Aftermath of Dreaming(79)

One night after a long and deep and wonderful bout of each other while Andrew was being particularly cuddly after I had rubbed his back, I asked him if I could sleep over, and leave very early in the morning. The January night was cold, his bed was layers of soft warmth, and the sweetness of him was too delicious to part from.

“I don’t want people asking me who my new wife is,” Andrew said, then looked at me gravely, as if hordes of photographers and journalists descended upon him every morning at six A.M., and there was nothing he could do about this lack of privacy.

I almost said, “Who’s gonna ask you? Patrick or the maids? They all know I come here anyway, and do they really arrive for work that early?” But I didn’t. Though his excuse clearly had no basis in reality, I suddenly understood, as I lay there in his arms, that in his mind it did. That even though media hounds wouldn’t actually show up on his extremely private practically-impossible-to-get-onto grounds, he was so used to guarding his life and self from the public for over thirty-two years, that this rule he had come up with that only the “girlfriend” spends the night protected him somehow. And what was even more clear in that moment was that he was trying to protect himself from what he felt. Which made me see that I just needed to break through that wall, slowly and steadily.



That month, Andrew missed my birthday. He knew when it was or I figured he did. I hadn’t told him the first time it came around after we had met because he was in Malaysia, but on all of the subsequent ones he knew because I would call him.

“It’s my birthday today.”

“Happy birthday, sweet-y-vette,” he’d say, but nothing ever appeared. All those years in New York, I wanted flowers, roses delivered to my door, a huge bouquet to fill my bedroom, then petals to press between heavy books and laminate onto rice paper—his love in floral form. And it was pretty obvious how easy that would be for him. Patrick could have handled the whole thing. But I decided it just wasn’t who Andrew was. Some people don’t give birthday presents; they grew up in families where it wasn’t a big deal.

But on that birthday in L.A., my twenty-fourth, since we were involved in a deeper way, I was crushed when nothing arrived. And so pissed off that I avoided his calls on that day and the next two; I lay on my futon listening to the phone ring, knowing it was him.

Finally, I gave in and called him. He grilled me about where I’d been, worried I’d disappeared, and I was just happy to hear his voice again. So, he doesn’t give gifts. Okay. I knew he loved me. He asked me all the time if I loved him, and though he rarely said it himself, I knew it was what he felt inside. I could see it in his eyes when he looked at me, and could hear it in his voice. And no other woman that he wasn’t working with had been in his life for years platonically. And the armor that Andrew wore got heavier with each passing hour. I could hear the changes in his voice as we talked throughout the day, then when I’d see him at night, it wasn’t just his clothes that came off, but that solid suit would be removed, revealing a softness inside that very few people knew.

And I felt backed up by him, protected. Loved and adored. His arms holding me, his sweet voice on the phone caressing me, his never vanishing, always taking my calls. Many times in the midst of dealing with an annoying customer at the restaurant, or struggling with an art piece, or a gallery offering me only a maybe and not a definite yes, I would automatically think, But Andrew loves me. He was myself. A part of me that I didn’t have came from him. And his voice daily and his body frequently sustained that belief.



I started going to parties with Viv. She was still seeing Craig, so I met a lot of his friends, and began recognizing names and faces in the social section of the L.A. Times—Craig and his cohorts’ parties were covered extensively. Men at the parties would ask me out and I couldn’t really say I was already seeing someone because Viv would wonder who that was. So to be able to keep seeing Andrew, undercover in a way, I’d go on some dates, but I’d never have sex with them. We’d just make out a little bit, schoolgirl-in-a-car kind of stuff, then I wouldn’t go any further, and after a while, I’d break up with them.

And they were all very nice men. An entertainment lawyer who took me to the best gourmet vegetarian restaurants and gave me a book on Buddhism for Valentine’s Day. An actor who was stuck in TV hell, successful by most people’s standards, but he only wanted to do films. And an architect who spent three months of each year in Bali acquiring a new tribal tattoo each time and wearing only sarongs there, plus a bunch of kinda-date guys (meet for coffee or a hike in the canyon) thrown in. Interesting, nice men. I just didn’t want to be with them. I wanted to be with Andrew. Constantly. The men couldn’t say anything without my comparing it in my mind to what Andrew would have said. And who could compare to him? And that was a problem because if it didn’t work out with Andrew—but it had to—what would I do? I was dating interesting, attractive, successful men, but none of them compared to Andrew.

And Andrew knew I was dating. He would call; I’d be on my way out. He would call; I’d still be out or would have just gotten home. And he’d want to know who they were and what we did—like he knew them, and sometimes I had a feeling he did or he made it seem that way, that he was having them checked out. There was no piece of information unattainable by him. He never acted jealous (like he had about Tim, derisively calling him Tim-my) and it was pointless to wish that he was. He so fully gathered the men into our experience that they practically weren’t people anymore, just fodder for the mill.