by Stephanie Wu
We got separated for a bit at the wedding, and I immediately felt a punch in my gut, like I’d lost him and I’d be socializing on my own all night instead of as a couple. It was also uncomfortably hot during the wedding, and I remember thinking, This isn’t attractive. I’m red in the face, and I’m sweating. It wasn’t the perfect setting I’d envisioned where I’d be in a yellow sundress and we’d be together at a wedding in a little country town.
After the wedding ceremony, people went off to do different activities, and a bunch of guests went to the lake to swim. I wanted to go but couldn’t find Greg, so I decided to set up the tent, because I realized that I hadn’t gotten rid of some of the packaging, and I didn’t want him to see that it was all new gear. I was unpacking when he came over to help me. Most of the camping spaces were gone so we pitched our tent on a slope. He wanted to go swimming, but I was feeling a bit too shy and spent the rest of the afternoon kicking myself for not being carefree and showing how adventurous I was.
During the reception at night, he was by my side again, noticeably paying attention in a way he wasn’t earlier. We got food together, and he referred to the desserts as “events,” and said, “Are you going to have some of these little events?” I thought it was so adorable, and was falling in love with him all over again. After the speeches, we started dancing, and this was when it happened. He grabbed my hand and we went to the dance floor; it was a beautiful outdoors pavilion setting, and he didn’t let me sit down all night. We spent the next two hours spinning each other around and slow dancing. I didn’t see another person all night and neither did he. People started to notice and ask what was happening between the two of us, and I couldn’t say anything because in the three years since we’d first met, I’d never felt affection from him.
At one point I got cold, so I decided to go to the tent to get a sweater. He said he’d walk back with me, in case there were bears—a real concern in Quebec. We climbed inside our little tent, and the model happened to be called the Hubba Hubba. Back inside the tent, he lay down and I was making small talk, thinking we would head back to the party, when he leaned over and gave me a peck on the lips. I was not about to settle for a peck after three years of sexual tension, so I grabbed his face and we started kissing. It was the most amazing thing—all these moments where I had hoped and prayed that he liked me back washed through my head. I felt that I had almost willed this to happen after wanting it for so long. We didn’t actually have sex, just kissed and went back to the party, but I felt like I’d had a night of sex. Something about the intensity of that kiss was enough—he could have gone off to war for four years and I could have lived off that kiss.
After this amazing night, we woke up the next morning and had both slid to one side of the tent. We were in a heap on a pile of stuff and it was really hot again—not a romantic way to wake up. We were saying our good-byes when Liz, the bride, came over and said, “You guys! I knew it! When are you getting married?” That’s when he shared his side of the story: apparently he had liked me all these years, and was always fighting with his own better judgment because he had a girlfriend and was a very loyal person. He had made it known to people that he liked me and had tried to make it known to me subtly—I just hadn’t picked up on it. We had a rushed good-bye—we were late for our flights, and from there we kept chatting over texts.
Two weeks later, he came down to visit me in Toronto. He had been saving miles for a decade and blew them all the following year visiting me every two weeks. We didn’t go more than three weeks without seeing each other and managed to pull off a long-distance relationship for a year. As he was finishing up school, I was accepted to graduate school in New York, and we decided, though we had never lived in the same city as a couple and had no idea what that would look or feel like, that we were going to move to New York and live together. We went from two people visiting each other and Skyping to moving in together and becoming roommates again in a completely new context.
The journey of retracing these moments that led up to the wedding has been amazing, and I realized that our love story actually started way before that. For me, it started the second I first saw him, and I guess it did for him too. When we first lived together in Toronto, I always cooked and left food out in hopes that people liked it.
