Group

by Christie Tate

My limbs felt loose and relaxed as we ran through the common ground of our mutual therapy experiences. I had none of my usual first-date stiffness, no impulse to hold any part of myself back. I didn’t have to: he saw Dr. Rosen.

  By the time I pulled up to Marnie’s house, I’d decided that the only thing Jeremy was missing in his life was the love of an emotionally available woman. By the time I’d found a sparkling water and a stuffed mushroom cap, I’d decided that would be me.

  “Come here, I want to show you something.” I led Jeremy upstairs to the nursery, where Marnie had hand-stenciled ducks on her daughter’s buttery-yellow walls. Without any shame, I opened each drawer to fawn over Landyn’s tiny diapers, impossibly minuscule socks, and a powder-pink sleep sack, soft as a snow owl.

  “Cute,” he said, when I held up a little bathrobe with an attached hood and bunny ears. Jeremy kept looking back toward the door like we were committing a crime. I offered him a baby cap to snuggle, and he stepped back. “Is this a prescription—to show me these clothes?” I shook my head and ran a cashmere sweater across my cheek. “Maybe we should head back to the party.” Jeremy stepped into the hall and waited for me to put Landyn’s clothes away.

  Downstairs, he made conversation with Pat, Marnie, and their suburban friends. My limbs remained loose as I drove him home after eleven.

  Whenever our conversation veered from Dr. Rosen, I noticed a few flags—not red exactly, but pinkish.

  “I’m a bit of a loner,” he said when I asked if he hung out with his group mates outside of sessions. I wondered if that might one day backfire on me. When I thought of the type of man I wanted to date, loner was nowhere on the list.

  He also mentioned that his car wasn’t working, and he couldn’t afford the spare part. Money trouble gave me a touch of heartburn—Carlos had told me that Jeremy’s breakup with his girlfriend had something to do with money he borrowed from her. I gripped the steering wheel and tried to stay loose. Would he resent my impending financial security? Was he anticapitalism? Was he, at the ripe age of thirty-six, still lost, professionally and financially? If so, how much did that matter to me?

  A little, but he was so cute in those glasses.

  “I don’t think I know much about your work,” I said, hoping a job description would ease the nub of tension at my neck.

  “I run the front office for an industrial janitorial company. A small operation on the west side.” The nub didn’t budge. I’d had the impression he was an IT manager for a big company downtown. I adjusted my grip on the steering wheel again.

  So we were different. Big deal. Lots of couples were famously different: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. James Carville and Mary Matalin. Homer and Marge. Maybe we wouldn’t make it to a silver anniversary celebration, but surely we could go on a second date.

  When I pulled up to his building at the end of the night, I took my right hand off the steering wheel and let it fall to my side.

  “There’s a Polish movie playing Monday night that’s getting rave reviews. Want to go?” I nodded, eager as a Yorkie. He gave me a not-entirely-chaste squeeze on my arm as he got out of the car.

  A second date! I pumped my fist in the air. As I turned my car around to head home, I banked the curb with a jolt that snapped my neck and knocked my water bottle out of the drink holder, but I barely felt it. My joy hugged the border of hysteria.

  * * *

  “Tell me more about this Jeremy,” Clare said the next night over dinner. She dropped her head into her open palm when I told her I gave him a tour of Landyn’s nursery. “Tater! You don’t show a man a nursery on your first date!”

  But I felt no shame. “Don’t worry. He sees Rosen. I don’t have to play games with him. I can be myself.” She cocked her head, skeptical.

  “This sounds really promising, Tater. This is your reward for joining that second group!”

  That night, I drew a line down the center of a piece of paper. No more haphazard romantic follies for me. I was in therapy now. I started with the “pro” column. He was undeniably intelligent. Who reads Thucydides for pleasure? He was sober, so he wouldn’t piss on me in the middle of the night. He had a cat, so he knew how to take care of something. The glasses, the smile, the rapt listening. I wrote it all down. Then I wrote the biggest pro of all: Sees Dr. Rosen.

