“I think you should take a lot of lovers,” he said.
I didn’t respond, or even look at him, embarrassed to find myself blushing, even though I prided myself on being able to talk tough with my male friends.
“The younger the better,” he continued. “That way you can figure out what you want and don’t want.”
I nodded my head instinctively. On a purely intellectual level, it made perfect sense, and it was basically what I’d been doing in the wake of my breakup.
“I mean you have to be responsible. You have to take responsibility for your relationships. Otherwise you’re just an asshole.”
I laughed. Not only at his frank way of speaking, but at the idea that I’d ever be such a master of romance. I could take a lot of lovers, sure, but I was terrified that each and every one of them was going to abandon me. And that insecurity was fueled by obsessiveness, even about men I didn’t really like enough to want to stay. I was fucked up. I knew that. And my dad knew it. But we weren’t quite ready to look at how I’d gotten that way or what could be done about it.
As my dad and I warmed to each other, he often complimented me, even about things that weren’t obviously positive. I discussed the breakup with my dad, saying that if we could just find a way to both make ourselves happy in the same place, then we’d be able to enjoy all of our love and mutual attraction.
“A lot of people would have given up by now,” my dad said. “They’d already have moved on to multiple other relationships that would have just re-created the same problems they had in their first relationship that didn’t work out. But not you. You’re really sticking to it, and wrestling with it, and you’re determined to figure out what went wrong and how to learn something from it.”
I smiled shyly at my dad as he spoke. I did want to discover something through what had happened with Scott. Now that I was over my fixation with the other man I’d kissed, I was deeply ashamed of how I’d behaved and how much it had hurt Scott. I wanted to get to a place where I knew myself better, was taking more responsibility for my life, and not causing so much collateral damage. I was convinced if I was honest and courageous about who I was and what I wanted, Scott would forgive me.
I wrote him an impassioned love letter, telling him that he was the only man for me, and letting him know that I would be there on the other side of whatever he was going through. And then I waited for his reply. And waited.
He e-mailed me a few times in January and left me a message on my birthday, but he never mentioned my letter, and I was too afraid to ask. In February, my phone rang at eleven in the morning. It was Scott. Although it was eight o’clock in Portland, he was still up, and very drunk. He said it was a beautiful letter, he still loved me, he still wanted to be with me, but he had another girlfriend. I chose to focus on everything before the “but.”
The night after I had this conversation with Scott, I went to a show downstairs at the Middle East. I’d been trying to at least distract myself with other guys in the wake of Scott’s return to Portland, even if my heart still belonged to my first true love, but I’d yet to meet anyone who’d even begun to compare to his charm and intelligence. That night, I was introduced to Anthony, a tall, lanky young man with a thicket of dark curls and chestnut eyes. As soon as we met, we were instantly flirting. Our wits easily dovetailed, and his presence numbed out the painful memory of Scott’s call.
The next time I saw him, he told me he needed a place to live, and I hooked him up with some friends whose house was my main hang out in Jamaica Plain, giving me easy access to him. When he brought me up to see his room a few weeks later, he surprised me. He was funnier and smarter than I’d anticipated, and I hadn’t expected him to be so perceptive about the kinds of tiny nuances I noticed but most others didn’t. When we were alone together, he turned to look at me. Laughing, he tugged his earlobes.
“What’s up?” he said.
Only then did I realize he was mimicking me—I was tugging my own earlobes. I quickly stopped, half-embarrassed, half-flattered he’d been watching me so closely.
“It’s something I do when I’m nervous,” I said, demonstrating.
“Are you nervous now?” he said, his voice devilish as he yanked his ears again, and then he kissed me, hard. We ended up talking and kissing until dawn.
