Something changed after the holidays, the way it always does, but worse. The snow and the salt stains and the sweating-on-the-subway of it all loses its festive tinge every January, and the emancipatory effect I’d been hoping for from a “clean slate” had not arrived. Even Amy’s party had been a bust. After dragging my ass out of bed and putting on some light makeup, I had arrived to discover a room full of couples having arguments and a few single people who mostly appeared to be on MDMA. Amy was in an upstairs bathroom making out with a guy named “Maxton.”
I left shortly after arriving, to go home with an ostensibly straight friend of Amy’s called Tamara, who told me she “never did this”; I got the impression she never did this a lot. I had been attracted to Tamara because she was tall and had a kind of horny glint in her eye, but when we got back to her apartment she became probing and intense, asking me about my emotional baggage and star sign and feelings about my place in the universe. (What was it about me that attracted this type of person? Why was it so hard to just go home with a stranger and get railed?) When I told her about the divorce she made a noise that sounded like an empathy orgasm, then pulled me to her chest and cradled my head like a child’s.
“You must be devastated,” she said, petting my hair in a way that was not unenjoyable but was not the romp I had hoped for, from the glint. “This must be such a dark time for you. I’m a Highly Sensitive Person, so you don’t need to tell me, I get it.”
I did not think it required a person to be highly sensitive to know that divorce was painful, but more than that, I did not want to talk about it with Tamara. I kissed her for a minute or two, and it was going well until she made the noise again, then pulled away and said, “Poor little bird.”
I told her I was okay, mostly, that I knew nothing worthwhile came easy and was taking it one day at a time. In reality, life since my mom’s house had felt very dark indeed, more or less blurring into one long nap punctuated by cereal and episodes of Housewives; but I did not share this, because I did not want to be this woman’s bird. She poured us each a glass of water and told me a lengthy anecdote about her friend’s bike accident, laboring particularly hard over the doctor’s instruction that—should this friend ever find herself hurtling over her handlebars on Roncesvalles Avenue again—she not brace for impact.
“You have to go limp and let it happen,” she said softly. “You can’t fight it, or you’ll break every bone in your body.”
She was rocking me back and forth at this point, but getting a cab at that hour, on New Year’s, would have been impossible, so when she slid her hand under my shirt, I pretended to be asleep.
The next morning we lay around in her bed, where, to avoid further cycling metaphors, I asked her to tell me the twist endings to every episode of an anthology series she had recently watched about the dangers of social media. In one episode, a man was apparently framed for murder by his hamster, due to technology. In another, a media teacher bludgeoned her students to death with an iPad. Fine.
I left Tamara’s house and met Amy at a nearby greasy spoon, where we bought a six-pack of hash browns and coffees the size of our heads. She wanted details about the rest of my night, but there wasn’t much to tell, especially since she was against television spoilers. Amy’s New Year’s resolutions were to finally commit to the 30 Day Shred program, set up monthly donations to some good causes, and smile more. I told her she already smiled a lot.
“Ultimately, I think you can always do more,” she said, blotting a hash brown with a paper napkin until it was translucent and heavy with oil.
I told Amy I wanted to burrow.
“That’s okay,” she said. “It takes as long as it takes.”
I told her that her skin shouldn’t look so glowy on a hangover, and she explained how to rub frozen spoons over your face until it depuffed back to normal, like you hadn’t pumped yourself full of poison the night before. I was thinking about how wise she was, how much she had life figured out, when she gave me a book of poems by a man from the internet who was always telling women to wear their wounds like wings.
“You’ll love this,” she said, completely sure. “I’m obsessed with the one about skinny-dipping in your own power.”
Amy walked me to a different diner where I had promised to meet Simon for breakfast, stopping in to say hi before heading to a New Year, New Booty HIIT cardio class. Simon did not look hungover either. I slid into the booth across from him and pretended to consider the sticky laminated menu before ordering another round of hash browns.
I realized he did not know I went out last night, that he thought I had stayed home to be alone and bake bread. I thought about Tamara’s cold hand on my boob and wondered if Simon had gone home with someone too. I didn’t ask, but decided on my own that he had, and she had been elegant and gorgeous and very good at drawing or something. I was distracted by this imagined rival throughout our meal.
