I tried to let that sink in.
Jake obviously had no idea how his jammed, claustrophobic nest looked to outsiders—or maybe he did. The psychologist on the one segment of Hoarders I’d watched (it was excruciating, so I never watched a second show) explained that hoarders used material items as a barricade to prevent intimacy, and to fill unmet childhood emotional needs. “Possessions that seem useless serve essential purposes for hoarders,” she explained sympathetically. “What looks like junk to others can be both a substitute for intimacy and a way to drive people away.” I could see how it worked. An old, crotchety dog who pooped while we were having sex and slept under the covers between us was an added bonus.
Did Jake want me in his life? Looking around his apartment, I struggled to believe so. But it was a free country, wasn’t it? Jake was a grown-up. He could live however he wanted. I couldn’t wait to get out of the place.
In the bathroom, I changed into a snug black knit dress with exposed shoulders, and over-the-knee black suede boots. Jake whistled when he saw me, which picked up my spirits considerably, making me feel like a black swan emerging from a muddy fishpond. Coming out of his building into the cool evening and his idyllic Greenwich Village side street, we hailed a cab to his favorite Spanish restaurant, where he knew the chef from his last trip to Madrid. For dessert, we ordered every item on the menu—mini ice cream sandwiches, brownies fit for an American Girl doll, and bracing Spanish espresso.
And then, of course, we went back to his apartment to make love. I’d been waiting all day to feel his hands on my body, and as proof, my black lace underwear was soaked. Once I was kissing him, the mess in his apartment seemed utterly irrelevant.
With only one hurricane lamp in Jake’s bedroom, and Jennie on her dog bed out in the hallway, it was easier to ignore the stacks of T-shirts, piles of unmatched socks, neon-yellow racing skis, and one set of crutches in his bedroom I hadn’t noticed on my first pass through. And when Jake held my hand under the cover all night long, I felt like I’d been a fool to question my feelings for him.
* * *
Sunday morning, Jake got up early to make coffee. I heard him whistling in the kitchen, grinding beans, and teasing Jennie about what a pain she was for refusing to eat broccoli for breakfast. (Eew!) He tiptoed back into the bedroom. Jennie tottered behind him, with a toothy dog smile.
“Do you want some of the best coffee in the world?” he asked when he saw my eyes were open. He reached across the bed to hand me my very own blue Wonder Woman coffee mug, a token to keep in his apartment, making me feel as if I were his Wonder Woman.
I drank that first sip of coffee, black and delicious, with both eyes closed. There was no place to put down my mug, so I cradled it in my lap. We didn’t get dressed until dinner. We made love throughout his apartment, despite the clutter, taking breaks to read the New York Times Sunday paper. I came twice, once lying on my back in his bed and once on the living room floor, the only clear spaces available. He came four times, twice in my mouth, as I knelt between his legs at the dining room table and in the shower, water streaming over both of us. “That’s a personal record,” he told me after his final orgasm. “I don’t think there’s a single sperm cell left in my body.” Even then, I wanted more, as if my body still needed to make up for years of underemployment.
As we both lay naked across his bed in the late afternoon, totally worn out, Jake curled away from me. The bed started to shake. I looked at his back. His shoulders were trembling. I edged closer to him. He was crying, but like someone who didn’t know how to cry. His body heaved, but without tears. He hid his face between his arms. I wrapped my arms around him from behind.
“What is it, Jake?” I whispered into the hollow between his shoulder blades.
“This feels too good with you,” he choked out. “I can’t take it. You don’t criticize me or tell me to be different. You don’t get angry at me for anything. You want to bike with me and visit my place and know me. It feels so right that it hurts.”
A sob ripped through him. I felt like crying myself. I held him until he stopped trembling.
Later, when he got out of bed, he turned away, like he couldn’t bear to face me. Pulling on his T-shirt and boxers, his bare back looked like a boy’s, like the boy he once had been, and something splintered inside me, too.
