Man Curse (20 page)

Chapter 29

M
y dildo and I had become best friends. Mr. Do was his name. First name, Dil. He had ten levels of vibration and was shaped like a thick, nine-inch dick with the feel of Silly Putty. He had the ability to turn and morph into numerous positions with a circular suction cup at the end that I could use to stick it to any surface and ride it like a cowboy friend. And I did. For many months after, my first orgasm was so loud I moaned and groaned, my echoing screams bouncing off brownstones outside.

But the more I used it, the more I had to use my creativity. Coming up with unique ways to stretch my legs wide, on a pillow, over my head, wide like a gymnast. I began timing orgasm attempts to see how fast I could make myself come and scream to beat my best time of seven minutes. But after months of using a dildo that I bought after my embarrassing hookup with Sean, the August hot sun collided with the approaching end of fun that made me horny for something real. A real man, a real boner, a real someone I could grind and ride.

So I called Terry. Although I wasn't sure whether I truly wanted to sleep with him, I was willing to explore the possibility. A local Brooklyn MC who went by the name of Terror One, he'd been calling and begging to take me out, off and on for years, after we'd met outside a
Buzz
party. Each time he asked, I'd always say no. Entertaining his conversation, flattered by the attention, but more concerned with my reputation as a journalist. I had one unbreakable rule: Never sleep with rappers. Never be like so many other female writers who'd moistened sheets by blurring the line between groupie and media professional. Never kill the delicate reputation I'd spent time in the business building. But Terry kept begging, wooing, texting little blurbs that were romantically driven and lightly written, bouncing from cell phone screens into my head and slowly tapping at my heart. Although I still wasn't fully convinced, the next time he called I agreed to meet him one late afternoon for a movie and dinner. He ruined it with one question:

“So you wanna see my penis?”

“Do I wanna see your what?”

“My penis. It's small . . .”

When this conversation occurred, we were sitting at the twenty-four-hour diner on Thirty-fourth and Eighth, down the block from the local theater. I sipped my cheap house wine while flipping through the oversize menu. Appreciative of the length, I was able to use its gigantic size to hide my face from his horny, adoring glances and anyone who might notice that I was on a date with (gasp)
a rapper
(double gasp).

“You want to see it?” Terry stretched wide the elastic waist of his basketball pants and looked down. “Well, I think it's small. Look . . .”

“No, I don't wanna see your penis,” I replied, face twisted in disgust. “What kind of question is that?”

“Well, why not?”

“'Cause . . . I don't,” I said, suddenly remembering the clear boundary words Dr. Weisman had taught me. “And I'm not interested in sex with anyone outside of an exclusive relationship.”

“But it's small,” he replied dismissively. “I just want you to see it.”

“Excuse me, did you want a large or small?” a slim brunette waitress with a nose ring asked. She seemed to pop up out of nowhere, holding my cranberry juice and his cold milk.

“I'm sorry,” she said, glancing at me. “I believe you said small, but I couldn't remember.”

“Actually, I ordered a large,” I replied, glancing at Terry before refocusing on the waitress. “But I'm thirsty, so I'll take what you got.”

She placed the cups on the table. Terry smiled, picking up his milk and using his finger to stir the ice.

“Ill,” I said, wincing. “Why are you drinking milk?”

“'Cause milk does ya body good.”

“That's an overused cliché,” I said, sucking my teeth. “Milk was a bad choice.”

“Well,” he said, taking a long gulp. “I need to grow.”

“Grow into what?”

“A
big
boy . . .”

“Here's your large, ma'am,” the waitress intervened, placing a tall glass of cranberry juice in front of me. “You should have what you want.”

Terry and I looked at each other and began cracking up. The waitress, stunned, walked away confused.

The truth is that he and I had fun together, laughing in easy ways that made me forget he was an MC. That is, until he'd bring up sex. Or begin rhyming about shooting someone and “bitches in the studio.” I remember the day he spontaneously grabbed my arm on an empty sidewalk, spun me around, and kissed my mouth as if a slobbery glob of wet jelly was smothered on his lips. It tasted like whiskey and Pepsi mixed with cigarettes and weed.

