I AM 30. My sister’s desk is blessed refuge. She has left for college, and I’ve moved into her teenage bedroom. I sit in her place. I type. I dig. You help.
Writing one’s memories is essentially the act of recovering oneself. To unearth, to retrieve, to mend. There are mornings I find by the feeling around my eyes that I cried during the night without waking myself up. The salt has dehydrated my skin, and it hugs my eye sockets tightly. I ask our reflection, “Where did we go last night?”
I’m given a thin-lipped smile, a shake of the head, and a few words: You don’t need to know. Eat something. Write. This is all you need.
And then you add, I am here. I love you. I am yours.
I AM 25. I meet his dog before I meet him.
May 30th, 2009. I’m at a summer rooftop party in the East Village, in a stunning home owned by an elegant gay Filipino couple. I’m here with my manager of a few months. My love, I’m torn over her. I’m wary of her combination of cocaine and a frenetic work ethic.
We have grown very close, though. She leans heavily on my arm from today’s cocktail of summer heat, drugs, and Chardonnay. I need to let her go but I can’t. I understand her. Insight and empathy, deepened by ego; it feels good to be needed.
She’s in her 50s, but her exact age is indiscernible. Life has been hard and she has tried to rally with multiple surgeries, refashioning her face as neither old nor young, neither beautiful nor unattractive.
The patio brims with sparkly people monologuing about their films at Cannes and their weekend jaunts in the Hamptons. The air is saturated with scent: perfume, sweat, alcohol. I’m in a white strapless dress made of cotton lace with a sweetheart neckline. I have my signature red lips and manicure. My hair is in ringlets. I look like the crowd’s mascot. A life-sized doll in full costume, part of the team but not quite. I sit in the middle of the milling bodies, my hands clenched tightly in my lap, one ankle tucked behind the other, my torso straight, shoulders back, trying to withstand the moist breath and weight of the intoxicated woman beside me.
I attend these parties because I must. I make sure to connect and be gracious with the host and guests. I keep a gentle hold on you, and the hours pass.
A German shepherd ambles my way. He tilts his head. I mirror him. His eyes hold the filmy blue of cataracts, but I know he sees more than most attending this soirée.
I’m not much of a pet person. I know that’s as terrible as saying I’m not looking for an everlasting love. I like pets just fine. But I don’t go all gooey when near one. My first two pets were baby chicks in Hawaii. They didn’t last long. In Bangkok we had four guinea pigs. They died after a few months. Then two rabbits that also died after three months. Next, two ducklings and a terrapin. After a few months, they were set free into the lake by our house. Then, a bichon frise. Buddy. When Buddy was 3, he was stolen. Then, two other dogs, a poodle and a mix. Coco and Peppermint. Each lasted for a few months before they were given away. Then, a kitten. She fell off the balcony from our ninth-floor apartment. We had as many addresses as we did pets.
Why grow attached, to pets or people, when so often they disappear? I’ve had exactly ten in-depth relationships from age 17 until now, 25. I keep being drawn to harmful choices. Every person has delivered a fervent proclamation of love, which I was foolish enough to believe. Every relationship has felt like a consumption, as in the illness and the synonym for a devouring. Every bond has begun with dilated infatuation and has ended with me dismantled limb by limb, a spider toyed with by a cruel child.
Although 25, I feel old, earmarked with all this love and letting go. I yearn to slow my racing pulse and rest my head on a pillow made by someone’s nearness. But I know better than to count on it or trust myself when it comes to men. I need to somehow rewire this mind and heart of mine before I can fantasize a life with a husband and children. And pets. For now, all I want, all I should allow myself, is a quiet, sunlit room of my own.
This dog trusts me. I can tell he’s too wizened for his trust to be unconditional like that of a puppy. He senses solidarity in our mirrored stillness. Surrounded by noise and ego, he and I float suspended in tranquility. I place my hand lightly on his head. It feels strange. In Thailand, it’s disrespectful to touch the top of anyone’s head if they are one’s age or older. This dog exudes such wisdom I feel it’d be more appropriate to sit on my knees and look into his eyes. So I do.
