Falling in Love

by Stephen Bradlee

  The next morning, Claire got up with me and made coffee. She went out for Danishes while I showered. I was touched. Claire came uptown for lunch and we devoured deli sandwiches at my pocket park refreshed by the adjoining waterfall’s aerated breeze. After lunch, I gave her a long passionate kiss. “I love you,” I said before feeling foolish. Shouldn’t the first ‘I love you’ come at some incredibly romantic moment, maybe while making love? Not in the middle of some street. But that was when I had said it.

  Claire understood. Flashing her dazzling smile, she whispered, “I love you, too.” We both vowed to spend all afternoon missing each other.

  Claire promised to call the police if Peter showed up at the Chez Passy. After hours of worrying about her, Claire cheerfully strolled in at midnight. Peter was no where to be seen.

  Since all the second-shift jobs seemed to be in word processing centers instead of secretarial, during a long lunch on Tuesday, I took two word processing tests and failed both. I vowed to try to stay late at work every night in an attempt to increase my typing speed and accuracy.

  That afternoon, I called home twice to find the line busy. I suspected why. When I finally got Claire on the line she admitted that she had been talking to Peter.

  “I thought you weren’t speaking to him.”

  “I was just giving him advice about life, which he sorely needs.”

  When I mentioned that I had failed the word processing tests, Claire became upset, angry that we might only be together on weekends.

  As a surprise, I decided to pick her up from work. Instead of being delighted, Claire accused me of checking to see if Peter was around. On the way home, we had our first fight in D’Agostino’s over, of all things, toothpaste. Claire had been using my toothpaste and admitted she didn’t like it. She wanted me to try her brand. I suggested that we each just use our own brands. Claire acquiesced, bought her brand and I thought the discussion was over. As we got ready for bed, she wondered, “Why won’t you just try it?”

  I tried it. Then I said, “Okay, now can I go back to my own toothpaste?” Claire huffed and strode into the bedroom. “What is going on here, Claire?” I asked.

  “I think you’re being childish,” she snapped.

  “Childish? What is this about? I can’t believe it is about fucking toothpaste.”

  Instead of answering, Claire got into bed and faced away from me so she could pout. I tried to reach out to her but she wouldn’t respond. Finally, I just turned around and we lay there, staring at opposite walls, listening to each other breaths for what seemed like hours.

  The next morning, Claire faked being asleep. But just as I was about to leave, she ran over and kissed me, saying, “I’m sorry about last night. I adore you.”

  “Touché.” I almost joked about my fresh breath but not even I was stupid enough to think that one would work.

  That afternoon Claire was again on the phone when I called. When she finally answered, she shrugged it off as a “friend from work.”

  That night when she wasn’t home by midnight, I called her cell phone twice and she didn’t pick up. I panicked, contemplated calling the police and paced the apartment. She came in at 2 a.m., reeking of alcohol and saying, “I just went out for a couple of drinks with some friends from work.” When I mentioned that she hadn’t returned my calls, she replied that her cell phone battery was dead.

  “You didn’t bother to call me? You didn’t think I’d be worried?” I shrieked.

  “Christ, it was just a couple of drinks! What’s wrong with you?”

  “I was just worried,” I replied, trying to keep calm. Claire’s breath revealed more than a couple of drinks but after the previous night’s toothpaste encounter, I didn’t want another senseless fight and Claire seemed too drunk for any rational conversation.

  The next morning, Claire snored the entire time I was getting ready for work. That afternoon, after the usual busy signals, she claimed she had been talking to Katherine.

  “Does she approve of us yet?” I asked lightly, trying to make a joke of it.

  “We didn’t talk about us,” she replied.

  Then what were you talking about, Claire? I didn’t ask.

  That night, Claire called to say that she was again going out with friends after work and I dreaded another drunken entrance. Around two, Claire’s key in the lock awoke me from a restless sleep. She entered the room quietly but I was grateful that she didn’t again smell like a bar.

  “Thanks for calling,” I mentioned.

  “It’s okay.” In bed, she turned away from me. I reached over and ran my hand down her arm, just to make some kind of connection. “I’m really tired,” she said.