“Everything okay?” Simon asked, his fork hovering over a plate of eggs slathered in salsa. Whenever he encountered them on a brunch menu, Simon made a point of ordering huevos divorciados, winking at me when they arrived. He often made little jokes about my marital status, making a big deal about having a “married woman” in his bed or quipping about my future second and third husbands. I knew he only did this because I responded with loud, enthusiastic laughter and because I often made jokes like these myself, but coming from him they made me feel exposed and uncomfortable, emotionally nude.
“I’m alright,” I said. “Just the old . . . New Year’s blues.”
I had never heard this phrase in my life and realized almost instantly after saying it that this was because it was not one. Simon’s lips stretched into a restrained smile and his eyes twinkled with amusement. “Ah,” he said. “Of course.”
He poured tiny plastic containers of cream into his coffee, stacking the empties on top of each other in a neat pile as I ate my eighth hash brown of the day. Whether because of my hangover, or the mild deception about the night before, or some other reason unknown to me, I couldn’t join Simon on our usual register. It suddenly felt ridiculous to be at breakfast opening packets of jam with some other, different man, as if this time it would work out, as if it could ever go another way. When the bill arrived, he seemed to understand that I wouldn’t be coming back to his place, kissed me primly on the cheek, and promised to text me that evening.
I boarded the streetcar, cried a bit, and arrived home. I pulled on a second pair of socks, got into bed, and opened the book Amy had given me, which instructed me to let myself “dream wild.” I closed the book and went to sleep.
My friends were not happy with me for skipping the dips and hot tub party and were further disappointed by my flakiness in the weeks that followed. I tried to fake a sudden devotion to work, but my waning interest in my job had long been registered. Pretending I was doing Dry January kept them off my back until I outed myself by tweeting something about a five-alarm hangover and a need for spaghetti that felt like an emergency. I ended up sending a text saying I was taking time to commune with the Physics of the Quest, something I had read about in Eat Pray Love, which I had downloaded as an e-book and was about halfway through. Clive texted back, gross, with a heart emoji.
Truthfully, I was feeling depressed and broke, two things I was not really entitled to feel, but which nonetheless had become dominant emotional presences in my life. I dealt with these feelings by buying dumb garbage I didn’t need and not looking at my bank balance, ever. Other than the online shopping, I was not doing anything that was not 100 percent necessary to keep myself alive and my rent paid. The days of meditation and self-improvement efforts were over. I walked everywhere with sunglasses and a pair of big wireless headphones on, though they played no music; I had lost the charging cable months ago. I could no longer bear to stop and talk to people, give them the cheery CliffsNotes of my life, smile and promise I was doing great—really good, actually—then carry on, to eat soup and cut my toenails and watch TV in a basement, alone.
This was probably better for everyone, as I was awful to hang out with. All I wanted to do was dissect my breakup, on some days the worst thing that had ever happened to me and on others the very best, a blessing straight from god that would surely lead to all kinds of positive developments I could not quite yet imagine. I knew if I saw my friends I would have to care about their lives in return, and I simply . . . did not. What I wanted was to spend my time monologuing about love and tragedy and whether the size of my calves had anything to do with my being now divorced.
The only person I saw with any regularity was Simon, because he loved to talk about his breakup too, and we could go on and on together about where it had all gone wrong, absolving each other of our various relational mistakes, then eat some food or share a bottle of wine and have sex. My doubts from the diner ebbed and flowed. I could usually overwrite them with a few beers or a solid orgasm. Also, I had clogged my shower drain and now could not use it for more than five minutes without nasty gray water pooling at my ankles. Simon had a lovely shower.
Occasionally I would meet up with someone from one of the apps, so I could do first date makeup and tell my best anecdotes and ask my most interesting questions to someone I would never see again. Seeking connection was lovely in theory, but mostly it felt better to sing the hits for a dazzled new audience, to kiss outside a bar and part ways, to leave them wanting more.