Suddenly, a gravelly voice butchers the peace. “There you are.”
I look up.
It is like staring into the almighty sun. He emits light. Gorgeous, tall and muscled, lean and full at the same time. Radiating sex like a coiled spring, taut and ready. There is something haphazard and worn in about him, like a well-used boot. Twin feelings surge my veins: I want to sleep with him and take care of him. He hunches down, his arm around the dog.
“I see you guys have met,” he says, his tone stamping ownership over the dog and certainty over our meeting. The grit in his voice lodges into my chest.
He asks my name, and I hand it over like a child surrendering her milk money to the school bully. My face is warm, my fingers cold, tingly. My blood has lost its way. He wears white, matching my dress. A linen button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tan cargo shorts. Later he’ll say, “I knew she was my bride. She was in white, and I just knew.”
“Want a glass of wine? Red or white?”
“Neither, thank you. I don’t drink.”
“How about some ribs?”
A slow smile that I cannot help starts tickling my mouth. “I’m vegan.”
His grins, undeterred. “How ’bout some water?”
“I can have some water,” I nod, blushing.
“Can you now?” His smile cuts through me like a hot knife slips through butter.
We swap stories. He wants to build sustainable communities around the world. I share where I’m from, and my dreams of building safe havens and schools in Bangladesh and elsewhere. He asks where I went to college and what I studied, and upon hearing, says he’s a feminist man raised by a feminist. It has been fifteen minutes since we exchanged names and already our identities are on the brink of merging.
“My website’s under construction,” he says. “Like me. I’m looking for my muse.”
I feel his smile, temperature, and scent move into me, coursing through my cheeks, neck, torso, down to my toes and back up again to nestle into my heart or between my legs. I can’t quite tell the difference.
I look him in the eye, smile without an ounce of flirtation and say, “I am not your muse.”
He is unabating, a storm that pushes on. He asks me four times for my number. I reply I’m not dating right now. He persists. I can tell he’s very good at this. He has been watching me, I’ve been watching him. He moves with the superior aura of one who has always been the most magnetic in the room. Everyone here is smitten with him. Smitten comes from the word smite, which means to strike with a hard blow during battle, to defeat and conquer land, or, when used in the context of disease, to attack or affect severely. Funny and fitting that we also use smitten to describe feelings of attraction.
His manner defies “charm”—that’s too small a word. “Magic” is more appropriate. He conjures something from nothing.
“Come on. Not a date. Coffee or a walk.”
“I’m flattered, but no, thank you.”
“If you won’t give me your number, take mine. I’ll wait for your call.” He nudges a scrap of paper into my hand. I hold it tightly, in vain hope that doing so will still my shaking. Desire always makes me tremble.
Thankfully, my coked-up manager decides to become belligerent at this moment. Her husband has arrived and she’s yelling obscenities.
“It was lovely to meet you,” I say, hurrying away to neutralize the commotion.
The crowd’s collectively cringing, fanning themselves to keep her words from landing on their skin. Her husband looks at me. He sighs, angry and resigned.
“I can’t control her,” he says. “She’s yours. I’m leaving. Please get her out of here and bring her home.”
“I will,” I nod. We’ve been here before. He leaves, I take her hand, we sit on a patio bench.
“Honey, I’m going to get you some water, then we’ll get a cab and go home, okay?” I stroke her hair, tuck a lock behind her ear. She nods enthusiastically, defeated and drained. For a moment, her eagerness paints her young. A kid who has thrown a tantrum from being over-tired. I bring her water. She drinks, gripping my hand like a raft. We make our way toward the door to leave the apartment. I sense him looking, the man in white. We share a smile. He waves, not with the wrist but with the top of his hand, just the fingers. Nodding up and down.
He mouths, “Bye bye.”
We finally find a cab, drive a few blocks, before she realizes she’s left her attaché case back at the party, with her laptop, a stack of headshots and resumes of various clients, and her wallet. We turn around. I go upstairs to retrieve her things. The elevator opens and of course, there he is.
