I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway (21 page)

ME: I think there’s something wrong with me.

HIM: You’re fine. You think too much.

ME: But I
want
to have sex. Don’t you
want
to want to have sex?

HIM: Go to sleep.

What I don’t say is that not only do I want to want to have sex but I eventually will, whether it’s with Kenny or someone else.

JT was just in the wrong place at the right time.

And now, the time is up. I have arrived at the airport, and Kenny is standing there, waiting at the curb. In his grown-up man coat, holding his briefcase. With his thinning hair and his full lips and his soft eyes. He is the smartest man I have ever met, funny and wry, and he is a great, great friend. I could never, ever be bored talking to him.

You can do it
—stay married.
You said you would.

IT IS SURPRISINGLY EASY
to live in denial. All you really need is a good imagination and a compulsive behavior to practice, something you can do over and over again that serves as the shortcut,
like the ladders in Chutes and Ladders—something that skips you right past the truth whenever it vexingly pops up.

For Paul and me, that thing is sex. Every day.

Rain, shine, at home, away—I could count on one hand the days we have missed—sex is the thing that smooths over every rough edge, metabolizes every fight, and contains our every lie, self-delusion, shadow, fear, and hope.

There is nothing too fancy about it, either, and that is part of the appeal. We do it in bed, almost always, and in pretty much exactly the same sequence—him on top, me on top, I come, he comes, and then we both immediately fall asleep. There is a ritualistic quality to it, not like devil worship, but like the British take tea or the Chinese do dim sum. I find it a relief that we know exactly what we like and that we do that; there is no need to perform, no demonstrations of prowess, no sexual equivalent of ordering the sea urchin just to prove how adventurous we are.

It is the antithesis of sex between brand-new partners, who run through a repertoire of moves hoping to find a winner or two in there somewhere. Something that will bring the new partner back for more, if you want them to, or at least make you feel like you could pass for second runner-up in a Megan Fox pageant.

Sometimes I wonder what will happen when we move to the next stage of our relationship, the stage where we no longer have sex every twenty-four hours, but so far, at least, that hasn’t happened. To be honest, I’m scared the whole thing will fall apart. Couples don’t
have
to run out of sexual desire for each other, do they?

But that thought is subsumed into the moment it becomes nine thirty and I crawl into our huge four-poster California king–size bed, and before I even have my contact lenses out of my eyes he is reaching for me. There is a comfort, a security, in being wanted like this: so durably, so regularly.

I can almost convince myself it will last forever.

But not quite.

Because trying to hold the whole truth and nothing but the truth from one’s awareness is sort of like trying to hold a (very large) beach ball underwater. It seems easy at first—see, nothing to it!—but soon it becomes clear that the air inside the ball is exerting a pressure
every second of every day
and I, being only human, cannot do
anything
every second of every day, much less apply constant counterpressure to a very large beach ball. Invariably I become hungry, or bored, or angry, or tired, and the next thing I know—
pop!
—the beach ball is right up in my face.

Then I do the “chutes” part of Chutes and Ladders.

Chutes suck.

KENNY WOULD NEVER LEAVE ME.
Never. This unspeakable truth is the central fact of our relationship. It’s the reason we don’t have sex but stay married. It’s the reason I smoke pot from the moment I wake up until the hour before bedtime. It is, if I am honest, the reason I chose him.

What it means, of course, is that it will be I who must leave him.

When we get home from the airport, Kenny gives me my Christmas present, a Pentax single-lens reflex camera. It is one of the most expensive gifts I have ever been given. Until I married Kenny I was poor, working three jobs; I was so scared about money. That’s how it is when you don’t have parents. You start to think like Evel Knievel. Any slight miscalculation could lead to dire consequences. Kenny took me away from all that.

But I still didn’t have a gift for him. All I had were excuses:

I had my finals up until the day before yesterday.

I had to work.

I didn’t know what you wanted.

I figured I would get something in San Antonio.

It’s not that I am thoughtless and heartless and selfish. (Although I am certainly self-centered.) It’s more that I have always had trouble
with gift giving in general. It just requires a level of planning and execution that I am rarely capable of.

