I AM 30. I write sitting in my parents’ breakfast nook. Summer has shifted into fall. I’ve begun to feel better. You knew I would. I’m glad I listened. I’ve cracked open the door to the deck to allow in the day. A whistle of cool air glides into the house like a sly paramour.
Suddenly, a small bird flies into the room. The poor thing is bewildered by the quick shift in surroundings. It begins to fly against the windowpanes, slamming once, twice, thrice into the glass. The more it does, the more frantic and disoriented it becomes, its shock now whisked into terror.
I leap to my feet and try to shepherd the bird outside. I want to call out to it but am afraid that would only scare it more. I make foolish flapping motions with my arms, swinging them in wide arcs, a cross between a traffic controller and a mime. Words slip out without my intention, in a desperate singsong.
“Little bird, this way. It’ll be okay. This way.”
And then, insanely, “Trust me. Come here. Here.”
She finally flies out the door. Trapped in such a panicked rush, she hits the doorframe on the way. There, she leaves a bright, scarlet smudge. I look at the sky. Already the clouds have folded her in, like flour enfolds spice. I touch the blood on the doorframe. It is barely a drop but given her tininess, a single drop is significant. I rub the drop once, twice, thrice between my forefinger and thumb, and just like that, the memory of her vanishes. Taken in by my very fingertips. I start crying, feeling suddenly cruel, a bully who has taken something from a littler creature. It was her blood. I didn’t even think to ask.
Shaken, I shut the door.
I AM 28. THE moment we meet, I know. He will take all of me.
Oh, my love, not again.
Why must I meet him now, when I’m doing so well? And, I can feel, he is the strongest storm thus far. Making every candle wary, sending their light and shadow jumping along the walls. Love, I will try to hold steady.
His sister finds me through a moms’ network. She calls looking for a date-night babysitter. Our conversation stretches into an hour. I meet her beautiful toddlers and husband. I love them immediately.
After a month she says, “You should meet my brother. He’s creative as well. He’s really good at branding. You should check out his website. There are some great video tutorials.”
I wonder how I should phrase that I’m adamantly single, decisively focused on my work, and not looking to entwine with anyone, least of all the brother of a dear new friend. I have a plan and I will stick to it.
“He’s not looking for a relationship either,” she says, without my having to say anything.
“Oh. Fantastic.” I look at his photos online. Not remotely appealing. Even better. I won’t be tempted.
She emails him, he emails me, suggesting we meet for drinks. About to disperse for Thanksgiving, we decide on the following Sunday. My brother is visiting Oregon as well. He looks over my shoulder as I watch one of the aforementioned allegedly amazing videos.
“Perfect. You’ve found your husband.”
My brother never expresses such romantic nonsense. He doesn’t believe in sweeping fantasies or star-crossed destiny. He is now 24 and my sister, 17. Standing now at 6’3”, with an unfailing sense of ethics, he is an enormously successful management consultant. Calm under pressure, he lives in suits and jets, bouncing continents and computer screens, moving billions of dollars daily between companies vying for power. He views life with thinly veiled suspicion, believing everyone is guilty, asinine, and out to kill.
He shares my precise manner in speaking. It can come across as affectation. I’d like to think it isn’t; we both adore language. When my brother says things like, “You need to school yourself on Justin Timberlake. His canon is tremendous,” he is neither joking nor speaking in sexual innuendo. He speaks from sincere respect for JT’s spectacular mastery of performance, business, and songwriting.
Now, my baby brother lists his reasons for his idiotic prophecy.
“He’s smart, and has an astute understanding of his material and audience. He’s hugely successful, and it’s time you date someone like that.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Is it now?”
“Success means work ethic. It’s not about wealth. Furthermore, he seems to share our sense of humor. When are you meeting him?”
“We’re meeting for drinks on Sunday.”
“See? Exactly. He knows what’s at play.”
“In New York everyone meets to talk about work over drinks! Even if one doesn’t drink!” Oh, how I loathe the sound of my voice, reedy with defense. My siblings always ruffle my feathers like nobody else. He continues his lunatic drivel while I fume.
