Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (19 page)

“Yes, babylove, it’s a start, and I’m not pressuring you, or giving you some ultimatum. I’m just saying, after these past few weeks together, I don’t think I can see you anymore if I know you’re seeing other people.” This is the part where, if this were a movie, I’d break character and stare at the camera.

“Ahem, sweet, sweet, sweet man, that is so an ultimatum. It’s not even funny.” A sinister smile spread across his lips, but before I let him defend his position, I threw him onto the bed and kissed him hard. “You win, now shut up and fuck me like a boyfriend.”

After really good, I’m going to be on top and put my legs together sex, Oliver started laughing. “Stephanie, you moved the furniture.” My white bed had moved across the room while we were having sex.

I sprung to the kitchen and began to boil water for the pasta, then loaded up the CD player with some classic rock. “Yeah, baby, that’s how it’s done around here. I’m a mover’s daughter. It comes with the gig.”

“Does that mean you’ve got enough baggage to put in a warehouse?”

“No, thank you very much. Wiseass.” I flipped my hair and rocked out to Joplin.

We eventually ate in bed. He fed me strings of pink spaghetti, twirled into mountains in my mouth. “God, I’m good,” I boasted between bites.

“Yes, you are, Stephanie Tara Klein, and modest to boot. Do you want me to move the bed back for you?”

I liked the bed in its new spot. “No, I like this new perspective. Let’s keep it here.” Then I smiled into his neck, laughing at my use of
let’s
. I kissed him and then bit his neck, breathing in his warm scent of soap and scalp. I drew an invisible pattern across his chest as we spoke, and after a while began to tell him I wished we could choose our memories. “We can’t,” I said, “but I really hope I remember this.” And as I whispered it, I wondered if he weren’t really asleep beside me, just as you do when you tell someone everything you’d be afraid to say if you knew they were fully awake. You secretly hope they do hear you but still pretend to be asleep. I’ll even remember that. But I couldn’t sleep—the classic rock was too much rock and not enough classic.

When I got up to turn off the music, Oliver jolted upright. “Go back to sleep, honey belle,” I whispered.

“No. I’m up now,” he said in a half-sleep.

“Good.” I clawed my way beside him. “Then tell me a bedtime story.” I cuddled up next to him and kissed him on the cheek.

He began one about an oyster shucker named Phebius, but soon his voice trailed into half words.

I remembered how Gabe told bedtime stories, making sure to include Williams-Sonoma gadgets in its telling. Gabe spun bedtime stories about our future together, how our daughter would have red hair like mine and would like for him to carry her around the house, letting her touch each of mommy’s kitchen gadgets while he told her how each of them worked.

When Gabe and I fell asleep at night, we’d groom each other. We’d hug, and I’d begin to scratch his back. When I felt something hard, I picked it off. Though eventually, he demanded that I couldn’t use my nails while popping the pimples on his back. “No nails!” he’d shout. Then he’d work on my back, navigating the landscape by touch alone. Sometimes he accidentally tried to scrape off a birthmark, so I’d scream. To quiet me down, he’d kiss me. This would lead to my complaining he needed an Altoid.

“It smells like you’ve been cheating on me with a very tiny man who just pooped in your mouth,” I’d say.

And he’d laugh, and say, “Oh come on, say it.” He’d wiggle me on the bed. “Say it.”

“Okay, it smells like a midget was here.” Gabe loved the word
midget
. He made me love it too. Then he’d burst out laughing, like a boy who just heard the word
penis
.

I loved that about us, the things we knew about each other. I hated and loved that he made rubbing his balls and sucking in their smell off his hands a sport, shouting, “OOOhh yeah! It doesn’t get any better than this. Everything should smell like these babies.” He wasn’t kidding, but he made me laugh. I loved that he’d overextend himself sometimes at the gym when he was working his lower body, so for two days, I’d need to help him walk down stairs. And he tolerated me in the same ways. He understood that I needed to “get situated” when I first got into bed, assuming what he called “the goal-tender position,” my leg bent, blocking him from getting close. And despite having a king-sized bed, he always needed to sleep right up in my business. He’d let me steal his shirts, scarf, and even his ski jacket if I was really cold, and he’d complain but later tell me how sexy I looked in his things. He said it made him feel closer to me.

