All of my girlfriends told me not to do it, that it was doomed. But Nate understood—he’d seen Alex’s photos too. And I knew deep down that it made sense to fly him out here because I wanted that badly to see what he was about. But Project Alex had only made me crazy, not stupid. I was still wary of a thirty-two-year-old man who couldn’t afford a domestic plane ticket with five weeks’ notice.
Those five weeks went by like the last two hours of a temp’s workday. We texted each other more than we usually constantly texted each other, about how much we couldn’t wait, how we wanted “this” to be “something,” and other things you say to strangers you’re convinced you will love soon but do not want to scare with soothsaying.
THE DAY finally came, and Alex texted me from LaGuardia Airport after he landed. We were to meet at a bar on Avenue A, with no presumptions that he’d spend the night at my place, as per my friend Angie’s advice, and, to her credit, “You met him on the Internet! He could be psycho!” is never a bad thing to be reminded of. The plan was that Alex would drop off his stuff at his friend’s apartment, then meet me at the bar and “see how things went.” He told me what he’d be wearing so I’d recognize him, and I wore a top over a bra, instead of something strapless, because he’d told me how much he loved unhooking lingerie. I probably shaved my legs four times that day, and got my hair and makeup camera-ready. I walked over in my cute wool coat, even though it was puffy-jacket weather, and when I realized I was there early, I walked a lap around the avenue, warming up for the big event.
I cornered the block to find Alex through the window, inside the bar. I saw him tiny at first, then big when I walked in, like when I clicked from his thumbnail on Christmas to see the big picture. I met eyes with a stunning, oddly familiar face. And I was so relieved. Because, in the Mannerist tradition of the whole affair, I took one look at Alex, and I knew I’d done the right thing. I’d been vindicated. Even though he was short—and I mean, like, Dudley Moore-short—Alex was, true to the Internet’s assurances, indeed, so. Good. Looking. I was literally agog: meeting eyes with Alex was like seeing a work of art look back at you. I marveled at his features like I was ogling some kind of tiny, expensive bird.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
There was nervous laughter, and he looked down at his hands like he warned me he might do, in one of our phone calls from the week before about how we thought it was going to go. After some chat about the movie they showed on his flight, Alex broke down and told me I was “really pretty,” and hearing that made me feel like I was drunk, it was such a sweet relief. That whole evening was fast, fizzy, and happy, and I jubilantly experienced whatever the opposite of “regret” is about spending money on his ticket. He wasn’t a rapist, I decided, so we walked down Avenue A back to my place, and he kissed me really gently when we got upstairs. I was ecstatic, and then he spent the night.
“Spent the night,” so you know, is not a euphemism in this case. There was no making out, and certainly no sex, but the evening’s main event—finding out Alex was attractive in real life and that he thought I was too—was enough of a high for me to spill the news to my friends about how explosively my Tulsa boyfriend lived up to my shallow expectations; he wasn’t ugly, and he didn’t butcher me into a torso and leave my limbs in a trash compactor, so I figured it was time to show him off, like an imaginary friend whom suddenly everybody else could see. Handsome-face’s deb ball awaited!
I found out about a going-away party that was happening the next night and decided to go, even though I couldn’t have cared less about the girl who was moving away. I think I was relieved she was getting out of town, frankly. But I knew there would be people I knew at that bar, and I wanted them to see me with a gorgeous date. And sure enough, I got a lot of compliments that night about how cute Alex was, and then, later into the evening, I found myself asking my friends at the party whether they thought, based on his body language, he liked me. I guess he was a lot less forthcoming in person; the stuff he would text me about wanting to cook for me and how beautiful my eyes were seemed like something I’d dreamt now that he was here. He wasn’t touching me or kissing me even casually, and I wasn’t sure when or if that would change. He also had that cool-kid affect; the kind of “mean” you see in teenagers able to make emotive dorks and weirdos feel they don’t belong with an eye roll or a raised brow. Alex wasn’t mean—not to me—he was just a little icy and withholding. And I was starting to feel insecure—like I needed more next to me than just a pretty face that I ordered online.
Over the four days he spent in town, Alex guest-starred in my ordinary life. He wrote record reviews while I went to work or school, and he came to see a show I was doing at the time. He told me how excited he was to see me onstage, but he showed up late, and because I didn’t know whether he was seated in time, it totally threw off my performance. But I forgave Alex the instant I got to see him afterward. Men know this, but the charge you get just from seeing a beautiful face looking back at yours can be enough to make you overlook fatal flaws.
We went out after the show to a bar with Alex’s New York friends, and they were just like the ones at that party I’d gone to before. You know: the jerks? Everybody was beautiful and acid-reflux-inducingly cool: These were the teenage bullies who thrived, and could afford to extend their adolescence. They had trust funds and vintage boots they don’t make in my size, and bangs down to their eyelids and part-time jobs at record shops. I felt like I was in high school again—and I hated high school. I don’t trust anybody who didn’t. But that night at the bar, I felt formidable by association, and happily shelved my contempt—I was wearing cute clothes, I was the thinnest I’d ever been in my life. I felt like an alpha bitch, but I knew it was all fake and temporary. Those weren’t my real friends, you can only maintain a weight you’re not meant to be for fifteen minutes tops, and Alex was going home soon. We cabbed back to my place and slept next to each other for another platonic night.
