Now, this should be the paragraph where I talk about how my cynical outlook on love and relationships stems from the one my parents lived out in front of me, or how I never fully recovered from the first time I let my guard down and got hurt, or whatever explanation justifies my unwavering phobia of commitment. For a while I preached that outlook and succumbed to that belief—the notion that the effects of the relationships of my past were not only lasting but permanent. I was under the impression that my need to self-sabotage every relationship resulted from my deep-rooted belief that love and happiness were a facade and that I was better off alone.
Four months into nearly every relationship I was ever in, a switch flipped in my head. Every romantic or sweet sentiment I had toward the guy I was dating disappeared completely. I wanted what I didn’t have and then, when I got it, I didn’t want it anymore. It was an endless spiraling black hole and there was absolutely no light in sight. That childhood dream of white picket fences and backyards for kids and golden retrievers named Bandit seemed a greater fairy tale than the ones with glass slippers. I grew up with the story that true love was just a given in life. Something standard-issue that would just “happen” like every tale assures us it will. As time went by, birthdays provoked more empathy than excitement. The fault I pinned on the variables dwindled. I was hit with the harsh reality that I was the common denominator in this cycle of failure. I was the constant. I was going to end up alone and there was nobody to blame but myself. My inability to maintain feelings for somebody was not caused by the parties in question. I had no one to blame for my shortcomings but myself. My parents’ terrible marriage was not to blame for my outlook. That guy who took advantage of me my senior year of high school did not build those impenetrable walls around me. My douchebag addict of an ex was not at fault for my relationships years down the road. They all played a factor, yes, but I couldn’t commit because I hadn’t met the person who made me want to. It only takes one person. It only has to work out once. That’s all.
I’d be lying if I said that I knew right away that Mats would be that person. Yes, that story would be far more romantic but far less star-crossed and millennial than the truth. Before I can get into how it all happened, I first have to explain the professional circumstances in which our friendship arose. As my manager’s assistant, Mats was not only privy to every work obligation on my calendar and every project in the pipeline. He wasn’t just cc’d on every email and connecting me to every phone call. He wasn’t just my point of contact on set, a messenger for PR packages, and an active participant in our group chat. He was the first person I talked to every morning and the last person I talked to every night. Looking back on this, it’s blatantly obvious to me that this kind of treatment was reserved for me alone, as he claims his crush started early into our meeting. In this industry, your work is your life and the people you work with become your family. Hell, you probably see them more than your actual family.
I could not have picked a safer crush than Mats. We were in constant communication, and our professional relationship was so central to our daily lives that I never read too much into our flirtatious interactions. I knew how off-limits he was, how many boundaries that a romantic relationship would cross, and the consequences if we ever did do anything. Also, let it be stated that I was pretty certain my innocent schoolgirl crush was totally one-sided. I think when you file somebody away as a “non-possibility,” you let your guard down. There is no body language to read into or texts to analyze, because you’ve already written them off. Any sort of flirtation that occurs is completely not registered because it is such a non-thing. That situation is where Mats and I lived. Or at least that’s how I saw it. I was also under the impression that he was a total player who probably texted heart-eyed emojis to every female client. Either way, my guard was down, a friendship formed, and my crush on Mats continued harmlessly.
I hate feelings. I am aware this sounds psychotic and alarming, but let me explain. I love the feeling of freshly washed sheets. And the feeling you get when you’re at a restaurant and they’re walking toward you with your food. I thrive in the feeling you get during the holidays when everything is covered with twinkling lights and synthetic snow. I revel in what it feels like to be surrounded by your best friends when your karaoke song comes on. I love those kinds of feelings. I understand and recognize them as I feel them. What I hate are those feelings that live inside you and are nameless, mysterious, and unfamiliar.
I’m decisive in my choices, I’m rarely surprised, and I swear I get a high from planning things in advance. I’m not a know-it-all, but I do like to know it all. I had no idea how I felt about Mats. I knew I had feelings, but I had no idea what they were or what they meant. So I did what I do with any delicate situation that requires me to tap into my emotions: I ignored it. I ignored the feeling I got when my phone vibrated with a non-work-related text. I ignored what I felt when he went out of his way to compliment my character traits. I ignored the glances of our mutual acquaintances, and I ignored the air of sexual tension between us. I had gotten so used to shutting my feelings in a box far, far away that I almost started to believe they never existed in the first place.