A week later there was a big party at Anthony’s house. I walked into the kitchen and the whole room erupted into a chorus of “Duchess.” Everyone in that group of friends had a nickname, and mine was “Que Sarah, Duchess of Rock,” soon shortened to “the Duchess,” which, of course, I loved. The room was already noisy, and smoky, and full of people and laughter and music. He grinned at me, and I felt the promise of an imminent rendezvous. After a few beers, I made my way to his room. He turned, pouch of tobacco in hand, and kissed me. It was still new and exciting, and yet, I knew his body a little bit now, and I felt entitled to lean into him and put my hands in his thick, dark hair.
We fell onto his bed. His pleasure, when I got him off, made me happy, made me feel powerful and sexy. He pushed me back and tugged down my jeans and underwear.
“I’m reciprocating,” he said, laughing.
He put his lips on me with gentle attention. It felt as if his mouth had been made for this. A sigh escaped me like a silk scarf fluttering. When I came, in only a minute, maybe two, it was fast and hard, like I had seen it be for boys. When he pulled away, I realized my shoes were still on. I lay there for a delicious moment before I stood and dressed. His room was neat and cozy, like the cabin of a ship, and I didn’t want to leave. He smoked a cigarette, sitting on the edge of his bed. I closed my eyes and drifted.
“Sarah, you have to go,” he said.
I rolled away from him toward the wall and lay there until I felt him give in and lie down next to me. My fake sleep gave way to the real thing. In the morning, I couldn’t face my messy room, my deadlines, and the sounds that came through the wall of Mary’s bedroom, reminding me of the boy who had chosen her over me, so I let myself drift back asleep in Anthony’s bed. Even when I heard movement at the foot of the bed, I kept my eyes closed. I recognized Anthony’s bandmate, who’d come to get the keys to their van.
“Who’s she?” Ken asked.
“No comment,” Anthony said.
Not exactly a term of endearment, but I knew the crude jokes and stupid nicknames guys in bands often made up about the girls they fooled around with—and I was relieved he hadn’t let his anxiety about the situation cause him to be cruel.
I didn’t think about Anthony as a potential boyfriend or wish he would call and take me to dinner. I didn’t think about him rationally at all. I just wanted him. It wasn’t only that he was tall and handsome and played “Blackbird” for me on his guitar, laughing at himself a little as he did, before segueing into new songs he was writing, or that we had the kind of sexual chemistry that had inspired me to nickname him my kryptonite. He had a natural grace and sparkle that made everything an adventure, made it feel as if the whole big world was right there with us, and I was living in it, just by being in his bed.
I was hanging out with Anthony’s roommates one night, and when he got home, late, even though we hadn’t hooked up for months, he swept me up to his room. We had sex, and it was as seamless as I’d known it would be. He kept me up long enough that I missed my morning bus to Cape Cod, where I was to be a bridesmaid in Marya’s wedding. Stuffing food into my mouth on a later bus in hopes of soaking up the remaining alcohol in my system, I smeared avocado all over my jeans, which only made me look more like the Cameron Diaz character in a screwball romantic comedy.
Cleaned up and halfway presentable a few hours later, I joined the rehearsal dinner. It was a lovely night. As I stood outside the group, drinking bourbon, a man stood beside me and rested his hand on my back in a friendly way. It was Marya’s father. His small, kind gesture went unnoticed by others but filleted me. So that’s what it feels like to have a normal dad.
In that instant, I understood
, almost on a molecular level, exactly what was still lacking, even now that my father and I had reconciled. He had no interest in putting aside his counterculture lifestyle for even one night to do the ordinary things dads do. Intellectually, I respected him for this, but there’s nothing logical about the heart’s desires.
I looked across the deck at Marya, laughing and talking amid her wedding guests. She was tall and beautiful and poised. More than that, I knew it was what was inside of her that mattered. She had a sense of her own worth. She knew she deserved to be happy.
That was why she was getting married, and I wasn’t.
