Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (13 page)

“We’re ready now,” he said without wavering.

The rabbi prayed, we signed our names, Gabe began to cry, but this time, it was joy. He couldn’t stop smiling, and looked at me the way I always wanted him to, the way my father looks at me when he’s proud. I knew he loved me like family, and I didn’t have to earn it. I could just be me.

Gabe was elated, and I was confused. He went from terror-stricken, trembling, ready to faint, to ecstatic. He kept asking the rabbi if he could kiss me yet. I cried the entire time, the one day neither of us brought tissues. When I later brought up the prenuptial agreement, he said, “I agree, we’re above that. I was just nervous. I am so happy you’re my wife. I’ll never leave you.” I believed him.

WHEN KEN AND I WERE READY TO LEAVE, WE SURVEYED
the bar looking for anyone from the share house. Specifically, we were searching for his friend Sherman, who looked like a bull mastiff but had the voice of a dachshund. Privately, I called him Meathead all summer. There’s always one Meathead. It’s like every state having a Springfield. “Do you think Meathead and Ken will be at the house this weekend?” “Do you think Meathead does that on purpose?” Halfway through the summer, I stopped trying to conceal it and called Sherman Meathead to his face.

“Hey, Meathead, she asked you three times. Can you please get off the hood of her car?” It was like breaking wind for the first time in a new romance.

He didn’t seem to mind. Instead he offered up a goofy smile, flashed a dimple, and said, “Cool. I finally have a nickname.” Then he climbed down from the roof of Salila’s car (whom I nicknamed Saliva) and quickly joined the other boys by the grill, looking hapless, circling, in need of a task. Meathead looked like he always had to go to the bathroom.

“A-D-D,” someone whispered.

“There’s no need to whisper. Meathead has no shame.” I felt like his mother. He needed more chew toys.

Meathead must have hitched a ride home with Saliva. Perhaps they’d hit it off and exchange some. Ken and I headed toward the car holding hands. The salt-swept street was surprisingly tranquil and pink. He pressed me against the passenger side door of his car before unlocking it for me, sliding his hands around my waist. He kissed me, then said, “I’m so glad this happened.” “This” was “us,” the couple we were becoming. I wanted to shriek and tell him I felt like the luckiest girl, that we were so perfect together. Instead I kissed him back and smiled, knowing full well that voicing any of this would cause his hands to move from caressing my waist to a protective stance involving hands cupped over balls.

My phone began to vibrate. “It’s three in the morning. Who the hell is calling me?” After looking at the caller ID, I smiled. “It’s the girls. Hello ladies?”

“Oh my God, Stephanie, you’re awake. Can you please pick us up? We’re on the side of the road in front of Star Room.” It was Dulce, and she sounded like she had to pee.

“Well, I’m not exactly home.” I covered the mouthpiece and asked Ken, “Can we pick up Alex and Dulce at Star Room?”

He smiled, nodded his head affirmatively, and opened my door with a grand bowing gesture. “Your chariot awaits, and so do your drunken friends. Ken to the rescue.”

“I’m with Ken leaving Talkhouse. We’ll be there soon.”

ONCE WE PULLED INTO THE DRIVEWAY OF OUR HOUSE,
each of us stepping out from the car, Ken didn’t offer to hold my hand. I worried he was embarrassed to show his want for me to the others. It felt like camp, and I suddenly felt twelve.

“I wonder if Sherman made it home,” Ken finally said, walking up to the house, two steps at a time. He then searched the house while I poured myself a goblet of red wine. What the hell. I slipped out back and found refuge in a hammock. I wanted to hide. After some time, Ken poked his head out from the sliding door on the porch. “Hey Steph, I’ve been looking all over for you.” He walked toward me looking less confident, almost like a kid up at bat after his second strike. “Care for some company?”

“Sure, but I’m not sharing my wine, so get your own,” I half mocked.

He joined me in the hammock, and then for no reason at all offered up, “Steph, I really like you.” I knew a “but” was coming. Anything after “but” is what really matters. Here we go. I couldn’t brace anything. “But I just got out of a relationship. Actually, she broke up with me, and it’s kinda why I’m here. I’m trying to get over it.” I hated that I let him touch my sweat, that he knew how I kissed. I wanted to collect my things from him, but the things were only moments. “But I really like you. Look, I could’ve been an ass and just used you, but I respect you.”