Although I was shunning them, I still wanted my friends to invite me to things. Eventually they stopped, carrying on as though I had moved away or had a baby. So one overcast February afternoon, after a few too many Instagram Stories of everyone hanging out without me, I took out exactly forty dollars, selected “no receipt,” and texted my friends that I missed them, and would they please join me at a trivia night we sometimes went to, hosted by a man we were absolutely certain was the worst person alive but who had a genuinely impressive store of general knowledge.
They agreed, and a reunion was scheduled, with a plan to combine our intellects in pursuit of a free bar tab (or one craft beer–branded tote bag split five ways, results pending). On the day of the quiz—running thirty minutes behind for absolutely no reason—I texted Amy, who I also hadn’t seen in a while, to tell her to come along. When I got to the table, the group chat was fully assembled, and I was overcome with a wave of affection for my funny, stylish, oddball friends. I hugged them all and told them that Amy would be joining us.
“Oh,” said Amirah, sounding not particularly pleased. “That’s fun . . . We’ve never really hung out outside of work.”
I told Amirah I hadn’t known this and in fact had assumed they were close based on how highly Amy spoke of her.
“Amy speaks highly of everyone,” said Amirah. “She’d find something nice to say about Stalin.”
“That’s not hard,” said Clive. “Have you seen that picture of him when he was younger? Step on me, comrade.”
Everyone pulled out their phones, something that would shortly be disallowed by the rules of the quiz. It was agreed that the picture of young Stalin could get it, but that it was obviously a more complicated moral quandary to have sex or not with the man himself. Lauren suggested Stalin between 1897 and 1901 was “the sweet spot” and that she would do it with him during those years only. I proposed an elaborate time travel scenario wherein my powers of fellatio caused a young Joseph to abandon his political ambitions and devote himself to gardening. We caught Emotional Lauren with her phone under the table, googling what did Stalin do.
Amy rocked up as Amirah was telling us about a dog she and Tom had fallen in love with on an adoption website. “What are we talking about?” she asked, sliding in between me and Clive with an out-of-character bottle of IPA.
“Amirah and her boyfriend are getting a starter baby,” I said. “Guess it’s pretty serious.”
“It’s not that serious,” Amirah said, rolling her eyes and turning to Amy. “But look at him! What were we supposed to do?” She held out her iPhone, which displayed the adoption page for a tiny puggle called Jeremy.
Amy yelped. “That’s the cutest fucking dog I’ve ever fucking seen,” she said. “You have to get him, oh my god.”
“I think it’s a bad idea,” I said. “What if you break up?”
Amirah made a face like she’d tasted bad milk. “With Tom? No.”
“Well,” I said, “you never know. You said yourself it’s not that serious. Plus, I think I changed my mind on the concept of pets in general. A puppy is basically a down payment on a future dog funeral.”
Amirah put her phone in her pocket and went quiet. I nudged my chair closer to hers as Amy cheerily introduced herself to the rest of the table, shaking hands with Clive and Lauren and reaching awkwardly across the table to meet Emotional Lauren’s outstretched arms. Next to us, a team registered loudly as “Les Quizerables,” then looked around to see if anyone was jealous.
The first round of questions was themed around “Nineties Names”—the cloned sheep (Dolly), Phoebe’s twin sister on Friends (Ursula), the Princess Diana memorial Beanie Baby (somehow, incredibly, “Princess”). Our interest had started to wane by the music round; Les Quizerables was being annoyingly hard-core, and their furtive huddles and loud, urgent calls for clarification took the casual shine off the evening, revealing us to be engaged once again in Adult Hobbies.
“This is how I know we’re getting old,” said Lauren, as the Quizerables captain pulled his group in for yet another showy consultation. “Genuinely fun people do not need someone to organize fun for them.”
Amirah agreed, pointing out that we were probably the youngest people in the bar—a bad sign.
“I don’t know,” said Amy. “I wouldn’t want to be in my early twenties now. I have a few young gals on my floor, and they are stressed as hell.”
Lauren asked what they were stressed about.