I rolled out of my embrace with Oliver, onto my side to scratch my own back.

“I said I’d move it back,” he mumbled in dream speak.

“What, honey belle?”

“Your bed. I’ll move it back if you want.”

I kissed him on his forehead. “Don’t worry, sweet boy. I like things just as they are.”

“Are you sure?” He stirred and nuzzled into me. His warm naked body had the sheen of Egyptian cotton.

“Believe me, no one is touching my fucking furniture again.” I’d already endured my share of unsolicited renovations à la Rome.

ONCE UPON A TIME ROME LIVED A DECORATED LIFE.
Okay, she didn’t. What she did was study interior design, but to the best of my knowledge, she never actually worked as an interior designer. Though she worked in a store once, which entitled her to a designer discount. So later in life she divided her time equally between Bergdorf’s and the D & D building. She helped decorate the expensive homes of her friends, offering them a discount on ampersand fabrics.

Her taste was upholstered and formal, gilded frames around oil paintings of dogs, a cone-shaped basket with dried hydrangeas and silk flowers hung heavy over mantelpieces throughout Teaneck and Englewood, New Jersey. The basket arrangement was her signature. The thing looked like a turkey’s ass, and I couldn’t comprehend why her friends wanted matching homes. It’s like using the same plastic surgeon and walking around with identical noses.

I should have smelled trouble when I phoned home to ask Gabe what he wanted me to pick up for dinner.

“Nothing,” he said, as if I’d just kicked a puppy.

“Are you sure? I’m walking home. I can pick something up on my way.”

“No. Besides, my mother’s here.” There was no “besides” about that statement. After a brief silence, he continued in a quiet voice that held an undertone of distant contempt. “I gotta go. See you when you get here.” He hung up the phone with a slam.

Not exactly in a rush to hang with
The Bulldog
, I retarded my pace, walking past neat windows of neat lives with chandeliers and built-in bookshelves. I wanted a warm neat life, too, the kind that smelled of roasted rosemary chicken and dishwasher. I wanted a lifetime of lazy firelit Sundays.

Gracious Home, the cloud nine of interior decorating stores, was around the corner from our Upper East Side two-bedroom apartment. On weekends, I combed through their rectangles of paint hues, weighed the pros of wireless blinds against the charm of curtains, and haggled with the saleswoman to retain curtain swatches an extra week. Everyone, eventually, ends up smelling like their home. I’d find something clean from a Dyptique shelf. I wanted us to have our own smell, to share more things than a marriage tax. I read pillars of books on crackling and distressing, updating flea market finds, and feng shui. I was determined to make our home comfortable and ours. In my handbag lived squares of area rug samples layered between the furniture blueprints I’d drawn on restaurant napkins. I’d finally cleared out my handbag—our first apartment as a newlywed couple was just as I liked it.

When I arrived home, I couldn’t open the front door. The key worked, but something was obstructing the entrance. I suddenly felt as though I were about to catch the other woman. “I’m coming. I’m coming!” Rome moaned. I forced a smile. Then the door swung open, and with it, the lid right off Pandora’s box. “Surprise!”

The sofa was now set on a diagonal, my books now in the bedroom. Nothing was as it ought to have been. My bedside table, with my vibrator and birth control, had been moved to the other side of the room. I wasn’t just mortified—I was livid. My blueprinted napkins were shredding in my mind as I surveyed the transformation. The measurements, the magazine clippings, the time I’d spent—it was all gone. She’d taken over. “Don’t you just love it?” I didn’t know what, or who, to disband first.