We scroll through other videos. This man has built himself and his company from his own vision. He’s an internet wunderkind, a contemporary guru who teaches people how to create abundance in life. The tone he adopts is overbearing and cocky, but it serves a purpose. He’s speaking to his demographic of men in their 20s and 30s. The aggressive tough-love seduces their respect. He has created an empire that helps people discover their best selves, and beneath the shtick is his genuine empathy for his audience. The positive impact he has had on others is already immeasurable.
I. Love. This. A man on the quest for more.
“He seems rather impressive,” I admit aloud. My cheeks are pinking with excitement.
Sunday, 7 o’clock in the evening, I walk into Angel’s Share, the dim-lit speakeasy he has chosen. He sits near the entrance, at the bar.
Oh, hell. In person, he’s rather attractive. And tall. And brawny, beautifully dressed, and bristling with potent masculine energy.
Confound it all. I’m furious with his sister. I’m furious with my brother. I’m furious with his misleading photos. I’m furious with the way this man smells when he leans toward me and the scent he leaves in the space between us when he leans back. I’m furious with this dizzying spot of air. His pomp and circumstance suggest he wears cologne from a bottle shaped like Fabio, but he doesn’t. He smells like fresh laundry.
Is there any aphrodisiac more endearing than the scent of fresh laundry? For me, any morsel of picturesque innocence feels like a sensorial sonnet. And when you love the way someone smells, you love not only their nearness and touch, but the small patch of air where their scent still floats after they’ve moved away. The French have a name for this. Sillage. Sillage means trail of scent, referring to this lingering memory of a person. After you’ve parted, this pleasure keeps you company, ebbing or deepening how much you miss him.
I’m in so much trouble.
My past is filled with gorgeous all-American golden boys, classically handsome, unabashedly confident of their longitude and latitude in a world that caters to them. Their king was my ex-husband, the iconic idol who runs through the surf, tanned, muscled, grinning, coming at me with blue eyes, dimples, and a lazy-Sunday-morning-in-bed drawl, saying, “Baby, baby, baby, be mine,” and I’ve replied, “Yes, please. I am yours.”
This man is different. The son of humble beginnings, his magnetism comes from presence, not muscle or symmetry. His face isn’t traditionally handsome. But the longer I look, his features grow on me, like fever evolving into hallucination. Angular cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and a mouth carefully shaped closed. It will be months before he allows himself to greet me with an open smile. When he does, it stretches the sky.
His entire body radiates disciplined concentration and intelligence. His posture and mannerisms appear calculated, rehearsed, as if he studies and understands body language. Above all, his gaze holds me. I’m a target already locked in by a missile.
Suddenly, my cells feel more alive.
We talk, covering everything but work, ignoring the social graces one observes in New York. Within seconds, we’re building off the other’s jokes, laughing as though we’re the first creatures to discover humor. Our faces mirror delighted shock. We speak unfettered, swapping family anecdotes. When he talks about his family, his face glows with love.
Turns out we live a few blocks away from each other. The night air is ideal to walk. His apartment is a block north of my ex-manager’s. His was one of the buildings I gazed at on the night I met my ex-husband, craning my neck and wondering who lived there, high above, encased in glass, contemplating the ant-like lives milling beneath. We hug goodbye. I return home. I call Momma and, while the phone rings, text my sister words I’ve never before felt or uttered. Silly words that make me squeamish.
“I think I just met the man I’m supposed to marry.”
In characteristic fashion my sister texts, “WTF? What is happening? Who are you? Who is this guy? Stop. Tell me more.”
Momma picks up. I try to speak but instead giggle uncontrollably.
“I’ve never heard you like this! What’s he like? You sound so happy.”
Goodness gracious. This will wreak havoc on my plan. I was doing so well.
Over the next two months, he and I meet a few times, careful to keep things casual. I manage the impossible: I neither kiss him nor let myself be kissed.
Tonight, we are meeting at another beautiful, hidden speakeasy. I arrive a few minutes before him and busy myself with the book I’m reading presently, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. All around me, stained-glass lamps shaped like upturned tulips dot the dark room, glowing with amber light. Each nook, booth, couch, table is different, lovingly chosen by a discerning eye. To enter the bar, one must have a secret telephone number to make a reservation. The place hasn’t a name, only a number: 17, brandished on a brass medallion hung on a somber mahogany door. The speakeasy lives underground, and has no windows for you, my love, to sit by. I’m sure this isn’t an ominous sign.