“Missed me already?” he grins.
“Kind of,” I laugh.
I walk past, find the attaché case, and she and I leave. She lives in Soho. I tuck her in and decide to walk the 67 blocks home. The air is alive with students and hipsters out to hooligan the Lower East Side. I love the electric, ravenous ownership with which they attack the night. I watch them laugh, hear their vernacular, observe them fall over or be sick or get into fights, only to laugh, get up, and keep doing what they were doing. Night after night after night. There’s such cacophonic energy on the ground that we forget to look up at the skyline we’re so famous for. As for those living in the skyscrapers, I wonder how often they peer down.
Walking helps me think. He has unnerved me. I feel around for you, dear one, and thank goodness, there you are. Between him, and her, and the party, I started to feel us slip. I buy three oranges from the fruit-cart on 5th Avenue and 14th Street. I eat the first, then the second, then the third orange, as though feasting on fruit will sate my curiosity and bed my wanting.
The futility is embarrassing. Of course I contact him. He is a magician. He has stolen my reason. It’s in a box somewhere being sawn in half.
He texts back, “Princess, let down your hair. Where’s your tower? The frog man comes.” Which I take to be Rapunzel and Frog Prince references, mashed together. He sends two then four more texts to explain his mangled lines, but they all contradict one another, similes and subtexts falling in exhausted tangle.
“It’s okay,” I text, “I know how to translate you.”
Our first date is the next morning at 10 a.m. Excitement makes me run toward the corner where he and his dog are waiting. I have to cross the street to meet him and we float for giddy seconds, waiting for the light to say Walk. Come on comeon comeoncomeon. I have to keep myself from running as we move toward each other. He waves the same as the night before, the top of his hand nodding up and down.
The three of us walk through Central Park. We come out the 72nd Street exit to lunch at a French bistro, then pile into his Westfalia van for New Jersey, where his sailboat’s docked. We pick up a picnic to eat while sailing. Right before he climbs up the mast to ready the sails, he kisses me.
“Just in case I fall,” he says.
I’m too seduced by the sun, the heat, the water to care about the cheesiness. For all I can tell, it’s perfect. The sea air has made my hair curly, and his skin tastes like salt. He hands me a flute of champagne. I take a hesitant sip, telling myself No even as I do. It has been a peaceful sober year. I’m instantly queasy from bubbles, alcohol, and breaking a promise to myself. But the moment’s delirium is delicious.
We sail around Manhattan, dock at 10 p.m., and eat at 1 in the morning back in his apartment in Chelsea. As a rule, I don’t eat after 8 in the evening. I keep slipping today. We eat from each other’s plates and spoons. We split everything down the middle and eat them our own ways. He pours balsamic vinegar and olive oil into his half of an avocado, and I eat mine naked. Before we get into bed, we take a shower. Not together. One at a time. I go first, washing away the last remnants of my makeup. The ocean’s breath has smudged the lines.
We share a toothbrush and he reminds me to floss, his insistence both startling and endearing. I put on a faded yellow T-shirt that belonged to his father and we fall into bed, tired but wide awake. We feel like we’ve done this forever. I nuzzle into him and he unwraps me like a present he packed, sent to himself, and has been waiting to open. We stay up late in the nonsensical way one does when something extraordinary has happened. He asks to have sex and I say, “No, thank you.” He asks to do other things and I repeat, “No, thank you.” He says, “I’m amazing, I promise!” I stare at him, mouth agape, astonished by the scale of his confidence.
“I’m sure you are, but I’m fine, thank you.”
He makes a game of it: “Can I do this? Can I touch here? How about here?”
He pesters and persists, growls and grins. I keep repeating, “No!” growing pink with both pleasure and exasperation. He finally accepts defeat and attacks a dead slumber at 4 in the morning. I’m sleepless, unused to being in another’s bed, unused to a day and night like this, unused to straying from my tight routine.