I tried to sound less than offended as I asked, “Wow, what brought all this on?” I was pacing and on my third cuticle.

“Oh, you know, just a new way to look at things.” She actually twirled. “Isn’t it great?” Rome’s hands were jammed into her makeshift waist. She was wearing salmon…everywhere. Salmon pants, suede shoes, sweater, and matching eyeglasses. I wanted to skin her alive and sell her saturated fat to her malnourished son.

Had I asked my own mother for help in arranging furniture, she would have at least cautioned, “Are you sure? Won’t Gabe get mad? Shouldn’t you ask him first?” There are things called boundaries. Clearly Rome didn’t know from them, and fucking Gabe, Jesus. Not once did he think to raise some kind of concern…you know, “Mom, maybe we should see what Stephanie thinks.” Instead I came home to sweat and destruction. Gabe was sweating from moving all the furniture on her command, and I wanted to destroy him.

The last thing you can do when you’re infuriated with your husband is fight with him in front of his family. It’s like handing your nightmare-in-law a big cardboard sign on her way out saying, “I told you so.” She’ll wear it proudly each time she visits, and over luncheons, when asked how we are, she’ll whisper to the ladies, “Well, they had a big fight last time I was there. Marvin and I never fight. We’ll see how long this lasts.” Then she’ll extend her pinky, sip her tea, and let a sweet meringue dissolve in her acrimonious mouth. So, you thank her for her expertise and fall asleep that night on a saline pillow of frustration.
You are such a momma’s boy
becomes the evening lullaby in your head.

In bed, Gabe whispered into the back of my shoulder, “I just thought it would make her happy, but Steph, come on, clearly you’re upset. I’ll move it all back right now if you want me to. I liked it your way better, anyway.”

“Oh, please. Pretty please. Don’t go there. Everything is so after the fact with you. You apologize in private and love me secretly. No wonder your parents hate me. You never show them that you love me. This is bigger than the goddamn furniture, and they still don’t even know we’re married!”

“Oh, Christ. Stop being so dramatic.” He stopped touching my back. “I give up. Go ahead, go to sleep angry. I don’t give a shit.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious. I could have told you that the minute you moved the coffee table for her.”

He left the room, and I sobbed silently, staring at the ceiling. Why hadn’t I paid attention to the signs, to how similar he was to Marvin, the way he would yes people to death? I married a momma’s boy who double-booked and overpromised our lives, agreeing to be at two places at once. The next day he’d phone with apologies. “Stuck at the hospital,” he’d lie. His middle name should’ve been Afterthefact. Judas, his actual given middle name, wasn’t far off the mark. Christ was looking the other way when Judas betrayed him. I was looking the other way, too, staring at the acorn instead of the family tree. “Well, you aren’t marrying his parents, now are you?” was a pill I’d hide under my tongue and spit out later. I’ve since learned not to swallow advice from anyone who has never had to deal with a Roman empire. You do marry the family, and a difficult family is as bad as a man with a temper. Lucky me, I had both. You’re signing a contract. His family is the fine print, so make sure you know what you’re getting into. Because, soon enough, the family comes into your house and moves your fucking mattress. Just make sure the man you choose to marry isn’t doing the pushing, or the “moving of the furniture,” without you. Pun intended.

A BOY CHASES A GIRL ON THE PLAYGROUND, YANKS HER
braids, then runs away in a frenzy, yelling that her freckles are uglier than her nose. It’s his savvy way of communicating
like
. Unlike Gabe, Oliver never called me names or ran from me, but he did his share of pulling: namely, my teeth. Despite my unwavering declarations of “NO WAY IN HELL,” he begged me to run with him in New York Road Runners Club races. “It’s because I love you,” he insisted.

“No. You hate me,” I countered one weekend over a 6
A.M.
breakfast in his Central Park West studio apartment. “No one who loves me would ever suggest I run anywhere, or for that matter, wake me this early.” Love was being bartered over Brie and baguette.

