Chapter 9 Marsh
Marsh
My last relationship was just shy of ten years.
From the ages of twenty-six to thirty-five, I was convinced that I was with the person I would be spending the rest of my life with.
The fucked-up part was that I don’t know if I wanted to.
I couldn’t envision a future with Julia.
There was no snapshot of the two of us as seniors sitting on a porch talking about our grandkids.
I never dreamed of us taking a romantic getaway to Greece one day.
Our whole relationship was taken one day at a time.
I guess that’s how nine years went by so quickly.
Because of our families, we knew each other growing up; then in college, I reconnected with her at a party.
She was objectively attractive and kind and was studying to be a teacher.
All the things that felt right. But there was no spark between us.
No passion. We learned to cohabitate, and she honestly felt more like a really good friend than anything else.
I wouldn’t even say she was my best friend because we rarely talked about our feelings.
In the last three years of our relationship, I think we had sex only four times.
I didn’t like the person I became when I was with Julia.
I felt more like a blank slate of a person who had no hopes and dreams and just decided to bury himself in work because it’s the only thing that made sense.
Work was the only thing I was remotely interested in.
After we broke up, work continued to be the only thing that brought me joy.
Until last week.
I’ve been on a handful of dates in the past year. Some of these have been a result of my dating app attempt, one was a woman I met at a trivia night in Mar Vista, and another was Jay setting me up with his wife’s friend.
All the women were wonderful. I think it’s hard to find a woman who isn’t a catch, and if men tell you otherwise, they’re trying to live out some fantasy of what they believe is the perfect woman.
Sleeping with women who weren’t Julia was tough for me.
Not because I still felt a connection to her, but because I was so used to doing the same routine all these years.
Sex never felt like a mystery or a place to be adventurous.
Like clockwork, I would just go through the motions.
I could have gone the rest of my life without having sex.
I would have been fine. I wasn’t missing anything.
But what I realized in the past year is that I do like sex, and I want to share that with someone I care about.
I want to make someone else feel good. It’s not that I didn’t want Julia to feel good, but sexual compatibility is real, and when you’re not compatible outside of the bedroom I’m sure that it’s hard to be in the bedroom.
Lucy:
Coming!!
I look down at my phone and simply give Lucy’s message a thumbs-up.
She wouldn’t tell me the details of today.
She just told me to pick her up once we freshened up after boxing.
Sitting in my car outside Lucy’s apartment, I find myself anticipating the most trivial things.
What is she going to look like when she comes outside?
What are we going to do? Am I dressed appropriately?
These are all new feelings for me. I feel like I’m back in high school and the head cheerleader just asked me to hang out with her.
If I want the rest of this month to go smoothly, I need to get it together. Quick.
When Lucy appears, she’s wearing a pair of loose jeans, Converse, and a white T-shirt that rises, revealing her belly button when she waves to me. Her hair is long and wavy, and she has a pair of black sunglasses on that make her look like a goddamn movie star.
“Hi!” Lucy opens the front door and gets in the passenger side. It’s clear she’s fresh from a post-boxing shower. Jesus, why does she always smell so good? She puts on her seatbelt and then shifts in my direction. “All right, let’s do this.”
I turn on the car and reach for the parking brake. “Now are you going to tell me what we’re doing today?”
“Not yet.” She smiles. “First, do you have a preference for what part of town you want to go to?”
“Will that determine what we’re doing?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “We can do either Pasadena, Highland Park, Beverly Hills, or Venice.”
“Pasadena,” I say, for some reason wanting to pick the location farthest away.
“Perfect,” Lucy says. “Just go east and I’ll direct you.”
“Go east.” I repeat the most generic directions she could have given me. “Sure.”
We start driving east and my gaze occasionally falls to Lucy who’s looking really good in my passenger seat. I kind of hate how easy this all feels. I clock a small heart tattoo on the inside of her arm and then remember the flower one on her foot.
“How many tattoos do you have?” I ask.
“Five or six,” she says, and I instantly regret asking because now I’m picturing where on her body they are. I don’t think I caught any while boxing but I guess I was focusing on trying not to get my ass beat. “But they’re all small ones,” she adds. “What about you?”
“None. But I’ve always wanted one.”
