The next day, I was at home in Venice, sitting in the guesthouse. I had been spending time with my rescue kitties, Sid and Nancy. They had been my steadiest companions for the past few years. I had scooped them up after seeing someone dump them into the street from a car in the hills of Los Feliz and Robert and I had taken them in. Brother and sister tabbies, they were beautiful, sweet, and independent creatures whose daily agenda still included plenty of time for cuddling and affection.
We were kindred souls—and survivors. Shortly after Sigal and I had left Robert’s with the U-Haul full of my most precious belongings, Robert showed up at my new house and deposited a bunch of garbage bags across my front lawn. He was about to leave when I spotted him and stepped outside. Quickly, he threw the rest of what he had stuffed in his car on the lawn and drove off. The bags were filled with papers, random beauty and body care items, even single tampons. All stuff that could have been thrown in the garbage, which was what I assumed he thought he was doing in a more figurative manner. But included in the detritus were Sid and Nancy, both of them locked in their carriers. Nancy’s included medication for a recent illness.
I brought them inside and then fell onto my knees in the entryway, sobbing until there was a small puddle of tears on the floor. At that time, I had nothing in my house, the floor was cracking beneath me and Jay, and I wanted to scream every time I peed. Why was my life such a fucking mess when all I wanted was calm and order?
After the premiere, though my bladder pain was gone, my life was still every bit as painful and lonely as ever, and I turned to an old friend for relief. I got high. I had been five years sober when I got a hold of some pot and smoked it right up. I had put so much energy into creating the perfect replica of what I imagined my life should be, and here was what it amounted to: me sitting alone in my upstairs bathroom, firing up my bong.
I made one last effort to connect with Jay. One night I called him up and said I wanted him to come over. I was convinced I could handle this laissez-faire approach to relationships and that I was within my rights to order up Jay for sex the way others had done with me. I waited for Jay by the staircase wearing seductive lingerie. He was as appreciative as I had hoped and then some. After admiring me, he said that he loved me.
I didn’t want to hear that. Those words were not in the script I had in my head, and when I didn’t respond, he pressed the issue by answering for me. “You love me.” This was not about love or anything else other than sex, I told myself. I felt righteous and entitled. Why couldn’t we just fuck if that’s what it’s really all about anyway? I wondered. Because it wasn’t about that for Jay, and though I was loath to admit it, the same was true for me. Finally, after he brought up the L-word again, I flat out said, “No, I don’t. I don’t love you.”
Jay was quiet. Neither of us had anything more to say. Many years passed before I saw him again. I was at an Italian restaurant in Hollywood when I spotted Jay at a table across the dining room with a young woman. I never knew if he also saw me. It was one of those classic bittersweet moments and left me wondering if he remembered only the hurt we inflicted on each other, or if our trip up in the Daintree outshone all the misery and was something he cherished as an amazing life experience, like I did.