“You don’t even know me. How can you respect me?” Now I was pissed. I let my shoe dangle from the tip of my foot as I drank more wine and thought of what to not say next.

“You remind me of Howard Roark.” What the hell? “Have you read
The Fountainhead
?”

“No.”

“Well, now you have to.” Of course I had to. I needed to see who he thought I was. “You are so much like the protagonist. You just don’t give a shit what people say—you do your own thing, and you see the world differently.” He then pointed to one of the trees from which the hammock was suspended. “See this tree? I see an oak tree, but when someone like you sees it, you envision a pile of wood to make fire and light. You see the potential in things.”

“No, that would make me destructive.” I didn’t know if “Thank you” would work.

“Well, you get what I’m saying, though. You see potential in ordinary things. I see it in the photographs you took this weekend. You notice things I would have otherwise never seen.”

I didn’t understand where all of this was coming from. It was flattering that he thought he knew me after such a short time. He saw in me what I did, and that made him all the more desirable—unavailable, but desirable. What a cliché.

“Look, Steph, I’m not telling you I just got out of a relationship because I don’t think we can work. I’m telling you so you know where I’m coming from. I just want to take things slowly because I still love her.”
Love her
. I could see the words, but I still wasn’t sure he actually said them aloud.

“Okay, you’ve told me. Now I know.” I felt doctor-naked, the kind when, at twelve, you’re just beginning to sprout hair and bud things, and they make you do a naked duck walk on the cold tile floor so they can check for scoliosis. He’d only moments ago said, “I’m so glad this happened.” And now, what? Forget this. I pushed my legs forward and tried to get up. In my rush to leave, though, my red wine spilled all over the center of his checkered button-down shirt.

He didn’t even flinch. He just lay there, defeated. “You missed,” he said flatly, as if I were aiming for the dramatic drinkin-the-face maneuver.

“Baby, no. It’s you who has missed.” Dear Lord. Me and my ABC daytime TV mouth. It almost makes me want to vomit in its telling.

Dulce was passed out, still dressed in something she ought to have apologized to someone for, on a sofa in the common area. When I opened the door to our room, I heard a female gasp. It was Sherman, peeking his shaggy blond head out from beneath Alexandra’s comforter. It was musical beds. I needed
my
Pod. “Sorry, sorry, I’m not looking. And I’ll crank up my iPod so you two can do your thing.”

Alex began to laugh. “Please, Stephanie, we’re not doing anything. Sherman was busy telling me about the mating rituals of hippos.”

“Rhinos,” he corrected her.

“Anyway, sweetie, why aren’t you in Ken’s room?” Alex sat upright and began to swig gulps of her Poland Spring water as I spoke.

“Oh, forget Ken. He’s not over his ex. It’s too unnerving.”

“Quit sounding all Les Miz about it and tell me what you mean.” Alexandra is amazingly patient and interested in all of my dramatics.

“I mean, we have this great night, we kiss, and I like him so much.”

“And the problem happens when?”

“When I open my mouth usually. Ugh, Alex, I just can’t take it. I really like him—”

“What do you like about him?” I knew this was a test. I had to think. What did I like about him? I liked how much he liked me, that I was attracted to him, that…I had no idea.

“I like how witty he is, and the way he touches me and makes me laugh.”

“Okay, and the problem?”

“Ugh, he tells me he’s so glad this all happened, blah blah, and then we come back here, and he’s all, you know my ex just dumped me, right? What the fuck? I am not getting involved with someone unavailable.” I was becoming animated, my hands slicing through the air. “Not going to do it.”

“Angel, you have to give him a chance. You’re being silly.”

“Yeah, besides, she was Asian,” Meathead added.

“So.”

“So she’s Asian,” he said again as if it explained everything. I blinked at him waiting for more. “Ken’s not going to marry some Asian chick. He’ll fuck her, yeah. Get that whole fetish thing over with, and then he’ll marry someone who’s good at hiding his matzo.” Meathead needed a plug. “Just go back in there and tell him you’re better than she is. Ask him to show you his matzo balls.”

“Sherman, are you four? Alex, shut him up.”

“Sherman, quiet!” Alex scolded him with a pointed finger, then broke into a smile only I could see.