AT THIS point, it was officially getting weird. Alex wasn’t touching me at all, and now that he was in New York, he could. I didn’t want to mention anything, because if I’ve learned nothing else from Martin Lawrence’s stand-up it’s that (a) men hate talking about stuff you think is going wrong in a relationship that you’re not sure is actually a relationship, and (b) women be shoppin’.
Either way, us not having sex didn’t make sense. It had been a few days in person after a few months of talking on the phone, and Alex and I were sharing a bed and nothing else. I was taking extraordinary pains to make sure I looked presentable before going to sleep next to him: I remember applying concealer, blush, and eye shadow before bed. I actually pulled my version of the “stretch, then put your arm around a girl at the movies” trick, getting under the covers next to Alex in a bra and panties, complaining how hot I was, then peeling my underwear off. But my nudity inspired nothing from the cherubic castrato to my right. I curled up, felt bad, then drifted off with a sorry pout on my powdered face, like Buster Keaton in the throes of another pitiable folly.
We went out to dinner on his last night in town, and to break up an awkwardly long silence over the appetizer course, Alex made me guess why he liked Caesar Salads.
“I give up.” I said. “Why?”
“Because I hate tomatoes.”
IT WASN’T that we weren’t getting along—it was that I was trying like a champion to avoid any kind of conversation about just what the hell was going on between us. I thought that me talking about the tension, rather than him causing it, was what would ruin everything.
The next morning, before he left for his flight back to Oklahoma, I finally asked him why we weren’t having sex. I wasn’t asking for my money back, though I guess we sort of did have an unofficial arrangement for fees paid and services unrendered when I bought his ticket and put him up. Not that he was Deuce Bigelow; I just wanted an explanation before he was gone again.
He got instantly defensive, like he’d heard that question before, and
told me that when it came to “the sex thing,” he needed to go slow with people he liked, because it was “all really intense.” Then his brown eyes met mine, and that’s literally all it took for me to back off. Yes, really—I was actually flattered! All I needed was the reassurance of his pretty face for me to back off. I filled in the blanks, assuming that he meant what he didn’t say: that soon I would be his girlfriend and he’d move here. I’d conveniently omitted the possibility that the man of my dreams was a eunuch or a closet case.
We said our good-byes, and soon he was back home. He texted me from Tulsa that he missed me already, and that he’d be back to see me again soon.
ALEX AND I spoke for two more months before he figured out a way to save the money he made writing freelance reviews tearing bands to pieces and tending bar at sweet sixteens to buy himself a ticket back to New York. But during the time between visits one and two, I was talking to a different Alex. From his phone voice, it sounded like the line between his eyebrows had gotten deeper from stress. Now he was grappling with adult stuff, like money and work and where he wanted to be and what he wanted to do, I guessed, in order to be with me. He seemed to want to change his life, to move here and write for a living and, you know, “succeed,” but he seemed stuck and scared. He wanted to be in New York, he said, and I was happy to hear him starting to think that way, but I knew to judge only action, and he wasn’t taking any, besides buying himself another few days with me. I forwarded him apartment notices and job openings, because I was trying to help. And I was told to chill out by the same friends who called me a moron for buying him a plane ticket in the first place. But I kept doing whatever I could to get him here. Meanwhile, I was in a Long Distance Not-Relationship with a guy who wouldn’t consummate what we did have when he was here. I had no idea where I stood with Alex, whom I basically fell for twice—once online, and then in person.
Around this time, I got a job as a writer’s assistant on a TV show. I gave notice at my other jobs and took a leave of absence from grad school to finish my MFA on my own. When I told Alex the good news, he asked me, “Are you gonna forget about me now? Are you gonna move on to something bigger?” And comments like that, no matter what the tone of the person who’s supposed to be kidding, are never a joke.
Alex’s second trip heaved with more urgency and anxiety: It was not romantic. I set him up with friends of mine I thought could help him get work in New York, and got out of his way when he needed my apartment to himself to write. And this time, his bags were at my place, where he stayed. But again, there was no sex. None at all! I would get naked and paw him at night over his T-shirt, kissing his neck, and he’d tell me to stop. I was confused and angry. I thought he wanted to be here, with me.
“WHAT’S GOING on?” I asked him in the morning, which is when straight guys will have sex with you when you’re in bed with them and you’re naked. He did that thing he’d done all week: looking at me, but not in my eyes. He was struggling. He blurted out something fast, about how the whole situation was really freaking him out. That’s all he could say. He seemed mad. “I’m just really freaked out,” he said again.
It was freaking me out too. I was so nervous putting my hand on his shoulder while he sat Indian-style at my feet watching The Gong Show Movie, wondering if he’d squeeze me back and whether it was sexual if he did. If I should kiss him first and what I’d do if he said no or pushed me away. I was awash in fear and self-doubt. Where did I get the idea that I was good enough for somebody to move to New York to be my boyfriend, anyway? I was becoming more and more infatuated with Alex, with or without sex raising the stakes, and his ambiguity was bringing out all of my most distorted, outdated perceptions of myself.