He arrives. I put away the book and give him a hug and a cookie I baked that day, one in a large batch. Every now and then, I make a big batch of heart-shaped cookies to give to colleagues, friends, and any stranger on the subway who looks like they could use one. They get a cookie, or a love note, or both.
He looks at me, blankly. “You’re reading a book. At a bar. And this is a cookie.”
“Yes.”
The drinks are old-fashioned cocktails made by purists, served in tiny glasses and tumblers. Momma gave me firm direction on the phone as I walked to meet him: “Have fun, relax, order a drink. Break the wagon. Live a little.”
“Yes, Momma.”
Thus I perch on a leather loveseat taking little sips of something outrageously delicious. It tastes like lavender laced with sin. I’m in a short, tight black skirt, a tight, black V-neck shirt, stockings, and boots. My pre-marriage uniform. He sits two feet away, the hot secret of our attraction scorching the air between us, each wondering when we’ll confess it and how. I can feel my pulse in my lips, beating so strongly I swear the scoundrel can see it.
“Have another sip.” He lifts my drink for me. He follows with something highly intelligent, witty, and original.
Hell. Swoon. Sip.
He leans in. I jump as if touched by a burning match. By silent rule, whenever he attempts contact, I contort away like a Romanian circus performer. Tonight though, the resolve is merciless in his eyes. I feel the hard curl of his arm slip around my torso, pressing me to him like meat against a grill.
I recite to him the eight reasons I typed and memorized, to why we should not Begin Something.
“One, we are each exactly where we need to be in our lives right now, and shouldn’t shake that. Two, I have just completed a catastrophic few years and am enjoying a peaceful singlehood. Three, I know and love your sister. So, should something go awry, or if I panic, I cannot run away and wouldn’t want to. What if all of us knowing one another creates unnecessary pressure?”
“You can run away anytime,” he says. “And, I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Well, that’s lovely. Thank you for your kind sentiments.”
He hovers closer. I fear I’ll faint or combust from the intoxicating blend of desire and trepidation.
“Four,” I continue my list, “I think you’re incredible and this could be something really amazing if we give it careful time to grow. Five—”
He kisses me. He breathes me in until there is nothing left.
HE IS POWER PERSONIFIED. A steady, sturdy, masculine force. All he needs is to glance my way and I’m a mess of blushes. After years of feeling like a weary, mud-caked soldier living on unstable ground, I feel beautiful, desired, fun. I’m even laughing again.
Dear love, please understand. Although being alone has felt exhilarating, being with him is equally thrilling.
We are in his apartment. We are talking on the couch. His eyes take on a look, and suddenly, I’m flipped over his shoulder and carried to bed, giggling.
More than sexual chemistry, he engages my mind. I was starving. Now I’m a glutton. Our conversations are on a new astral plane of intelligence. We inspire each other.
He calls himself a teacher of strategy. He doesn’t talk; he states. He doesn’t walk; he strides. He targets, persuades, conquers like mercury cuts through flesh. He’s the youngest man I’ve ever dated, a year older than myself. A man of two voices, his brand is his public persona. For his inner circle, he is kind, humble, compassionate. To his followers—whom he calls his “students”—he is an all-wise monarch, the living testament of the company promise. A mere few years ago, he was a scrawny, geeky, shy boy with an app and a plan. Now, he is self-made royalty.
Sometimes, my mind calls him the Prince.
There are moments when he jars me. He has a penchant for misogynist jokes, which feels obtuse given his closeness to his three sisters and mother—all very strong, smart women. Moreover, he’s attracted to me, a clear feminist.
“A woman can’t call herself a woman if she doesn’t wear heels at least five inches high,” he says. “They do amazing things for the ass.”
“I don’t need the help, thank you.”
He laughs.
Like a rash, his fondness for this sort of humor flares up whenever there’s a moment in conversation that feels too vulnerable, meaningful, intimate, or serious for his liking.
I wonder, as well, about the toll of the continual pressure, ambition, and competition for More. New York is the epicenter of The Culture of More. He runs a hard, fast race at a punishing pace, with the wealthiest, swiftest, coolest kids.
