Chapter Six #2
“I thought of you too,” I say.
She smiles.
HI AGAIN,
I DON’T KNOW IF YOU GOT MY LAST EMAIL. ARE THERE ANY WEBSITES OR ONLINE RESOURCES WHERE I CAN LEARN ABOUT SAME-SEX RELATIONSHIPS IN BIRDS?
THANKS SO MUCH,
SAMMY
The bird patron has sent in another question. I haven’t answered the prior question yet. I haven’t really done anything since I spoke to that woman. A few people have asked me for help with the computers, but mostly I sat here, clicking, pretending to work.
I’m distracted. I’m thinking about that woman.
I remember walking around Montreal with her.
We walked from a bar on Sainte-Catherine Street, past the Notre-Dame Basilica toward the St. Lawrence.
I remember holding hands. We walked through a park, I think it was La Fontaine Park, through the Plateau, and eventually found ourselves standing outside of Leonard Cohen’s old house.
It was near her apartment. The sun was starting to rise by the time we went inside.
I remember her bedding was pink, and there was this bright beam of sunlight that came through her window.
One night, years before I cheated on Ben with that girl, he and I were at a bar with some friends.
The music was loud. A remix of that Katy Perry “I Kissed a Girl” song was playing.
The room was dim and humid. We were moving through a crowd.
There were red laser beams flashing above us.
Ben shouted in my ear, “Would you ever kiss a girl?”
At the time, I had no idea I was gay. Despite that, I answered, “Maybe,” because I knew that was what he wanted me to say.
Later, he asked me if I would ever have a threesome with him and another girl.
The guy I dated in high school asked me that question too.
I considered it something men always asked women.
Despite knowing I would never have a threesome with Ben, I answered, “Maybe,” because I understood that was the response he wanted.
I knew he fetishized women having sex with other women and that it would be unattractive to deflate that fantasy.
I wanted to be what he wanted. That’s also why I rarely expressed when he upset me, and we hardly fought.
I knew it wasn’t attractive to nag or complain.
It depresses me now to think of myself then.
I would prefer to be perceived as a bog monster today rather than entertain the sexual fantasies of a man, especially any fantasy rooted in sexualizing lesbians.
I’d sooner defend the image of me as a hideous, withered hag, rather than the image of me as a coy, quiet, sexualized teenaged girl.
It’s appalling that I was trained to behave the way I was when I was younger, and I think of it as a societal betrayal and a depraved way to treat girls.
I remember Ben doing things that bothered me.
He left hair in the sink after shaving. He drank a lot.
He had friends around I didn’t like. I had to remember important dates for him, like his dad’s birthday.
Sometimes he made offhand, objectifying comments about women on TV.
He did our laundry, but I did the rest of our household chores.
I made the bed. I cooked. I did the dishes.
I cleaned the bathrooms. I found him dismissive and patronizing when I voiced my opinions about topics like music.
He regularly put movies and TV shows on that I didn’t like.
I sat in our living room, watching mindlessly, bored.
I kept the vast majority of my complaints to myself.
When I did voice a complaint, it was calculated.
There were times when we had issues that I had to confront, like when he let his friend Randy sleep on our couch for a week without asking me.
But I also understood that being a total pushover would make me unattractive, so I had to demonstrate some degree of backbone.
In those instances, I put on makeup before I confronted him.
I put on clothes with his taste in mind.
I never argued with him without brushing my hair first.
Ben and I slept beside each other, saw each other naked, and took care of each other when we were sick.
He washed my hair in the shower. I worried for his safety when he was delayed coming home, and he worried about mine.
When bad things happened to him, or to me, we both felt upset.
There was a lot of comfort and intimacy between us.
Still, there was also a divide. In many ways, I felt weak and unsafe in our relationship. I had my guard up.
I think I objectified myself and other women partly because Ben did, and because the rest of society seemed to.
I didn’t think of hooking up with that woman as cheating because I didn’t consider her a person the same way I considered men people.
I didn’t consider myself a full person. I thought of us both as part object.
