by Annie Jocoby
I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t that upset about them sleeping together. That kind of thing had been going on and off for years. There was a period of time when the three of us were all together, before it all became too much, and jealousy got the better of us. But I still look back on those three months in college, when Alexis, Nick and I all shared a house in the Hamptons one summer, as some of the best times of my life. Before it blew up one morning when Nick brought home Rielle. Three was company, but four would be a crowd, and Alexis wanted no part of it anymore. Which made me wonder if she was into Nick at that time more than she was into me. At any rate, after the summer was over, Alexis went back to Yale, Nick and I stayed at Harvard, and we didn’t get into the threeways anymore. I always suspected, though, that Nick and Alexis were hooking up behind my back. And Rielle’s, because she became a permanent part of Nick’s life from the moment he met her at a clam bake on the beach.
Now he and Alexis were back to hooking up again. But why would that set her off against me?
So, I asked “Ok, so you guys slept together. Why did that piss her off?”
“Because she asked me about you and Iris. She apparently was under the delusion that Iris is just one of your fly by nights. You know, like you used to have before you met her,” he said. “And I set her straight.”
“Don’t remind me of my pre-Iris love life.” Before I met Iris, I was a manwhore with one stunning Victoria’s Secret type after another. None of them made me happy. Not that there was anything wrong with them, but I was always looking for something more than a beautiful face and rocking body.
I wanted my best friend.
I found that with Iris.
I felt comfortable with her, safe with her, from the moment I met her. She just has that nature that puts me at ease, and I knew immediately that I wanted to tell her everything. But she was so unsure of herself, which only made me like her more.
It made me want to protect her.
She has no idea has pretty she is. I’ve always been a sucker for redheads, it’s the Irish in me, but it’s more than that. It’s the way that her eyes light up when she looks at the doves at the bird feeder in the backyard. She could watch those doves for hours, a hot cup of Earl Grey tea in her hand, sipping it mildly while she watches the birds, entranced. She bought a book about birds after we got that feeder so she could know the different birds that she would meet every day, and always got excited when she saw a different one.
It’s the way she won’t kill any bugs in the house. She gently puts the bugs on a piece of toilet paper, and sets them free outside.
It’s her hysterical laughter at the silliest things, and usually her laughter is in response to something I say.
It’s the silly songs she sings, off-key, to the dogs every day, making up her own lyrics to familiar tunes.
It’s the smattering of freckles that cross the bridge of her nose, spilling onto both of her perfectly round cheeks.
It’s the way that she looks at me, and how she can read me. I don’t even have to say anything to her. She just knows. Like she has telepathy.
Most of all, I love her because she wants nothing from me. She just wants me. That’s what I love the most about her. Everybody has always wanted something from me. Not her. She simply wants me.
Or wanted me. Past tense.
“You still there?” Nick asked.
“Yeah.” I still couldn’t bring myself to tell Nick that Iris was gone. The one woman in my life who got me¸ who really got me, was gone. And it was Nick’s fault. And Alexis’.
No. It was my fault.
“What did you tell Alexis about Iris?”I asked Nick.
“That you’re in love with her.”
“Well, that explains everything. But I can’t imagine why she would think differently – after all, Iris was living with me. Of course she’s my girl.”
“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” Nick asked.
“She knows,” I said. “Iris.”
“Oh.”
“And she, she, she’s….gone.” Saying the words made them real, and I felt like somebody had taken a sharp knife and flayed my flesh from my body, inch by inch.
“Oh. I’m sorry, buddy.”
I was silent. I couldn’t talk.
“Hey, let’s get a beer, huh?”
“Nah, I don’t feel like a beer.” I felt sick again.
I could hear him audibly breathing on the phone. “Well, you take care, buddy. Call me if you need me. Anytime.” He paused. “I love you, buddy.”
I said nothing for a long time.
“Me too,” I finally said.
Then we hung up.
Chapter Eighteen
Iris
I arrived at my mother’s house, Madison in tow. I really didn’t have any plans at that time for what I would do. I’d sold everything before moving in with Ryan – well, by “everything,” I mean an old-school (non -flat screen) television, a couch and love seat, a bed, a dresser, a nightstand and a coffee table. It didn’t fit in with Ryan’s elegant décor, so I put an ad out on Craig’s list and was fortunate enough to get some bites. Which is why I only had clothes over there.
I let the cat out of her carrier, and she scurried to hide underneath a bed. Poor Madison. I knew how cats hate to travel and how they hate carriers. They aren’t like dogs, who like carriers, because dogs lived in caves long ago. Cats don’t really have that evolutionary gene with regards to carriers, so they hate them. Madison was no exception.
My mother was sitting at the dining-room table, looking over some offers for prizes that she hoped to win from some fly-by-night outfit or another. She was forever trying to win a big jackpot from some shady organization. I felt badly for her, being so gullible. She reasoned that somebody has to win, but I was always explaining to her that, for the prizes that she was shooting for, nobody won them. They were frauds.
But she kept trying.
“What’re you doing here?” She was actually very happy to see me.
