of my makeup had washed off. I didn’t have a brush, lipstick, or anything resembling a beauty product in my possession. I finger-combed my hair into a bun that I hoped looked sexy and devil-may-care, not like proof of my ongoing existential crisis. On the walk to the bar, I found an old Burt’s Bees lip gloss in my coat pocket, which felt like the universe throwing me a sparkly mauve bone. There were lingering patches of snow on the ground, but you could smell spring preparing her entrance. The closer I got to the bar where we were meeting, the better I felt. I remembered that I was okay. And I could go home to my sleigh bed after one hour.
Anna and the others were huddled around the corner of the bar. Someone slid an oversize square plate of cheese and dried fruit toward me. I stuffed creamy Roquefort and smoked Gouda into my mouth. John walked in ten minutes later. A flicker of worry: Would I have to babysit him? As he made his way to the bar, I took in his confident stride, his calm smile. He greeted the coworkers he barely knew and side-hugged me. He smelled like fresh air and clean
clothes. This guy could take care of himself; I could leave whenever I wanted.
“Sorry, I’m late.” He leaned toward me so I could hear over the din at the crowded bar. “I just bought a new bed and had to wait for the delivery.” I told him about my new sleigh bed. There was something suggestive about the bed talk and it stirred something in me. Maybe he wasn’t gay.
More friends arrived, and our group reshuffled around the bar. I kept ending up next to John.
I watched him. He didn’t say much, but his eyes sparked with life as he followed the conversation. When it was time to walk over to the House of Blues for the concert, again, John and I fell into step. His style was simple: blue sweater, jeans, lace-up black dress shoes with a rounded toe. His jacket was warm, but neither trendy nor businessman serious. I didn’t sense any dark secret stash of shame in him—no well of loneliness or hint of a dark side that would be tempting and maddening to try to fix.
In my purse, my phone buzzed with a text from Rory checking to see if I’d made it home. From the bathroom, I texted her back: Still out and almost having fun!
The House of Blues was jammed with sweaty drunk people in sweaters and boots. John bought me a bottle of water. I found myself actively hoping he wasn’t gay. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place who. A vague connection tickled at my consciousness. I didn’t mean to grill him. It was just a question. A harmless question to a guy I was enjoying talking to.
“Do you have a religion?” I have no idea why I asked that question in those words.
He raised his brows in amusement. “I didn’t see that question coming.” He took a swig of his water before answering. “I was raised Jewish.”
Everything went still and silent: The dance floor. The bar area. The people setting up the stage. In an instant that stretched into the next day, I froze too. This guy, whom I had blown off months before, then wrote off as gay, but now wanted to kiss, reminded me of Dr. Rosen. It was the Jewish thing that pushed me into revelation. Suddenly it was so obvious. They were both introverts with sharp senses of humor and a gentle but solid masculinity they didn’t have to flaunt. Simple style that didn’t flash their status or the current trends. Both had an air of confidence that, at times, bled into cocksureness. And their directness—they were not men who would ignore an elephant in the room. Good God—standing before me was a young, single, age-appropriate, gainfully employed man who reminded me of my therapist.
The rest of the concert was a blur of sweating, dancing, and losing myself in the music. John stood off to the side taking in the whole scene. At two o’clock in the morning, he walked me home. The city streets, dotted with snow flurries, were empty except for a nocturnal dog walker. I felt something I’d never felt with a man before: calm, quiet, happy, and excited. I wanted to be close to him. I wanted to fall asleep listening to his voice. I wanted to hear what he thought about all the people we knew in common and where he’d traveled. I liked him, and it felt like a secret power collecting under my skin. We laughed again that we’d both bought new beds in the past forty-eight hours. It meant something—the two of us with our new beds. A good omen.
The next day John left a voice mail: “I don’t know if you’re single, but if you are, then we should hang out.”
The excitement I felt about John was a steady pillar of hope, one that could guide me, not distract me and obliterate everything else in my life. It was quieter than the gale-force winds of the Intern and Reed. It was brighter and rose higher than the flat line of my desire for Brandon. But it wasn’t overwhelming. I still had an appetite. I slept normally. I wrote briefs at work and went to 12-step meetings.
“He’s Jewish, single, handsome, gainfully employed, liberal, kind, and just bought a new bed.” I ticked off all John’s positive traits to the group. “We’re going out tomorrow night.”
“And he took you to the opera,” Max said. “I’m calling it now: John’s the one.”
“Don’t do that.” Too much pressure. “It’s just dinner.”
I sat back in my chair and matched Dr. Rosen’s smile, beam for beam. “He reminds me of you.”
