Tiny Beautiful Things (21 page)

But it was the wisest one too. And I wasn’t the only one whose life is better for it. He deserved the love of a woman who didn’t have the word
go
whispering like a deranged ghost in her ear. To leave him was a kindness of a sort, though it didn’t seem that way at the time.

It wasn’t until I’d been married to Mr. Sugar a few years that I truly understood my first marriage. In loving him, I’ve come to see more clearly how and why I loved my first husband. My two marriages aren’t so different from each other, though there’s some sort of magic sparkle glue in the second that was missing in the first. Mr. Sugar and my ex have never met, but I’m certain if they did they’d get along swimmingly. They’re both good men with kind hearts and gentle souls. They both share my passions for books, the outdoors, and lefty politics; they’re both working artists, in different fields. I argue with Mr. Sugar about the same amount as I did with my former husband, at a comparable velocity, about similar things. In both marriages there have been struggles and sorrows that few know about and fewer still were and are capable of seeing or understanding. Mr. Sugar and I have been neck-deep together in the muckiest mud pit too. The only difference is
that every time I’ve been down there with him I wasn’t fighting for my freedom and neither was he. In our nearly sixteen years together, I’ve never once thought the word
go
. I’ve only wrestled harder so I’d emerge dirty, but stronger, with him.

I didn’t want to stay with my ex-husband, not at my core, even though whole swaths of me did. And if there’s one thing I believe more than I believe anything else, it’s that you can’t fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It’s a god we must obey, a force that brings us all inevitably to our knees. And because of it, I can only ask the three of you the same question: Will you do it later or will you do it now?

Yours,
Sugar

Dear Sugar
,

Up until a few months ago, my dating life was always sort of black and white. I’ve either been in a serious, monogamous relationship or I’ve dabbled around with one-night stands or random, no-strings-attached romps with platonic male friends. Recently, I’ve entered the strange and magical world of casual, nonmonogamous dating. I’ve met a few guys who I enjoy on an intellectual level, as well as sexually. I’m learning a lot about my own sexuality through interacting with distinctly different partners, and I feel like I’m finally discovering that part of myself, which is awesome
.

Maybe it’s because I’m new to this whole nonmonogamous scene and it just doesn’t come naturally to me (yet?), but sometimes I find myself feeling completely overwhelmed by the prospect of juggling these different men. One week, I went out with “Bill” on Monday, saw “Jack” on Tuesday, then had a no-strings-attached encounter with a friendly ex on Wednesday. It was lovely getting laid three nights in a row, but getting laid by three different dudes sort of made my head spin
.

I don’t want to have anonymous and/or completely meaningless sex, but neither do I want to home in on one guy and pursue a serious relationship right now. How can I navigate these new
waters without giving myself a nervous breakdown? Am I obliged to tell the guys I’m seeing that they’re not the only dude I’m sleeping with?

Man Juggler

Dear Man Juggler,

I’ll answer the easy question first: Yes, you are obliged to tell the men you’re sleeping with regularly that you’re not sleeping with them exclusively. There are no exceptions to this rule. Ever. For anyone. Under any circumstances. People have the right to know if the people they are fucking are also fucking other people. This is the only way the people fucking people who are fucking other people can make emotionally healthy decisions about their lives. It’s clean. It’s right. It’s honest. And it’s a basic tenet of Sugar’s hard-earned, didn’t-do-it-the-right-way-the-first-time-around Ethical Code to Loving Others as Well as Loving Oneself.

Plus, it seems like breaking this news is going to be rather easy, Man Juggler. It sounds to me that the men on your current roster of lovers already know that you aren’t sleeping with them exclusively. (And yet, if they all knew this, why would you ask the question?) Best be sure to slip it in rather soon. You don’t have to be overly specific or get all heavy and doe-eyed and like, “Um … we really have to talk.” Just say, “Hey________(Bill/friendly ex/new romping partner I have acquired since I wrote that question to Sugar), this has been superfun and I want you to know that I’m seeing other people too.”

Then smile. Just a little. And perhaps run your hand very lightly up his dreamy hunk of hairy man arm.

Okay. Now. On to your question about how to navigate the
“strange and magical world of casual, nonmonogamous dating.” I think it’s excellent that you’re having fun sleeping with people you like but don’t love, who stimulate you both sexually and intellectually. And it’s even better that this new (and likely temporary) era of your sex life is helping you discover a previously unexplored side of yourself. So all that’s peachy, right? What’s not so peachy is this business about how you feel “completely overwhelmed by the prospect of juggling these different men.”

The beauty of your situation, Man Juggler, is that you don’t have to juggle. Just because you can fuck a different man every night of the week doesn’t mean you should. One of the basic principles of every single art form has to do not with what’s there—the music, the words, the movement, the dialogue, the paint—but with what isn’t. In the visual arts it’s called the “negative space”—the blank parts around and between objects, which is, of course, every bit as crucial as the objects themselves. The negative space allows us to see the nonnegative space in all its glory and gloom, its color and mystery and light. What isn’t there gives what’s there meaning. Imagine that.

Sex with three different guys on three consecutive nights? It’s too much paint. Don’t do it again. Not because I told you so, but because
you told me so
when you used the phrases “head spin” and “nervous breakdown” in reference to that three-day run. Listen to yourself. And have fun.

