Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir (27 page)

“I’m sick. I don’t have the energy to straighten it. And you only think it’s more me because it’s so unruly.”

“Ah, so it was a good session, I see.”

“Do you find it at all pathetic that our conversations are mostly about my mental health lately?” I poured our soup into bowls. “Thank you, honey. This was nice of you. You’re officially my new boyfriend.”

“Well, then I’m the lucky one.” When Dulce spoke, her tone always sounded as if she were having a discussion about lollypops and gobstoppers. I think they call it carefree.

“Hardly. Want to know what I do to my boyfriends? Apparently I make ’em responsible for my happiness, and thus responsible for my unhappiness. I let them wrap my whole world in their hands like that damn gospel song.”

“You know that ‘damn song’ is about God, and how we really don’t have control over our lives.”

“Yeah, well, if that’s true, I’m throwing away a whole lot of money in
ther-rape-me
sessions.”

“Nah. You’re just learning to control what you can.”

“Lovely. I’m a walking twelve-step program.” I swallowed half a matzo ball without chewing.

“So come on,” she said, “tell me about your session,” Dulce giggled as she tried to slurp up a particularly long noodle.

“I have to make a list of situations that make me happy. Perhaps I’ll add noodle slurping to it and hope it works?”

“Why do you have to make a list?” She set her bowl down, tucked her knees up, and knotted herself into what she considered “comfortable” on my sofa.

I turned my head and stared for a moment before asking, “Can’t you sit like a normal person?” Dulce is double-jointed. I’ve never understood this concept of joints. Meathead, the spastic guy from our Hampton’s sharehouse, had nicknamed her “Stick Bug” because of her movements and long thin limbs. When she drank too much, she’d display her jointed talents for all to see, showcasing her ability to touch her knee to her nose while wearing her minute of a skirt.

“You can also work on being more flexible by stretching, you know.”

“Yeah, I’m working on flexible. I’ll try stretching when therapy renders useless.”

“So why the list?” she asked again, this time sitting on her heels.

“Because, other than being in love, I don’t know what makes me feel good. Not really, not like that.”

“What is it about love, do you think?”

“When I’m in a relationship, I’m usually told by the guy that I’m sexy and talented, and I believe it when he says it. But when I’m alone, I don’t feel any of those things. I know I have to be those things or they wouldn’t see them. But I don’t see them in myself. My therapist told me I need to learn to love myself. It sounds easy enough, but really, how do you just wake up one day and learn that? It feels like something you should just do involuntarily, like swallowing or blinking, but now I have to work on it. It feels so forced. I mean, I know I went to a good school, and people tell me I’m smart and creative, but I don’t KNOW that. I don’t know how to make myself
feel
that.”

Since moving to New York from Baltimore, where she’d gone to college, Dulce had four different jobs in finance. She was currently employed at Merrill Lynch, working as an analyst, making a great living, and she hated it.

“I always look forward to coming here,” Dulce continued, “because you make me feel alive again. Work is so anesthetizing. It’s like some antidepressant that numbs you out. Carter doesn’t understand why I’m always so tired. But when I’m around you, you remind me of the old me, the creative me, that I’ve seemed to have lost somewhere along the way in my own life struggles. It’s like I feel hope in myself because I can at least get excited about your passions.”

“Yeah, how are things with
The Glenn
?”

I nicknamed her new boyfriend Carter “The Glenn” because he was fatally attracted to Dulce. He referred to her only by her given name, Allyson Reese, just so she would one day say, “Oh, the only ones who call me that are my mother and Carter.” He wanted the in on being important any way he could get it. When Dulce spent time with me, The Glenn had her on the clock, phoning her cell on the hour, wondering when she’d be coming over. His ears must have been ringing. Dulce’s cell phone did just that.

“Hi sweetie…no, I told you…well, just a bit longer…we’re in the middle of a project. No, sweetie, don’t be silly…” I cleared our bowls from the coffee table and gave Dulce the illusion of privacy as I headed toward my adjoining kitchen. I listened as she tried to pacify him, cooing “I love you”s at him in an
infantimbre
I thought only Gay Max had mastered.

When I returned, she was off the phone. “Let me guess. He can’t live or breathe without you?” Dulce smiled and rolled her eyes. “Why do you tolerate him?”