Oliver would be spending the next two days at the hospital. Pediatrics at Mount Sinai. Meanwhile, I was busy with my own work overload, spending many late nights at the office toiling away on creative executions for inhaled insulin. Oliver thought it was “cute” when our work overlapped, mostly because he felt helpful around me. He’d regularly need to quell my medical fears when I was assigned to a pharmaceutical client. The agency brought in experts to educate us on the diseases for which my client provided medicines, so I often needed to excuse myself from meetings, light-headed and sweating. Conceptualizing interactive advertising solutions for drugs wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be working on, but overall, work was relaxed for me. You know, aside from my constant nightmares that some dormant genetic condition would spring into action. I was convinced for several months that I had type 2 diabetes. I’d also recently learned, thanks to the Discovery Channel, that dogs could smell cancer. At night, after the makeup was removed and the triple crèmes were applied, I stripped naked and collapsed on my bed. Oliver thought it was part of foreplay. “No,” I’d yell. “Linus goes first.” Then I’d let Linus survey my body for The Cancer. He rarely made it past my toes. “That’s it, baby. Mommy’s got the ’beeties, so enjoy ’em while they last.”

“Dear God, Stephanie!” Oliver had said. “Maybe it’s your head that needs the examination, not your blood sugar.” Then Oliver would try to bite me, just as he would during this 6
A.M.
breakfast.

“Let’s break bread before I spend days apart from you examining broken everything else,” he had said. I didn’t mind because his apartment was cave cool, conducive for sleep. I could give him breakfast. That, I could do. Running was another story.

“It’s important to me, babylove.” He batted his eyes. He was way too perky. “And it’s not like I have other races this year.” Oliver needed to run his last NYRR race, which would automatically secure him a spot in the New York City Marathon.

“I’m not stopping you,” I said plainly as I reached over him for the Brie. “Go ahead and run it. I’ll be at the finish line with Linus, lungs intact, thank you very much.” He pressed his mouth against my tricep in what felt like the beginning of a warm kiss, then opened his mouth wider, digging his fangs into my flesh. “Ow! Stop biting me!” I said as I snapped my hand back.

“It was a love bite.” Then came his snickerwheeze. When Oliver was in a mischievous mood and didn’t like what I had to say, he’d mock bite me. Sometimes it hurt. This time it did not.

“Well, it fucking hurt.”

“Please, baby? It would be so nice to do it together.”

Brie on baguette was nice together. Peanut butter and jelly, Stockton and Malone, rum and Coke are “so nice together.” Stephanie running alongside Oliver? Notsomuch.

I understood his point. We were in a relationship now, so the things he enjoyed when he was alone, he’d now have the opportunity to share with me, the woman he loved to love. The problem, of course, was sharing running with me was like sharing gonorrhea. I wanted none of it.

“Hmm, let me think,” I said with my finger to my chin. “Yeah, no, I don’t think I’d be into that so much.”

“Come on, you can walk the whole thing,” Oliver whined. “I just have to do the race. My time doesn’t matter.”

“But I’ll be holding you back.”

“I just want to share it with you. That’s more important to me than how fast we go.” I wasn’t sure if we were talking about the race anymore. “We’ll go at your pace. It’s just something nice for us to do together outside.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard these words. Gabe said the exact same thing about golf. It wasn’t important how well I did, only that I was there participating in
his important
. I purchased a stack of collared polo shirts in sorbet colors, a Lady Fairway glove. Even did the lessons thing, hoping I’d catch the golf bug and begin to crave that clicking sound when you hit the ball the right way. The only thing I caught was a hatred for the time he spent playing. It’s called resentment. I had a case of it. I kept it right beside his case of
en
Titleist balls. How his and hers.

“Oliver, I’m going to say it only one more time, so listen closely. You, my friend, are seriously delusional. Let me explain something to you.”

“Oh, dear, here she goes.” He pushed his plate in front of him, setting his napkin on it. If he had sleeves, he’d have pushed them up and crossed his arms, ready in his waiting.

