Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy (15 page)

The toys did not have the desired effect that I had in mind of strengthening the bond between us. It was hard to know whom to
thank: the battery-powered machines and molded silicon or the handler. Whatever the case, I began to fantasize about good ole’ basic sex. I don’t care what anyone says; it’s impossible to “make love” with anal beads up your ass.

As time went on, I also noticed that there was something mysterious about Mickey. Often, he was unable to sit still, uncomfortable in his own skin. He’d leave rooms to take phone calls, have vague obligations that he wouldn’t discuss. I wouldn’t hear from him for a few days and ask what was going on. He’d answer, “Oh, I had to help a friend move some furniture.” I’d probe, “What friend? What furniture?” To which he’d answer, “Don’t worry about it. You don’t know them.” I couldn’t tell if he was cheating or was a spy.

How I felt about Mickey became synonymous with how I felt about Vancouver: There was something casually transient about all my encounters there—people seemed to drift in and out of one another’s lives with no operatic drama, like smoke passing through a screen door. I was skimming the surface and could never dig in. We were all unmoored ships aimlessly floating around. There was nothing anchoring me down, other than my vague double A–battery relationship, and I started to think about moving again, this time to Toronto. This would continue my little dance of moving to a new city every time a relationship seemed doomed or fell apart. At least I was consistent at something.

Another day at the sewage-pump place ended, and I went over to Mickey’s apartment, dropped my satchel, and sunk into his bean bag chair.

“I think I want to see what Toronto’s like. Everyone says the stand-up scene is really good there.”

“Oh yeah? I’ve always wanted to live in Toronto. This place is driving me crazy.” Mickey’s reply was unexpected. Was he suggesting we move there
together?
I felt as ambivalent about the idea as I did about our relationship.

“Well, do you think I should go out for a couple of months and see if it’s any good?” I asked cautiously.

“Why not? You can store your stuff here for that month if you want. See what you think, and then I’ll come out.”

That made things almost too easy. I took his offer at face value and left a couple of boxes. Once again, I packed up my big blue backpack and headed east for an exploratory visit.

I’d only been in Toronto for two weeks, staying in a friend of a friend’s apartment, when Mickey called to say he was coming to visit. He didn’t
ask
, he
told
me, probably because he sensed that I was enjoying my new life without him too much and would protest if given the option. The second he arrived, it was clear that we were hanging on to each other by a fraying thread. He brought the sex toys with him, which I thought was a pretty ballsy move, considering he had to take them through airport security. I can only imagine what their outlines looked like on the TSA’s monitors.

On his first night, I took him out for a nice dinner, hoping to lighten the mood, but he could barely conceal how pissed off he was at me for making him fly across the country to deal with the ambiguity of our relationship, and lashed out in bizarre ways. I’d lost five pounds
due to stress, a rather insignificant amount, but Mickey commented that I was acting too proud of my “new body.” I should have given him a gold star for noticing.

On the second night, he refused to leave my apartment. I couldn’t understand why, and after we argued about how senseless he was being, I stormed out to do a spot on an open-mic comedy show. When I returned, I found him sitting in silence on the couch, holding my journal.

I froze. I knew what he’d read. It was my last entry from a few days earlier. I’d hung out with some improvisers after watching their show at Second City, and wrote about how one of them was particularly handsome. During the show, when he went into the audience asking for suggestions, calling out, “Can I get an object?” I yelled back, “How about my feelings?!” He thought that was hysterical, which inspired me to introduce myself after the show. The next thing I knew, we were kissing. And I described that. In detail. It was more than anyone should have to read.

Mickey was outraged that I’d broken his trust, and I was furious that he’d read my diary, but in the contest of who was the
most
wrong, we both lost. He called me an unfaithful bitch. I told him that he was a fucking lunatic. And thus began the most epic breakup of my decade, if measured in volume and destruction. We screamed and swore at each other. I called him a fucking asshole; he said I was a fucking bitch. It was unoriginal, fury-drenched dialogue, but I can tell you, we really sold it. This was the kind of dirty talk I could do.