It wasn’t that I cared so much about marriage specifically. Since Scott and I had broken up, I’d started saying: “I don’t have a baby clock; I have a book clock.” And it was true that I’d let Scott go back to Portland mostly because I didn’t see how I could sustain our relationship and my writing at the same time. But I wanted to be worth marriage. I wanted to know I deserved to be happy, even if I wasn’t about to admit it to myself yet, and if you’d asked me—But don’t you want to be happy?—I would have rolled my eyes, lit a cigarette, and said Bang bang shoot shoot.
My longing for worthiness had been imprinted on me when I was a baby, forming the foundation of my personality, as seamlessly as I’d learned to recite my alphabet and tie my laces. Having my dad back in my life for a year wasn’t going to instantly heal me.
The next time I went to a party at Anthony’s house, he was in his room, practicing for an audition in New York City to play with an up-and-coming band whose first album I’d adored when I reviewed it. As much as he partied, he was also focused and devoted to his music, which he wanted like I wanted to write. He got the gig, as I’d known he would. I didn’t see him before he jetted off to Europe. I was jealous: He got to stop painting houses and do what he loved and was good at, travel, and get paid. He took what he wanted. Meanwhile, I was left juggling deadlines, rolling quarters to pay my bills, and not hearing from Scott. I made a vow to take what I wanted, too: I would finish my book.
I was as swamped with deadlines as ever, but when I was done writing articles and reviews, I pulled my laptop over to my bed, poured a glass of wine, and worked on my novel, which was slowly but surely taking shape. When my resolve wavered, I drew inspiration from my kryptonite, distilling my goal into a simple mantra: Be like a boy.
I had continued to enjoy the deeper relationship with my family that had blossomed during our trip to Ireland. My brother was attending Boston University, and I often took him as my plus-one when I was sent to cover bands he liked. Even though it was happening ten years later than it normally did for siblings, it felt good to be his cool older sister. When my mom and Craig came down to visit him, they took us both out for meals, and I appreciated how nice they were to me following my breakup with Scott. Still wanting to be perfect, and to protect them, I hid my heavy drinking and entanglements with boys in bands from them, although I’m sure they sometimes noticed my epic hangovers.
Despite my newfound focus on writing and my enjoyment of my family, by the time my kryptonite got home from touring in late September, our affair was one of the most vibrant parts of my life. He continued to have this way of really seeing me, careless as he could be. During a phone conversation about my writing, he started unfolding a fantasy about how I needed a male intern who would work naked. In the morning, I would wake up, put on a silk kimono, and have my intern pour me a martini. Then I would light a cigarette and say (pausing to drag on my cigarette):
“Intern, take dictation. I had a bird. It flew away. It was my father.”
Stunned that he’d been paying attention all along, I smiled at his words.
Happy to finally be in his room with him once again, our bodies close together, my skin singing, I talked with Anthony about his music, my writing, and the big world beyond Boston. He took me to bed and stripped me. His skin was tan and smelled like sunshine and the dusky scent of tobacco. I was freer with him than I had been with Scott for a long time, maybe ever. We drifted off to sleep, entwined, at dawn.
The next morning, I stopped in at the Dunkin’ Donuts on my way home because I wanted something sugary. I felt dirty in that happy way, with his smell on my skin, and my writing waiting for me, amid all of the commuters who were going to the coffins of their desks. Not me. I felt like maybe I was creating a life for myself that supported my writing and my desires. Marguerite Duras had lovers. Patti Smith had lovers. I had a lover. I was maybe becoming an artist on the cusp of the big life I’d always dreamed of having. I went home, alive, to write.
I’d been writing CD reviews for about six months, and I’d developed a nice rapport with my editor. As I earned his trust, he gave me more power to select the albums I covered. In the middle of October, I noticed that the guy I’d had a crush on when I was seventeen, Judah, had a new album. I pitched a CD review and landed the assignment.
The album was an ode to the singer’s best friend, who had died suddenly the previous year. It was perfect for my mood that fall. As much as I was enjoying my affair with my kryptonite, we only spent about one night a month together. I missed Scott. And when I heard Mary and her boyfriend through my bedroom wall, I envied what they had. I listened to the album, again and again, crafting my review carefully, as if I were writing a love letter to the singer, which, in a way, I was.