That evening, Jake’s biggest film donor, the hedge fund investor who’d contributed to Jake’s movies since he’d graduated from Princeton, hosted a Halloween costume party. I was elated to be Jake’s girlfriend in New York, to meet his work friends, to take our relationship public. My mama bear came out when Jake, who’d turned back into his normal jocular self, confessed that one of his ex-girlfriends, Hannah of Sanibel fame, would be there with her new boyfriend, a Calvin Klein underwear model whose three-story Times Square billboard was causing traffic accidents. He was reportedly coming to the costume party wearing nothing but Calvin Klein underwear. Where did Jake find these women?
“I can’t wait for you to meet everyone,” he said. “And to protect me from Hannah.”
Jake had picked up a Wonder Woman costume for me at the same nutty Manhattan adult costume shop where he’d bought my coffee mug. Jake went as an Andy Warhol Campbell’s Tomato Soup can, with gel in his hair to make it stand up crazily, as Andy’s once did. The costumed guests blurred together, except for Hannah. Fortunately I saw her only from across the double living room. She was dressed as an Indian princess with a beaded suede headband, although the turquoise gem above her forehead had fallen out. She smiled at me warmly, like she knew a secret I didn’t. I turned away, confused.
I had to leave the party early to get home to the kids. My custody started at eight o’clock. Tim and Bella would be fine alone for a few hours, but not overnight. So I made my exit at ten, wiped off my eye makeup with a Kleenex in the taxi to Penn Station, and caught the last Amtrak back to Philadelphia.
I didn’t hear from Jake for the rest of the night. I texted from the train. Send me pictures! And How late did you stay? I kept on my coat so no strange men would get any ideas about picking up Wonder Woman.
When I finally snuck into my house around one in the morning, and checked on the kids in their beds (nothing more adorable than a sleeping child, especially teenagers temporarily unable to sass or snarl), I sent Jake another quick message. Home safe. Love you. And still I heard nothing back. Had he lost or misplaced his phone? Thank God I was exhausted enough to fall asleep without wondering when, where, or with whom he’d disappeared.
* * *
I got up at seven to make the kids avocado toast before school. Then I wrote for a few hours and went to noon power hour yoga. I checked my phone every ten minutes. Nothing from Jake. In the five or six weeks we’d been seeing each other, we’d emailed or texted each other several times a day. In my email queue, I had over two hundred saved messages from him. His silence unnerved me. What had happened? Was it possible that he had gone home with another woman? Maybe with . . . Hannah? I didn’t think so. Every time I looked at my blank phone screen, I took a deep breath, and tried to soothe my anxious inner child like a jockey trying to coax an unruly Thoroughbred into the starting gate at the Kentucky Derby.
Luckily, I had a phone session with Sara at one o’clock.
“Well, Leslie, have you two ever talked about commitment?” she asked. “Being monogamous? Making this official?”
“Well, I’ve been faithful to him. Even when he was seeing Hannah. I assume he is, too. But I guess it’s more of a . . . guess than an explicit agreement.”
“And Jake? Has he ever brought up the subject of sexual fidelity, yours or his?”
I explained about Jake’s text that read, I want you and me to be a We. And what he whispered almost every time we made love: I want to be the only man who gets to fuck you.
Even to me, my pronouncements sounded as convincing as a six-year-old telling her parents she had not eaten the last brownie. There was a pause on the line.
“Hmph.”
Sara sounded perplexed by what I’d told her. “That’s not the same as a conversation about fidelity and sexual exclusivity, Leslie. Most people fall into this trap, by making assumptions. That’s risky. You have to talk about monogamy explicitly. There’s no other way for a couple to approach commitment. It seems like Jake expects you to be loyal, to not even get texts from other men. He wants to be in your life. I’m not sure he wants to let you into his, or to make an unambiguous commitment. Maybe he’s afraid to make himself vulnerable, and that’s why he’s never gotten married or had kids, and why his apartment is such a disaster. Careful, Leslie. Nostalgia for a high school crush can create a powerful false intimacy. You’ve missed thirty years of Jake’s life. I know it’s hard to believe after Marty and Conor, but there are many far better men out there. You don’t have to settle for this.”
Shit.
