Group

by Christie Tate

  “I’m going to masturbate before bed. You’re welcome to join me.” Jeremy slipped off his boxer shorts, and his busy elbow tapped my forearm with every stroke.

  “Want me to do that?” I whispered, a strand of my desire shaking loose.

  “I’ve got it.”

  I rested my hand on his shoulder, grateful he let me keep it there.

  * * *

  After Italy, I started working the long hours of a first-year associate at a big law firm, never leaving the office at night before seven. Suddenly I had a secretary, an expense account, and an office with a window overlooking the Chicago River. During my sixth week of work, I pulled my first all-nighter. My main task as a young lawyer was to review financial documents ten hours a day for a client whose beverages I grew up drinking. Skadden also sent me to the client’s headquarters to interview the bigwigs who set up their sales strategy so we could defend them to the SEC. After a long day of back-to-back meetings with the all-male-except-me team and a long dinner, I would collapse on a hotel bed and call Jeremy, who was home playing his NetHack.

  “You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you,” Jeremy would say.

  While I was off learning how to be a Skadden lawyer, Jeremy slipped into a depression. He gained weight, stopped shaving, skipped AA meetings, and sat at his computer playing his game most of the hours he wasn’t at work. Mr. Bourgeois puked up a hairball that languished in the middle of his living room for a week. The bathtub grew furry with hair and scum. When I spent the night over there, I held my pee as long as I could. I could almost make it eighteen hours. And we were always at his place these days. I understood he was unable to expend the energy to come all the way to my house.

  In my spare time, I tried to pull him out of it by buying him groceries and suggesting he hit a meeting or call his sponsor. In group, I begged Dr. Rosen to help him. “Can’t you see he’s depressed?” Dr. Rosen’s answer was always the same: “What are you feeling?”

  The feedback from both of my groups was unanimous: “Concentrate on your new career.”

  “Focus on your new Skadden life. Maybe your tastes will change,” Dr. Rosen said. It sounded like an offhand comment. My tastes?

  I craved action. My boyfriend was not going to mentally deteriorate, or God forbid, relapse on alcohol, on my watch. I bought him a new comforter—a masculine plaid—took a bottle of bleach to the bathroom, and pulled globs of God knows what out of the drain. I scrapped cat puke out of the rug. I stocked his fridge with fresh fruit and lean proteins, his pantry with low-sugar cereals.

  In my frenzy, I remained deaf to the one need he had expressed—to be left alone. Today, I have compassion for him and the illness that robbed him of joy and energy. I also have compassion for myself as his ex-girlfriend who thought she could cure his malaise with new linens and fresh pineapple. At the time, all I could manage was scrambling harder to “fix” him by fashioning him into the man I wanted him to be.

  One night during this dark period, under the stiffness of Jeremy’s new plaid comforter, I shimmied down to give him a blow job. I’d been working as a lawyer for six months. My standard of living had shifted from law student to Big Firm attorney. I occasionally let myself shop at Whole Foods. I bought a full-price skirt at J.Crew. My savings account swelled to two grand. During the daylight hours, I squared my shoulders and stood like a woman worthy of the thick white business cards Skadden printed with my name on them.

  At night, I slumped and ached.

  The blow job was my idea. An attempt to bridge the wide gulf between me and Jeremy. As my head bobbed between his sweaty thighs, I had a single thought: I don’t want to be doing this. I violated myself by forcing the blow job and violated him by feigning desire and using oral sex to get him to pay attention to me and arrest his clinical depression. Jeremy hadn’t showered in days—his body smelled sour with neglect and so many days’ residue. I breathed out of my mouth, trying to ignore the stench of his body and the swells of my own disgust.

  The following Tuesday morning I didn’t mention the blow job because I was ashamed. Jeremy’s unwashed body felt like something I should protect, even though Dr. Rosen advised me all along to bring everything to group. I was also ashamed that I forced a blow job I hadn’t enjoyed. My relationship was a farce, and I continued to act dishonestly and against my own interest and pleasure. By the afternoon, everything I wasn’t saying about my relationship was a loaded gun pointed at my throat. During a lull in the conversation, I spoke up.