  Dating a man who saw a therapist—any therapist—was ideal. Therapy made you more sensitive and self-aware. It gave you tools to navigate a relationship. Seeing a man who saw my therapist was a way to build a bulletproof relationship. After all, I trusted Dr. Rosen. Mostly. I knew his work. I was his work. Jeremy and I would have acres of common ground. We would never run out of things to say. Bonus: we’d have free couples counseling—we’d just see the therapist at different times and with other people.

  On our second date, we sat on lumpy seats in the crowded Music Box Theatre reading the subtitles of a Polish film about two sad people walking through a city park. Jeremy elbowed me when I crossed my legs. “The great group no-no,” he whispered, and we both laughed. He put his hand on top of mine and left it there until the end of the movie. Its warmth and heft felt like solid pleasure.

  On the walk back to his place, we huddled together as the wind whipped all around us. We told each other our hardest prescriptions. I trotted out my cocktease prescription—not a story I ever pictured telling on a second date. He told me he hadn’t done his hardest one yet. When I asked what it was, he looked away.

  After a few steps, he said, “Rosen says I should ask my ex-girlfriend to forgive the loan she made me.” He grimaced and looked down at his feet.

  His living room featured a brown couch and matching coffee table. He’d positioned his desk and computer by the window in his kitchen, and his bathroom, while not exactly reeking of bleach and free of stray hairs, struck me as reasonably clean. I was impressed by his silver kettle and an array of teas.

  A plump tabby with orange-and-white coloring purred at his feet. “This is Mr. Bourgeois.”

  “That’s his name?”

  He nodded and smiled.

  “Looking at your bookshelf, I shouldn’t be surprised.” Machiavelli, Sartre, Plato, Socrates, Heidegger, Kant. The lightest read was Saint Augustine.

  I slipped off my shoes and told him I hated my new group.

  “Why?” he asked, sitting next to me on the couch. His knee touched mine.

  “It’s so raw and intense in there. Everyone screaming and eating, then crying and hugging. And Marnie isn’t thrilled I’m there—”

  “Why do you think Rosen put you in there?”

  “Well.”

  “What?”

  “He thinks it will help me open up to a relationship.” I upended my teacup to hide how embarrassing it sounded.

  He took my hand. “I hated my second group too. Every second of it.”

  “Why’d you stay?”

  “I wanted to see what those feelings meant, where they came from.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Now here I am.” My heart lurched to the edge of my rib cage.

  He leaned toward me.

  “Is it okay if I kiss you?” he asked.

  I felt a welling in my chest, the novel sensation of safety inching toward desire. I nodded, and our lips met. I tasted chamomile tea, and when he put his hand on my neck, I leaned into him and the chance he offered. I hadn’t really tasted a man’s lips in almost two years—with Andrew I was too busy dissociating to feel anything, and in the parking lot with Xavier all I could taste was my own neediness. Now, with Jeremy pressing his lips and tongue against mine, his goatee tickling my upper lip, I felt my libido flicker a few times and then ignite. The pressure between my legs was a mix of pleasure and pain, desire and ache, satisfaction and hunger. I was coming to life.

  This is what I’d been waiting for.

  18

  “No secrets,” Dr. Rosen advised when I showed up in group with the epic news that I’d been on two dates with Jeremy. “Anything that happens between you and Jeremy—emotionally, ro
mantically, sexually—bring it to both of your groups.”

  “Also financially,” Carlos said, aware as he was of Jeremy’s past issues.

  Quick math: my two groups plus Jeremy’s two equaled approximately twenty people who would know when we went dutch on dinner, gave each other house keys, or had sex during my period. I balked and held up my hands. “Whoa. Hold up. Won’t weekly play-by-plays to every-goddamn-person take the zing out of the relationship.”

  “My suggestion is no secrets,” Dr. Rosen repeated.

  “Your suggestion sucks.”

  “How well has it worked to do it your way?”

  * * *

  On our third date, Jeremy and I babysat Marnie’s daughter, Landyn, for a few hours so she and Pat could go out for an anniversary dinner. As the baby slept in my arms, Jeremy peeked in the cabinets, stared at Clare’s dishes, and stood on the balcony admiring the view.