I made these elaborate desserts, and my ulterior motive was for my food to be the way to his heart. I cooked huge dinners and baked cheesecakes and hazelnut chocolate cakes, and every time I gave him something to sample, he shrugged and said it wasn’t his thing. He never, ever liked my food. I felt like if I couldn’t make him love me through my food then there was no hope, because cooking was the one thing I was really good at. When we finally got together and I told him that my cooking was a point of insecurity for me, he told me that he was nuts about my food, but had felt that admitting so would be a betrayal to his girlfriend. Now that it’s the two of us living together, he gobbles up my food. It turns out he loves my food and he loves me.
—C, 28 (F)
THE SHOWER INTRUDER
AFTER WORKING ON THE EAST COAST for a few years, I decided to go on a cross-country journey with my friend Jonah. We drove west to California, crashing with friends along the way. In the final leg of the trip, Jonah was staying with his mom in the Bay Area while I stayed with my friend Kat. I’d met Kat’s roommate, Leo, before, because he had visited New York and slept on my couch. I didn’t know much about him, only that he was an artist who thought he was the cutest guy ever.
I had already been staying at Kat’s for a couple of days when I went jogging one morning. I came back and saw Leo cleaning the bathroom, so I asked if he minded if I took a quick shower. I went into the bathroom, but the door wouldn’t close because they had towel hooks hanging from it. I figured it wasn’t a big deal and went in.
I was shampooing my hair when I thought I saw a shadow on the other side of the shower curtain. I turned and looked out the front to see if the door had opened, but didn’t notice anything. When I turned back around, Leo was in the shower with me. He had not only slid past the curtain and into the shower, but had also already sudsed up. “What the hell?” I screamed. “Someone is getting out right now.” I thought about hitting him, but we were the only ones home, and I thought the consequences could be much worse if I hit him as opposed to yelling at the top of my lungs. I felt incredibly vulnerable and violated. Leo was quite large and muscular, and the thought of what could have happened was too scary.
“Okay,” he said. “I just have to rinse first.” He slithered past me, rinsed off, and left. I then rinsed off quickly and ran into Kat’s room to call Jonah and have him pick me up. I hurriedly packed up and was waiting on the corner for Jonah when Leo came out to apologize. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I know what I did was stupid and immature, but I wanted you to know that you have a beautiful body.” Yeah, I thought to myself, a body that you had no business seeing.
After Jonah picked me up, we went to see Kat at her job to tell her what had happened. Not only did she kick him out, but he also lost both of his girlfriends—it turned out he had been dating two girls at the same time. The whole Bay Area heard the shower story, and his player actions were exposed—no one else wanted to date him after they found out what a slimeball he was.
—L, 30 (F)
THE NAKED NANNA
I ONCE LIVED IN AN ARTIST-HOUSING BUILDING that was co-run by a nonprofit arts organization and homeless prevention coalition. In order to live there, you had to qualify as an entertainment professional—meaning you’ve worked in the industry a certain amount in the past two years—and meet an income requirement. There were thirty-some floors in the building—probably close to three hundred people total, with a penthouse floor that housed older former artists with severe nursing needs. It was such an affordable housing option that the wait list was a year long, and when accepted, you were put in wherever there was an open bed. At the time, I only had three weeks to find a place, so a social worker suggested I put a notic
e on the bulletin board saying I was willing to sublet a room within the building. Sure enough, I got a call from Paula, who said she was going to Los Angeles for two years and needed a subletter.
It was a cool environment—there were a bunch of older people, but for the most part, it was like a music conservatory dorm, with all the requisite drama. One great indication of the insanity of the building was that there was a naked clause on Halloween. They actually put a sign on the elevator saying, “Please wear clothing on Halloween.” There was also a rule saying you couldn’t make out or have sex in the elevators. When the building first opened, it was almost all gay men, and I guess there was a lot of sex everywhere, so eventually that became a rule.
You could always hear people rehearsing for jobs—once someone upstairs was auditioning for a project that I was working on. We didn’t end up hiring him, but it was still cool. Everyone was incredibly nice—when I was trying to get a room, the people in the building helped me in any way they could. Since everyone was an artist, they tended to be open. It was very comfortable to not have to try and be normal. The only downside was that you had a roommate. There were only ten studio units in the building, and of course people moved into those and didn’t leave for the rest of their lives.