Two plastic playthings pretending together.
Joy made a disaster in the kitchen last December when I was sick.
She gets a lot of business in December. People restore old books as gifts for the holidays.
She was overwhelmed with jobs, I was out of commission, and the kitchen got away from her.
I emerged from our bedroom for the first time in days like a raggedy bear out of hibernation.
I ambled into the kitchen and saw dirty pots and pans piled on the stove.
Tomato sauce smeared across the counter.
The sink teeming with crusty dishes. An open bag of bread.
I had an ear infection as well as an allergic reaction to the penicillin prescribed to me. My face was swollen and inflamed. My entire body was covered in bright pink hives. I hadn’t showered in days.
I care that the kitchen is clean. I don’t go to bed without wiping down the counters, running the dishwasher, scrubbing out the sink.
That day, I was bothered by the state of the kitchen, so I stormed outside to Joy’s workshop.
I threw open the door, and I stood in front of her—hollow-eyed, grimy, and disheveled.
I said, almost in tears, “The dirty kitchen makes me feel like you don’t care about me. ”
It didn’t occur to me to consider how I looked before I confronted her. It’s never occurred to me that I should look in the mirror before I tell her I’m upset.
I don’t consider if Joy will think I’m a nag, or find me unattractive, if I look bad when I tell her I’m upset.
I speak to her openly. I don’t weigh the pros and cons of expressing my honest thoughts and feelings to her.
I’m not plotting what I do, say, and wear like I’m an actress in a play prepping for a scene.
I’m not playing the part of her partner. I am her partner.
“I cheated on Ben once,” I tell Dr. Jeong. “Ben was away on a trip with his friends. He was fishing, I think. I’d gone to a bar with some people from school, and I met this girl in the bathroom.”
I tell her about the woman who came to the library.
“I never told anyone about her. Ben never found out. I thought of it as this strange blip in time. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I just sort of tucked it away.”
Her head is tilted. “Why do you think you tucked it away?”
“I don’t know. I remember telling myself it wasn’t really cheating because it was with a girl.
I feel gross recognizing that now. It’s bizarre that I ever thought that way.
And I feel guilty doing that to Ben, and to that woman.
I don’t know what I was thinking. It just happened.
I was confused at the time. I didn’t know how to talk about it, and I figured it was just this weird one-time thing.
I told myself it didn’t count as cheating, but maybe if I’d faced that properly, I might have saved us all some grief.
It happened a couple years before we broke up. ”
She says, “You were struggling with your identity, and you didn’t have the tools you needed to explore that.
It’s good to acknowledge that you feel guilty, and to reflect on mistakes you made, but we also need to acknowledge you were in a difficult situation.
How can we work toward you forgiving yourself? ”
I squint at her. “Is that what I need to do? Forgive my-self?”
“Well, how do you feel about that?”
I exhale. “I feel like I have no right to mourn Ben because I cheated on him. And when we broke up, I felt relieved. I was sad, but mostly I felt like it was the right thing to do. But he was so upset. He called me a lot. It was awful. Now I feel like I abandoned him, and I don’t know if he ever got over that.
I never heard about him dating anyone else after me.
I wish he had. He stayed in that apartment we lived in for a long time.
I don’t know if he ever moved. I finished school and got my first job that paid more than minimum wage.
I moved into a nicer place. I made new friends.
I was single for a while but started dating people.
I was happy. After a few years, I met Joy.
We moved in together soon after, and I felt really content.
But he was still sort of stuck and seemed depressed. And now he’s…” I pause.
He’s dead.
My face feels hot.
“You’re allowed to mourn Ben even if you feel guilty, and even if your relationship was difficult.
It’s normal to have complicated feelings like this, and you shouldn’t judge yourself so harshly.
I know that you care about Ben. Let’s take a breather from this, okay? Can we do some mindfulness exercises?”
I nod.
We gotta make a decision. Leave tonight or live and die this way.
I’m driving home. “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman is playing on the radio. I have the windows rolled down. I’m gripping the steering wheel, looking at the lights that lie out before me.