The Adventure, Part 5: Shaking off the ghosts

My biggest fear in this new relationship was repeating all the mistakes I’d made in the previous ones. Actually, scratch that--repeating any of my old mistakes. Looming large was the specter of the last time I’d moved for love--when I moved to a place I would never have considered moving to otherwise, and let my own life and my own identity get completely wrapped up in the guy in question, so that when he dumped me, I had less than nothing. Not even my own sense of self-worth to fall back on. Ever since, I’d been beating myself up for not being able to see it coming. Some part of my brain was convinced that if things were so wrong he felt compelled to break up with me, there must have been some kind of warning. He couldn’t have just left me with no warning and no clear explanation, could he? I had to have done something wrong, missed some sign. That guy refused to talk about why he broke up with me, to this day I’ve never gotten a clear explanation--so if I didn’t know what went wrong with that one, what would prevent it from happening again? No, screw that, I thought. I want to be in love again, but I also want to be in love without being sickeningly aware that it could end at any second, that the rug could be pulled out from under me just as suddenly. Better to protect myself. Sometimes there are no answers, and that’s the hardest lesson of all.

Also looming large was the specter of a previous ex, a computer geek, just like John. That relationship had ended in the way that so many do--a slow, gradual decline that was nearly imperceptible until we’d both hit rock bottom. Once I saw the light, though, I saw there was nothing to be salvaged. I suspect now that Chris was both manic-depressive and borderline OCD. For the three years we lived together, every part of my life that intersected with his was heavily controlled. Pictures had to be hung and placed this way, socks had to be folded this way, he would only eat these foods, prepared in this way, and he categorically refused to try new things. His food couldn’t touch or he wouldn’t eat it, he owned multiple sets of the exact same outfit (fifty pairs of the same socks in the same color, ten pairs of the same jeans in the same color, thirty of the same plain white t-shirt, thirty of the same white briefs--and nothing else), and he had the most bizarre logic for the storage of duplicates that I’ve ever encountered. He once threw away a full bottle of laundry detergent because, and I quote, “we have another one exactly like it,” but he couldn’t function without four reserve bottles of a specific kind of organic ketchup in the cupboard. And no, we did not use that much ketchup. I was expected to do all the laundry, the cleaning, the grocery shopping, and the cooking, but I had to do it his way, to his specifications. I had no input in decorating or décor--the apartment had to be laid out in his way, with his furniture, in pre-approved colors and styles. Household expenses were to be split exactly fifty-fifty, no questions asked, despite the fact that he made three times what I did.

Naturally, this was not living together. This was him permitting me, barely, to share his space. I put up with it because I was young and stupid and thought that love involved compromise, right? Eventually I realized that if I was the only one doing it, it wasn’t compromise. By the time I moved out, he had degenerated to the point where he never left the house, and he barely deigned to acknowledge my existence. He spent eighteen hours a day, or more, playing computer games in his underwear. He didn’t talk to me, didn’t talk to my friends on the rare occasions they came over, refused to go anywhere with me, didn’t even bother looking away from the computer screen. The day he said, “But we’ve already had sex once this month,” was the last straw. I left and never looked back.

The first month of living with John nearly undid me. All those ghosts came back to haunt me, with a vengeance. And I couldn’t shake them. I’d laid down a series of rules, thinking to avoid some of the sticking points of the past--my cats were non-negotiable. I would assume complete control of the kitchen, and he would eat what I put in front of him, no questions asked and no whining allowed. I would assume decorating control, so that there would be no exposed wiring, piles of dirty clothes, or jars of loose change. John agreed unreservedly. But still. John's gaming manuals and computer paraphrenalia reminded me of Chris. Unpacking reminded me that I'd once again, despite my best efforts, moved for love and made myself vulnerable. Cleaning the apartment reminded me of Ed, who was overbearing and malicious to the point of emotional abuse--I'd cleaned his apartment for a year, debasing myself for some small scrap of affection that never materialized. Cooking for John reminded me of all of them. I tried not to plan for the future, to look too far ahead, in case he changed his mind and dumped me. It was like living under the sword of Damocles.

“I have to do everything exactly right,” I thought. “I can’t lose my best friend for nothing.”

I kept dreaming I was being forced to live with all my exes again.

The Orange by Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange--
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave--
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad you exist.

Transfiguration by Jack Hirschman

I am peasant
next to your language
because I am not
a peasant, simple
next to your love
because I wound it,
dumb next to your voice
because you are my lips
and leave me speechless,
leave me also loneliness,
hurt me
with the inexpressible,
and because you
live the way you do
and I cannot,
I must go elsewhere
in this corner of
my shoulder and weep you,
who love me inexhaustibly
more than I can ever hope
to silence with a poem,
because it is the silence
I hope for, because
it is the very pure
silence hope itself is,
and so I bend, to
my pencil I say: you,
to the beautiful page, you,
I say Yes without speaking,
I say many things, and still
there is room, there is space,
your face is where I see forever.

Prayer for a Marriage by Steve Scafidi

When we are old one night and the moon
arcs over the house like an antique
China saucer and the teacup sun

follows somewhere far behind
I hope the stars deepen to a shine
so bright you could read by it

if you liked and the sadnesses
we will have known go away
for awhile--in this hour or two

before sleep--and that we kiss
standing in the kitchen not fighting
gravity so much as embodying

its sweet force, and I hope we kiss
like we do today knowing so much
good is said in this primitive tongue

from the wild first surprising ones
to the lower dizzy ten thousand
infinitely slower ones—and I hope

while we stand there in the kitchen
making tea and kissing, the whistle
of the teapot wakes the neighbors.