He doesn’t merely run with them; he leads. He is the King of the Cool Kids, encircled by adorers and fellow nobility. He wears his coolness masterfully, having studied himself on video to understand and perfect body language and performance. Like many men of power, he lives a highly public yet solitary life, the sections of his day divided between being surrounded by crowds, and working on his own. Everyone desires a piece of him. Grown men stammer when hearing his name, attesting he changed their lives. In person, they grin slavishly. The female groupies swarm like bees abuzz. Sometimes, I wonder how important it is to him that I look the way I do. Whether I’m another goal for him to conquer. He grew up bullied and unpopular. I wonder if I resemble the girls who once denied him the time of day.
“High-status” is a term he enjoys. New to me, it means one person is alpha while another is beta. He uses it as both an adjective and a noun, widely, to speak about business, behavior, and even dating.
“To give a woman flowers is beta. An alpha doesn’t let her feel too secure in his affections for her—he’s high-status, and to remain that way, she needs to feel she has yet to gain his full interest. In the same vein, women shouldn’t be too confident or vocal especially in relationships. It’s unattractive.”
Then he’ll say something utterly insightful, and I’ll become a puddle. I won’t have forgotten his previous comment; the duality of his split persona is all the more compelling. Intriguing. Exciting. His story is unlike anyone else’s I’ve read.
I imagine, after years of feeling overlooked and unattractive, he needs to feel powerful, in control, and adored. I can absolutely empathize. Life has a way of sending us people who mirror our best and our most worrying qualities. I imagine, too, that it’s hard for him to trust others. It’s lonely, being surrounded by hungry hands and hot mouths who desire bits of you.
I think I’m a safe space for him. A rare person who wants nothing but his companionship. We don’t gallivant through fabulous events or clubs. We talk.
I’m introduced to a few of his colleagues. They’ve been wondering who I was, a female name written consistently in his personal calendar.
“You two make a phenomenal team,” they say. “A potential power couple.”
Appearances would lead one to believe such a thing. I’ve grown to resemble the female half of a perfect power couple. Had you asked me at 15, a chubby, unpopular, pimply pariah, what I’d emulate at 28, I wouldn’t have imagined this woman. I certainly don’t feel like her. Their compliment makes me feel giddy and lovable, although something somersaults in my tummy. Humility. Nostalgia. Sadness for the girl-child who felt ugly, unwanted, and invisible for all those years. A patch of dust so common and hidden that no one cared to sweep or step into it.
He travels often for work. Sometimes he forgets the day of the week or where he’s meant to fly and land tomorrow. He wakes up when his assistant calls, he climbs into the car waiting downstairs, it takes him to the airport, and the plane delivers him where he’s needed. I sometimes leave him gift packages to come home to, mixed bags of things drawn from our personal jokes and sweet anecdotes. I leave them with his doorman. When he travels for an extended time, it takes longer for him to drop his wall once we reconnect. But he does.
“Stay the night.” His voice is muffled by my hair. We lie in his bed. His breath feels warm, like sunlight.
“Not yet. I don’t know you enough to know you won’t change by morning.”
“You do.”
I sit up, shrug. “I’m not ready. Thank you, though. Soon.”
In the cab home I realize I’ve left my gold bangle at his house. I text him.
He replies, “All good. I put it in the lost and found I’ve got for my girls.”
THE AIR IS FREEZING, the sky gloriously bright. One of my favorite things about the New York winter is that while it’s brutal, unwieldy, and stretches so long it feels like bad manners, the days remain bright. We hardly experience rain. We rarely experience gray or misty days. The season passes and I ruefully decide, “I’ll give you another year.”
I sit in a café, running over my sides before an audition. I glance at the page from time to time but mostly look out the window, to secure the lines to memory. Across the narrow street is a tiny playground on an island that suffices for a neighborhood park. A tiny plot of earth in Manhattan is luxury. I watch the children laugh and run, layered in undershirts, T-shirts, coats, scarves, hats, and mittens to keep the air’s bite off their tender skin. Some of the kids are layered so enthusiastically they’re wider than they are tall. Were they to fall, they would bounce.
