Aftermath of Dreaming(80)

So it wasn’t a big jump when he asked which of them I was sleeping with. Or f*cking, as he said.

“None of them, I’m seeing you.”

We were in his bed, it was past one A.M., and a February wind was moving and talking in the trees outside, though I knew it would abandon them by daylight.

“Yvette, you can f*ck other men.”

I looked up at him from where I was below.

“I think you should,” he went on. “It’ll be good for you.”

How?

Then his movements came harder still.

I drove myself home in the chill quiet dark. My futon was always a depressing refuge after leaving his bed. I lay awake, trying to imagine if that was something I could do. Have sex with two men. I had a feeling it would be like drinking milk and beer in the same sitting. Nice on their own, but stomach-curdling in proximity. It wasn’t something I would do. Or wanted to.

But Andrew was pretty persistent. He started asking all the time, so finally…I lied. I figured that what Andrew really wanted was an additional barrier, another thing to put between us to protect how he felt. Me with someone else. Like him with Stephanie. And for me to betray him—even though he instigated it—was the only way for me to stay near him. So I pretended I did, but didn’t. And even though I wasn’t betraying him sexually (the make-outs hardly counted), I was, in fact, betraying him because I lied to him. About being faithful. That I wasn’t. But I was. I had known since I moved to L.A. that Andrew wasn’t only sleeping with me, he was seeing Stephanie. And supposedly, purportedly a bunch of other women as well, though that part I wasn’t sure about and couldn’t tell. But even if he was, I didn’t care. To be upset about any of that was as futile as moving to the Arctic and throwing a fit about the cold, a condition you knew existed before you went. Wear enough protective layers or move south.

And my lies were simple. It’s not like he needed details. Okay, sometimes he wanted them. But a “yes” instead of a “no” to the query usually handled it. He seemed comforted by it somehow. That I’d changed? I didn’t know. He’d ask if I loved him the best—that was easy and true. “Yes,” I’d say. “I love you the best.” I just never wanted to leave his bed, and if pretending to be in other men’s helped me stay there, then okay.



A few weeks later, Viv and I were having lunch on the patio of a restaurant on Sunset Boulevard. It was a dumpy little health food place that had a huge following because the food was great, plus they made their own special salad dressing. Tour bus companies paid for the meals of certain celebrities to dine on the patio, which was visible from Sunset Boulevard, so their tourist customers could “unexpectedly” spot stars when they went by, but from what I could tell, Viv wasn’t one of them. Viv was going on and on about a meeting she had had the day before with Andrew, while I pretended to need to look intently at my veggie burger to get the tomato and lettuce situated on it just so. I couldn’t believe his name was coming up with her again. It had been a nice couple of months since she had complained about how horrible he was, and poor Stephanie, blah, blah, blah. Viv’s agent had decided she should do a movie—and how different can that be from the characters she creates for her videos, Viv had told me—so he had arranged a meeting for her with Andrew.

“It went incredibly great,” Viv said as she popped vitamins in her mouth. She had a different combination she took with each meal. “Though I still hate him. And it was clear he wanted to f*ck me and would have tried to if Stephanie wasn’t my best friend.”

Then she started her diatribe against him, but it was interspersed with waves of excitement that she would be in Andrew’s next film. My appetite was gone from listening to her go on and on. Some of the cheddar cheese on my veggie burger had melted into a hard, shiny surface of orange on my plate. Viv hadn’t gotten cheese on hers because she didn’t eat any dairy; her nutritionist had told her it goes straight to the hips. I imagined Viv’s food lining up in her mouth with marching orders in hand that would direct it to its bodily destinations, like travelers on the mother ship, to enhance her perfect skin, tight body, and soft lips. Viv was going strong with her “poor Stephanie being led astray” monologue. As I sipped my carrot juice, I thought that “poor Stephanie” looked to me like she could take care of herself. She was the epitome of Nordic beauty; I found it frightening. Her physical perfection was so high, it appeared calculated by a force other than God. Finally, an opportunity to end Viv’s vitriol presented itself—Viv’s ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend walked in, thank God—so I signaled to Viv with my eyes, and we pushed back our chairs, grabbed our purses, went to the parking lot, and said goodbye. Viv was so grateful that I had noticed the new girlfriend so she could make her exit without having to say hello that she forgot all about Andrew.

As I headed west through the sunlit, neon-drenched, billboards-blazing brightness of Sunset Boulevard, I wondered again why Viv disliked Andrew so much. Her anger was so vehement and personal for a man she had only just met. And she had had it before they ever said hello.

But that was only one of countless conversations I found myself in where Andrew was discussed extensively by (a) people who kind of knew him, (b) people who knew people who knew him, and (c) people who knew People magazine articles about him. It was excruciating to sit and pretend that I (a) didn’t know him, (b) had little to no interest in him, and (c) agreed and/or believed all the crap they said about him. All the women who did it seemed to be inwardly angry that they had never slept with him, and the men appeared jealous of everything he’d gotten. Mostly their conversations were mean, with an undercurrent of reserved awe that I don’t think they were even aware of. It was their inability to comprehend doing everything that Andrew had achieved, and it permeated their rumors and stories, disclosing the envy and inferiority they felt. I’d make neutral sounds and facial expressions to keep my true thoughts and feelings opaque, all the while counting the minutes for their gossip to end.