  Since I had to be up at seven, I really only wanted a hug. But I was grateful that we didn’t have a fight. The next day was finally Friday. I was already getting excited about the weekend and hoped that our petty arguments were behind us. We still didn’t know if we were brave enough to go to Gregory’s luncheon on Saturday but Claire did say she wanted to see Gregory’s apartment because Katherine had said it was incredible. I wanted to spend all weekend making love, holding hands and cuddling together on the sofa while watching movies. Just being, well, in love.

  I called her twice during the day but she didn’t answer and didn’t return my messages, which seemed odd to me. I rushed home after work, hoping to see her still in bed waiting for me. But the apartment was eerily empty. I saw Claire’s key on the coffee table and felt a chill. The answering machine was flashing menacingly but I didn’t have the courage to press Play. I went into the bedroom and opened the closet. Claire’s side was bare. She had moved out.

  Sick to my stomach, I paced around the apartment. I finally clicked the answering machine to hear Claire’s voice. “Sherry, I know we said no men forever but I’m going back to Peter. He’s agreed to go into AA and I’m going to help him with his anger management. I’m really sorry. Bye.” Click.

  I slumped onto the sofa. I wanted to phone Claire to call her a “Bitch” and a “Chicken” for not telling me to my face. Instead, I cried. Of all the breakups that I had endured with men, this one felt worse. Somehow, I thought I had finally had a chance to find a real love. Now it was crushed.

  I couldn’t go to group. I didn’t think that Claire would have the courage to show up but I didn’t care. I couldn’t face anyone. I promised myself that I wouldn’t go to a bar. I couldn’t go from that glorious past weekend to waking up next to a nameless guy. But I also couldn’t just sit there.

  In a liquor store on Greenwich, I bought a fifth of tequila, margarita mix and lime juice. I already had salt. I dumped them and two trays of ice into a large pitcher. Then I plopped on the sofa and began drinking myself into oblivion. I wanted to be flat on my back, alone, as soon as possible.

  After the first few drinks life got pretty hazy. So much that I thought I was hallucinating. When I finally staggered into the bedroom, I expected Robie to break for the sofa, as always. But he just lay there.

  “Wrong night to hang around, Guy!”

  I flung the covers up, collapsed on the bed and curled up crying while wishing I were dead. Then the hallucinations started again. Someone seemed to be scratching my cheek with sandpaper. What the fuck! Then I saw this furry blur atop of me. Robie was licking the tears off my face! Impossible, I thought. I stroked him. Why not? It was just a fucking dream. He arched his back and began purring. I held him to my chest, aching for tenderness. He just lay on my chest, purring and occasionally licking my cheeks. I held him tighter, ready for him to run off but he just lay there purring and staring at me. Then finally, gratefully, I passed out. I awoke a few hours later feeling like hell. Robie lay beside me curled up against my hip. Just to be sure, I ran my hand over his back. He looked up at me and then went back to sleep.

  A sunlit day woke me near noon. Robie was gone. My head was beyond splitting. It felt fractured. I called Elaine. She was about to leave for Gregory’s birthday party. I frantically cleaned myself up, threw on
some clothes and rushed up to Elaine’s. In the cab on the way to Gregory’s, I implored her to explain what the hell had happened with Claire.

  “I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out what is going on in my own head, not all that successfully, I might add,” she confided. “So I can’t really presume to know what is in Claire’s head but it sounds like the toothpaste incident was just her trying to push you away before you left her on your own.”

  “But I didn’t want to leave her! She left me! And why go back to that asshole who could kill her.”

  Elaine shook her head in dismay. “Probably the same old same old. Hoping that if she can somehow save him, she will get his love.” I stared at her in shock. Elaine added, “Sherry, intellectually, Claire knows it is all bullshit but emotionally she wants it to be true. That’s why she’s messed up. Beside, you are probably thinking that you want to run to her and save her by giving her the love she needs?” I nodded slightly, embarrassed. Elaine smiled, “That’s why you’re messed up, too.”