They are watched over by moms, babysitters, and nannies. One can clearly identify the hierarchy and who is what. The easiest, most accurate way to isolate our roles is by appearance. The moms, for the most part, are white, in their 30s and 40s, stylishly coiffed and dressed. Nearly every mom is in impeccable shape from a mix of yoga, Pilates, SoulCycle, and the gym.
The nannies are middle-aged women who are Black, Latina, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Indian, Taiwanese, Russian, Romanian, Chinese, Indonesian, Ukrainian, anything except for white American.
The babysitters are girls in their 20s, usually students or artists. One can tell who we are by our age and our lack of telltale rock on our ring finger.
The intimate world of women is a snapdragon, unfurling in layers of petals and teeth. Each woman, across the street and beyond, harbors stunning secrets, hopes that singe, brilliance that humbles, resilience that inspires, and unhealed gashes that will compel you to stitch your life to her wellbeing. As tough as it can be to be a girl in this belittling world, never would I trade genders. The ache from missing my sisters and my place in our circle would undo me.
I watch a mom call after her child, her neck pale and tight. I love collarbones for their wings-in-flight shape. Hers jut sharply, the skin stretched like parchment paper, so thin I can sense her heartbeat, urgent as a baby bird’s. Her body is sapped of warmth and softness. In this town, we whittle ourselves down to a punishing, unnatural, almost unfeminine thinness. Such is our brand of attractiveness.
Former, recovering, and current anorexics can always sight fellow anorexics. It isn’t her thinness that betrays her. It’s her shrunken energy. She looks like she’s being pressed in and down by an enormous invisible hand. She may flash a dazzling smile one second, but when she thinks you aren’t watching, she will turn inward and look like she’s sinking.
I still fight to tame my own anorexia. A clear connection has risen: I was raised by a bully, married a bully, and have been my own biggest bully through the choices I make.
In a strange, simple sense, for me, anorexia has been a side effect of being a girl in this world.
While my relationship with exercise, food, and appearance is particularly intense, nearly all women have a strained relationship with these matters. I don’t know a single woman completely content with her physicality. I don’t know a single person who doesn’t desire beauty. Even if you were raised in a Pleasantville home, how you behave, look, and live are under constant scrutiny, pressure, and commentary. Socially, politically, on a global scale.
I try to ventriloquize my voice to the other side of the street, to ask the woman running after her child, “When was your moment you first felt small? When did you decide to shield yourself by shrinking yourself?”
Blink, check the time. My audition is in fifteen minutes. One last peek at all the women and their children. Now run. Time to play pretend.
I WRAP UP the monologue, satisfied that I’ve hit every emotion at the correct point, honoring the arc the playwright intended. I finish, allow a beat, then meet the gaze of the panel. The director, producers, casting director, and writer look pleased. A few of them smile, nod their heads. They write furiously on pages before them, slide the notes over to their colleagues. They peruse my resume and headshot. They share solemn Yes’s and Mmm’s.
“Let’s see that again, with more anger,” says the director. “She’s been holding all this in for a long time. Let it get messy. Let her be ugly.”
“Absolutely. Thank you.” I perform with dilated anger, mess, and ugliness.
Broad grins, enthusiastic nods, across the panel.
“Beautiful work,” says the director and the others murmur their agreement. I’m delighted. The play is a rare gem, intelligent and bold. The role I’m auditioning for is even more uncommon: a character who isn’t “Leading Man’s Girlfriend” but the protagonist of her own story. The role is written for a white woman, but I’m a wild card they decided to audition. One of the producers leans forward.
“Tell us about yourself.”
I share a few tidbits, making sure to be authentic, funny, warm, and intelligent. While speaking I mentally gauge thirty seconds, and whether they’d like me continue for another thirty, then another. This is an opportunity to catapult my life. If the panel judges me worthy, years of labor may coalesce to fruition.
“Thank you so much for coming in.”
“Thank you for having me.”
The assistant leads me out of the studio. The moment the door opens, every woman in the waiting room whips her head to stare, to discern by my face and body language how it went. Most of us know one another. We are friendly while professional.