I stared at him in shock after the kiss, before pushing him away and screaming, “What the fuck!” I looked around frantically, making sure we hadn't been busted, before stomping down the block to hop on the train.

Fast-forward three weeks later, date number two, where I stared at him from across a restaurant table. Disappointed that his idiotic words had turned off my horny plans for him. Bored, ready to leave, I watched across the restaurant as some idiot manhandled a woman and, like a cop, dragged her by the upper arm out of the diner.

“You ever hit a girl before?” I asked, anticipating even the most minor reaction.

“Yeah, once or twice,” he answered nonchalantly, twisting his hair. “You know her?”

“Do I know her?”

“No, I meant to phrase that as a declaration. ‘You know her.' Joya. Joya Kelly.”

A model turned actress, Joya had a role on one of the biggest TV dramas on NBC.

“That was your girlfriend?”

“She was my fiancée.”

“You hit her?”

“She hit me first.”

“Must've been a reason.”

“She thought I was cheating.”

“Were you?”

“Yeah, but she didn't know. She was just on some ‘I had a dream' shit. Moody as fuck, on her cycle.” He sipped his milk. “We used to fight and hit each other all the time.”

My stomach flipped in a gassy, crampy limp, like the second achy day of menstruation.

“Why's your face look like that?” he asked, wincing at me.

“Oh,” I said, getting up to leave. “I don't feel well.”

“We'll take a doggie bag,” he said to the waitress, standing and grabbing my coat. “Let her pack ya food, and I'll get you a cab.”

“Nah, I'm good.” I began digging in my bag, looking for something, anything, a tissue. A nervous move to avoid looking at Terry. “I'ma just go.”

“You a'ight?”

“No, my stomach hurts. I told you.” I pushed down the uncontrollable aggravation mounting in my chest. “I gotta go. Maybe it was the food.”

I took a deep breath.

“Yeah, um.” I couldn't figure out what to say. “Well . . . thanks for dinner.”

“But we didn't eat,” he said loudly.

I speed-walked out the door and headed to the C train.

Never took any of Terry's calls again. Deleted his texts. Saved his name in my phone as “The Abuser.” And that fall, when his song “She Left” hit no. 1 on the radio, with familiar lyrics like “She said good-bye / Without looking in the eye / When I told her the truth / About a time in my youth.”

I initially wanted to call and say “Congratulations!” Tell him how flattered I was that he wrote a song about us, but I didn't because the truth was that I shouldn't have gone out with him to begin with. Breaking my own rules of journalism ethics. Embarrassed to even be seen with the man. And besides, if he abused her, he'd do it to me. Mental note: Stay in therapy.

Chapter 30

A
fter ten months in therapy, with holiday time approaching again, it became less weird to endure Dr. Weisman's long pauses. The sessions allotted by my insurance were running out. I became expectant of her nuances. She'd wait, twisting her pink breast-cancer-awareness pen between wrinkly, skinny fingers, forcing me to speak. She'd strangely stare at me expressionlessly, paid to be patient with her clients by not blinking, but instead peering inside our brains. I'd uncomfortably attempt to look anywhere, out the window, at a tree, at something. Just not into her Medusa-like hypnotic eyes, trying to pull secrets from my soul and break them into tiny psychoanalytical pebbles.

“How's work?”

“Amazing,” I said, relieved she'd broken the tension. “I found an agent who's shopping my book. She says the feedback is good. And I just got offered an editor's position with a new magazine start-up.”

“Congratulations,” she said, nodding with approval, jotting down notes. “How's dating been going?”

“Dating myself or men?”

“Both.”

I'd made a fun habit of taking myself out weekly. Movies, restaurants, video arcades, museums; if it was something I wanted to do with a man, I did it by myself. If it was something I wanted a man to buy me, I bought it myself. Flowers. Brunch. Sexy panties. The love song I sang to myself harmonized with the golden suggestions of advice I followed from Dr. Weisman. “Date yourself before and while you date others. How can you want someone to do something for you if you haven't done it for yourself?” Amen.