I was behind the wheel of the TT, heading to school to get Bella, when Jake finally called. I pulled over to the side of Chestnut Street and put on my flashers to talk to him. Drowning out his voice, an institutional loudspeaker blared in the background.
“Hey you,” he said, clearing his throat. His voice sounded as if he’d scraped it with steel wool. “I’m in the ER at Beth Israel. Don’t worry. I’m okay.”
“Oh my God.” Clutching the steering wheel, my shoulders and chest stiffened with worry. I imagined a dented yellow taxi crashing into him or a tanklike Mercedes running a red light through the crosswalk as he biked up Broadway. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, after you left, we broke out some mezcal. Not sure what I was thinking. We started doing shots. I don’t remember exactly how I got home. But I spent the night throwing up. Kind of like you at Hershey Park. But, um, this morning . . . afternoon actually . . . I was throwing up blood. So I took a cab to the ER. I have some kind of esophageal tearing from ‘excessive vomiting.’ I promise, it’s not as fun as it sounds.”
He was joking, or trying to. I didn’t laugh.
Once I was sure he didn’t need me to come back to New York to take care of him, we said good-bye and I sped to get Bella before the school’s late-pickup fees kicked in. I was relieved Jake was not lying in a New York morgue or in bed with another woman. Yet I felt emotionally singed—puzzled, surprised, disturbed. If Jake had torn his throat at eighteen, when we were kids thrashing out how to handle booze, maybe I’d have understood. But Jake had been drinking alcohol for thirty years. The feelings Jake elicited in me were like roller-coaster loops: empathy, confusion, frustration, worry, passion. For the first time since he’d gone to Sanibel with Hannah, I didn’t want to talk to Jake at all. Sara was right: I had no clue who Jake Bryant really was.
* * *
Two weeks later, Jake left for South Africa to work on a film about Cape Town’s citywide water crisis, a trip that fell over Thanksgiving. Which they don’t celebrate in Africa, obviously.
“Can you come?” Jake had asked, once my irritation cooled and we were talking again after a two- or three-day hiatus. My detachment had backfired, because I’d missed Jake desperately during our time-out. Fear-driven questions, like chiggers under my skin, haunted me. Who will hold me all night the way Jake does? How can I go back to starving for love and sex? What man will understand my writing the way he does? Despite the esophageal vomit-fest, I wanted to go to Cape Town with Jake, to see the magnificent, faraway metropolis with him, at the height of South Africa’s summer. Especially because he hadn’t had anything to drink since Halloween. I hadn’t asked him to stop; he’d voluntarily decided to dry out. His escapade seemed too ridiculous to be anything but a fluke that wouldn’t, couldn’t, happen again. Once we connected again, he told me he was going to take a month off from drinking. I felt giddy with relief, as if computer pixels were rearranging themselves in the shape of my heart, blissed out by sinking back into being in love with him.
With descriptions as vivid as if he were pitching a new documentary, he tempted me with images of a city on hills surrounded by shark-infested cerulean-blue ocean. Exotic food and artisanal wine. Friendly people. Complicated cultural history. Jake’s images almost made me drool. I wanted to say yes, as much to be with him in an exotic new place as to witness Cape Town for myself.
However, if the Cape Town invitation had included a mind meld with Mandela, I still would have said no. Thanksgiving is my kids’ favorite meal; in fact, it’s one of the only meals I can cook. I would have felt guilt-ridden throwing them over for any man or any exotic trip on the homiest holiday of the year. Usually we went to Southampton, but Marty insisted we stay in Philly so he could see the kids after the meal, and it wasn’t worth a fight.
Alone in my bedroom on Thanksgiving Eve, high above my sleeping kids, I poured out my feelings for Jake, two oceans away.
Jake—I’m missing you and thinking about how much I appreciate you and what we have together.
It’s a bit intense, so prepare yourself.
Years ago, when I started to realize how dismal and deadly and completely cardboard everything in my marriage had become, I had an unbidden wish: to like sex again, of course, but even more, I wanted to have a sex life that was real, and close, not just exciting sexually but emotionally.