  “I don’t want to suck dirty dick.”

  Everyone turned toward me.

  “What did you just say?” Marnie said.

  Nan’s eyes grew wide as I described the blow job. “Hell no,” she whispered.

  When I finally looked at Dr. Rosen, I saw compassion in his eyes. “You don’t have to suck dirty dick,” he said.

  My eyes teared up. He said it again very slowly. You. Don’t. Have. To. Suck. Dirty. Dick. Then added: ever again. I nodded.

  “I’m done,” I said. My spine straightened in the truth of those two words.

  Dr. Rosen held his arms out straight in front of him, palms turned up. Then he slowly turned his palms over. “This is how you let go.”

  I wasn’t following. It looked like tai chi. My group mates put words to the gesture.

  “Stop calling him.”

  “Stop trekking to that shithole apartment after work.”

  “Stop paying for everything.”

  If I just stopped—the chasing, planning, schlepping, conniving, cajoling, cleaning, shopping, pining, buying, and sucking—it would all be over. On his own, Jeremy wasn’t going to pop over to my house. He wasn’t going to make a dinner reservation or get tickets to see Wilco at the Riviera. If I let go, there would be nothing. I would be truly alone, but I would be free.

  “So if I let go—” I said, grabbing Dr. Rosen’s hairy forearm with both hands. I leaned toward him until our faces were less than a foot apart. I wanted him to finish the sentence. Whatever he said, I was going to hold him to it.

  “You’re going to find out what a real relationship feels like.”

  23

  “Can you let yourself have an orgasm with him?”

  Dr. Rosen and the morning group were waiting for an answer from me. I was three months out of my relationship with Jeremy and two weeks into a flirtatious fling with a Skadden intern who was in pursuit of a full-time job offer.

  “Aren’t there laws against this?” I asked. “I’m not supposed to bed the job aspirants.”

  “You’re the lawyer,” Nan said.

  “I don’t do sexual harassment.”

  “Apparently you do.”

  I’d met “the Intern” at a dinner the firm hosted at Japonais. Over a steady stream of raw tuna and unagi, I let him compliment my eyes and insinuate that his sexual prowess would blow my fucking mind. He was such a boy—cocky, loose-limbed, and unabashedly sexual in his designer jeans and hipster Adidas tennis shoes. He was six years younger than I was, but it felt like more. He grew up driving his dad’s brand-new Lexus SUV and taking SAT prep classes. He’d never worked a full-time job. I accepted his offer to walk me home from the restaurant, thinking that a wiry thing like him would never be able to batter through the invisible fence that kept sexually alive men away from me. But he sailed over the fence, and in one smooth moment when he pressed his lips to mine under a busted streetlamp on Clark Street, I opened my mouth and received him. As his lips moved softly against mine, there was a zing between my legs, and my appetite for anything in the world other than his lips on mine vaporized in an instant.

  The next day he tracked down my personal e-mail address. That was some kiss, he wrote. I didn’t tell him I’d stayed awake all night thinking about it. I didn’t tell him that every one of my limbs was thrumming with activity—still, after fifteen hours. I didn’t tell him that I’d skipped breakfast and didn’t have lunch until almost three because I was feasting on the memory of that kiss. What I told him was: I’ve
had better. A delicious lie that drove him to promise me that he would be the best I ever had. Prove it, I demanded.

  Dr. Rosen was impervious to sexual harassment laws. “So? Will you let yourself have an orgasm with him?”

  Yes, I desperately wanted to bed the Intern and let him make good on all his promises. I wanted him to lick my honey until the sun rose over Chicago. But I also wanted a real relationship, a go-to-Costco-on-Sunday type of thing. And this boy-child didn’t seem the type to appreciate a woman in her sweats, face dotted with zit cream after a sixteen-hour workday. In his third e-mail, he confessed to being both bi-curious and recently snorting cocaine in Miami.

  “Nothing on his résumé screams ‘suitable lifetime partner for a woman in recovery.’ ”

  “You could fuck him and find out,” Dr. Rosen said.