The room pulses with need. It throbs with the understandable desperation to book work, find approval, stability, and relief from the seemingly endless years of auditioning. The large majority of us live not from paycheck to paycheck but dollar to dollar, willingly subjecting ourselves to daily rejection and scrutiny. I’ve known these women for six years now. We are aging. The consequent anxiety is evident. Some carry age well, others not so much. They are withered by struggle, creased by insecurity, wrinkled by the harshness of our industry.
Quickly I gather my things to rush to my next audition. This one is for a car commercial. If booked, it’ll pay my rent for a year. I run toward the subway. I walk past a bodega, its colorful shelves bursting with tabloids and porn. The images on both kinds of magazines make my head hurt, the way the sound of a man yelling will. Courtesy of the loud silence.
“Does your family ever talk about relationships or sex?” I asked the Prince the other night, on a dinner date. He had made a comment that piqued my curiosity, that while his family is close, they censor parts of themselves from one another.
He laughed. “No way. We don’t touch on relationships, let alone sex.”
“Not even your siblings?”
“Nope.”
“How’d you learn about sex?”
“The way most kids do. Online. And you know, ‘periodicals.’ ” He smiled in a way that let me know the conversation had ended.
Traditional porn is the antithesis of sex. The sentence died on my lips. It’s strange. In many ways, I feel very close to him and as though we can discuss so much. But certain areas and opinions are unpermitted, cast into corners. He broke our gaze, and my mind meandered. You can always tell when someone’s primary education or introduction to sex, courtship, and the opposite sex is porn. You feel the aggression in his touch. You hear the misogyny in his words. You sense the shame in his nearness.
I grab the N right before the doors shut and arrive at the next studio with seconds to spare. While waiting in the lobby for the elevator, I take off my boots, opaque stockings, and cardigan, leaving only my short, tight, black dress, and slip on five-inch heels. It’s freezing but I must serve the commercial’s message and demographic.
The elevator arrives. Two other girls, one guy, and myself pile in. As we make our way up, the other girls undergo their transformations. I apply lip-gloss on my already painted mouth. In real life, I never wear lip-gloss. It feels like overkill. Just before the doors open, I angle my body away from the others and covertly create cleavage, plumping each diminutive breast to perch higher and forward. Another accessory I shun when I’m myself. I look at my reflection in the elevator mirror. I look like something to be sucked on. Suddenly, I feel nauseous.
We arrive at our floor. The air in the waiting room is of a cramped bar. The musk of everyone’s lust for territory is animal, pungent. The small differences between a bar and this are that the floor isn’t sticky, the lights are bright, and the room is forcibly quiet, as cameras film auditions behind every closed door. My eyes skim the various doors marked Studio A, B, C, to find where I’m to report. The casting director will audition us in the order we arrive. For commercial auditions, the number of actresses and models called in is significantly higher than theater and film auditions. The sheer volume of us illuminates a hard fact: we are easily swapped and replaced with one another. Pretty faces are a dime a dozen.
Another actress squeezes in beside me on the low pleather couch, smiling apologetically. “It’s okay,” I whisper. The plastic squeaks, clammy against our bare thighs.
We girls, boys, women, and men, our eyes scour the room like floodlights sweeping prison grounds to catch all details, to expertly measure and compare one another. After producing my own work, videos, art, and music of forthright intelligence, these auditions make me want to gouge out my teeth. Part of me thinks, There’s so much more to me that I must pursue. Another voice says, What else are you good for? What else could you sustainably sell and be but a pretty face?
If control is the father of my story, beauty is my mother. I’ve always believed beauty is my strongest currency, resource, duty, and skill. I glance at the commercial’s copy, an unoriginal but relentlessly effective narrative: sexy damsel standing beside luxury car. A luxury car promises sex, illustrated perfectly by a girl who looks like sex. I look around. Conveniently, there are hordes of us to pick from. Of course there are—we were raised on these commercials.
My phone buzzes. It’s Dad. He rarely calls so I pick up, worried it’s an emergency.
“Hey sweetie, just returning your call. How are you?”
“Hi! Great, thanks,” I whisper. “I’m at an audition. Call you in a bit?”
“Sure. I’m proud of you.”
“Sorry?”
“I’m proud of you. It requires toughness to do what you’ve done for years. I couldn’t. I admire you.”
“Thank you, Dad. Wow. I’ll call you soon as I can.”