Dr. Rosen rubbed his chest.
* * *
La Scarola looked like a dive from Grand Street, but inside it was bright, smelled of garlic frying in butter, and bustled with waiters running trays of lasagna and fried calamari through its haphazard aisles. Dozens of people loitered by the front door, but John spoke to the host, who showed us right away to a quiet table in the corner. We split the angel hair pasta with shrimp and the pasta arrabiata. The conversation drifted from the stuff we did in college, how we felt about the partners we worked for, how often we went home to visit our families. My gaze never once drifted beyond the world of our table for the next three hours. I was genuinely surprised when the houselights came on and the music stopped. “I’m sorry,” our attentive waiter said, “but we must sleep.” I’d just spent almost three and a half hours with John and hadn’t called any of my group members from the bathroom. My heart still held the steady joy I first felt when he walked me home the other night.
At the end of the date, John squeezed my hand, which sent a jolt straight through my whole body. Back at home, I didn’t send a long e-mail debriefing to my groups or call Rory about my food. I climbed into my sleigh bed and drifted off to sleep with a smile on my face.
The next day at work I focused on the brief I was working on and ended the day with a 12-step meeting. I’d had the best date of my life and was still able to function. Before going to bed, I checked my e-mail and saw one from John.
I think I just went on my last first date.
I read the line again and again and then tiptoed over to my bed, as if a sudden move might make the expansive feeling in my chest disappear. I put my head on my pillow. I’d waited all these years for a chance to build a relationship with someone without drama, doubt, alcoholism, or protective eyewear. Now that opportunity was sitting in my in-box.
I put my hands over my heart—my beautiful, scored heart.
38
I waited for John to get drunk and urinate on me, but he didn’t like alcohol. He didn’t play video games, have a wife, or follow strict religious rules. When he told stories about growing up in LA, I listened for signs he was enmeshed with his mother or subconsciously enraged with his father, but he didn’t appear to be anything other than emotionally steady and hardworking. There seemed to be no extreme elements in his personality. He worked out, but moderately; he had a corporate law job that required long hours, but he worked only as hard as the task required; he watched his finances, but wasn’t cheap. I braced to be bored by his stability, for my body to curl into itself like a winter leaf. But being with John was like eating a perfectly seared piece of Arctic char, rosemary roasted potatoes, and grilled asparagus. Filling, tasty, nourishing. My tastes had changed, and John was delicious. He made me feel like I could stretch out like a starfish, bursting with life.
“There has to be a catch,” I said to Dr. Rosen and my groups. “How did I go from Brandon to this in just a few weeks?” I thought you had to wait months after a breakup to find a healthy relationship. “Is he my rebound guy?”
“Ask him about his past relationships—whether he had them and how they ended,” Dr. Rosen said. “You might see evidence that he’s afraid of commitment.”
Lorne groaned. “Don’t do that. Guys don’t want to discuss ‘fear of commitment.’ ”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be super casual when I bring it up.”
That night, John started a fire after dinner while I huddled under a white wool blanket. He settled next to me on the couch and closed his eyes—he’d worked past midnight the night before.
I threw off the blanket and faced him. “Have you had any long-term girlfriends?”
He opened one eye and looked at me. “We’re going there right now?”
“I’m wondering if you’ve ever…”
“Been serious with anyone?”
“Right. Like committed, a
nd if so, what happened?”
“Is this a test?”
I nodded. He laughed in his good-natured way and then described his two serious girlfriends. One from right after college, and one from a few years later. He described both women as good people whom he would probably still be friends with if they weren’t ex-girlfriends. The first relationship fizzled because she cheated on him, and there was too much drama. In the second, they broke up because they were too much alike.
“It wasn’t exciting to be with someone who thought and acted just like I did.”
While I might bring him more drama than he had a taste for, we didn’t have to worry that we were too much alike. I wasn’t moderate about anything, and I spun through more emotions in an hour than he did in a month.
During the second week of dating, John and I were parked in front of my building, kissing—neither of us wanting to say good-bye for the night. I was seized by the impulse to confess.
“I go to twelve-step recovery meetings for an eating disorder. I also go to group therapy three times a week. If you don’t like the sound of that, then we should part ways right now. And I don’t keep secrets from my group, so don’t even ask. They’re going to know the size of your penis and whether you flip me during sex.” I braced for a tense negotiation.
“The flip thing sounds like a good story.” No signs of angst on John’s part.
“I’m serious about the group thing.”
He shrugged. “Talk about whatever you need to in therapy.”
“And I don’t suck dirty dick, like ever.”
Group Page 25