The only time I am able to successfully gift-give is if I have
just
fallen in love with you, say, sometime in the last six months. Then my need to ensure that you will continue to love me will supersede my inability to think much past this afternoon.

But what I really can’t handle about giving gifts is the emotional part. If I bought Kenny a gift, it would mean that I wanted Kenny. That I was
loving
Kenny. But I can’t stop wanting to
leave
Kenny. How could I leave Kenny and buy him a Christmas gift at the same time? Wouldn’t that be, like, lying? Somewhere in my distorted sense of integrity, I know I can’t give Kenny the impression that he can expect another year out of me when I’m having trouble coming up with another week.

The moving to San Antonio “plan” included us spending the night in the apartment where I’ve been subletting a room (now
there’s
a story—involving doing lines in a nightclub bathroom with a crazy chick who needed a roommate), then getting in the car the next morning and starting the 1,438-mile drive to San Antonio. But after I open the camera it somehow seems more right to just pack my stuff into the car and take off now.

I am getting sicker by the hour, so I lie on the sofa while Kenny loads everything into the Subaru. I have only a few boxes and a single futon that can just be rolled up and stuffed into the trunk. Antonia, the girl from the nightclub bathroom, is out of town, so I just lock up and, unceremoniously, we drive off.

Good-bye, Salt Lake.

It is a beautiful night for driving. The moon is full and huge and it’s throwing the towering peaks of the Wasatch Front into silhouette against the night sky. I have come to really love Utah, and as we travel south on Interstate 15, I try to “feel” this part of my life come to an end. But I can’t, really. We stop in American Fork and spend the night. It’s more than a little forlorn, listening to the sound of
the trucks on the interstate bleeding through the cheap walls and windows.

The next morning is one of those glorious Zion days, with the snow-capped mountains and the intense saturation of the blue sky. Perfect for getting high. I pull out a film canister where I have stashed a large bud of sinsemilla that JT gave me. Kenny is known to partake of some good weed, and nothing goes better with a road trip than a joint. Probably some of the greatest fun we’ve ever had together was driving from Minneapolis cross-country when we moved to San Francisco. Hard to believe that was less than three years ago.

In minutes we are burning one down. “I got this from a friend of mine,” I say as I roll a flawless little pinner joint. I like them slim because I’m a lightweight, and my rolling technique is unsurpassed. “He’s in a band?” I half-swallow the words, because I’m busy sucking in the smoke.

Kenny glances at me but doesn’t really respond, which isn’t unusual. Most people would call Kenny “laid-back” but that’s not completely accurate. Really he just doesn’t react to things. It’s like a defense mechanism. If you don’t know him well, he seems relaxed, but if you do, he seems removed, even arrogant or superior. In any case, I’m ignoring him ignoring me.

“His name is JT. We got to be good friends over the past couple of months.”

Kenny still isn’t saying anything so I keep talking. It’s almost like that’s my job in this marriage, to keep the conversation going. Probably so neither of us notices how lonely we are.

“He’s great. I think you’d like him.” I can feel a thousand little urges popping words right into my mouth. It’s like I’m dying to just come right out and tell Kenny I fucked this guy last night. I want him to know that I’m guilty and I’m a liar, because I’m from Minnesota so I hate lying, and if I just tell him the truth I won’t be a liar anymore. Twenty-four hours of lying is about all I can take.

I also want to tell him so he’ll finally be disgusted enough with me
to leave me. Because I resent the fact that Kenny is making me do the leaving. That he doesn’t have the balls to do what we both know needs to be done. Especially when it’s so obviously the right thing to do.

“Yeah?” is all he says. Just “yeah.” Like
Uh-huh, everything’s cool, you’re not trying to tell me anything, there’s nothing to see here, folks, so just keep driving
“yeah.” The sad truth is that I could probably tell him all about JT and even
that
wouldn’t make him leave.

“Yeah.” I inhale sharply again and hold my breath. “He’s in this band. They’re really good friends with Robin.” Robin is (was) my best friend in Salt Lake, the one I go out with, drink with, do drugs with, and blame for everything I can’t or won’t admit to. I’ve been hanging out with her constantly, but I probably won’t really miss her.