  After Marnie and Pat retrieved Landyn, I suggested to Jeremy that we join Clare and Steven at a bar on Belmont for some live music. When he agreed, I was dumbstruck. Could it really be this easy? All I had to do was ask?

  “Do you want to pack a bag so you can stay over?” he asked.

  I couldn’t hide my giddiness. I raced around the room stuffing contact lens solution and a fresh sweater into a bag.

  The bar was not exactly Jeremy’s scene—a cavern full of fraternity boys and aging Cubs fans sloshing drinks out of plastic cups. After the first set, Jeremy whispered that he was ready to go. My whole body trilled. I drove through red lights and rolled through stop signs. I couldn’t wait to press my body against his.

  I sat on his bed in the dark while he fed Mr. Bourgeois. When he sat next to me, I leaned into him. He pressed his lips against mine. “Is that okay?” he whispered. I nodded and pulled him toward me. I pressed my body against his, and he held me tight as he kissed me, harder and deeper.

  He pushed me off gently and rolled onto his back. “I’m not ready for sex,” he said. A simple admission—five words I’d never heard anyone, including myself, say. Was it a prescription?

  “It’s okay.” And it was. What I wanted was a chance to be close to someone. It didn’t have to be sex, not tonight.

  As soon as he said sex was off the table, my body relaxed further into him, the bed, the moment. For tonight, kissing would be where it began and ended. He rolled toward me and held me close—chest to chest, belly to belly, thigh to thigh.

  “Maybe we could just sleep,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  We settled into each other, our breathing deepened.

  “Do you always sleep with this many clothes on?” he whispered into my neck.

  I still had on my jeans and T-shirt. The only article I’d removed was a light wool sweater.

  “Yes.” I actually always slept in my bra. I had since ninth grade when my breasts exploded from buds to D’s. I liked sleeping with my breasts bound, tucked into the underwire and lace. With past boyfriends, I would slip out of my bra when we were having sex, but when it was time to sleep, I put it back on. I’d never been with a man who noticed, or who was willing to ask me about it.

  The next morning, shards of light sliced through the edge of Jeremy’s blackout curtains, and Mr. Bourgeois sat on the edge of the bed considering me. I padded into the living room and found Jeremy at the little table in his darkened kitchen, typing on his computer.

  “Hey.” I stepped into the foot of space between the fridge and the metal shelves he used as a pantry. I crossed my arms and hugged myself.

  An awkward silence gathered between us. I cleared my throat. “What are your plans for the day?” Would we brunch and walk down the street swaddled in the gauzy intimacy of the night before? Would we go back to bed?

  He turned most of his body back to the computer. I crossed my right leg over my left.

  “Catching up on stuff. AA meeting tonight. What about you?”

  “Some reading for my cyber law class. Clare and I might see an early movie.” I paused. Was I supposed to invite him? He looked at the computer screen, where a grid of pound signs, dots, and percentage symbols lit up a black background. “What’s that?”

  “It’s an ASCII video game called NetHack.” He blushed and looked at his feet. “It’s a bit of a preoccupation.”

  Video game? Preoccupation?

  “No judgment here.” I smiled at him. But a frisson of warning shot through me. A grown-ass man sitting in a darkened room playing a video game? The claustrophobic image made my throat constrict.

  “You say that now. But I literally might play this all day—” His green eyes were not filled with levity, but something shadowy I recognized. Shame.

  “If it brings you joy, what’s the harm?” My voice was shrill with false cheer. His face relaxed, but then I hugged myself tighter, aware of an urge to flee. “I think I’ll get going soon.”

  When I pulled into my parking spot at home, I dialed Rory’s number.

  “I’m not sure about him,” I said.

  “Honey, he just got out of a relationship. Bring it all to group.”

  On Tuesday morning, Patrice, Rory, Marty, Ed, and Dr. Rosen cheered Jeremy for being explicit about his sexual boundaries. When I was with Jeremy, I’d felt comforted by his admission that he wasn’t ready for sex, but now their cheers felt infantilizing—they were adults entitled to regular hot sex, and we were children who were stuck with kissing and cuddling. I hated their gaiety, and I hated myself for agreeing to disclose everything to my groups.