He picked up the bottle of wine that we’d bought for dinner
and threw it. It smashed on the ground, glass shattering at my feet. I couldn’t believe it. He looked at me, pleased with himself. I threw back the closest thing to me: the cheese it paired with. He tossed the camera he’d given to me as a going-away present while I madly ripped up photos of us and let the pieces fall in the air like confetti. There was a necklace, a T-shirt, and crumpled-up cards and love notes, all hurled through the air, but it wasn’t until I felt a butt plug ricochet off my forehead that I knew it was O-V-E-R.

I threw the anal beads at his head and told him to stuff them up his own ass and pull them out one at a time while
leaving
.

He stomped out, but not without threatening, “You’ll never hear from or see me again in your life.”

Yeah, I assumed that after he read my diary and chucked a bottle at me.

The apartment was suddenly very still. I looked around at the wreckage littering my floor: torn photos, destroyed love notes, broken glass, plastic bits from the camera, and the sex toys. Without giving it too much thought, I grabbed a garbage bag and began furiously cleaning up, tossing it all in, until I got to the jewel vibrator “in tasteful silver.”

Those sex toys were expensive and practically brand-new. I’d never be able to use them again or even look at them the same way. The butt plug was dead to me. Could I just boil them and give them away? Can you donate sex toys to Goodwill? Maybe I could run them through the dishwasher and give them to my neighbor? He was always loitering in the hallways wearing a smirk and a bathrobe. But then I’d have to talk to him.
Ew
.

I wanted to clear everything out of my life that had been even remotely connected to Mickey, literally and figuratively. So I sifted through my belongings and also tossed out
Geek Love
, all our remaining photos, and a bunch of CDs. I dragged the bag down to the back of the apartment building and hoisted it into the dumpster, savoring the image in my mind of the sanitation truck emptying that dumpster into a landfill, and amongst the rotting food, dirt, and debris, a big pink sparkly dildo proudly tumbling out.

I couldn’t sleep that night. My mind raced through our fight, and my body wouldn’t relax. I hated that we’d let things escalate to the point where we’d really never be able to talk again. I was pissed off at Mickey for ruining so many things. Going forward, not only would I never keep a journal again, but at bachelorette parties, if the bride whipped out a rabbit vibrator from a gift box, I would instinctively duck. I’d moved from fetish to phobia.

But at least I had someone to move on with.

A few weeks later I went to bed with the handsome improviser. It was a total relief that when he asked for a suggestion this time, he didn’t ask for an object.

I
t was the dawn of a new millennium, and everyone was freaking out that after January 1 their computers wouldn’t be able to keep time. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment above a secondhand bookstore in Little Italy, the coolest part of town. My roommate was a jazz musician dating a bassist, our upstairs neighbor was a makeup artist, and I was a struggling stand-up comedian in love with an improviser. We were all very impressed with ourselves.

Even though I lived there for four years, much of my Toronto Era was a blur. It was a particularly debaucherous time in my life, which is saying something. One of the city’s many nicknames is Hogtown, as it used to be a livestock-processing center. I made sure I lived up to that moniker.

Sadly, the improviser and I weren’t meant to be. We simply had different values. He wanted stability, companionship, and success in his career, and I wanted to PAR-TAY.

Now, even the word
party
makes me feel tired. I rebounded with anyone who showed a flicker of interest. He went on to date a taller, prettier, more successful version of me, a comedic actress named Olivia Rosenbaum. It was like he created her in his shed.

The epitome of the struggling artist, I worked ten different temporary jobs to make rent, and spent half the night at the comedy club hoping to get on, and the other half at the bar hoping to get off. Seeing as stage time was hard to come by, in the end, I’d built up a bigger reputation at my neighborhood bar than at Yuk Yuk’s. This bar was called Ted’s Wrecking Yard and had the atmosphere of an alcoholic’s garage with a pool table in the back and a small stage for the occasional indie band. The combination of the pent-up energy from not getting on stage enough and the grungy atmosphere of Ted’s transformed me into a different, more confident version of myself. My audience was the bartender and fellow patrons. The bartender even nicknamed me “the troublemaker,” as I tried to impress him once by saying something ridiculous like “trouble relaxes me.” Evidently, I watched too many episodes of
Knots Landing
as a kid. It was at this dark drinking establishment that I perfected the power of suggestion. I wasn’t so much a tease as I was a taunt. Or a good improviser.