I pass the joint back to Kenny and he takes a hit off of it. What he doesn’t do is say anything.

It’s just as well. My high is coming on now. For the first twenty minutes, it’s like having a halo all over my body. I feel more alive, more perceptive, and nicely, finally, at one with the sky and the mountains and the road. I love this feeling. Kenny loves this feeling too, not as much as I do, but he loves it. Especially, though, Kenny and I love this feeling as a pair. It’s when we feel the most “together.”

Kenny pops a cassette tape into the deck. It’s Prince, which reminds us of home. My favorite one:
Dirty Mind.
The thoughts about JT recede into the background as Prince tells me that morning, noon, and night he’ll give me head. I imagine being Prince’s girlfriend. With him I would be who I
really
am. I am sure of it.

Neither Kenny nor I mention that it’s Christmas. Anyway, out here, in the middle of nowhere, it’s just Wednesday.

THAT NIGHT WE HAVE SEX.
I lie there without making a sound. Afterward I turn over and pull the worn motel blanket up around my shoulders. For the first time in years, I cry. Not some big major dramatic cry, but I squeeze out a few tears. Which never hap
pens. I am so numb from my daily pot habit, and the neural bridge to the neighborhood where I keep my tears washed out a long time ago, maybe around tenth grade, that even when I want to cry I can’t. I’m quiet, so Kenny doesn’t even notice I’m crying. He wouldn’t want to notice even if he could hear me. Some old part of me has awakened, a part that has been asleep for a long, long, long time.

I know I have to go.

When my eyes open the next morning, the room is empty. I immediately turn on the TV. I don’t want to be alone. The news anchors are talking about the second-biggest shopping day of the year. I’m going to be returning something today, too. Something that never quite fit.

I wait for Kenny. A few minutes pass and I start to worry. Where is he? It hits me that maybe he knows I’m leaving—did he “hear” my thoughts somehow?—and he’s beaten me to the punch. I throw on some clothes and run down the motel stairs. The car is still there. I’m relieved. I don’t want to stay, but I don’t want him to leave.

Barefoot, I walk across the parking lot to the truck stop café. Kenny is eating breakfast, alone. He’s always been an early riser; it’s part of his normalness. He was probably just letting me sleep in. He’s so considerate; he was raised so well. I love that he still opens doors for me. But that’s not enough of a reason to stay married. He sees me and smiles, but right away it fades. He knows something is not all the way right.

Fifteen minutes later we are on the road again. It’s cool, and gray, and flat. I have said hardly a word, unusual for me. He has said hardly a word, either. After a long, long ripple of highway, I cannot stand it anymore.

“I think we should get a divorce.”

There. I said it. I am shocked at how “done” it already sounds. The words only just came out of my mouth! This is where I learn that the words are the last part of the truth that comes to pass. Even if I wanted to, there is no way to take them back. The words are only symbols for an energy, a knowledge, an understanding, that has been
there for months. Probably it was there the day we married. Maybe it’s been there since we met.

“Should I turn the car around?” he says. Perfect acceptance. He is so graceful, Kenny.

We are in Albuquerque, 622 miles from where we started. Five hundred forty-three to go. It will take almost as long to reach San Antonio as it will to get back to Salt Lake.

“No,” I say. “We’ll need the rest of the drive to work out the details.”

And with that, my first marriage is over.

IT’S SWELTERINGLY HOT IN CHICAGO.
After a few days apart, we couldn’t stand it anymore so Paul bought me a ticket to fly out for a few days. I arrived early this morning on the red-eye from Los Angeles. I am so excited to see him.

Paul is directing a music video for an old friend of his who manages a British pop star. Actually, she isn’t quite a star, she’s more of a pop asteroid. But she’s trying to take things to the next level and since Paul wasn’t working on anything else, he’s volunteered to make a video that will help her do that. He’s either so nice that way or so codependent that way. But I don’t really care since I’ve never really experienced Chicago and I’m going to have a great time just hanging out, all expenses paid.