  Toto, we are not in Catholic school anymore.

  * * *

  Our first date was on a Monday night, a few days after he accepted his offer from Skadden, so I was no longer in violation of harassment laws. He had classes all day Monday, so he pulled up to my office in his shiny black Lexus after his constitutional law seminar. He opened my door like a valet. The car was spotless—shiny black leather, clean cup holders, and a sound system that lit up the dashboard.

  “My usual move is to take girls to Jane’s in Bucktown and then to a neighborhood bar, but you’re getting the deluxe treatment.” His smile was sly. He’d already put more thought into this date than any man had ever put into planning time with me.

  He drove to a bistro on Grand Street. I’d written him off as a smart-ass player, which he most definitely was, but underneath his relentless sexual swagger, he displayed a fascination with legal ethics and the contours of civil liberties. His face softened with genuine tenderness when he talked about holding his baby niece for the first time. He lost points for having voted for George Bush, but earned a few back when he mentioned his therapist.

  “It’s not Dr. Jonathan Rosen, is it?” He shook his head. Thank God.

  By the end of the pumpkin soup course, I was ready to go full Luther Vandross with him. He brushed my calf with his foot, and I felt that heat between my legs again. As I sliced through my sea bass with the edge of my fork, I had only one thought: Oh my God, I’m having sex tonight.

  When the check came, he pulled out his wallet and slipped a black American Express in the pocket of the leather folder. He scribbled a figure for a tip, signed his name with an illegible flourish, and stood up. “Let’s get out of here.” He held out his hand and I grabbed it. His suggestive smile told me that he had no intention of playing video games all night.

  On the way back to his place, he asked me questions about Texas, as if it was an exotic region in outer space.

  “It’s flat, hot, and conservative.”

  “Any Jews there?”

  “A few. My ballet teacher was a French Jew. Why?”

  “We Jews are always thinking about our relative numbers.” This was the first I’d heard of the Intern’s religion. I could picture you-know-who’s self-satisfied smile when he realized he’d instructed me to have an orgasm with a Jewish man. Mamaleh, I’m so proud of you.

  As the elevator doors in his lobby closed on us, the Intern hooked his fingers into my belt loops and pulled me close. He smelled like clean laundry and something spicy, like cinnamon. He kissed me like he was starving for me, and I matched his intensity when I kissed him back. When his hands cupped my breasts, I groaned with pleasure through my one bra.

  I felt so free—like I could feel the air molecules dancing between us, celebrating my liberation. I slipped my hand under his shirt, and he moved closer to me. It felt like magic—a man moving closer to me, a man staying awake for me, a man hungry for me.

  “You like that?” he whispered. Each time he touched me another layer melted away. He bit my lip playfully, and it was good-bye to the nuns who said French kissing was a sin because it mirrored the sex act. He touched the small of my back, and the grip of my mother’s edict to save sex for marriage released its hold on my body. He held my face as he kissed me and washed away the stain of my relationship with Jeremy—the hairballs in the drain, the bad blow job, and the constant grinding of my flesh against the stone of his isolation.

  When the doors opened with a ping, I tried to pull away, but he held me close. “Don’t we need to get off?” I said. He flicked his tongue in my ear and whispered, “Oh, we’re definitely going to do that.”

  We raced down the hall, him ahead of me, reaching back for my hand. Who was this guy who wanted to freebase pleasure and take me with him?

  We barely made it to his apartment door before he had unhooked my bra. I’d never been kissed that deeply. Parts of me that had never stirred in the presence of someone else sprung to life. This, this, this, my body sang with pleasure. More, more, more.

  He led me to his small, neat bedroom. The light was off, but I could make out a plain gray comforter on the bed, and some law books on the shelf next to a small clock with glowing red numbers. I opened my arms wide and belly-flopped onto his soft, clean bed.

  There was nothing between us—no video games, no mental illness, no therapists. He reached for a condom and pulled off his pants. His forehead rested on mine, and I looked into his open, unafraid eyes. I pressed against him and shuddered into my prescription.