“Everything,” she said. “They get anxiety about literally everything. This one girl, Kitty, she had to turn in a report to our floor manager last week, and she straight up . . . didn’t do it. When I asked her about it, she said, and I quote, ‘Deadlines give me anxiety.’”
The rest of the table was unsure how to respond. On the one hand, it was probably very annoying to have to do someone else’s report. On the other hand, anxiety is a real and often serious mental disorder affecting millions of people every day. On some third, more embarrassing but most important hand, nobody wanted to sound old for complaining about this stuff. We were about to turn thirty, not fifty-seven.
“I feel a lot of pressure to spit in Simon’s mouth,” I said, to change the subject. “Or at least put a finger in his butt. Do you guys do that? I feel like everyone is doing that except me.” Nobody responded, so I explained that although I’d asked him a lot of times about it, and even drunkenly offered to peg him without fully understanding what that entailed, he insisted that the normal sex we were having was fulfilling and good. I wondered aloud if he was seeing someone else who did all the ass play he secretly craved. “In general,” I said, “I just want to figure out what he’s getting from this arrangement. He’s always doing such actively thoughtful stuff, and I’m like . . . why.”
I sat back and waited for someone to speak. Emotional Lauren yawned, and I thought I saw Amirah roll her eyes. Normally this was the kind of talk that really got my friends going. When had they all become such prudes? Was there something going on with the moon?
“Do you guys think we spend too much time talking about sex and dating?” Lauren asked.
I felt my shoulders creep up in the direction of my ears. “I just think, like, what else is there?” I wanted to sound wry and knowing but could tell I’d landed somewhere between vacant and defensive. Instead of trying to fix it, I turned to Amy for help with a question about a recent episode of reality television in which two wealthy women bullied a third, who called them bad feminists and fat.
Amy got it right away. “It’s so sad when they get at each other’s throats like that,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, the management staff of that restaurant is a family.”
The remaining rounds passed calmly if quietly, and eventually we placed third, the prize for which was a waived entry fee at next week’s quiz. As the nerds who defeated us wasted their bar tab on “spiked kombucha,” I asked, somewhat desperately, what I’d missed during the early weeks of 2019. My friends gave me the headlines as I snapped the elastic of my tights against my knees and took big gulps of water and wine: Clive had “recently reengaged with leeks” and was keen to determine the Herb of Summer in advance of the weather getting warmer (he was leaning toward dill). Emotional Lauren was moving in with Nour; they’d so far had seven arguments about the definition of the word “credenza.” Amy had seen a financial adviser and decided to invest in weed. Lauren had finally pulled the trigger on owning a fanny pack. Amirah stayed quiet, looking at her phone and fidgeting in her chair.
I tried to think of something to share, something new that had happened to me. “The other day . . .” I started, then stopped. I had been about to tell a story, the climactic moment of which was that I’d accidentally swapped non-dairy milks with Olivia. I did not want to describe the pathetic details of my day-to-day life, and they had been responding poorly to sex and dating stories. But those were all I had. I tried another: “The other day Simon came into his room and was like, ‘Can I show you something?’ and I said sure, and then he took out this deck of cards and it dawned on me: this man is going to do a magic trick.”
This did not receive the roar of laughter and recognition I had hoped for, but I persevered, describing my mental and emotional turmoil at the idea of this handsome man I was coming to care about ruining it all by pulling the ace of spades out of my ear.
“But the twist is that the trick was really impressive,” I said. “Against all odds it made him even more attractive, something I think a magic trick has never done at any point in history. Wild, right?”
Lauren made a little noise to acknowledge that I’d finished speaking. Clive raised his eyebrows and ate a french fry. “Sounds like you’re the one getting serious,” said Lauren.
I assured her we were taking it slow—we had slept apart once already this week.
“It’s Friday,” said Amirah.
Lauren got up to go to the bathroom.
“Right!” I said brightly. “Well, better to get all this Simon talk out of the way before he gets here.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Lauren sat back down, unsmiling. I told her I’d assumed this was a more-the-merrier situation. Amirah often invited her boyfriend to things without telling us, and shouldn’t we all have the same privileges?