Before I moved in, Paula had warned me that the first person she was supposed to sublet to had had problems with her roommate. That should have been a red flag, but I needed a place to live and it was such a fantastic location and building that I didn’t care who I lived with. I spent twenty hours a day out at work and rehearsal, so I wasn’t home very much. “My roommate’s older,” said Paula. “She’s a little difficult and throws little temper tantrums if she’s not getting enough attention.” I was willing to deal with anything, but I didn’t realize the extent of it until I got there.
Paula’s roommate was a seventy-five-year-old former actress we called Nanna. The two of them had split the living room down the middle, and Nanna tried to take over the entire living room because she had more stuff—she felt it was her apartment and someone else was living in it. Her side had tons of furniture and stuff crammed into it, while mine had two folding chairs and a cocktail table. There were a lot of boxes after I moved in, and she even called building management because she thought my stuff was taking up too much space in the living room. She started randomly chaining the door so I couldn’t come in and out, and I had to tell her, “I paid for this apartment, so I can come in and out when I want.” She wanted me to tell her where I was at all times and when I’d be coming back.
About two weeks after I moved in, I was in the living room, where we had a stackable washer-dryer unit next to the kitchen. When I walked in I saw her standing there in nothing but pantyhose and a button-down shirt. I figured she was getting dressed and needed to get something out of the laundry, so I let it go. I’ll give anyone the benefit of the doubt once or twice. Except the seminakedness didn’t stop. I spotted her going to the trash chute in the hallway in nothing but stockings and a shirt, or sometimes, socks and a shirt. Since she was older, I didn’t want to cause any problems. I wasn’t home very much anyway.
Then came the day when I walked into the kitchen and she was bent over getting dishes out of the dishwasher with absolutely nothing on. I saw everything. I immediately walked back into my room and closed the door—I didn’t know what to do. The weird thing was, she never apologized or looked ashamed or embarrassed. She kept walking around in just a shirt, which was sometimes buttoned and sometimes completely open. Sometimes she wore stockings if I was lucky, otherwise absolutely no underwear. I saw her breasts so many times. And she acted like I was rude for invading her space by constantly giving me looks and sighing at me. We had two bathrooms, and hers was in her room and mine was in the hallway, so it wasn’t as if she had to run to and from the shower. She was always hanging out in her part of the living room or in the kitchen, doing normal things people usually wore clothes to do, but in varying degrees of nakedness.
Nanna also got annoyed when I had friends over. Most of my friends are guys, and I was always afraid that they were going to think I was inviting them over so they could get an eyeful of seventy-five-year-old ass. I started warning people who came over, telling them about my naked Nanna situation. “Just be ready and avert your eyes until you’re sure she’s wearing clothes,” I said.
I never confronted her about the nakedness, but I did confront her about other things. She often made a hot mess in the kitchen and didn’t clean up. I always made my requests in a polite way, such as “Someone might be coming by, so maybe we should clean up.” She did have a few friends come over once in a while, and they hung out in the living room fully dressed. I was almost afraid that one day she would start commenting on the presence of my clothing—I wasn’t sure if it was a nudist apartment and Paula had neglected to tell me.
Aside from Nanna, the building was great. The boys next door to me had a shower that was right next to mine, and they were actors or singers who belted show tunes every morning. When I was in my bathroom or shower, I often heard Wicked or Phantom of the Opera coming through the wall. And you can bet that if it was something I knew, I sang right along with them. I could hear them pause slightly, and then jump right back into it. We never hung out, we only sang together. It was fantastic.
Thanks to the nonprofit arts organization, there were always free tickets to shows, community events, and cool performances from people who lived in the building. A lot of the older actors went to these events and told stories about working in the industry. We had a party to watch the Tonys in the community room, and one older man had a story about every single person who came on the screen. It was so entertaining.