  There were no pep rallies in the afternoon group. Marnie thought his sexual reticence signaled that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. “I don’t like it,” she said, shaking her head. Nan and Emily wondered why he didn’t offer me breakfast. Mary wondered why he didn’t have a proper pantry. I shrugged my shoulders and swallowed lump after lump of shame.

  “Dr. Rosen, morning group loves everything about this guy. Afternoon group sees nothing but red flags. Which is it?” The sharpness of the afternoon group’s critique scared me.

  “The two groups reflect your own internal conflict. The split’s in you—you don’t know if Jeremy’s pacing is a gift or if you are going to starve in this relationship. If he’s a videogame addict or an introvert who likes computers.”

  “How do I find out which is true?”

  “Keep showing up.”

  “Where?”

  “Everywhere.”

  * * *

  Dutifully, I reported to both groups with updates every session. All ten of my group members knew I paid for most of our meals with money I saved over the summer. That I drove us everywhere because his truck was still out of commission. That we mostly hung out at his place. They learned that the first time he touched my breasts, I shuddered with a pleasure that bordered on nausea—a cake too rich, a sunset too vibrant. “Is this okay?” Jeremy asked whenever he touched my body in a new way—a kiss on my belly, a hand on my upper thigh. My morning group loved his commitment to consent, but my afternoon group pronounced it “kinda lame.”

  As it happened, our slow sexual progress was indeed Dr. Rosen’s doing. One night, while we were making out on his bed, Jeremy admitted that Dr. Rosen warned him not to rush. “He said I should take it slow or I would end up hating you like I hated my ex.” Apparently, their relationship combusted not only because of unresolved financial conflicts, but also because the sexual progress of the relationship outpaced his emotional readiness.

  I wrapped a blanket around my body. I felt exposed—I was the one who wanted more physically. It felt like rejection and made me want to hide my face from him, from Dr. Rosen, and from the twenty-odd people who knew I wanted to have sex with him.

  A poll on the radio revealed that most couples go “all the way” by the third date. When I complained in my morning group about falling way behind the national norm, Dr. Rosen insisted that we weren’t ready. I sensed a conflict of interest—because, really, it was Jeremy who wasn’t ready. Dr. Rosen held his ground.
/>   “What’s your rush?” he asked.

  “I’ve endured a lifetime of failed relationships and sexual repression.”

  “Then what’s a little more time?”

  Arguing with Dr. Rosen wouldn’t work. I had to adjust my strategy if I wanted him to cosign intercourse. A few minutes later, I leaned toward Dr. Rosen and said in my most rational voice, “Can we talk about Jeremy? He’s hiding out in video games. You should consider giving him a prescription to spend some time with his emotionally and sexually available girlfriend.”

  Cough Cough. Cough. Dr. Rosen’s theatrical throat-clear. Translation: You’re full of shit. I ignored it.

  “He exhibits classic signs of avoidance. He’s afraid of intimacy—”

  More coughing. Then a question: “And what about you, Mamaleh?”

  “Me? I’m totally available.” I stretched my arms out wide. Nothing to hide here. The whole room laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Serious question?” Dr. Rosen said. I nodded. “How many bras are you wearing?”

  “Busted,” Carlos said under his breath.

  Confused, I looked at my shoulder, where three bra straps crisscrossed under my tank top. I’d run before group, and my chest was a double D. A single sports bra didn’t keep my girls in place, so I wore two, sometimes three.

  “Do you hate your breasts?” Dr. Rosen asked.

  Of course I hated my breasts—they were bags of fat hanging on my clavicle. I associated them with being ungainly, not being sexual. And there was something scary about them—how important they were to other people (men) and how unwieldy they were. All my life I’d coveted a flat chest. Flat like the earth after a glacier scrapes by. Flat like a ballerina’s, a model’s, a little girl’s.

  “I don’t love them.”

  “You’re trying to make them small—”

  “I was exercising, not trying to win a Playboy bunny contest.”

  “Do you think that hating your breasts might interfere with your sexual relationship?”