“Well, he’s not always like that,” she said. “I mean, he has redeeming qualities. Like, he knows how much I hate having to wake up so early for work, knows how much it stresses me out, so he gets up and rides the subway downtown with me just to keep me company. It’s completely out of his way, but he does it for me.” That was sweet in a mildly needy and maniacal way. Hence, The Glenn.

“You know, Dulce, there is such a thing as too giving. I mean, I know he does that to make you happy, but I suspect he’s willing to do anything for you, except if your being happy involves time away from him.” Oh, I would know. I’d lived a lifetime feeling that way about Gabe. “What does he do with himself when you’re not around for him to shower with affection and praise? I mean, does The Glenn have any hobbies? A sport, anything?”

Dulce blinked at me, biting her lower lip in thought.

“Exactly,” I said. “He needs to get a life and figure out what makes him happy besides being in love and making you mixed tapes. Shit, you should’ve invited him here for our matzo-ball soup for the soul session, after all. He could use a little list-making loveliness in his life.”

“Yeah, okay, Steph, get out your journal and make the list now. I’ll make one too. Hopefully, we’ll figure out what we should be doing with all of this pent-up energy, aside from analyzing it.”

WHEN YOU’RE MARRIED, YOUR ENERGY HAS A CHANCE TO
roam. You can choose a hobby—raising a dog, fertility, painting. Your Google searches have a theme. You are no longer aimless in the bookstore. You have found something to invest all the energy you had previously spent on planning the wedding, or before that, planning your life. Unfortunately, many of us, when we’re single never-been’s (as in never been married), don’t really think we’ve got an adult life until we’re married. So we obsess over the meanings of IMs, e-mails, and lack of calls as a hobby. We can almost spreadsheet the interactions with our respective dates.

E-mailed him twice, called once.

Returned his call. Ball is in his court.

He asked you out. Up to you to respond.

We could try to elaborate, adding which story we told to whom, but it would require more typing than it’s worth. And when there is no guy, we create them or resurrect the older ones because we don’t know what to do with the available energy we still have after our yoga, spinning, and elliptical efforts. When you get married, you can exhale and start your life.

That’s what I thought. So many women do it, let themselves obsess over someone because it gives them something to do. Carter did it with Dulce. I did it with Gabe, Oliver, and a host of others in between. Now, though, I reviewed my journal entries, examined the scope of my conversations with friends, and I thought, “Is this it? Did you really let it become this, just this? Fuck. You’re more than this.”

I knew I had to start making my hobbies, my passions, about me. It’s a way better investment than some random guy who wouldn’t be around the next week. I’d find something I could do, just for me, which made me happy. It would be something no one could ever take from me, on a par with education. Learning to make yourself happy, without another person, is just as invaluable as learning from the past. And masturbation is not a hobby, it’s a sport. But I tested it out anyway.

I drew myself a bath after undressing, and as the tub filled, I watched my body, not with a critical eye, but with the eyes of a lover who doesn’t care about the distended or aged. He’s too focused on what’s next to notice about “enough.” In the looking, I decide I have a beautiful stomach. It’s not muscular or flat enough, but I’ve stopped giving a shit about “enough.” It’s what a stomach should be. It’s smooth and sinks concave when I pull it up in a breath, exposing a shallow bowl of skin, hollowed to my hipbones. I lie on the bed, feeling desire so strong, it masquerades as hunger. I can feel it there, warm and purring. I like watching it move, pulsing in pleasure. I smell my odor. The deodorant has worn thin and ineffective as I rub myself. Harder. With two hands now. No, not like that. This is better. I pull one arm over my head, covering one nostril, making it harder to breathe. Harder. I’m angry. That’s it. Harder. It’s not enough. I have to think of something. A strong hand presses into my back. I can’t see it. I only feel the warmth and strength in it, as though I could collapse my weight into the palm, and it would still catch me. Salt and pepper hair, an older man. I fantasize about safety. Even in my sexiest thoughts, I conjure security and crave for it to press into me.

I anger-fucked myself to sleep again after my bath. I hated that I needed therapy, hated how broken I felt, hated that I couldn’t set everything right immediately. My rage slid out when I finished, the kind buried so deep you didn’t know it was there. Latent. It arrived with my tears of aggravation. Restless, my God, that’s what it was. I was so fucking restless. Twitchy and scratchy and movey (it should be a word) and frustrated. I didn’t realize I’d become so abrasive and miserable until the sexual release cleaved me like a peach, revealing the hard center of a stone fruit. It needed to be coaxed from its lodge and roots.