“Running, just so you know, was invented to escape. Something wants to EAT YOU. You run for your fucking life. It’s not meant to be a good time on paved roads through a park with headphones, okay? Coaches punish players by subjecting them to an extra lap. PUNISH. Hello, are ya gettin’ what I’m sayin’?”

“Haven’t you ever run toward something?” His shoulders fell.

“Are we still talking about running here? Because it seems to me like you want me to do this just to prove something.” It was too early for this, but it was too late to rescind it.

“Please answer me. Haven’t you ever run toward something?” He actually wanted an answer, which meant more than wanting an answer. We were now having a talk.

“I don’t know.”

“I run home toward you every day, Stephanie. I leave work excited, and I literally run toward the subway, knowing I’ll get to see you.”

“So, we run toward something we fear we might miss, then?” I was imagining his train leaving the station, a brown paper bag skipping on the subway platform, the doors closing just before he had a chance to board. I knew the way I said it sounded heavier, as if I meant our relationship, a fleeting us.

“Wait, what do you mean?”

“Maybe you run toward us, Oliver, because you’re afraid I’m going to leave you. Maybe you want me to run in this race with you because you think it will mean I’m more invested in us.”

“Okay, hold on. This isn’t about us. It’s not. I’m just saying that it would be nice to share something with you that I really enjoy. That’s all.” He said it in a voice that conveyed resignation. “It means more when you’re there, Stephanie.”

I’d have preferred letting him stick a needle in my hard-to-find veins to running with him. Asking me, an out-of-shape woman whose heart could give out upon orgasm, to run more than a mile, was really like asking me to go hiking in mud, uphill both ways, during mosquito season, if there were such a thing. But I’d do it because I knew it was ammunition for the future.

My running would be something I could hold over him to get my way—The Mistletoe Method. What? Like you’ve never done it? Please. We all do it from time to time. It’s not exactly the mature approach, but I was in rebound mode with someone who met the needs Gabe couldn’t. Of course, I know this isn’t the reason to do things, to expect something back. I am quite aware that relationships aren’t really always equal and severed into fair bits. But with Oliver, I measured things. How often he’d sleep at my place, which of us paid for the last meal, who said “sorry” first. As far as measurements were concerned, the scales were tipped in his favor. I owed him.

“Fine.”

“Really?”

“Don’t give me a chance to back out of this or I will. Now let me go back to sleep.”

Maybe he deserved more than the asshole “fine,” but I wasn’t ready to give it to him. “Fine” was my compromise. It was all I could manage at the time. I started to see our relationship merits on a system of Stephanie. He was good to Stephanie, stewed Stephanie tea and produced pints of mint chocolate chip for her in the middle of the night. He was patient and loving toward Stephanie. But Stephanie was rarely inspired to make Oliver happy. Shopping at Bergdorf’s for a new outfit he’d like was hardly selfless. Yes, I’d cook him dinner, but I liked to cook, so did it really count? Maybe the only way it became about loving him was when it became insufferable, like when my parents forced me to attend services at synagogue. If I were miserable, spending my Sunday afternoon indoors, in itchy tights, God would know I loved him. Maybe this is love: doing the things you really don’t want to do just because you know it will make them happy. Just as I’d spent Sunday afternoons on Long Island with Gabe’s parents, in lieu of my preferred activity of bathing suit shopping in cruel lighting, I would love Oliver like Sunday school and run in his craptacular race.

On the day of the race, we were running a half hour late due to what Oliver liked to call “the variable.” Regardless of alarm clocks, setting out clothes for the next day, everything accounted for, there was always the unaccounted variable with me, which continually resulted in our being late. Sometimes it had to do with having to wait for my phone to charge, or not remembering to fill Linus’s water bowl until the elevator was in the lobby. Mostly it was due to my inability to manage time. Everyday rituals were kinetic; my body just performed them without accounting for how long they took.