That spring our friendship reached a whole new level. No, we did not have sex. We did something much dirtier. Something much more intimate. Some may even classify this experience as “life changing.” We went to Coachella together. Now, everything you see and hear about Coachella from Vanessa Hudgens’s Snapchat is true. It’s this otherworldly, trippy, fringed haze of a mirage past Morongo Casino. It’s insane. It’s like limbo. It’s far enough from the 405 that you forget you’re within government jurisdiction and your morals are looser than your culturally inappropriate crocheted caftan. Coachella is where sexually shy twentysomethings engage in fivesomes with Justin Bobby look-alikes who keep their beanies on past foreplay. Coachella is the backdrop and music score of fever-dream love affairs between acid-dropping nine-to-fivers. There are no limits; there are no inhibitions. At Coachella anything can happen. Or, in my case, absolutely nothing can happen. For three days Mats slept on the floor of my hotel room, brought me coffee in the morning, and carried my backpack. He introduced me to his friends and relayed that one of them thought I was hot. He’d be happy to set it up, he added. I’m sure if I had let myself feel something, it would have felt pretty terrible. But instead I felt nothing.
I’d be lying if I said that when I invited Mats to Coachella, there wasn’t a little part of me that considered that something might happen between us. I don’t know if I actually wanted him to make a move, or if I just wanted some sort of confirmation that this air of sexual tension between us wasn’t just coming from me. Maybe I wanted to gauge my feelings toward him in an unprofessional and somewhat remote setting—to see if this crush I had developed stemmed from a convenience and close proximity, or if in fact it remained past the comfortable confines of the corporate world. I just needed an answer. He liked me or he liked me not. I liked him or I liked him not. Or a cocktail of the two. As the desert got smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror and the familiar smoggy skyline came into view, I realized I never got my answer. I returned to the city more confused and conflicted than I had left it. Great.
If this story had been a movie, this next part would have been done in a hyper-speed time lapse. The seasons changed, but we remained exactly the same. Our texts still read like confiscated middle school notes. Our in-person interactions still sparked endless insinuations and assumptions that we had embarked on an illicit fling. I went out with other guys, he went out with other girls, and we gave no thought to the fact that nothing ever panned out. We had spent the past ten months entangled in this “thing” with no end in sight. It seemed as if we could live in this gray area forever. Until we couldn’t.
By August, I decided that enough was enough. I had spent nearly a year invested in and consumed by a non-relationship relationship. It was in fact hindering the rest of my dating life. I was dating haphazardly, one foot
always already out the door. Mats was like my work husband but also a friend and also just a what-if presence in my life. I think that motivation to put yourself out there and date comes from loneliness and desire for companionship. But when that spot in your life is halfway filled, you don’t have that same fire under your ass. I was turning twenty-two and I was nowhere near where I thought I’d be romantically. So as the planning of my twenty-second birthday commenced, I saw it as an opportune moment to figure my shit out. Four of my best friends and I would be spending the weekend in Vegas. In that time I pledged not to speak to or speak of Mats. Instead, I would speak to and do *ahem* other stuff with any other guys. My goal was to figure out how I really felt. With Mats out of sight and mind, and a bunch of other eligible bachelors at the ready, what were my true feelings? With another guy’s tongue down my throat, would I still be thinking about Mats? Or would that kind of male attention result in feelings similar to those I had toward him? I had three days to find out.
It may take you by surprise, but I love Las Vegas. Since I’m normally somebody who’s a self-proclaimed grandma and avid member of the #LetsStayHome squad, Vegas doesn’t seem to fit that bill. For one weekend a year, that persona drops and I tap into my eighteen-year-old dancing-on-tables self. I wear teeny-tiny dresses and heels that come with altitude warnings, I down shots out of frozen glasses, and I dance like I’m expecting a downpour of singles. There’s a reason why they say “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.” We spent our first day in Vegas in our own cabana at the Marquee Dayclub at the Cosmopolitan. The only thing low about me was my inhibitions. Our cabana was conveniently placed between a bachelor party and a group of twentysomething LA agents. My best friend Sydney bartered with the best man for the homemade T-shirts their group was sporting (she decided the perfect souvenir for the weekend was their iron-on Tinder T-shirts with the groom’s face). I chatted it up with two brothers from the agency cabana. Less than ten minutes into our conversation they asked me if I knew Mats. I laughed, telling them I did and ruling them out as prospects for the weekend. When the sun began to set, Sydney gave up on her T-shirt conquest (settling instead for a lifetime supply of Jimmy Johns, courtesy of the best man, who turned out to be a stakeholder). I deemed every eligible (and ineligible) poolside bachelor as too Ed Hardy, and we retired to our suite to rest up for the evening. By “rest up,” I mean attempt to sober up with french fries and overpriced minibar nuts, all of which I’d throw up mere minutes later. While my friends took cold showers and power naps, I took up residency in the bathroom, vomiting vodka sodas, mimosas, and tequila shots while feeling the comedown of the knockoff ecstasy I had taken that morning. Don’t do drugs, kids.