“It would be one thing if this was your rebound thing, after Patrick moved out,” my friend Brandy told me. “But he isn’t even fucking you? He’s useless to you. Useless. Send him back to Tulsa and you’re done.”
She was right—what could be more useless than a long-distance, platonic relationship? This went deeper than my own problems. Obviously there was something wrong with Alex beyond his not being super into me—even gay guys let you blow them in the morning.
ALEX WENT back home, and a couple of texts and calls followed after his second trip, but none of them were sweet like they were when we’d first met online and were both infatuated with the potential of the whole thing. He told me how stressed out he was, and that he didn’t know what he was going to do about moving here since his trip had left him broke. He wasn’t happy in Tulsa, but he didn’t know what was next for him. And even though he didn’t spurt overtures in my direction like he used to, he kept calling, assuming I was committed to talking to him no matter how the situation shaped up. But I had already made my decision.
He was useless. I could make myself feel bad—I didn’t need an unrequited crush for that—and I could sleep with the cat if I wanted to share a bed with someone who wouldn’t fuck me. I didn’t want to be his friend, and I was tired of pretending I thought he was funny. I was sick of playing fan-girl to a cool kid with no libido, who lived in poverty across the country. It was hard to figure out, because I liked him so much, but I was better off alone. I called him after work one night once he was back in Tulsa, and told him exactly how I felt while he was here, so he would know.
I SAID I wasn’t stupid: that I knew he wasn’t really in it to move here, to be with me, to take that leap. I made sure he knew that when we were in bed together and he didn’t look me in the eye, it crushed me. It made me feel invisible, like I was always afraid he’d make me feel—just like, or even because, he was afraid I’d one day move on to something bigger than him. He curled up to me as close as he possibly could have in my bed, and he still wouldn’t touch me. And there I was, naked and thin and warm and twenty-seven and double-D’ed and freckled and his. I shoved to the side that there was no way we could have ever gotten together without having to worry one day about my supporting us both by pulling in some kind of crazy Manhattan double income, or giving up on the idea of ever having kids, or not depending on my parents to help us out. I didn’t care that he wasn’t as smart as he pretended to be, or confused hating everything with being funny. I just wanted to kiss him; I wanted to make love, in the truest sense, to a person I already felt so close to. And Alex couldn’t even deal with a blowjob. That fucking coward.
I said what I had to say, and he said he had to go and think, and I said good night, and then, the next day, we had our final phone conversation, in a private conference room at my work, after Alex left a couple of self-pitying messages about how I probably had him on pay no mind list and had moved on—like I was the one rejecting him, paging Dr. I Don’t Think So. I called Alex back and asked him if he’d thought at all about what I said, and he asked me if I was giving him an ultimatum: that if we weren’t a thing, or if he couldn’t move here, or definitively be with me, whether we were going to keep talking.
And I said no.
And he said “ever?” And he was mad, and I choked back tears, because I knew I had to end it, like when you have to put a suffering animal to sleep so you can put it out of its misery. And I swear to God, I’d never in my life ended anything I wanted the way I wanted Alex. I wanted him so badly. I didn’t think I would ever again find anybody I’d be able to love the way I knew I could love him. But I knew the reality of the situation, and that what I wanted wasn’t going to come true. That the pursuit of it was only going to cause more pain.
So I said, “No, never.”
And then he hung up.
douche ziggy
Here is a short list of what crazy people are good for.
1. Writing great fiction in the Southern Gothic tradition
2. Knitting outfits for their pet chickens
3. Boosting sales of Purell (for destroying germs), tin foil (for hat-making), bathrobes, and lipstick (for bathrobe-wearing and lipstick-smearing, respectively)
4. Shooting presidents
Sadly, however, crazy people also
have a fifth use. And that is:
5. Providing otherwise reasonably functional people with crazy sex, which is not just sex with a crazy person, though it certainly is that, but also sex that is, by its nature, insane.
Even nonsexual human interaction with crazy people can cause people to become temporarily crazy (think about your family); but crazy sex with crazy people can make regular people totally fucking lose their minds. And all you can do once the sex stops and you’ve come to your senses is look back and retrace your steps to figure out how it is you got yourself into that mess in the first place.
I HAD an eighth-grade history teacher who wouldn’t make us memorize any dates. She figured it was useless for us to know that the Magna Carta was chartered in 1215 or that the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1919. Instead, when it was quiz time, she’d give us a list of events and test us on our ability to rearrange them in the order they happened. The time line, she reasoned, would be of more use to us than anything else, because the only way to make sense of history is by studying its cause-and-effect cycle.
I got into a situation with a crazy person named Ben because I had the loss of a damaged person named Alex hanging over me like a dirt cloud over Pig Pen for what had ballooned into a six-month funk. Alex’s frigidity, after the sex-free final year of my doomed relationship with Patrick, plus all the time invested and the chocolate-chip scones downed in their respective aftermath, honed me into the perfect vessel for Ben’s brand of crazy. Alex was Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, I was the lantern he kicked over, and Ben was the Chicago Fire.
Julie Klausner Page 12