I took her advice to another level, jogging several times a week, reminiscing of my high school winter track days. I took yoga, found karate classes, meditated, journaled daily, and worked overtime to take care of me. Taking hours, every day, for me. Cleaning my apartment, trashing the clutter, making room in my closet for love, giving away clothes I hadn't worn in a year, even taking moments throughout the day to resist the urge to move and instead sit in silence. Feeling the pain. Daring to cry or seethe in anger, or shiver with insecurity or simply crack up at my own silly self. I felt it all. My insides glowed from self-love. And for the first time I actually liked me. Thanks to the mirror I spoke to daily, I knew I was beautiful without needing to be told. I knew I was confident and courageous and could handle anything that came my way. I even made a point of talking to my mother more often. Fighting to finally forgive her. Releasing the resentment I'd held since childhood. It wasn't all gone. I still cautiously needed my space. But seeing her growth made me try. She was the healthiest I'd ever known her to be, always talking about her own therapy sessions. And I was happy, praying, and wishing her well. I was healing and becoming more clear than I'd been in my entire life.

“I haven't slept with anyone. I mean, thank God for dildos. Because I'm not even that interested. I mean I am, but it's not a priority,” I said, laughing. “I've averaged maybe a date or two per month.”

“And this is all from people you met online?”

“Just one or two. Here and there. One I met on the train. One at a get-together. Another online. I've got this new plan to just make friends. Actually be friends. No sex for a few months. Maybe not at all. Just really getting to know people before I decide to date. Meredith recommended it. Pre-dating. So I guess I'm not really dating yet. I'm just hanging out.”

“I think that's a healthy thing to do,” she said, smiling.

“Yeah, and if it doesn't work out for dating, at least I made a new friend. No expectations. Just friendly intentions.”

“Sounds like a good plan. Anyone panning out?”

“There's one I like. He's nice, but weird.”

“How?”

“Just . . .” My words drifted off as I looked into her pupils. “I don't know. He's different . . .”

“Why is that weird?”

I diverted her lingering, perplexed glare, fidgeting in my chair, thinking about Chad and how we'd met.

I
'd periodically skim the online dating ads just to crack up. It was like a relationship commercial online where you're given fifty words to express yourself in the most poetic way. I clicked through the pages, surfing the love web, seeing whether anyone fit my account specifications: men 28–40, within a thirty-mile radius.

Skimming through my inbox, I noticed how mostly white guys hit me up. But color didn't matter to me. My soul mate could be any race. I was open to the possibilities. Smiling at their flirty e-mails, I came upon one brother who looked eerily familiar. He smiled in his photo, bright and shiny with a Yankee cap fitted atop his head. He was bald, with a full mustache and beard covering his smooth, brown face, dotted with round glasses that made for a British, academic look. He smiled brightly in a happy way that reminded me of a kid on Christmas Day.

ChadM28: New to this online dating thing, but figured I'd give it a try. I'm a nonprofit fundraising director living in NYC. I prefer a good book, dramatic movie, and great food with stimulating conversation. I couldn't come up with an alias for my profile, so I decided to use my name. I think it's best to begin from a point of honesty. So I encourage you to reach out to me if you're looking for long-term dating and an activity partner.

Above his picture, in the right-hand corner, it read, “Rate this photo.” I clicked on four stars out of five, leaving one off simply because I didn't know him. The next morning, I checked my phone and saw an e-mail message from ChadM.

Hello. You rated me 4 stars. I rated you 4. We have 92% in common. I think we should definitely have a conversation. What do you think? I'll begin . . .

And he went on to wittily write about his life—how he'd been single for a year and a half. How he worked for a nonprofit and wrote a novel on the side. How online dating was a last resort before he thought about retiring to a Buddhist monastery (sike).

I laughed out loud, impressed that he managed to write an entire paragraph without a typo, full of color and context, concise and grammatically correct. My reply led to a two-week e-mail exchange before we graduated to the next step: The Phone Call.

Chapter 31

W
e'd scheduled a time to talk: Friday, nine o'clock. I'd call him.

He'd written me an e-mail:
Ok, hit me up when you're ready. I'm excited!

