I’m sleeping with another writer who won’t stop talking about his Ex. His nose is long and his eyes are shaped like horizontal teardrops, drooping downward in the corners. On meeting him my first thought is, he has really pretty eyes. When he talks to me there seems to exist an undercurrent of anxiety, like I can see his skin vibrating at the same frequency that his voice does. His voice sounds old like it's coming out of someone who knows too much and has seen too much. The way he pronounces certain diphthongs like in oil, or in slow makes me think he’s from the South. He’s actually from Ohio, which is a fact that I have gathered up. Along with these: he doesn’t wear clothing that isn't of a neutral shade, he likes to play pool, he watches British panel shows before he falls asleep, he was expelled from his high school, and he is allergic to dairy.
I meet The Writer on a dating app. He texts me before our first date that he is nervous, I find this extremely attractive. We meet at a bar that is too loud and too expensive. The date goes well, I think. He reveals to me that he smokes, that I can trust him to understand my grief because he’s been touched by it too, and that he’s also had a hard year. We walk two miles back to my apartment and he asks first before he kisses me on my couch. Later, in my bed, I stare up at the ceiling while he’s on top of me and I think about patience. This will end soon. Perhaps all of it. When he finishes he asks me how I handle conflict. I’m not sure where this comes from but I find it strange, too goading. He tells me about a book called, ‘Conflict is Not Abuse’. I have an unread copy on my shelf. I start to wish this stranger would leave my apartment but I let him stay the night thinking that I’ll feel less odd about it in the morning. He murmurs and coos like a baby does in his sleep. I like the way his stomach feels pressing into my back. His sweat smells acrid and it lingers on my sheets and on my skin when he leaves.
On our second date, he asks me if I’m missing anyone right now. I answer, “My dad, my best friend who I’m not speaking to right now”. I ask him back and he says, “My Ex”. He takes me back to his apartment to meet his fat cat and he reads to me a quote from a Rachel Cusk novel. It’s something that I had said in so many words earlier, that to love you have to stay curious about yourself, interested in yourself, constantly in a relationship with yourself, or it won’t be good. He kisses me and it is good. I am already curious about myself, endlessly so; I’m still clutching my water glass as I wrap my arm around his shoulders. He pulls back to tell me that he’s wanted to kiss me all night. I tell him, “Me too”. “I’m not very good at making the first move”. “Me neither”, I say before our lips meet again. He pulls away suddenly and tells me that he needs to take a break. He goes out to smoke and I’m left staring at his bookshelves wondering what I should be feeling. I feel nervous like the air has been sucked out of the room. I look at the titles lining his walls and I feel intimidated by how well-read he is. How little I probably know in comparison. He comes back in and stands above me, his eye contact and his stance feel oppressive. He tells me that he hasn't dated anyone in a long time, that he’s afraid of being in a relationship again, that he doesn't want to move too fast, and that he’s going on dates with other people. I tell him I don’t mind, we don’t know each other that well yet. I find myself in his bed, reaching above me to hold onto the rails in the headboard. The sex is too sweaty and feels too intimate for not knowing him very well yet. He walks me down to my car afterward and I ask when I can see him again. ‘Thursday’, he says. ‘I’ll make you dinner’, I say.
This goes on for a month. He comes over for dinner, he spends the night, we meet for drinks, we fuck and go for burgers afterward, we drink bottles of wine on my back porch, he spends the night, we say we’ll watch a movie but we don’t, he spends the night, he reads to me on his couch, and he tells me his stories. He tells me that all he wants is to be sitting on a porch in the rain with the person he loves. We sparsely text in between seeing each other and I start to feel myself grow hopeful. When I’m alone, I think about taking him out to dinner on his birthday, baking him a cake, and buying him flowers.
I’m never sure if I’ll hear from him again when I walk him down the block to his bus. I linger, looking into his eyes for too long as if I could crawl inside his head and figure it out. He doesn’t stop talking about his Ex and yet I don’t seem to mind because I have the sense that I can tell him most things and that he’ll understand what I’m saying. I tell him the things that I usually hide away and I feel better for it. I don’t know how long this will last and if the ghosts in his closet will start to annoy me soon. I can already feel them starting to dance around in my head, putting pressure between my eyebrows, and telling me lies. Triggering in me this desire to cling too closely and have too much patience. Everything feels too delicate and precious, a curio cabinet filled with antique porcelain figurines waiting to be knocked into and broken into a thousand pieces.