Even though I’ve always been an avid fan of sex itself, I felt like maybe I had never had a truly intimate connection. Or at least, it had been so long ago or so terribly fleeting that I’d forgotten what it was like.
I craved that closeness as much or more than the erotic component, which naturally I did also want again. But I wanted much, much more. It could have been with a man, a woman, myself—I didn’t have a clear picture of what I wanted. I needed that kind of connection in addition to sexual pleasure.
Most amazing to me is feeling close to you. Sex is never “just sex.” With you, it’s simultaneously, exponentially, not only the best sex of my life but also the deepest, most satisfying, intense emotional connection as well. It means more to me than I ever could have imagined in my bleakest hours. Being with you makes me so very, very happy.
Love, Leslie
* * *
Thanksgiving morning, I slid the twenty-pound turkey in the oven. The kids were still asleep. I laid out the stuffing, washed the Brussels sprouts, soaked the rice, and wiped the dirt off the raw mushrooms. I checked the pumpkin pie in the fridge. I walked Jennie. Then I crawled back in bed and checked my phone to see if Jake had replied. He had.
Leslie, I was going to call you tonight but I think I’d better write this all out. I, too, have obviously felt our incredible more-than-sexual connection, from the beginning. I’ll be very honest, it had always bummed me out that our first young love affair had never really gotten a chance to flourish, sexually and otherwise. Of course I desperately wanted to lose my virginity to you, but there was more to it, and it really made me sad when it ended.
So when we got together again, at first, it was kind of about healing the past in that sense. It wasn’t just that, of course. I, too, had obviously been trapped in a series of listless relationships that left me unfulfilled in so many ways. You have to both like your partner, and lust for them, but love is something more than the sum of those parts. I frankly had neither. I wanted to be with someone who inspired my lust and who I more-than-liked.
For me it happened in Atlantic City. We ended up on the bed as if we couldn’t wait, with your dress pulled up and my cock buried deep in your wonderful pussy, and it was erotic as hell but I had this incredible feeling that was so much more than sexual. It felt so emotionally fulfilling to be inside you that way. It was fantastic.
It had been a long, long time since I’d felt that way. It was deep. No pun intended. (OK, pun intended.) I was afraid to admit it but that was the first time that I Knew. That was what made me want to continue to pursue you. And it was also kind of terrifying, not only because it threatened my lame existing relationships and status quo, but because it represented very real emotional risk. Every time we got together, it wasn’t only our bodies that were naked, it was like my heart h
ad been pulled out of my chest. That’s why I kept telling you that I was scared. It WAS scary. Also great. And so much better now that we’re together forever.
I miss you so much. When I get home I want to spend hours in your bed, until we’re both completely soaked and spent. I can’t wait for that. You are the best girlfriend ever.
love, me
Two days later, I drove to the Philadelphia Airport in the TT and pulled into the one lone space hidden in a far corner of the hourly lot. Finally, Jake walked through the international security doors, disheveled, exhausted, mine. I held him long and hard. He felt warm under his pin-striped cotton shirt; I felt safe in his arms, surrounded by strangers and piles of overseas luggage. He ruffled my hair and kissed my forehead as I buried my face in his neck. He whispered in my ear, “Loved that sweet email. Good to be back, BGE.” It took me a second to translate: Best Girlfriend Ever.
Sunday morning, I brought him black coffee in bed.
“Surprise,” I said, handing him the steaming mug. “Today is Thanksgiving again.”
Even his eyebrows looked jet-lagged. “What?”
“I’ve got another turkey already in the oven. Stuffing, Brussels sprouts, pumpkin pie. Everyone’s coming.”
“You’re kidding,” he said. “That may be the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.”
Later that day, sitting at the Kentucky black walnut dinner table my grandfather had made, as we were all saying our thankfuls, I took Jake’s hand under the table.
“I love you,” I whispered. His eyes got wet as he smiled back at me.
“Thank you so much,” he whispered back, squeezing my hand.
I was the Best Girlfriend Ever. Jake was all mine. Nothing had ever felt this good.
* * *
The Naked Truth Page 21