And our security guards knew us better than anyone. When I was sick they checked in on me and did errands for me once in a while. Once I went on a date with a guy at a bar across the street, and he was bad news. He kept saying, “I know where you live and I’m going to come visit sometime”—I guess he thought it was a cute thing to say. I told the girl at the front desk about it, and sure enough, she saw him standing outside our building a few days later. She glared at him and pretended she was getting a weapon—which of course she didn’t have—and left a note saying not to let him in. And we were supposed to pay the maintenance guys if we wanted anything special done, but they not only fixed things without pay but also didn’t tell management. They were super cool.
I was so happy I got into the building, which I found out about through a guy I call the housing fairy. During the day, I worked at a corporate firm in a huge building. There was a plaza for the whole building where you could eat your lunch on a nice day. I was out there in the spring, and knew I had to move out of my current apartment by the end of summer. I was vaguely thinking about housing but not doing much about it yet. I was sharing a table with a guy who was a visual artist with a day job in the building. He suggested I apply to the artist-housing building he used to live in, but the application was so involved that I waited until I did need housing to actually apply. When I was asked how I’d found out about the building, I told management about the guy who worked at the same building as me. They looked him up and said, “No one by that name has ever lived here.” I figured he might have been subletting, so I tried to look him up through our building corporate directory, but his name was nowhere to be found. He’d given me his card, but I lost it. I never found anyone in the building who had ever heard of him, so I’m convinced he was a fairy who came down from heaven to tell me where to live.
—F, 30 (F)
THE STAGED ROBBERY
WHEN I FIRST MOVED to Los Angeles, I stayed with my best friend and his fiancée for two weeks, until that ran its course and I decided to leave. I do stand-up comedy on the side, and the next place I moved to was a house with seven other comedians. It was actually sad. You might think comedians are hilarious and joking all the time, but it’s actually morose and bad. The opposite of what happens on the stage happens at home. We were all wondering, Am I going to
make it? Am I doing the right thing? I lived there for three months, sharing a bathroom with four people, two of whom I never met the whole time I was staying there—it was basically a public restroom.
Since I also have a daytime job, I realized there was no reason for me to keep living in that apartment. So the next place I found was in the West Hollywood area, an old army base that was converted into residential units. It was a two-level apartment with two bedrooms. I showed up and met Grant, a good-looking aspiring actor who lived there. At the time, he was living with his girlfriend, but she wanted to move out.
We hit it off immediately. Grant and I watched TV together and hung out, and even though I wasn’t around during the day, we had good times together. About a month in, he told me he’d gotten fired—he had been working as a bartender at a nearby country club. “They think they caught me stealing alcohol,” he said. “It’s bullshit. You’re allowed to take home a little bit.” And I remember feeling the heat on my neck, because right behind him was a wine rack stocked with high-end wine. I’m not sure why I believed him, but he assured me money wasn’t a problem and he’d get another job soon. Sure enough, he had another bartending gig by the next week.
A few weeks later, the two of us went to Best Buy to pick up some cables. I bought a TV because I found one on clearance. I paid for mine in the back of the store, and as we were walking past the checkout, I saw him holding a bunch of cables and a few other things. “Are you going to pay for that?” I asked. He acted like he had forgotten to pay, but you don’t forget to pay for something at a store when you’re there specifically for that item. That’s when I started feeling a little wary about Grant.
One day I got back from work and saw him wearing a checkered collared shirt. “I have one that looks like that,” I said. He looked at me and said, “Oh, this is actually your shirt. I put it on.” It wasn’t something that had been lying around—he would have had to go into my closet to take it out. He never gave me a straight answer about why he was wearing it, only that he was going to wash it and put it back. He was also a dirtbag who didn’t treat women well. He was actively cheating on the girlfriend who had moved out of the apartment by going on OkCupid dates with other girls.