I pitched a feature to preview Judah’s band’s upcoming Boston show. My editor had been impressed with my CD review, and I was assigned the piece. On the afternoon of the interview, my heart hammered in my chest, even though I did phoners all of the time and I’d already covered people who were more famous than he was. We felt each other out for the first few minutes, before we both relaxed. I couldn’t help but flirt.
“So what’s a typical date with you like?”
“I’m a great date. I’ll do anything except go see a Merchant Ivory movie.”
He laughed, a delicious, sexy shuffle. I laughed and felt something happening on the phone between us. I wasn’t even surprised. It felt right. I was too hardwired to move toward the promise of the elusive rock star, no matter the potential risk, to remember my mom’s prescient warning to me in her graduation letter. I couldn’t give myself value. Only he could.
The conversation shifted to his reputation, which was formidable.
“You’ve got to keep your fists up, Sarah,” he said.
It was a one-off comment. He didn’t really know me. I knew this. But his words were so true. I’d always been drawn to something in his music. It was dark, raw, brutally honest about human nature, desire, and love. Some people considered it misogynistic. I’d always seen it as power, which was something I wanted for myself, especially now that I was on my own. No Simon’s Rock. No Bard. No Claire. No Scott.
I’d earned access to this man who knew how to be this force in the world, and I wanted more of that for myself. I told him I’d be at his Boston show.
“Come back and say hey,” he said.
I was nerved up as I approached the venue, but it never occurred to me to not go. Everything that scared me was always what I desired most.
The room was crowded, his fans devoted as usual. I ordered a Maker’s Mark and soda, and then another, hovering at the bar while I drank them quickly, almost afraid to approach the stage. I pushed myself into the crowd so I could see him. The music was sexy. It throbbed and glistened. He had put on weight since I’d seen his old band in Portland nearly eight years earlier, but he was still light on his feet, elegant yet forceful in the way he stretched at the mic, telegraphing every emotion.
I thought about our conversation, and the article I’d written, and enjoyed the thrill of feeling as if this public man was a little bit mine, especially when he sat at his keyboard for a medley that included a bit of Fleetwood Mac’s “Sara.” At the end of the show, I was nervous but walked into the green room like it was no big deal. Judah was sitting in the corner, a white towel over his head, like a boxer postfight. His bassist nodded at me, th
en left us alone in the small room crammed with gear. I introduced myself.
“How’s the rest of the tour been?” I asked.
“I always say you don’t have to pay me to play. That I’ll gladly do it for free. It’s the other twenty-three hours of bullshit you have to pay me for.”
He laughed, gravelly and genuine, the kind of laugh it was a pleasure to join. His gaze was knowing and cryptic like a cat’s. We talked easily for a few minutes, my whole body thrumming with the old excitement of my teenage crush. Suddenly, I was sure I’d kept him too long, that he wanted to get on with the rest of his night.
“Here, take my card, so we can stay in touch,” I said.
“Stay in touch,” he said, teasing me, as he took hold of the other end of the card.
“Yeah, I’ll be in LA in January,” I said, making it up on the spot.
“You’ve got my number.”
I offered my hand. His grip was firm. We held on to each other a little too long, our gaze locked. It was almost enough to make me blush. As I turned and left the room, I was very aware of his eyes on me, tracing my hips. The chilled night air hit my feverish skin all at once. I walked home over the Mass Ave Bridge, singing his songs, ecstatic.
As I rang in 2004, my life was a constant up and down. Just as with my childhood survival technique where I’d focused on my dad’s small gestures of love, rather than his gaping parental deficiencies, I held on to the slightest affection from my kryptonite, Anthony: when he kissed me at a bar in front of friends; when, after the New Year’s Eve party at his house, his ex-girlfriend went home, and he and I ended up drunk in his bed together.
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