Friday was perfect since my normal, end-of-week routine was to sit around with my feet up. So when nine came, I dialed. But it went straight to voice mail.

“You know the deal,” the recording said. “Leave a message.”

The prompt was so short that I didn't have time to think of what I wanted to say.

“Hi, this is Fey?” My voice was crackly. Literally like static on a cell phone, barely comprehensible, uneasy, like a pubescent child who adds question marks to the end of each sentence. “Um, from match.com? So . . . I'm calling at nine like I said I would? Um, okay, well, you can call me. Um, okay. Bye.”

Stupid. I sounded like an idiot, bumbling and tripping over words like feet struggling for room to walk inside a mouth. In the midst of being angry at myself, I was upset at him for not answering. For putting me through the agony of having to leave what I saw as recorded blackmail. I mean, why make a phone date only to flake out?

There I was with the questions again. Marks of insecurity set in. Moments of the less-evolved, puppy part of me licking old wounds while crying in protest, pained to the core. I pulled out my journal and used a technique from the book Dr. Weisman suggested:
The Journey from Heartbreak to Connection
, by Susan Anderson. She
specialized in healing those who'd been abandoned by parents, lovers, friends. I'd become more conscious of my sexual urges after reading her explanation of how abandonment survivors tend to use sex as a means of control. As a way to soothe the pain and provide protection, the urge to have sex is like a baby's urge to grab a blanket or teddy bear in response to the fear of being hurt or abandoned. It's a means of wanting safety and power and control over the anxieties of being left. After reading about this, I understood why I slept with Sean that last time. And although I hadn't had sex with Chad, yet, the fear of being rejected produced an unbearable tension in my chest.

So I worked on Anderson's suggested exercise called “Inner Child.” It consisted of talking to the childlike self, the scared little girl who'd been neglected and abandoned. I called her “Lil.” She was protected by “Big,” my mature, assertive, grown-up, nurturing, protective, and logical side. By paying attention and giving voice to fears, the likelihood of manifesting them in toxic ways diminishes and gives way to a potent inner dialogue between the self-assured and less confident parts of the mind.

Lil:
 Where is he? Why is he not answering? He's dissin'. He knew we were supposed to talk and he's ignoring me.

Big:
 Well, how do you know he's not in the bathroom?

Lil:
 No, he could've waited or taken the phone with him.

Big:
 You want him to use the bathroom and talk on the phone? Wouldn't that be rude and gross?

Lil:
 I mean, yeah, I guess. But . . .

Big:
 But what?

Lil:
 I just want to talk to him.

Big:
 And you will. Just be patient. Let him call you. Isn't faith important?

Lil:
 Yeah.

Big:
 Why is faith important?

Lil:
 'Cause God blesses those who believe. Leap and the net will appear.

Big:
 Right. I want you to try hard to remember that. I know it's difficult. But you can't scare yourself away before you've even tried. Because things aren't going as you've planned. God laughs at plans. So you have to go with the flow and believe that no matter what happens, you will get what's best for you. Everything happens for a good reason. Right?

Lil:
 Yeah. I just get so scared. What if he doesn't call?

Big:
 If he doesn't call, that's God blessing and protecting you from someone who doesn't deserve you. Someone doing you a favor. It might hurt. But you will get over it and someone better will come. You are a big, brave girl. You respect yourself. You don't chase love. Someone who wants to get to know you will call you and show you. Someone nice will give you love. Do you believe that?

Lil:
 (sigh) Yes. OK. I will be brave. And if he doesn't call, forget him. He's a jerk. And if he does? Well, we'll see.

Big:
 Good girl. Either way you'll be fine. Still beautiful. Still wonderful. Still worthy of love. And I will protect you. Always have, always will. Just give me a chance, okay?

Lil:
 Okay.

Big:
 I love you, Lil, forever and ever.

Lil:
 I love you, too.

T
he phone rang. It was nine twenty.

“Hello, may I speak to Fey?”

“Speaking.”

“Hey, this is Chad.”

“Oh,” I tried to say in my most nonchalant voice. “Hey.”