My boyfriend, the wonderful, perfect guy? Yeah, he’s bisexual. “I wanted to come and visit for awhile.”
“Uh, oh. Did you and nutso have a fight?” “Nutso” was her term for all my boyfriends.
“No, no fight.” I lied. “I just missed you guys, that’s all.”
I went up the stairs with my bag in hand, and laid down on the rickety bed. This room was maybe 50 square feet, and that was pushing it. There was just enough room for a wire shelf, a desk with a computer, and a double bed. Before we painted this room, there were very strange drawings on the wall that my nephew and his rather odd friends drew. Some of the drawings looked like the dark dreams of a psychotic inmate. Some literally looked like these fever dreams, as they depicted a man with a knife, chopping off somebody’s head. Others just figuratively looked like a psycho’s dreams. I stayed here, from time to time, and those drawings always creeped me out. So, one weekend, we got some Kilz and painted over the walls. Now the room looked nice. Threadbare, tiny, but nice. The carpet could use some work, though.
I came back down the stairs. “What’s for dinner?”
“Well, you know, Michael and me don’t usually eat that much.”
“So that means…you at least have a frozen pizza in there, don’t you?”
“Well, no. Maybe I can get Michael to pick up some fried chicken from the KFC.” At this, she phoned my dad, who was visiting a friend, asking him to pick up a bucket of chicken with all the trimmings on his way home.
That night, after my mother and I watched some reality TV together – X-Factor was on that night, and poor Britney looked rode hard and put away wet – I lay in the upstairs bed, trying to figure out what to do. OK, so you’re kicked out. You didn’t qualify for an apartment because of your record. So, now what? I was surprised that my mind went there, first, before thinking about the Ryan situation. I just figured that it was a moot point now, and Ryan would soon be with some other unsuspecting female. I really didn’t figure that we would
get back together.
Why wasn’t I more upset about this? Then, I figured that, once you get your heart broken once, I mean truly broken, the heart won’t break again. And I suffered the massive heartbreak of my life about 8 years before. This was going to be cake.
Except it wasn’t.
About three days into my visit, I couldn’t get out of bed. I had never felt so depressed in my life. By then I had to admit to my mother that Ryan and I had broken up. And that was when it hit me like a flood. All the memories of us making love, hanging out, cooking together, laughing together, skiing and mountain biking, cooking for friends – all of this was now gone.
More than this, the idea of him was gone. The idea of being happy, of being with somebody I loved, who loved me, somebody who would never leave me – that was gone. And I couldn’t bring myself to meet anybody else on my Match account, even though everybody always told me that the best way to get over somebody was to meet somebody else.
Yeah, I tried that once, during my last heartbreak. At that time, the new guy that I met for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory simply asked me about any trips I had taken recently. The last trip I had taken at that time was to DC, to meet my then-boyfriends parents. I said that I had recently been to Washington DC, then started crying, right there at the table.
The guy couldn’t end the date fast enough.
At this point, my life was in upheaval. My on-going struggle with the fact that I hated my job had never resolved itself, and it didn’t look likely to. I was not the kind of person who likes to try to look for a job, so, when I fell into having my own practice, I thought that it was where I should be. I didn’t anticipate how it all would make me so miserable – the paperwork, the chasing down money, the constant phone calls and e-mails and whining. 20% of my clients made 80% of my work, and this was enough. Plus, I wasn’t good about bookkeeping, so the IRS was like a wolf at the door, constantly.
I also saw little hope on the romantic front. Ryan was nuts about me – why, I would never know, but he was. Everything about him was perfect – his beauty, his kindness, his sexual prowess, his thoughtfulness, his sense of humor, his intelligence, his manners…I could go on and on. That he was rich was a bonus, but it was far from the only thing, and it wasn’t even in the top 10, to be honest. So, now I am supposed to be happy with an ordinary schlub?
Oh, Ryan, you ruined me for the ordinary.
Of course, I knew that I would, soon enough, be ready to date the schlub down the block. I just would have to give him a chance, and realize that nobody would ever compare to Ryan.
One good thing was, my sister and I were bonding again. We would hang out in her room, talking politics or watching silly movies.
“Paul Ryan’s the devil. He’s a Nazi.”
My sister was obsessed with Nazis. “Please don’t start with the Nazis. Not everybody is going to be a Nazi.” One thing about my sister – you get her talking about Nazis and serial killers, and you would never get her to stop.
“Well he is.”
We were watching Up In Smoke for about the hundredth time. My sister had pot – she always had pot, even though her work drug-tests her. She was sharing with me. Pot was something that I would smoke if somebody else bought it and it was offered to me. But I had never bought it myself.
After about a half hour of toking, we were both extremely high. The pot was high-grade stuff, a “one hit wonder.” Watching the movie I said “I love this part!” Cheech was sitting on Chong’s lap in the driver’s seat, because they had to switch places really quickly, because Chong didn’t have a license. I started laughing so hard that tears ran down my cheeks. My sister was laughing too, right along with me.
Then we started talking a bit about what was going on.
“So, what happened to Ryan?”
“He had issues.”
“Worse issues than any of your other boyfriends?”