  Gregory lived on Park Avenue in an imposing building with brass-and-glass doors and a spiffily-dressed doorman who opened the cab’s door.

  “This is it?” I asked Elaine. I couldn’t believe that Gregory had moved from my little apartment into this palace, and was worried that he might one day have to move back again.

  “This is it,” Elaine replied, before returning to Claire. “In the end, both you and Claire have to learn to love yourselves first before you can try loving someone else.”

  I followed Elaine into the imposing lobby. Off to the side sparkled a lovely garden courtyard with stone benches and crisply-cut grass mixed with splashes of brightly-colored flowers. “Loving Claire was easier,” I said softly. “She was new and special. I have been living with, and hating, myself for a very long time.”

  Elaine entered the shiny brass and mirror elevator with a weary voice. “I know.”

  Gregory’s duplex apartment had an ornate sweeping staircase between the floors lined with paintings of modern artists. Guests mingled around sculptures and antiques. But the centerpiece was, of course, Gregory. He was decked out in designer shoes that looked almost like high heels, jeans, a plain but expensive-looking T-shirt, an outrageously-colored jacket and a fabulous scarf thrown so casually over his shoulder that it made the entire outfit. He flew over to us. “I’m sooooo happy you’ve come,” he said, almost kissing us both at once. Then he hugged me tightly and whispered, “Claire doesn’t deserve you, Darling. And you will live, trust me.” Then he spun around, saying, “Get yourselves a drink. I have to attend to a kitchen crisis.” Gregory flew toward a door near the staircase before swinging around. “And if you’re looking for Skip, well—”

  “—he had an emergency,” offered Elaine.

  “But, of course.” Then he disappeared.

  “What does his lover do?” I asked Elaine, eying the sumptuous surroundings. I knew that Gregory managed an East Side Art Gallery but I couldn’t see how he could afford such luxury.

  “He’s a doctor in family practice.”

  “Some practice.”

  We wandered over to a huge crystal bowl brimming with punch. We each sampled a crystal cup’s worth. Although I knew it would be non-alcoholic I was quickly realizing that addicts substituted sugar for booze. I instantly felt both a sugar high and my teeth decaying.

  About everyone at the party seemed to be from group and they had all heard about Claire and me. I got a lot of hugs, which only made me feel even lonelier. What was supposed to be our coming out party was quickly becoming a condolences party and I craved to slip away. I ended up in a gallery between a Picasso and a Chagall, both originals. I didn’t know much about art but I knew they had to cost some serious cash. “Are these on loan from the gallery,” I wondered aloud, “or did Gregory just steal them?”

  A familiar laugh came up behind us. “Neither, Darling,” Gregory assured me. “Like this apartment, they were presents to myself when I was undisowned.”

  “Undisowned?” I had no clue what that meant.

  Gregory told me that he had grown up in Hancock Park and that his wealthy parents, being pillars of Los Angeles society, usually went out every evening. His father didn’t believe in nannies and the maid didn’t believe in babysitting so as soon as she retreated to her apartment above the garage Gregory was left abandoned inside a huge mansion, terrified of being alone. On the night of his tenth birthday, he took a taxi to Hollywood and cruised Santa Monica Boulevard.

  “I did that about every night until I was thirteen,” he explained. “Until my mother took me to the doctor for a sore throat and it turned out to be the clap. The following week, my father shipped me off to a military academy ‘to make a man out of me.’ Brilliant concept that homophobic fathers have,” he chuckled. “When they learn that their sons are gay, they immediately send them to an all-boys school.” Gregory smiled wistfully. “A wonderful concept, really.”

  Gregory looked at the Picasso. His smile vanished and his voice was barely a whisper. “From then on, my father was wracked with guilt and fear. Guilt at having borne a faggot son and constantly fearing that he would open the Times to see a picture of me on a street corner wearing a dress. He never said a sentence to me that didn’t include the word, deviant. ‘My deviant lifestyle.’ ‘My deviant friends.’ ‘His deviant son.’”