“Yeah, sorry for being late. I came home from work and my dog had shit in the hallway of my building. So embarrassing. My landlord was there showing an apartment. She stank up my entire hallway. And when I bent over to clean it, my phone fell on the floor, centimeters from the poop, the battery popped out, millimeters away, it was a mess. So I was mopping the floor, picking up crap, and fixing the phone at the time you called. I'm sorry for not answering. Is Mercury in retrograde? I mean, I've been looking forward to this talk all day, and as soon as I rush home and get myself together, things go haywire. It's not my style to be late for a first date. 'Cause I know first impressions mean everything. Not to use a cliché, but they really are lasting.”

“Did that feel better?” I asked, with a huge smile on my face. “Can you breathe now?”

“Yes,” he said, coughing. “I just needed to get that off my chest. I'm all discombobulated. Today was a long day.”

“Discombobulated? Do you normally use that word?”

“No, but it just came out. I think I'm nervous. Trying to sound smart.”

We both laughed and moved on to meshed ideas and internal vibes. Sharing our days, pasts, and hopeful futures. Nodding and acknowledging supportive agreements that felt like warm blankets across our backs. Safe. Consoling. It felt right talking for two hours, touching on topics from politics to entertainment, sports, food, family, and friends. He told me about his monogamy-prone love life, full of wrong turns and erroneous choices. He shared stories of his father being killed in a fight when he was fourteen. And his mother, wanting to have a grandchild before she dies, to carry on the family's genes and name. He confessed his drama of writing, taking a decade to finish his novel by night, while going to grad school and working as a nonprofit communications director. Two hours seemed like thirty minutes, as we talked and ignored the sweat sucking the phone to our skulls, melting wax and smearing makeup into my ear canal. Messy, yet amazing.

“Your eyes are beautiful, by the way,” he said. “That's why I e-mailed you. I mean, I really liked what you wrote online. It was poetic. But what stood out is that you didn't feel the need to use a sexy profile picture. Just your eyes. I like them. They're honest. Sensitive. Caring. Really pretty.”

He called again a few days later. A few days after that.

“So you think this is strange?” Dr. Weisman asked. Her head tilted to the side. Pen in hand, ready to take notes. “His calling you regularly bothers you?”

“I mean, I just guess I'm not used to it.”

“He sounds attentive to me. Sounds like he likes you.”

“I mean, is that normal? The frequency of calling?”

“If a man likes you and is interested, he will call you.”

“So why do I feel like I want to dodge his calls sometimes? Like he's bothering me. One time I purposely let it go to voice mail. And then I called him back, not wanting to play games. I mean, I like talking to him. But then I get scared. Like it's going to go downhill at any moment.”

Dr. Weisman nodded. “You're an abandoned child. An abused child. Many typically push away those who give them healthy attention, while chasing the ones who hurt and abandon them. It's an addiction in a way. You often attract lovers with your same emotional issues. Where the abandonment feels normal, familiar, pushing all the buttons of attraction, pointing to toxic love. Making you feel like pain and rejection is what love is. Because that's how you grew up. That's what you got from your parents and those who were supposed to support, nurture, and love you unconditionally. But because they didn't, attention from someone who actually shows healthy availability is new and unfamiliar. It often makes someone abandoned feel distrustful or turned off. Fearful. They subconsciously question why someone would want to pay attention to them. They push it away or sabotage it.”

“Wow,” I said as Dr. Weisman stood to open the blinds, noting the end of the session. “That's interesting. The human mind is amazing.”

The glare of the sun made me stretch my lids wide, waking me up to common sense. Sitting forward on the edge of the couch, back straight and alert. “And I'm a good person, dammit. I deserve love.”

“Yes, you are,” she said, smiling. “Yes, you do. And you'll have it. Healing takes time. But you can heal. You will. And you are.”

“I've never heard anyone say that before. I mean, except Meredith.” I sat with my hands under my thighs. “I've always felt like I'd have abandonment issues forever. Always dealing with my mommy shit, my daddy shit, my family-curse shit.”

“All wounds heal if you have the courage to take care of them properly,” she said, smiling. “And yours will, too.”