At 6 a.m. I run away. The last thing I need is another man who wants, wants, wants, then spits me out. I’m foggy-brained that day from a lack of sleep, a sip of champagne, and an overdose of spontaneity and touch. I scold myself and later, drop my phone in a mug of tea. I’m relieved to be unreachable for a few days. He is not dissuaded. He finds me on Facebook, and emails a story of himself in the third person, a lost, wandering man and his dog in search of love, softness, and completion. A place to rest, a person to rest with, a person to be. I want to think the letter is a crafty ploy, but it feels beautifully earnest. The tender hope threaded through it moves me. The least I should do is call, to tell him I’m not the person he seeks.
My love, you may think I’m being coy or overly cautious. But I’m neither. Despite his openness, I’m unconvinced. One can’t make a meal out of dessert. He is walking, breathing, grinning decadence.
“Thank you, but I’m not your girl. You’re an incredible man, and I’m positive you’ll find the woman you need. But I’m not her.”
Somehow this conversation doesn’t proceed as intended.
He asks, “Why not? What would keep you from being her, and keep me from being the man for you? What are you doing right now?”
“I’m on my way to the gym. But, in general, I don’t have time for a relationship.”
“Right now, what’re you doing?
“I’m walking. To the gym.”
“Okay. Where?”
Every detail he needs trips out of my mouth. I hang up and gape goldfish-like at my phone, furious with myself.
I turn the corner, and he’s waiting by the gym. “Don’t you ever take time to relax?” he asks.
“I am relaxed.”
He smiles. “Just give me half an hour. Just a tiny, thirty-minute interlude in your schedule.”
“Fine.”
We walk to the Natural History Museum. In the Late Jurassic hall, he sits me on a bench in front of a stegosaurus. Staring longingly like an orphaned puppy seeking a teat, he announces, “You are my perfection. I refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer.”
His pitch is impressive and I’ve received the best. Every proposal in this city is masterful, and every man, given the personality of this town, proclaims he is not one to take “No” for an answer. He’s here to conquer and succeed and the woman he presently desires is the prize to win.
Past the museum wall is Central Park. In there, around the west 70s, is a bench that heard a similar speech a year ago, and another, further north in the Conservatory Gardens, that witnessed an impassioned soliloquy two years ago. A grassy knoll near John Lennon’s memorial garden staged a similar scene two and half years ago. Professing love or receiving a profession on a bench or patch of grass in Central Park is almost a rite of passage to being a New Yorker.
This, though, is the first I’ve been pitched in front of a stegosaurus.
His argument is particularly emphatic. His concluding sentence:
“You are mine.”
I smile. “But I haven’t said that I am yours. And I’m far from perfect. Besides, declaring me your perfection doesn’t automatically make you mine.”
He grins, tipsy with excitement and challenge. “You’re gonna love me.”
Stunning, his engorged entitlement. The beauty of his features is remarkable; his is a face to drown in. No one has ever denied him. Least of all a woman. I wonder what his mother is like.
I remind him we want different things and are incompatible. He is wanderlust. I am discipline. I am an LED lightbulb while he’s an outlaw firecracker singeing any hand foolish enough to touch it. He wants to live in Connecticut and rebuild a half-burnt, dilapidated barn he just bought. Acting is my calling—I cannot leave New York City.
He says, “We’ll make it work. All I’ll do is support your dreams, like you’ll support mine.”
I agree to date him. Still, I’m hesitant. It’s unsettling how panicky and frustrated he becomes on days I have to be away from him for work. Every emotion, he seems to feel aggressively, from joy to anger, lust to fear. After two weeks, I end it.
Momma doesn’t like that.
“He’s so good for you. He’s so much fun and makes you happy. You need to be happy!”
“Momma, I am happy! He takes too much. We’re too different.”
“That’s a good thing. You’ll balance each other. He can bring lightness into your life, and you can infuse order into his.”
He calls three weeks later. “Come over for dinner,” he says. “A dinner as friends.”
He makes sushi and surprises me with an easel he’s built, refurbished from an antique wrought-iron chair. The back of the chair is shaped like a heart. He built a t-platform that hooks into the chair. He bought me two canvases to go with the easel, one three by four feet, another four by six.