Yet I feel like I should persist. Because my eyesight feels hazy when he’s licking my cunt and I like when he pulls out his phone to read me quotes from books and I like how disarmed I feel when he asks me a question and I answer it truthfully and I like that he seems quite serious yet has the faint traces of laughter etched into the crinkles around his eyes and I like that he nuzzles his face into my arm like a cat when I’m reading in bed as the sun’s coming up & I like feeling a deep sense of affection when he tells me his life story, and yes, I do like the not knowing too. Not knowing if this moment will extend beyond what it is, in all its smallness and bareness. Not knowing if he can feel the impact too. To be loved is to be changed, I think, and I’m not sure if he wants to be changed.
He leaves early one night because he needs to be alone, he’s confused, tired. He tells me that he could see something good with me, that I’m great. I write in my journal a series of questions for myself, ‘What about self-respect?’, ‘What about my decisiveness?’, ‘Do I want?’ My dog eats the rest of this page off my dining room table while I am at work. I think about how I am hospitable, and kind to this man who doesn’t know what he wants, who has been hurt and has hurt too. I am aware of my weight, of my feet. I am good.
The last time I see The Writer I invite him over to bake a pie. My dog greets him with a yelp that is only reserved for his favorite people because The Writer has been over enough times to now be one of my dog’s favorites. I watch my hands as I run them through butter and flour, I hope that he is watching them too. While the dough chills, we walk to a wine shop. There is a children’s book left open on the street, we stop to read the page, “Little Rabbit has a nice meal with his friends. After that, they all have homemade apple treats!” I take a picture of the open book, our shoes are in the corners of the photo.
At home, I pour out glasses of a Greek white and he tells me that he couldn’t drink Greek wine for a long time. “Why?” I ask. “Because My Ex is Greek.” He says this as if it’s a joke. “Okay” is all I say back, missing the punchline.
He reads me a story he’s been working on while we’re sitting on my back porch. I can tell that it’s about His Ex. It’s good and I feel intimidated again. I come inside to take the intimidation out on my pie crust with a rolling pin. ‘I don’t have the patience for a lattice crust tonight’, I tell him. The pie goes in the oven and he wraps his arms around me. He asks me what I want and I tell him, ‘you’. I’m walked backwards into my bedroom and my clothes are slowly peeled off.
The Writer is inside of me when he abruptly pulls away and tells me that he needs to stop. ‘I’m just really in my head right now, I’m sorry.” I tell him it's okay. I’m holding onto his chin with too much care. He gets up to pee, I don’t put my clothes back on yet, hoping that this moment that feels steeped in shame will start to feel warm again soon.
He comes back in and sits on the edge of the bed. ‘What's wrong?’ I ask him, my voice coming out small. I put my hand on his knee. ‘I’m so sorry, I feel so embarrassed’. He tells me that he still has such a wall up, even with sex. I’m not sure what to say so I tell him that I’m sorry for everything that he has been through. ‘I’m sorry for you too, but it seems like you’re moving on and I am not’. ‘I haven’t had a choice’, I tell him. He inhales deeply, putting his clothes on to have a smoke outside.
This particular memory, at least this small one, him going out to smoke, my naked body still in bed, is going to be stuck in me for a long time, a knotted ugly mass near my navel, What is it about my body? I feel at this moment that everything zooms out for me, I feel too exposed and I know too much. My bedroom is still dark, the A/C is making the room too cold, and I am starting to sense the familiar feeling of ‘less than enough-ness’ creeping up my spine. My fingers are flustered as I button my shirt back up. I try to pee but I am too shy. I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, my nose is red, my eyes are shiny, the blue in them coming out more brightly in their welling, and I think that I still look pretty. I pull the now-finished pie out of the oven and go back into my bedroom. I feel my face grow hot, I so desperately do not want to cry right now. Why is this happening? Has it been like this every time for him and I just didn’t notice? I am so blind and stupidly, beautifully hopeful.