That morning, I was tightening my shoelaces when something inside me loosened. A very loud noise escaped my body. It wasn’t as if it slipped out during a stretch. This was a fugitive fart. I looked at him with a blank stare bordering on mortification, but then, just as quickly, a smile escaped, too. I laughed, doubled over, until I actually gripped a handful of his shirt and tried to apologize.

“My baby just passed some wind,” he said, hugging me. “You know, there’s always that first moment in a relationship, Stephanie, when you have to encounter stuff like this. And man, you just went for it, no pinky toe in those waters. You just dive, don’t you, girl?” He was right, but it had less to do with gas and more to do with life.

“Wait, Oliver, it’s not funny, I think I have to…make.” I’d gone to the bathroom with him around before, but I’d never “passed wind” in front of him, and I’d certainly never corrupted my bathroom in his presence.

“There it is, the frickin’ variable.” He tossed his hands into the air, smiling.

“It’s not like I can help it! Just go without me.”

“No, just see if you can go first.” What? I wasn’t four. I knew when I had to go to the bathroom. “God, we’re always late. It’s so disrespectful. I know this time it’s not your fault, but it’s always something. Just put a verb in it, all right?” This was his clever way of urging me to hurry.

“I swear, it’s not about disrespect. Everyone always thinks tardiness is about them,” I shouted to him through my bathroom door. “They take it personally when I’m late, like I don’t respect their time. Hello, this is ’rhea, not respect!” I was grunting and had the sweats. “Why don’t you go without me?” I urged sweetly. Please, someone, anyone, make him go away.

“I’m not going. So we’ll be late. It’s not like it’ll be the first time. Besides, worse things have been known to happen.” Yeah, like dying with your granny panties around your ankles.

“Are you just going to stand there and listen?” Between rocking in pain and trying to remember if I’d removed Gabe from my beneficiary forms in case I died right there, I had to try to be quiet. “Can you at least play some music or something?” I was horrified.

THE CHICKLETS AND I HAVE HAD MANY A HEATED DISCUSSION
about the crap we take, or refuse to take, once we’re in relationships. Phone Therapist cautioned, “Sex is the barometer of a relationship. It can tell you all you need to know about the strength of the partnership at any particular time.” For others, namely Alexandra, it was not about a barometer as much as it was about a barium enema. Shit was the real gauge on the success of her relationships. It wasn’t about how much she was willing to tolerate, but rather, actually taking one.

She couldn’t poo in public, not even in a work bathroom. She’d sooner go home or borrow keys to Dulce’s nearby apartment than make a number two in the offices of her number one publishing conglomerate. Even when we were in the Hamptons, she’d agonize about how many people were in the house for the weekend, not in fear of overcrowding, but because of what she liked to call “The BS,” or The Bathroom Situation. Her bathroom was something she just wouldn’t share in the sharehouse. If Alexandra ever found a guy she could actually “make” around, I’m certain they’d make it. I’d begin to plan her engagement party.

I didn’t have Alex’s problem. I also didn’t share in the opposite extreme of my sister who boasted about her BMs as if they were MVPs, leaving hers in the bowl, dragging an unsuspecting friend in to witness her creation. I straddled the two extremes. I’m a firm believer that if you can be intimate with the guy, you’ve got to be able to go to the bathroom if he’s around. So in the past weeks with Oliver, if I had to go, I’d just put it out there. “I’m going to make now. So you need to either go to the other room or turn up the volume.” Of course, by doing this you’re running a risk, because now he knows what’s happening. Now he’ll suddenly be aware he’s with a human instead of a goddess. It’s a risk I was willing to take. I just didn’t want to take it with him leaning just outside the door. “Hello, are you putting on music or what?”

“Sorry, love, I was trying to find the right station for the mood.” I could hear him snicker through the door.

“It’s not funny! It hurts.” It was funny, the kind of funny when you see someone slip on ice. I hated and loved him.