I trail my fingers along the white expanse, hungrily, dazzled. Could this really be mine?
I turn to him. His eyes are pools of want and tenderness and hard as I search, I cannot find danger. I realize in a sudden rush that my trepidation has come from being wary of my own dangerous tendencies regarding men. My heart and mind are sinister and untrustworthy but his are pure and open. I have been punishing him for my past. Shame on you, Reema.
He hands me keys to his apartment. I’ve been given emptied shelves by men before, but never keys.
“Stay,” he says. “Stay or come and go, but stay longer than you stay away. I’ll always be safe for you. You can trust me.”
After two months of exceptional romance, I leap. I don’t move in, but I do stay.
Dear one, have you ever been in love? I’m unclear on how your reality works. As for me, I’ve lived my entire life with you, and shared every detail of remote importance. So you know I’ve never felt true love before.
But now, I feel love happening.
And, dear one, have you ever, by chance, fallen in love in New York City? If you haven’t, please consider putting it on your list of things to do before you die. Falling in love in New York is sublime. Do what you need to do: reorganize your schedule, pay sacrificial alms to the planets, surrender the limb the Devil asks for to make this happen at least once. The entire City will conspire to make this wonderfully easy for you. All our lives, like kittens to milk, we obediently lap up movies, songs, novels, and short stories depicting glorious scenes set in Manhattan that we now perform. Here we are, he and I, finally floating in a serenaded montage of our own. Here we are on the cobblestone streets of the West Village, people-watching and playing hopscotch with witty innuendos. Here we are looking out the window at the Empire State Building flanked by adoring skyscrapers. The view is made all the more marvelous by our horizontal vantage point as we lie on his bed, our skin warm, blushed, dewy, recently enjoyed and quenched.
A few weeks are all it takes for the inevitable. I’m a little shy to say it so I write a note and tape it to a pineapple I buy for the purpose of being my messenger.
“I bought you a pineapple,” says the note. “Because I love you.”
He understands. He laughs. Feeling exposed, I hide behind a basket of laced fingers. He peels them back one by one to kiss my face.
I cut the pineapple the way we do in Thailand. We cut it whole, nicking out the eyes in dainty, delicate slivers in a spiral, surgeoned on an angle. This way you retain more of the fruit than if you were to hack at the hard skin, chucking chunks of fruit with the shell. This amazes him and I love him all the more, for how easily the little things delight him and his consequent unabashed joy. We eat the entire fruit in one go. Our mouths itch the way anyone’s will when hell-bent on eating a whole pineapple, pausing only to lick the juice off your lover’s fingers, lips, chin, neck, chest, wrists. Love is the sweetest itch.
I HAVE NEVER BEEN loved this way. This love feels like coming home to children and puppies, tumbling, spilling, pouring in feverish haste to welcome and adore me. He likes all of me. My mind, personality, goals, my many flaws and idiosyncrasies, the motorcycle muffler burn on my right ankle, the little red mole on my nose that I hope isn’t cancerous, the spot on my lower back that’s extremely sensitive when blown on or licked. He assigns every forgettable detail a nickname, claiming them as his evermore. Under the hot glare of his love, I feel special.
I have been dying to love and be loved. Whenever I think of my initial wariness toward him, I scold myself for being so cruel and unfair. I have now surrendered all trepidation, to love him with full intensity and abandon. After a lifetime of finely honed alertness, I soften. The long hours I used to spend writing in my journal or talking to you, I devote now to him. I would never let you slip from me. It’s simply that he occupies so much space. There’s barely any left for you.
We are that couple. Into a room we walk wearing smiles wider than the parting crowd, delivering laughter, presents, and music. He brings his guitar and sings one of the songs he has written for me. He writes a song a day, a practice he adopted long before meeting me, although he slips in and out of the vow, so that a song-a-day becomes a song-when-I-feel-like-it. Many of the songs have lyrics that sound Spanish but are actually nonsensical. He invents the words, and his carnal charisma and confidence pass them off as real. The audacity horrifies my work ethic and thrills my spirit. In the middle of a moment, he’ll start singing invented words, will pull me into a playful samba, and paint me in kisses. All other tasks are forgotten. My favorite song he writes for me is “Sunshine.”