He comes back inside and stands by my dresser. My nose starts to run while I try to be kind. I tell him that I think he’s being mean to himself by still clinging to this person from his past. He agrees with me. I tell him that it’s easy to become addicted to someone when they don’t want you. He agrees with me. He knows these things to be true but he won’t change them. I tell him, ‘I don’t know whether I should be patient with you or wary of you’. He tells me I should be wary and I believe him then.
He tells me then that he’s been in a situation-ship with another person for the last year and that they’ve had a falling out last night because he told them about me. They meet up to play pool together, he says. They’ve been trying to call him all day, they show up at his apartment, he keeps telling them that he doesn’t want a relationship, he sees himself in them, he wants them to have more self-respect but he still invites them in. I think about icebergs, then. How there’s a deep underbelly beneath the surface that we can’t see. The Pool Player is his underbelly. I feel at this moment that I am getting away from something bad. He tells me that he doesn’t want to string anyone along and I tell him that he already has. He seems confused by this, ‘But they are the one who keeps pursuing me’, he says. Because I am a girl, and because I have a phone, who this person is clicks into place for me then. They are another red head who looks too cool for him. He was tagged in a photo dump of theirs from a year ago, a post-it note of a Rilke quote, the note is hanging above his desk. I don’t know them but I am mad for them.
I tell him that I want someone to go to Walgreens for me when I’m sick, I want holidays, I want homes, and reading on the couch with my feet in someone’s lap. I ask him how he feels about me, he says that I am great, incredible even, he likes spending time with me, he doesn’t want this to be the last time he sees me, but there isn’t a ‘fire’ for him. I tell him that a ‘fire’ isn’t always a good thing. He tells me, almost exasperated that he knows. I feel a deep sadness for him then. For his past that is trapped in the present. What a waste, I think.
He puts his shoes on, and I ask him what he’s doing. “I need to go”. "We still haven’t eaten the pie”, I say. I start to feel desperate as I follow him out to the kitchen and the sight of the pie cooling on the stovetop coupled with the clock reading 1:22 am makes me start to cry. I sit down on the floor. He tells me he could be a close friend to me. I don’t say anything for a long time. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you probably want to go’, I say. ‘I need to be alone tonight’, he says as he shuts the door. I think he means every night, I think he should mean every night but I know that he won’t. He’ll invite The Pool Player in again or another me.
He’s left in such a hurried embarrassment that he’s forgotten to put one of his socks on, the one that my dog had carried off into the living room while we were fucking. I find it once he’s left. He walked out of my apartment missing a sock and wearing dress shoes. I pick up the sock and throw it into my laundry basket. I call my Mom, ‘Look at how far you’ve come’, she tells me and I agree with her. I tell my Mom that he’s left a sock in my apartment and she tells me that I shouldn’t give it back, ‘Dobby doesn’t get his sock’. I burst out laughing on the phone and she does too. As I crawl into bed I think about how writing is my best revenge.
The next day, I laugh with my friends on the phone and later with my friends eating the pie that was meant for The Writer. I think this story is mostly funny in its immediate aftermath. I send him a text later that day. I tell him that I see a lot of good in him but that I don’t want to see him again. I do this because there is a part of me that wants to be bad, not to him, but to myself. I could so easily subsist on his scraps. I tell him to eat, write, read, and live well. I wish him fewer walls. I am kind because I don’t think this man needs more meanness. He thanks me for this.
Sitting out on my porch as the sun is setting, it starts to rain as I read over the last text The Writer will send me. I think about him telling me he wanted just this, sitting on a porch in the rain with someone he loves. I think about how I am proud of myself, for responding to his first message, for plunging ahead hopefully, for creating the good, for being myself, truly, in all my earnest, uncoolness. The rain stops and I am tired and perhaps a bit more worn than the day before. I think about how writing is maybe not my best revenge but instead where I go to tell on myself. Where I go to say that this story doesn’t feel funny when I’m not telling it to make my friends laugh, that I am embarrassed, that my feelings are hurt, and deeply too, that I worry about the enoughness of my body, that I probably will be nosy and stalk his Instagram from time to time, that I too could so easily become a writer who won’t stop talking about Their Ex.