When I had nothing left in my stomach to heave, and the thought of alcohol was no longer nauseating, I joined my friends in getting ready for the night. We bopped along to Calvin Harris, caking on our makeup to conceal how crappy we actually felt. I popped a few more pills. I think they were called moon rocks? I have no idea. And for serious, don’t do drugs. And if you do drugs, don’t be dumb about it. Don’t get drugs from somebody you don’t know, don’t take something if you don’t know what it is, don’t mix drugs together, don’t take them when you’re alone, and only take them in safe situations with people you trust. Or better yet, just don’t do drugs. Good talk!
You know those annoying girls who sit at a table at the nightclub just bobbing their heads to the music and sipping on “skinny” cocktails and giggling among themselves? That was us. But then we proceeded to get plastered. We scream-sang a Diplo remix, enjoying that point where you’re inebriated enough to think you look like Kendall Jenner but sober enough to keep your heels and underwear on. It was in that peak moment where the music swelled, and I raised my arms above my head, rocking my body along to the music, mouthing the words as if we were starring in our own music video, that it happened. For the first time all weekend, the name that lit up my phone was Mats. I smiled smugly as I showed it off to my friends. I had won the unspoken contest: he had caved first. As I reveled in the praise of my friends, I placed my thumb on the home button, unlocking it. I was sure he had conjured up some work-related excuse or some other fabricated reason I would see right through. Instead, I was met with a screenshot of the out-of-character bikini Instagram I had posted earlier that day (I blame the drugs) along with the following three words:
Mats
you
Mats
look
Mats
incredible
I dropped my phone. Literally, as if I no longer had opposable thumbs. My face must have been a dead giveaway of my surprise. My friends scrambled to retrieve my phone from the sticky ground. Their eyes darted across the screen, scanning the conversation as their expressions mimicked my own. We traded shouts of “What the fuck?” “Are you fucking kidding?” “What are you going to say?” “Stop, let me read it again!” “Wait! Stop! Check to see when he screenshotted it!” “STOP!” “No way!” If any onlookers had been observing our previous behavior and thought we couldn’t fit the basic bitch stereotype any more, our high-pitched squeals and Cher Horowitz–like mannerisms surpassed their expectations. I’m sure we were the object of countless annoyed glares, but I wasn’t thinking about that. I wasn’t even thinking about the letters my thumbs were tapping, or my lack of hesitation in pressing the “send” button, or my disinterest in making him sweat out my responses. I don’t remember the conversation verbatim, but it went something like this:
He told me I looked hot.
I compared myself to a hot potato.
He told me I was not a potato.
I said I was a tater tot because I was tan and bloated.
He said I was not a tater tot.
I said I was a french fry.
He said I was not a french fry.
He said I was sexy.
I asked him why he was being so nice to me.
He told me it was because he liked me.
I told him that he was paid to like me.
He told me he wasn’t paid to like me the way he does.
I told him that I didn’t think he was allowed to like me.
He told me he wasn’t allowed to like me.
He asked me if I liked him.
I told him I didn’t think I was allowed to like him.
He told me I wasn’t allowed to like him.
I asked him if he was sober.
He didn’t respond.
I asked him again.
He didn’t respond.
I asked him again.
He didn’t respond.
I didn’t hear from Mats until four p.m. the next day. Halfway through the excruciating drive back to LA in Lily’s un-air-conditioned car, we had stopped at a gas station in Buttfuck Nowhere, and as I handed Lily my card for gas money, my phone vibrated. After fourteen hours of radio silence, he resurfaced with “I was a little drunk.” I contemplated throwing my phone out the window, but I was pretty sure I didn’t have insurance on it.
You may have noticed my lack of excitement at this pivotal moment. Maybe you’re reading this with frustration at my reaction, since it seems as if this was the outcome I had desired. I mean, even my friends questioned my hostility toward the night’s events. Let me break it down for you in a far more coherent (and sober) explanation than I gave them. While Mats initially caught my eye in a purely superficial manner, my crush on him developed over nearly a year of friendship. It grew from innocent late-night talks on the office floor and the delirious banter post-twelve-hour-shoot days until I wound up where I was. I pushed those thoughts and feelings aside because of the value our friendship had to me. The stakes were far too high to risk losing what we had established between us on the chance of a half-baked idea. Which was why I had set aside this weekend to flesh out my feelings and finally determine what the next course of action was. There was so much careful thought and consideration behind my process. Mats’s text message delivered the harsh reality that I was the only one with that mindset. His
seeming recklessness and impulsiveness implied that he had no hesitation toward jeopardizing our friendship for anything more than sex, proving that any of his sentiments that I had taken for true feelings were just lust in disguise. I guess all it took for me to figure out my feelings was to figure out that he didn’t feel the same way.
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