  Gregory’s sipped his punch. “He disowned me and I ended up back in Hollywood turning tricks to feed my various habits. I was probably one day away from the morgue when my mother brokered a deal. Move out of LA, don’t embarrass the family and I would get a monthly allowance. I did try, I suppose, but when you are raging alcoholic and a drug-addicted sex addict it is hard to keep out of jail and out the papers. Dear old Dad managed to suppress most of my finer antics and, finally, I did manage to get sober. And even after twelve years, my father and I finally agreed on one thing—that within one second, I could still drop back down into that black hole.”

  Gregory knocked on a wooden end table. “Two years ago, he died and, amazingly, he left me an insanely huge inheritance, with, of course, one slight condition.”

  He gestured sweepingly around the apartment and proclaimed grandly, “All that you see is mine,” and then added softly, “Until one arrest. Even for jaywalking. Then it all goes to the Cancer Fund.”

  Although Gregory graciously and wittily played tour guide leading us around his awesome apartment, he must have known how I felt. His tour ended at the foyer where he said, “Thanks for coming.” He embraced me warmly and I looked around for Elaine. But Gregory had opened the large mahogany door. “I’ll tell everyone,” he said. “Call me later, okay?”

  I walked all the way home, basically killing time. I avoided returning to the same liquor store, a fairly easy task in New York, and after a brief but vague conversation with the counter clerk I walked out with a bagful of Crown Royal, some Italian sweet vermouth and a small jar of maraschino cherries. The clerk had promised that I would pass out before I ever made it to four Manhattans. He was right. The last thing I remembered was Robie curling up against my thigh.

  But the result was another heavyweight hangover and I spent most of Sunday in Central Park trying to air out my head. I walked around freely as I had realized that the women’s soccer games I wanted to avoid were only on Saturdays.

  I didn’t feel up to another night of lying dead drunk beside Robie but I also dreaded waking up beside some guy. So on the way home I stopped by Diva for one drink. Right.

  I wasn’t sure if I was really attracted to women or had just been attracted to Claire and the idea of some kind of “virgin” love. But I did enjoy the prospect of not having to deal with the whole man-woman communication problem. I had loved that Claire usually seemed to know what I was thinking and feeling and I didn’t have to explain myself, that I was with someone who understood me as a woman instead of being with some guy who was trying to figure out women in general and me in particular.

  I sat at the far end
of the bar and ordered the house special. Although it seemed to contain an inordinate amount of booze, it didn’t fill the emptiness inside of me so I ventured a second one. Someone settled on the stool beside me and chirped “Hi” like she knew me. In the mirror behind the bar bottles I noticed a vaguely familiar-looking blonde before realizing that she was one of the pool players the first night I was with Claire. I wasn’t really in a conversational mood but managed a “Hi.”

  She smiled at me in the mirror and appeared to have no problem reading my mood. “Fallen out of love lately?”

  “I didn’t. She did.”

  “I’m in the same boat,” the Blonde confided. “What say we do a little drowning?”

  I raised my glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

  I didn’t remember too much after that until I awoke nude in an unfamiliar bedroom and glanced at an alarm clock that read: 10:45. Fuck! I had blown another job. I quickly called my temp agency supervisor and hoped that my crushing hangover would make my wavering voice sound sickly. I breathlessly declared that I had vomited from flu all night and had tried to remain awake until eight-thirty a.m. so I could call her and explain my inability to work that day but that I had finally fallen asleep around seven and had just woken up.

  She didn’t believe a word. In a very chilly voice, she reminded me that the all-night answering service allowed me to call in the moment I knew that I could not make my assignment. I figured she probably even smelled my breath over the phone.

  I hunted for my clothes and dressed raggedly while trying futilely to recall the Blonde’s name. While the nameless men had occasionally left notes thanking me for a wonderful night, the Blonde’s pen had been silent. Maybe I was destined to go down in history as a lousy lesbian lay. Maybe next time I should bring Artie. On a table by the sofa was a phone bill for Barbara McManus. “Bye, Barbara,” I whispered and ventured out into a fierce morning sunlight with a head that throbbed rhythmically all the way back to my apartment.