I hang up as tears rush my eyes. I’ve never heard those words before. “Proud of you.” Never. I blink a hard, long blink. I open my eyes and the world is brighter, the light is clearer, the sounds of heels, heartbeats, and coughs are louder.
I hear my name. My eyes meet the casting director’s. I leap to my feet, holding my modeling card. My card has a large photo on one side, four smaller ones on the other, each depicting me in various degrees of undress. I offer it to the casting director. She brushes it aside.
“We already have you.”
“Of course. Thanks.” In any other arena, my mind would quietly correct her words to “We already have yours.” However, her wording has veracity. I, very much the image on the page, sit already in unseen hands.
HIS APARTMENT is immaculate. Every photo, book, piece of furniture and décor has been chosen with clinical precision. He has sculpted a new world high above the masses, from monochromatic tones and right angles of steel. Boxes line the walls, holding office supplies, gifts from fans, online purchases. His meals arrive at his door every morning, pre-cooked, packaged, labeled.
He travels for nearly half of every month. The apartment feels sterile, with barely a trace of life. No plants or aroma of cooking. My parents’ home in Oregon teems with life, people, voices, affection, laughter, jokes, cooking, pets. I miss them like a physical ache, a steady drip-feed of longing.
We lie in his bed, our bodies relaxed and content. I form into his body, my head in the nook made by his neck and shoulder, his arm gripping me to him, our legs scissored over, underneath, over. A cozy tangle of differences, for we couldn’t be more opposite. I’m petite while he is husky. I’m smooth while he is hairy. I’m forever chilly, while he is warm to the point of burning. I love the space of time we’re still inside; that period when we’re getting to know each other’s sweet spots—his ears, my neck—and how to rouse them just right.
He has a conspicuous birthmark on his forehead that I love. Aside from his lips, it’s my favorite spot to kiss. I shift my weight, moving to sit on top of him. I admire his expanse, tracing his details with my fingers. Wide windows show the night is clear and New York is breathtaking.
“Great view.”
“I know,” he says, looking only at me. “Beautiful.”
I laugh and turn pink in the dark. He, famous for his poker face, forgets it a moment. We hold the other’s gaze for as long as we can before bashfulness begs mercy.
It’s been months and we’ve yet to have sex. Not for a lack of desire but for sound reasons. Ours isn’t a monogamous relationship, and I can’t have sex outside one. Our relationship is obstinately Casual.
In the contemporary dating sphere, people graduate through stages of affection. As if auditioning, we compete for the other party’s attention, admiration, and approval, hoping we’re measured as more worthy than the rest. Our dating status begins with casual, then progresses to regular, then serious, then exclusive. Exclusivity means monogamy and “full status.” He and I are casual, and I’ve yet to achieve full status.
When dating casually, it’s understood we may also date other people. I don’t. That’s what the Cool Kids do, and I’ve never been a Cool Kid. I’m the opposite of cool and aloof—I’m completely gooey in the middle.
He, however, is the King of the Cool. It’s evident, the importance of him being and remaining single, a jet-setting millionaire “player.” It’s part of his brand. I have neither the arrogance nor desire to try being the woman to change his present priorities. He’s a late bloomer to sex and attracting the opposite sex. To compensate, he’s now blooming with fervor, exploring as many women as he can while he can.
I’m rather happy with our nonattachment. I like our affection and pace. All my previous experiences have followed one pattern, one gear: sudden, complete consumption. Him over me, I over him. It’s a relief to not feel devoured. It’s a relief to not slip away, from you or myself.
Surprisingly, he never brings up sex or makes advances. For all I know, he has an assembly line of women with whom he has sex. With me, he seems perfectly content doing everything-but, then cuddling up and talking. Pillow-talk. My polite instinct is to leave and give the man his space, but he curls a big, hard arm around me, anchoring me in place, and we talk, naked, indulging in this extraordinary rarity. This blissful slip of hours found between midnight and dawn, when we reveal our most tender anecdotes, painful memories, and audacious goals.
He and I brainstorm ideas. We share successes, setbacks, and hopes. One can almost touch the joy shimmering off our bodies. We do this evening after evening, all the while confident we’ll remain unattached.
I have yet to accept his offer to spend the night.