“No. Just different.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t want to go into it.” And I didn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her, or anybody else, that Ryan had oral sex with another guy. How do you tell people that? I knew that most people figured that men who liked men must be gay and living in denial. Why can’t anybody believe that there are people in the world who love members of both sexes?
I actually did do some research on the matter. Wikipedia confirmed that, in the Kinsey study, some 37% of men had a sexual encounter with another man. I had never seen that number before, and it was somewhat shocking. I also read an article about a bisexual man who was happily married. The man played with other men while he was married, and it was all copacetic with the wife. Perhaps I jumped the gun. Maybe I could have been happy, could have accepted it, if I would have given Ryan a chance.
If I only would have stayed.
But, I ran. I ran before I gave him a chance to run me out. Of course, as it turns out, it was really him running me out more than me running out.
So I decided to try some therapy of my own.
Chapter Nineteen
It was my first appointment with Dr. McCormick. She was on my new insurance plan that I picked up for Melinda and myself. It was Melinda’s request, and I knew she was an amazing assistant, so I wanted to keep her happy and honor her request.
Dr. McCormick’s office was not magnificent, as was Dr. Halder’s. I could just imagine how much Dr. Halder’s hourly rate was. Dr. McCormick’s was steep enough, but the insurance would cover 6 sessions.
Dr. McCormick beckoned me into her office. “Have a seat. Would you like some water?” I nodded, and she presented me a bottle of water. “So, tell me about yourself.”
That’s an awfully broad question. “Where do I begin?”
“Anywhere you want.”
“Well, I uh, I’m an attorney.”
“Do you like that?”
“Hate it.”
“What do you hate about it?”
“Everything.”
“So, why did you choose to go into law?”
“I figured that I always needed a way to support myself, because no man would ever support me.”
“Did that work out?”
“No. My overhead is too high, and I have a hard time getting clients to pay.”
“You say that you got into the law because no man would ever support you. Why do you say that?”
“Well, I seem to be a magnet for troubled men.”
“Troubled in what way?”
“Well, they usually have some kind of volatile emotional issues. Like they could go from loving me to wanting to kill me where I stand in under a minute.” Well, a slight exaggeration, but I was sure that she got the point.
Dr. McCormick looked at me, very shrink-like. “Why do you suppose that you are drawn to these types of men?”
“I’m not drawn to them, they’re drawn to me.”
Dr. McCormick looked at me. “Iris, what is the common denominator between these men?”
I was confused. “I’m not sure I’m following you.”
“What kind of commonalities do these men have with one another?”
“Nothing.”
Dr. McCormick stayed silent, watching me.
“I mean, they all dated me…”
Dr. McCormick’s face changed.
I continued on. “They all dated me.” I thought about a friend from college, a huge guy who was probably on steroids. Every time he went out, and I mean every time he went out, he got into a fist fight. His best friend couldn’t figure out what it was about Chuck that made guys want to fight him. I told him that it wasn’t the other guys, it was Chuck.
My epiphany. They weren’t attracted to me. I was attracted to them. But how did I know that these guys would turn out crazy when I first met them?
Dr. McCormick was continuing on. “Now, why do you suppose that you are drawn to these men?”
I didn’t know.
She tried a different tactic. “Tell me about your family.”
&nb
sp; “We all get along. My parents were always great to me.”
“Tell me about your childhood.”
“Well, I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up.”
She was interested, “And why was that?”
“Well, I was a shy kid, and I was always the new kid in school.”
She looked at me, silently.
“My parents moved around a lot when I was young. Always around the city, into different parts of the city, and different school districts, too. So I was always new. I was always embarrassed to be singled out as being the new kid. I would come into a school right in the middle of the school year, and then would be in a different school the following semester.”
“And how did that make you feel?”
“Well, I figured that the other kids didn’t like me that much.”
“Why was that?”
“It was very difficult getting involved in a new school. Kids are cliquey, and they really didn’t want anything to do with me. I tried, though.” I looked at my hands, then bit my nails. “There was one incident, in particular, that always stood out for me. Uh, this girl up the street was one of the popular kids in school. We were at the same bus stop, so we talked every morning. She never acknowledged me in school, though, never talked to me. Anyhow, I never got invited to spend the night with anyone, or go roller skating, or to slumber parties. So, when she invited me to her slumber party, I thought that I had made it.”
I sighed, tears welling up in my eyes. “I was the first one there, of course, because she lived across the street. Then, when each kid came to the party, and saw me there, she apologized to each one for my being there. Right in front of me, she told each one that she was sorry that she invited me, but her father made her invite me, because of the fact that I was at the bus stop with her every day. That memory is burned in my brain to this day.” I realized that I was really crying now, and Dr. McCormick handed me a Kleenex. I blew my nose, surprised that this long-ago memory could still affect me so much.
“Why does this story affect you?”
“Well, I just wanted a friend. I really wanted to be popular, but that was out of reach, so I just wanted any friend. I thought that she actually liked me, so that was why she was inviting me to her party. It was pretty crushing to find out that this was not the case. It was humiliating.” I shook my head. I was 10 years old when that happened, but it was like it was yesterday.