The Adventure, part 4: In which my brain attempts to process

The strangest part about the new relationship was that it didn’t seem strange. It seemed perfectly comfortable and familiar and normal, which is why I kept circling it in my head, poking it with a stick and waiting for it to rear up and bite me. Granted, John and I had known each other for fourteen years, but I'm the person who has said the following, in no particular order: “Marriage is like a living death.” “I'm never moving for love again.” “I'm never living with a man again, unless we're married, and maybe not then.” “There is no such thing as love at first sight.” “It's not possible to be completely, 100% sure about a person.” “I'm never leaving New York again.”

Well. Never say never.

It quickly became clear that we wanted to explore this, to spend as much time together as possible. Which meant one of us would have to move. Which meant, naturally, I would have to move. He worked in the gaming industry, which is an almost entirely West Coast-centered industry; he would have had no opportunities in New York. And his son was on the West Coast; until he went away to college, John wanted to be as close to him as possible (custody agreements notwithstanding, of course).

At first I resisted the idea of moving. It was an instinctual battening down of the hatches, borne of my last serious relationship--in which I moved for love, completely rearranging my life, and was summarily dumped a year later for my trouble, without even a satisfactory explanation as to what had gone wrong. When that ended, it almost killed me. My heart was pulverized and what little was left was buried so deep I was sure it would never see the light of day again.

“Never move for love,” I declared, and I followed my own advice so well that for the next two and a half years I didn’t love anyone, thereby negating any possibility of moving. I’d banish that asshole from my heart if I had to cut it out with my own carving knife, I thought, letting my ineffectual rage slowly congeal into a core of ice. I didn't want to feel anything, for fear of going through something like that again, and then one day I realized I hadn't felt anything for so long that I was pretty sure my heart was dead. And then--la!--there it was, hiding in a Vegas hotel room.

John made a reasonable and rational argument not only for my moving cross-country, but for our living together, after--let’s see, that would have been after about four days of serious dating. I squirmed, I hedged, I said, “Let’s date long-distance for a while and see what happens.” Then I said, “I’ll move, but I want to get my own place in San Diego.” Finally I agreed. Surprisingly, most of my friends said, “Why not?” I was expecting an outcry of “Jesus, Jenny! Didn’t you learn your lesson the last time?” But my friend Keed put it very succinctly. “The fact that it didn’t work out last time is not indicative of a character flaw on your part,” she said. “You took a gamble, and it didn’t work out. Which sucks. But it could have gone the other way, too. You’re not a bad person for having taken a gamble.” “Shit, you only live once,” declared my friend Jim. “Explore this, see what happens.”

John himself said, “If this relationship ends, it won’t be because of me.” Ha, I thought, I’ve heard that before. But some dormant part of my brain awoke, and told me, do you really want to be the jaded, cynical, serial-dater New Yorker for the rest of your life? Do you have any reason to doubt him, other than your own fear of being dumped again? Do you really want that last jerk to be dictating your relationship decisions forever? Shut up, I replied, let me doubt in peace.

The Adventure, part 3: And so it begins

When the universe shifted three inches to the left, John and I stared at each other for a moment. The penny had dropped. Mutually. Then he swiftly crossed the room and kissed me. And kissed me. And kissed me some more. When we came up for air, he said simply, “I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you.”

“Wait...what?” I said. “Has this been under my nose the whole time? Have I been completely oblivious for fourteen years?”

“I never said anything because you were always with someone, and you seemed happy. What could I have done? The timing wouldn’t have been right, anyway. I’m a little pissed I had to pine away for fourteen years before the timing was right, but now it is.”

I had to agree. The timing was right, and although I couldn’t explain why, we both just knew. That was the universe shifting.

“I...wait. This is...something serious is happening here,” I said. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life,” he replied.

I considered this for a moment.

“Pockets has a crush on you,” I said. “Is that weird? I mean, would that affect--“

“I’m in love with you,” he said. “If you were dead, Pockets still wouldn’t have a chance.”

“We’ve been good friends for a long time, John. I don’t want to get into anything with you if it’ll spoil that. I mean, I don’t want this to just be a Vegas fling. And what if, God forbid, the sex is bad? Or everything turns awkward? Or--“

There was some more kissing.

“Are you really worried that the sex will be bad?” he said.

“Stranger things have happened. And, seriously, I’d rather keep you as a friend than ruin it if this isn’t going to work out.”

“It will work out.”

“You don’t know that, anything could--“

“Stop. Wait,” he said. “This is right. We can both feel it. You know this is right.”

He had me there. I was never a romantic. I always laughed at people who claimed love at first sight, claimed that you could just know about a person, claimed they had an emotional connection before a physical one. Suckers, I thought. Fools. For me, love had always started long after the initial sexual attraction; only after a certain physical and mental compatibility had been tested and confirmed could I begin to let myself be vulnerable. But now, here I was, falling in love in a matter of minutes.

Well, “falling” wasn’t quite the right word. “Falling” belonged to my last serious relationship, in which I was almost literally consumed. Love in that case was like being dropped into a vat of warm baby oil; it felt wonderful at first, but then became suffocating and was almost impossible to climb out of. And when I did, it clung to me, despite all my best efforts to shake it off. But with John...something opened up. There was no falling, no fear, no second-guessing. I turned a corner and there it was. The whole world, and him, just waiting for me.

There's a scene in “Sex in the City” where Miranda is bitching to Carrie about her ongoing drama with Steve, and she says that she always hoped that one day, all her bullshit would fall away and she would just know. Later, Steve enters, holding a “1” birthday candle. And lo, all her bullshit fell away, and she knew him to be The One. I never thought it was possible to just know, like that, that my usual anxious bullshit would magically disappear, but it seems I’ve been (happily) proven wrong.

*

This is the part where I lose my best friend.

Every Day You Play by Pablo Neruda

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened,
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.

My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic buckets of kisses.
I want
to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.