“Name one time I have ever, ever done that,” said Amirah, annoyed to be dragged into this. “Also, Tom is not a stranger—”
Emotional Lauren’s Incoming Confrontation alarm went off, forcing her to get involved: “I think it’ll be fun!” she said. “Amirah, you should text Tom too, if you want. Everyone’s welcome!”
Clive swooped in to assist. “I know it’s been a rough year,” he said, putting his hand on my arm. “We’re so happy that you’re happy with Simon, he sounds great.”
“He is great,” I said. “You guys are gonna love him.”
“Oh, you totally will,” Amy said supportively. “He’s a babe. Great hair.”
“You’ve met him?” Amirah asked. Eye contact pinged around the table.
“Yeah.” Amy smiled, walking further into the trap she didn’t know was there. “We went for a little walk on New Year’s, after the party!”
I had not told my friends about the party. Emotional Lauren set down her drink and stared into the bottom of it like a deep truth lurked within. Lauren sighed, and Amirah did a faint, furious laugh. Clive breathed in through his nostrils and turned to me. “I want you to keep in mind, somewhere in there, that you’re going through a big thing right now. It’s not like you can instantly parachute out of your marriage and into another relationship.”
“God, he is so wise,” Amy said. “I’m always saying I need more gay friends, and like, this is what I mean.” Clive let this slide.
“The thing is, I think maybe I can!” I said cheerily. “Jump from one thing to another, I mean. I wasn’t expecting it to be this easy, but I feel very okay. Good, even. I know you’re worried, and that’s really sweet, but you don’t have to be. I’m actually meeting up with Jon soon to finalize everything, so it’s like, pretty much totally over.” I tipped my glass toward my mouth and discovered it was empty.
“He’s talking to you again? When did that happen?” Amirah sounded pissed.
I chewed on some ice as I told her we hadn’t had a conversation-conversation, in the sense of two people talking, but that I’d made an appointment with a therapist and sent him a link, so we were going to meet for a post-breakup counseling session, at which we would say our final goodbyes and wish each other well.
There was a long pause. Finally, Emotional Lauren cleared her throat and leaned forward, pensive and serious. She looked like Oprah. “And has he said he wants to do this?”
“Basically,” I said. “When he was moving out, he suggested we see a breakup counselor together. I thought it sounded stupid, but now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I want to be a good partner—ex-partner, whatever—and help him process things however he needs. Especially since I’m moving on and stuff. Anyway, enough about me! Amirah, any cool frissons lately?”
Amirah crossed her arms but did not say anything.
Simon arrived moments later to a fully silent table, deposited a bottle of wine and a basket of french fries between us, and hung his coat on the back of my chair. His face was flushed from the walk, and the mineral smell of the cold outside clung to his beard. “Hope it’s okay I got white,” he said, smiling nervously. “I texted you, but I guess your phone was in your bag.” He did a dorky wave to the group and unscrewed the cap on the top of the bottle.
Amirah leaned forward. “So, Simon,” she said. “I hear you do magic.”
Simon handled this gamely, and the conversation moved on to other things. Tom did eventually join us, and the group settled back into its usual dynamic, all rude jokes and dumb theories, and the revelation that while Stalin (and indeed the entire line of questioning) was not to his taste, Simon would, if pressed, do it with a pre-atrocities Imelda Marcos. Although I felt a certain chill in the air when I was speaking, everyone took to Simon immediately, and it was a genuine pleasure to watch him blossom under the group’s interest, doling out witty jabs, asking thoughtful follow-up questions, and being charming in his slightly studied though nonetheless effective way.
I zoned out for a minute and watched my friends and sort-of boyfriend discuss a recent scandal involving the prime minister’s socks: to some commentators they had been too political, and to many enraged online presences, not nearly political enough. Simon said he didn’t consider the PM a leftist, but he guessed he was more left leaning than the average voter.
“I did hear you lean left,” Clive said with a sly smile. It took Simon a second to realize Clive was talking about his penis. He did eventually and followed up with a “huge caucus” joke that didn’t technically make sense but was enormously successful as a vulgar pun.
“And this is the man you’re bringing to Emily’s wedding?” Emotional Lauren asked, feigning shock.