Yours,
Sugar

Dear Sugar
,

I’m a woman in my mid-fifties. I read your column regularly and believe that my question is pedestrian but am humbly asking for your advice and support anyway as I sit in the pain of it all
.

After a couple decades of marriage, my husband and I are separating. I’m at peace with it as I feel my marriage has essentially been dead for a while. My husband never was demonstrative emotionally or physically. I have spent many years feeling horribly lonely. No amount of trying to get from him what I needed brought change. It took a lot for me to finally believe that I was worthy of more and to make a step toward that possibility
.

Of course the future terrifies me and excites me at the same time. I want to create more loving relationships in my life, both in friendship and romance. I want and need loving touches, loving words. And at the same time, I’m terrified that I’ll never feel the tender touch of a man. Yesterday, as a friend was telling me about a wonderful intimate moment with his partner, I was frightened that I would never have that in my life
.

I worry about sex. I haven’t been with another man for a long time. The sex in my marriage was routine and uninspiring. At one point, I told my husband I wanted to have sex more often and he made a joke of it the next night. And I am afraid I am not
very “good” at it. I would orgasm regularly with my husband so it isn’t that. We hid behind what worked until it got to be boring. For years I imagined robust, adventurous sex, and yet I would allow the routine to continue. I am afraid that I will meet a man that I connect with and we’ll have sex and I will not be any good in bed
.

I need help. How does one go about changing that before it’s too late?

And, then there is the issue of my body. With clothes on, I am presentable. Without clothes, my body reveals the story of significant weight gain and significant weight loss. I feel good about losing weight, but naked my body is droopy and I’m embarrassed by it. I try to imagine how I will be present sexually with all my insecurities in that department. Surgery is expensive and out of my means. My doctor says without it, my skin won’t regain the same tightness. I imagine orchestrating ways to keep from being seen, but I know that probably won’t work and I am so afraid of how a potential lover will react. I don’t want to hide behind my fear, and yet I am so very frightened of exposing myself. I know you can’t do it for me, Sugar, and yet I feel so alone in this place of fear
.

Are there men my age who date women my age who will be accepting of my body? I know you really don’t have the answer but I ask anyway. Emotionally, I am very brave. Sexually and being vulnerable with my body, I am not so much but want to be. And, of course, I am equally terrified that I won’t have the opportunity to express myself and challenge myself in that way. Please help
.

Signed,
Wanting

Dear Wanting,

When my daughter was five she overheard me complaining to Mr. Sugar that I was a big fat ugly beast who looks terrible in everything and immediately she asked with surprise, “You’re a big fat ugly beast who looks terrible in everything?”

“No! I was only joking!” I exclaimed in a falsely cheerful tone. Then I proceeded to pretend, for the sake of my daughter’s future self-esteem, that I did not believe myself to be a big fat ugly beast who looks terrible in everything.

My impulse is to do the same for you, Wanting. In order to protect you from a more complicated reality, I want to pretend that droopy-fleshed women in deep middle age are lusted after by droves of men for their original and seasoned beauty.
“Looks don’t matter!”
I want to shout in a giddy, you-go-girl tone. It wouldn’t be a lie. Looks really don’t matter. You know they don’t. I know they don’t. All the sweet peas of Sugarland would rise and ratify that statement.

And yet. But still. We know it’s not entirely true.

Looks matter to most of us. And sadly, they matter to women to a rather depressing degree—regardless of age, weight, or place on the gorgeous-to-hideous beauty continuum. I don’t need to detail the emails in my inbox from women with fears such as your own as proof. I need only do a quick accounting of just about every woman I’ve ever known—an endless phalanx of mostly attractive females who were freaked out because they were fat or flat-chested or frizzy-haired or oddly shaped or lined with wrinkles or laced with stretch marks or in some other way imperfect when viewed through the distorted eyes of the all-knowing, woman-annihilating, ruthless beauty god who has ruled and sometimes doomed significant portions of our lives.

I say enough of that. Enough of that.

I’ve written often about how we have to reach hard in the direction of the lives we want, even if it’s difficult to do so. I’ve advised people to set healthy boundaries and communicate mindfully and take risks and work hard on what actually matters and confront contradictory truths and trust the inner voice that speaks with love and shut out the inner voice that speaks with hate. But the thing is—the thing so many of us forget—is that those values and principles don’t only apply to our emotional lives. We’ve got to live them out in our bodies too.

Yours. Mine. Droopy and ugly and fat and thin and marred and wretched as they are. We have to be as fearless about our bellies as we are with our hearts.

There isn’t a shortcut around this. The answer to your conundrum isn’t finding a way to make your future lover believe you look like Angelina Jolie. It’s coming to terms with the fact that you don’t and never will (a fact, I’d like to note, that Angelina Jolie herself will also have to come to terms with someday and probably already struggles with now).

Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It’s one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. It’s the man who opts not to invite his abusive mother to his wedding; the woman who decides to spend her Saturday mornings in a drawing class instead of scrubbing the toilets at home; the writer who won’t allow himself to be devoured by his envy; the parent who takes a deep breath instead of throwing a plate. It’s you and me standing naked before our lovers, even if it makes us feel kind of squirmy in a bad way when we do. The work is there. It’s our task. Doing it will give us strength and clarity. It will bring us closer to who we hope to be.