  When I opened my eyes, his smirk offered a single message: I told you I was good at this. The waves of pleasure rose from between my legs and crested through my entire body. And then, I burst into tears.

  “I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m not sad.” I tried to stuff the sobs back into my treacherous heart. The Intern kissed the tears as they slid down my cheeks. He asked what was wrong.

  “You’re just so—”

  He raised his eyebrows and leaned closer, kissing my neck, chasing the tears that escaped. “What?”

  “Clean.” Tears continued to stream down my hot cheeks. “Oh my God,” I whispered, covering my face with both hands.

  “It’s kind of hot, actually.” He lifted my chin and kissed me on the lips. “What’s your therapist going to say?”

  * * *

  “I did it, and then I cried.” My afternoon group was rapt. I’d slept through my morning group for the first time in my therapeutic history. Finally. I’d waited three years to be too busy having sex to attend group.

  Nan was incredulous. “What did that little white boy do to you?”

  Dr. Rosen shook his head, his hands at his temples. “You let him pleasure you, and then you showed him all the feelings you had about it. Do you understand how intimate that was?” He gazed at me with amazement.

  “I want to do it again.”

  “When’s your next date?”

  “Next week.” Thumbs-up from the Good Doctor. “He’s Jewish, by the way.” Exactly as I suspected, Dr. Rosen gasped and held his hands to his heart. “I knew you’d do that.”

  “Why do you think I’m reacting like this?”

  “So you can insist this is all about you. Like Luther.” Dr. Rosen’s head was bobbing maniacally, and he stuck up his thumbs like I’d gotten the right answer.

  “You’re so annoying,” Marnie said to Dr. Rosen with a dismissive wave of her hand.

  Dr. Rosen kept his gaze on me. “Do you understand?”

  All I understood was that my therapist had a Freudian bug up his ass. Dr. Rosen accurately read my blank look as ignorance.

  “If you attach to me—here, in treatment”—he pointed toward his dorky brown shoes—“then you will be able to attach to men out there.” He gestured out the window. “Assuming we have a healthy attachment, you can use it as a foundation for your romantic relationships.”

  “Is it working?” I held my palms to my chest.

  “Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  * * *

  Once a week, the Intern picked me up in his shiny black car and whisked me away to a trendy bistro where we would pass innuendo back and forth like a baske
t of tortilla chips. It was hypercharged flirting—him bragging about how he could please me; me hinting I was far hungrier than he imagined. “I’ve been deprived a long time,” I would say. “Nothing I can’t handle,” he would insist. Back at his place, he would hunch over his stereo, laboring over the perfect mood music. He favored Al Green and hip-hop. Watching him work so hard to set the mood was a huge turn-on.

  The third night we were together, he pulled me into his bedroom with a puckish glint in his eye. “I have a surprise for you. Wait right here,” he said, backing out of the room. When he returned, he handed me something blue and white that was folded like a flag.

  “What the?” I giggled as I unfolded the heavy fabric and held up a giant football jersey with a number eighteen on it.

  “It’s Peyton Manning’s jersey. I want you to wear it.”

  “Just because I’m from Texas doesn’t mean football makes me hot.”

  “It’ll be hot to sleep next to you if you are wearing that.”

  My body surrendered to the force of his easy freedom. I wanted to crawl into the jersey, into his body, into his world, where desire was naked and blatant and having sex was always on the table.

  Both my groups loved the Intern. Both unanimously predicted that he was falling in love with me. Both pronounced me cured of whatever emotional injury or character defect led me to stay so long with Jeremy. Dr. Rosen beamed at me, session after session, praising my detailed disclosures of our intimate encounters, my joy, my surrender to pleasure.

  I floated through my workdays. The glow of hot sex and a real, budding relationship softened the daily humiliations of being a junior female associate at a law firm. One Tuesday, when the partner asked me, the only female in the room, to take notes during a team meeting like I was a secretary, I bit my lip, but let it go when I saw an e-mail from the Intern pop up on my BlackBerry.