“Emily and Patrick?” Amy chirped. “No way! I’m going to that! The groom and I were both on stu gov at Western. I actually gave him an HJ once, but it was at a stoplight party, so I feel like that doesn’t count. Maybe don’t tell the bride, just in case.”
I promised I wouldn’t. “I’ll barely know anybody there,” I said. “I’m mostly going to show off my fancy new man. Look at this: face of victory. Right?” I patted Simon’s thigh like he was my trusty steed. “You could be a war criminal and I’d still take you to this wedding.”
A loud wail broke out from the table nearby, and I realized that someone on Les Quizerables was wearing a baby. I was horrified to find myself in the company of young parents, but grateful to their offspring for breaking yet another long, awkward pause. I looked at Simon and could not read his expression. Amirah avoided my eye contact by fussing with Tom’s hair, Lauren and Clive were texting, and Emotional Lauren was gazing intently into the middle distance with a strand of hair in her mouth. I shifted my eyeline to Amy, who smiled nervously. For the first time since she’d arrived, she seemed unsure how to proceed.
“I’m excited for you to meet Ryan,” she said to me, then turned to include the rest of the table. “Yesterday I told one of my patient’s moms that my boyfriend is a clown, and she looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘Aren’t they all?’”
Clive laughed first, then the rest of them joined in. I could have kissed her. In an effort to ride the wave of goodwill Amy had created, I let out a flurry of complimentary non sequiturs, praising Clive’s culinary abilities and Amirah’s trivia contributions and the outerwear of both Laurens. They accepted these gamely, then moved along to other topics, asking Simon about 6Bites and letting Tom talk to us about Bitcoin. I used a credit card to buy a round of drinks for the table, and when the rescue puggle came up again, I kept my mouth shut.
As the night progressed I felt a bit better, though if I was silent for too long a panic would creep in and I’d blurt a self-deprecating anecdote or joke, realizing too late that someone else at the table was in the middle of their own story or conversation. I could tell my interruptions weren’t winning anyone over, but it seemed better than doing nothing. I felt suddenly desperate to impress this group of people who had known and loved me since we were teenagers, who I’d seen barf and betray people and figure out that they were wearing the wrong-sized bra. It was a destabilizing feeling and I wanted it to go away.
We demolished a final round of fries for the table and called it a night, complaining already about how bad our headaches would be tomorrow. Because it was winter in Toronto, the decision to leave meant extensively preparing ourselves to be cold. Base layers were supplemented with scarves, hoods pulled tight around faces, mittens layered on top of gloves, and then we were outside, the frigid air hardening the snot in our noses as we discussed the merits of various bus routes versus the streetcar.
Street mush was already seeping into my cheap winter boots; my toes would be damp when I got home. Amy, whose sublet was nearby, skipped away after putting her number in Emotional Lauren’s phone and promising her “mimos, on demand, any time.” Tom was holding Amirah close to him, his hands in the pockets of her big down coat. Lauren was trying to use the tip of her nose to unlock her iPhone, unwilling to take off her gloves. Clive took in the scene and yelled, “Fuck this, XL for the girls,” ordering a van to whisk everyone to their respective homes. After a quick head count, I offered—gallantly, I thought—to give up my spot. Nobody protested.
Three minutes later, a gray van pulled up. Everyone piled in, and Amirah said a stilted goodbye and tried to hurry the automatic door closed, which made it fully open again, then judder and glitch when she tried to pull it back, which she did several times, until the van’s driver yelled at her to stop touching it. They looked out at me, unspeaking, as the door inched shut incredibly slowly, emitting a high-pitched, whiny beep. When it finally closed the van pulled away, and Emotional Lauren did a tentative wave at Simon and me out the back windshield.
I reached for Simon’s hand and said, “Shall we?” in a sort of Cary Grant voice. He put his mitten on mine, and we set off down Dundas. Snow started to fall in fat, thick flakes.
“Sorry about tonight,” I said. “They’re a lot more fun than that, usually.”
“They seemed fine to me,” said Simon.
When we got back to mine, he was quiet in a way that indicated he was mad.