“You will always be my sunshine, and I will always your man.”
My love isn’t an accomplished man. Neither is he exceptionally intelligent, talented, or cultured. But he has the invaluable ability to make others feel good. The moment you’re around him, you feel unique, adored, and needed. You feel meaningful. You vow your life to his and believe him when he says he has done the same.
On our first date I told him, “I’m a touch person.”
He replied, “I’m the same. That’s mainly why my last relationship fell apart. My ex-wife was different. Cold.”
I hear him in me and me in him. We fuse need to need.
“You are mine and I am yours,” I decide, murmuring into his chest, nuzzling at night like a small, sleepy pet into that warm nook where his heart beats loudest.
After three months, we know. We’re going to be married.
I cannot wait for him to meet my family. In the meantime, he needs to meet my New York brood. He comes to a christening, for the twin daughters of my closest friends. The Broadway star and the tennis icon, my surrogate older sister and brother. My Warrior family. They adore him instantly.
We stay at the christening reception for a few hours and leave to walk while the light is still young.
Somewhere along Jane Street we come across two women he knows. They’re coming this way, we’re walking that way, straight toward them, the only people on the block. One has auburn hair, the other blonde. The blonde has a lovely smattering of freckles across her nose, a trail that begs tracing. She smiles a small smile, raises her hand in a little wave.
“Hey there,” he says in his molasses drawl. “How are ya?”
Both women seem a little shy. He pulls them into hugs. He introduces me. I smile big, trying to warm the space between us, sensing their reticence and something else. A cloudy sadness fills the air, making it feel like bathwater once you’ve soaped the day away, the milky gray of long, tired hours spent working, toiling, trying.
We exchange small talk. He does most of the talking. He asks what they’re up to, explains we just came from a christening, hence our dressy attire. We didn’t mean to, but his button-down shirt is the identical blue as my chiffon dress. I chose the dress for its color, the same shade as his eyes when they decide to be more blue than green. He chose his shirt because I sewed back one of its buttons a few days ago. He declared it thus his favorite. My hair is pinned with silk roses, and we are glowing from the summer and the nearness of each other. We are embarrassingly picturesque and something about the women makes me feel guilty.
He says, “I’m so happy we ran into you guys. I’m glad you’re doin’ good.”
He takes my hand, we walk a block in silence. He exhales deeply.
“That was my ex-wife. The blonde. Our divorce finalized last December.”
It is September. He looks sad and worn.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he says, the sentence unzipping everything. Years I cannot see, memories fading to sepia, matters never reconciled, questions still unanswered.
I nod slowly. “She seemed nice,” I say, squeezing his hand. “She was reserved but friendly. And you were so kind and warm. That’s a testament to you and her. There was a lot of love there once.” I kiss the back of his hand.
He looks miserable, still.
“You are so dear,” I say. “You feel your feelings in such a big way, don’t you?”
He nods. “I can’t help it.”
I smile. “It’s a rare and beautiful thing.” I take his hand. “Let’s sit down somewhere.”
He nods okay. We tuck into a little Italian café. He shares what happened, the explainable parts and the pieces that remain elusive.
“It’s okay,” I say. “It’ll be okay.”
He nods. I place my hands on either side of his face, propping my elbows on the little mosaic-topped table. He closes his eyes and rests the weight of his head in my palms. We sit like this for a while. The balmy summer days are so long. They begin cool but warm as the hours pass. The sun keeps us dutiful company. I watch the light move from lemon to gold to amber. He opens his eyes and suddenly I’m looking into an ocean, a blue so vivid I can smell the salt. He keeps his head where it is, his jaw nestled in my palms as snuggly and decidedly as a body fills a hammock, and the hammock bends and gives to hold the body seeking rest. This is why we are here. To share the weight.