She turns to me. “What would you get?”
“I have no idea. I’ve waited too long, now there’s pressure for it to be something perfect.”
“Your first one will be awful, it always is,” she says. “Don’t put pressure on yourself.”
“Assuming I’ll be getting more than one?” I raise an eyebrow.
“You’ll become addicted. It’s hard not to.”
I look at her. “What was your first tattoo?”
“My grandma’s name,” she says.
“And that one is awful?”
“Not the sentiment!” She laughs. “The font. I was like seventeen and went to some parlor up the street from where I lived. I asked the first guy I went to. If I were to do it now, I would have a nicer style.”
“What’s your grandma’s name?” I ask.
“Lillian,” she says.
“Beautiful name,” I respond.
“She’s my mom’s mom. I only met her once when I went to the Philippines as a kid…I was glued to her hip the whole time.” Lucy turns to me. “What about your grandmothers?”
“Eleanor and Mavis,” I say.
“Please tell me Mavis was married to your grandpa Marshall.”
“Mavis and Marshall Oakley,” I confirm.
“Iconic,” Lucy says. We turn on the radio and roll down the windows. I embrace the California breeze on my forearm while Lucy’s hair blows in her face.
Los Angeles can be described as a lazy paradise sprinkled with influencers and movie stars at every other restaurant or a drug-infested den, depending on the news story.
But you get the big picture only when you live here.
There’s so much more to the city than the beach or filming locations.
LA has small pockets of true community: Montrose, Eagle Rock, Lake Balboa, the list goes on.
I often take for granted how great it is to live here.
As we drive up Forest Lawn, the backdrop of mountains and Griffith Park is to our right while in typical Los Angeles fashion the Warner Bros. Studios is to our left. I realize I’m on autopilot until Lucy tells me to exit in two miles.
When we exit, Lucy directs me to the most beautiful tree-lined street in Lower Arroyo. There are homes that must be upward of three million dollars surrounding us.
“Where are we going?” I ask skeptically.
She clicks her tongue. “You’re so impatient.”
“I literally asked once.”
“We’re .2 miles away,” she says, looking at the map on her phone.
We continue driving, and in the near distance I see a breathtaking ranch surrounded by trees and an Open House sign smacked right in the front.
My foot releases on the gas. “What is this?”
“Just park right here.” Lucy directs to an open spot a few houses ahead.
I do as she says. “An open house?”
“What’s a better way to jump into a relationship than house hunting?” she says, quite proud of herself I might add.
Looking at houses flares a slight feeling of PTSD.
I think Julia and I looked at upward of eighty homes during our time together.
None of it was fun, and house hunting is probably the best way to test a relationship.
There’s no easier way to start an argument than talking about where you’d want to spend the next fifteen years living and how much money you’re willing to pay for it.
“We couldn’t look at apartments? Or houses to rent?” I gaze ahead at what’s probably over two thousand square feet of property in one of the nicest areas of Pasadena. “I can tell you right now this house is out of our budget.”
“Suspend your disbelief, Marshall.” Lucy opens the door. “Come on.”
I step out of the car and reluctantly follow. It’s a beautiful day. Perfectly sunny and nowhere near the scorching temperatures from last week. There’s also a drastic difference from the overcast and chill in the air from a few hours ago.
“I think you’re romanticizing the idea of house hunting,” I say.
“Am I?” Lucy asks. “Or are couples romanticizing it?”
“What’s the angle of this story?” I frown.
“Well, from my readers’ perspective, I just started dating a very dreamy guy.
” She lowers her sunglasses and unsuccessfully tries to get a reaction.
“At this point in the relationship, we’re getting to know each other, spending a lot of time together, and now we’re talking about moving in together. ”
“After a couple weeks?”
“Exactly,” Lucy says. “The point being that people rush into relationships just because they found someone. They think that the next step is meeting their parents, moving in together, getting engaged, having babies, all those things.” Lucy stops and pivots in my direction.
“Do couples really want these things or are they just doing it because they think they need to?”
I suddenly feel accurately psychoanalyzed right now.
“I went through all this,” I say, “and it was the most stress inducing thing I’ve ever done.”
Lucy stops short, looks at me. “You own a house?”