Even masturbation left me feeling wrong about everything, and I’m not even Catholic. I am, however, a glutton for punishment, so the next morning I went shopping for a new pair of jeans. Kidding. I wasn’t looking for Hell, just Purgatory. So I hit the streets with my camera and headed for Crapass Central, yet again. This time I was prepared. I had gloves, tissues, and
my
Pod cranked to Nina Simone’s “I Shall Be Released.”

I swear I see my reflection somewhere inside these walls.

I see my life come shining from the west out to the east.

I mouthed the words that came next,
any day now
. It wasn’t working, any of it. Coffee would help, certainly. I like my coffee burnt and sweet, like flan syrup.

“Grandeskimnowhipgingerbreadlatte at the bar.”

“Thank you,” I mumbled.

“No, thank
you
, ma’am.” Swell, now I was a ma’am. When did that happen? I fucking hate life and your green apron. What was she smiling about? How was she so happy grinding it out, putting white lids on white cups, pumping syrup and addictive stimulants into the lives of strangers?

“May I ask you a question?” I said plainly, pulling the Pod buds from my ears.

“You sure can.”

“Are you, are you happy?”

“I am today,” she said.

Maybe that’s what really mattered? Living in the now, and all that crap about the past being over? The future hasn’t happened, and today is forever? These aren’t the kinds of statements that belonged beside question marks.

“You’ve got great hair. Surely that’s reason enough to be happy,” she added, in a twirl, as I began to suck foam from my coffee. Everyone around me was twirling lately. She got my order wrong. I didn’t order Comfort and Joy with a side of Pep and Glee in my latte—I wanted it in my life.

She was right about the hair. I was wearing it curly again. I felt the chaos inside and couldn’t be bothered trying to tame it. It was too much work. Besides, I was too busy “working on me.” Days prior, I’d schlepped to the park to photograph old people and bridges. It wasn’t helping and only felt like I was trying to pass the time until someone new entered the picture. “Work on yourself. Love yourself.” Ew. Enough! I’d done that. I’d done that. I’d DONE THAT! I had the damn list to prove it. If I heard myself tell one more person about my hobbies and friends and job and dog, I was going to—

I hate when I do that.

I threatened just there. Did you see that? If I heard one more…yeah, big talker, what were you gonna do about it? I hated that I was empty threats, even to myself. And, more importantly, I hated the word
hobbies
. I still do. It’s terrible and reminds me of Tyler Hobbes, a fat, freckled kid from my childhood who ate boxes full of toothpicks, and who, even in sixth grade, did the comb-over. I think of wooden hobbyhorses. I was ill over the selling of my life. Maybe that’s what was making me sick. I was out there working it, selling myself, really, telling people about my interests, about how nice it was to finally focus on being single. I’d done it in the park, in Jaimee’s arms. Pointed to my camera and called it my baby. Who was I fooling? The worst bit of it was, I wasn’t just trying to convince her. I’d been peddling “I’m happy now” to myself.

I’d built a thick, heavy wall of funny stories and interests around my heart. I didn’t know how to let anyone in anymore. And the most uncomfortable I got was when someone asked me how I was while looking me in the eye, pausing in a stare, waiting for a reply. I looked away, and then looked back, ensuring I made eye contact so they wouldn’t ask again. I’d lie to their face. Convincingly. “I’m good. Really good.” I shook my head between good and really. “Yeah.” They’d smile back, and I’d want to hide in a dark closet for days.

I was not fine. I was despondent. I felt myself hardening. I used to be so much softer than the cold armor of a woman I saw in the reflection of the coffee shop window.

“Be patient with yourself,” I said aloud as I pushed the ear buds back in. “It’s not going to happen overnight. Change takes time. You’ll get there.” It was how I comforted myself. It didn’t come in an orange cylinder from Duane Reade. My salve wasn’t over the counter—it was beneath all my bitching about misery. It was there trying to surface through my thick sob story. I didn’t need a ball game or my father’s closet. I needed me. I just had to sit still long enough to hear what I had to say. It was exactly where I should have been focusing.