“No really, I mean, getting dumped sucks, but when she’s Asian, it really sucks,” Meathead continued, but I tuned out the rest.

“Cookie, you have to stop preemptively ending things before they even start. I know you’re afraid of making yourself vulnerable, but if you keep impeding things before they even begin, just out of fear, you’ll never know.” I’d never know joy. Shit damn. I worried she was right. What if I was snapping into “screw you, your loss” mode too fast? How do you take back, “No, you’re the one who missed”? Me and my drama trap doors.

“KNOCK. KNOCK.” IT WAS MY TURN.

“Who’s there?”

“Steph.”

“Steph who?”

“Steph up and answer the door before I change my mind.”

It was how I did sorry.

The rest was kinetic. Like riding a bike or learning rhythm, you learn by doing it. Your body has a memory, remembering what you’ve forced out—trauma, pain, a kiss. My head does what it can to force out pain, to keep things in check, hush vulnerability to a scant whisper. But my body makes up for it. It accepts affection, and it gives.

After some kissing, he began to trace a pattern on my stomach with his thumb, occasionally slipping it beneath my underwear. That’s when I decided to fake
not
having my period. Read that again. I know your immediate instinct might involve pregnancy, a woman tricking a man into thinking she might be pregnant. Let him feel heavy with guilt and the like. Well, I don’t do that, and that’s not what this is about.

I didn’t fake having my period, pulling the Advil equivalent of “not tonight honey, I have a headache.” I
had
my period but didn’t want him to know it. I just knew; I felt it, suddenly. How exactly do you fake not having your period when you do indeed have it? You get rid of the evidence.

“I’ll be right back,” I whispered before quietly stealing away to the bathroom. My suspicion was correct. I discovered the spot in my underwear, so I ripped them off, tucked them in a balled fist, and buried them in a travel bag I had stored beneath the bathroom sink. I flushed the tampon applicator and wrapper. I tucked in the string. What evidence? Had I been a cat, I might have choked up a feather, but if I had, he wouldn’t have noticed. He wasn’t exactly looking at my mouth.

I climbed back into bed, wearing only my sweat shorts, so the last thing he’d suspect was “period.” Why all this effort? I easily could have just told him I had my period, but then I wouldn’t have earned good girl points. See, he had to think I was being “good.” Had I not had my period, I probably wouldn’t have pushed his hand away, but men need to think you’re tough and valuable. They enjoy working for it and don’t want it from a woman who gives it up too easily. So, I omitted the truth and let him believe I was, indeed, a good girl, with a little curl. “Goodnight, Mr. Ken.”

I tried to fall asleep in his bed as we listened to The Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” an iPod earbud in each of our ears. In the dark of his room, I flipped onto my stomach and silently rehashed, parsing through the moments of my day, like cards laid flat on a coffee table. How would I ever meet someone if I always killed it before it began? And that’s all it was, a beginning. Why did I have to make every guy I met into “could he be the one”? I hardly knew him. I was in like with an idea.

Declaring “I hate games” was my way of excusing impatience. If games aren’t played, things move along quickly without anxiety. People cannonball off the cliff, plunging into relationship waters without forethought, before knowing the first thing about the other person, save for how much they’re liked back. Then they’re left hanging onto driftwood, hoping to stay afloat. Damn, I should’ve known better. It can’t be “he’s A-MAZE-ING” before I learn how he handles anger, stress, or his mother. He couldn’t be “sweetheart” before I knew what kind of drunk he was, how he handled deadlines, phone messages, or me when I’ve gone and chicked out in the middle of the night. At least I could cross that last one off the list.

As for independence, I was glad I’d decided to leave the pack for the night and, despite it all, I was still looking up, anticipating some fireworks. Even if I was the one who had to conjure my own noise and light. I’ve always been wicked good at that.

FAR FROM MONTAUK, ONCE MY FEET WERE FIRMLY
planted back on Manhattan concrete, I did some math. Turns out two e-mails and an IM do not equal a phone call. Ken hadn’t called all week, and his e-mails were noncommittal where plans were concerned. He was working things out with his ex. I didn’t need a theorem or proof. Perhaps I could’ve had Alex call Meathead to get the scoop. No. Bad. Okay, new mantra. “I’ll work hard enough for the both of us” would be replaced with a deep breath, followed by, “Let. It. Go.” Letitgo.