My method was as follows: I’d find a free bar stool and order a drink. If a guy sat down beside me, I’d say something like, “You can’t sit here unless you buy me a drink, and I’m stealing one of your cigarettes.” Then I’d order two Maker’s Marks, turn back, and ask accusingly, “You do drink bourbon, don’t you?” and lift my glass for a toast. Boldness goes a long way, and I had a pretty good return rate with
this bulldozing technique. It was pre-foreplay role-playing. Most of the guys were caught off guard by my brash behavior and found it amusing. They’d usually pony up for a couple of drinks, engage in a little banter, and then sometimes we’d make out. I wouldn’t leave with them, nor would we exchange info. It was a game I kept within the confines of the Wrecking Yard, which became my parlor, my acting workshop, my chemistry lab all rolled into one. It was shocking how easily these guys handed over the reins, completely content to sit back and see where I would take them. People love being told what to do.

One night I was even daring enough to approach this guy after watching his girlfriend storm out. Like a vulture, I swooped in with two shots of tequila, handed him one, and with a smile said, “Women. Can’t live with them, can’t stuff ’em in a bag.” Like I said, I was a
struggling
comic. We clicked glasses, sucked on lemons, and followed up with a citrus-infused make out before last call. What I was doing was half harmless and half unhinged, but back then I had boundless energy for this sort of thing.

My fashion designer friend invited me to a party in New York, a trip I would remember for years because of how long it took to pay off that MasterCard bill. My flight left Friday morning at nine. The night before, I victoriously secured a date with Ethan from my new acting class. I developed a crush on Ethan even though the other actresses warned me, “He’s the kind of guy who won’t cushion your head as it’s slamming into the headboard.” That sounded less like a metaphor and more like something that had literally happened. Regardless, it was why I was attracted to him; I admired how he didn’t seem to give a
shit. He was who I pretended to be. And then there was the challenge aspect: What if I could make him protect my head?

We met for dinner at Ted’s Wrecking Yard. Does Ted’s serve food, you ask? No. Dinner was three rounds of beers.

“So are you seeing someone?” I asked him between rounds.

“Why? Do you have a suggestion?” he challenged.

“Yeah. How about the redhead over there?”

What did he think? I was an amateur?

“Already been with her,” he volleyed back, and took another swig.

In a way, we were playing the same instant gratification game, both gatherers, not hunters. We weren’t looking for one triumphant kill to drag home and feel proud of; we were content with racking up smaller scores.

Before we left, he insisted that “we needed” one round of shots, which would have made sense if they were vitamin B12 shots.

That’s when I knew I’d broken through. Moments later, we kissed in my stairwell because I didn’t want to disturb my roommate, who was studying for her jazz theory exam. Following a vigorous necking session that could only be classified as
hot
, he broke the action to look at his watch.

“Hey. I gotta go. I have tickets to this play,” he said abruptly, putting on his leather jacket. He didn’t invite me to join him. I acted unfazed.

“See you after New York,” I said and waved, alluding that he might be missing his one chance, as the trip might change me. Some of those acting techniques we learned were proving useful.

I still had twelve hours until my flight—I could pack sixty-two
times over! Since I was way ahead of schedule, I went back to Ted’s Wrecking Yard in an effort to give the evening some resolve. This is what happens when you don’t own a TV. The place was packed with mostly couples and people I already knew, so I ordered a draft and chatted with the bartender. A petite girl with translucent skin and short curly blonde hair wandered in and sat down beside me. She was dressed in a trashy tight polyester dress and heavily made up, but not enough to hide the dark-blue circles under her eyes. She looked like a tarted-up cherub on a bender. After drinking silently side by side for a while, I asked out of pure curiosity, “Are you waiting for someone?” She snort-laughed. “No, I’m trying to get away from someone.” I liked that answer. “Well, let me know if I can be of help.” She introduced herself as Kerri, and we engaged in girl talk: sizing up and rating the different men in the bar. The alcohol started to hit me hard, and I remembered that I still had to pack. As I leaned down to grab my purse, I felt a small hand on my back. It was Kerri’s. With bloodshot eyes she said, “I’ll buy you a drink if you kiss me.”