Cult Classic(57)

That’s why I was scared of seeing Knox. Because of the monster I became around him.

Knox’s concern for my physical well-being was the entry point of his affection. At first, I thought his compulsion to nurse stemmed from his immersion in an older art form and, by extension, an older world. He insisted on walking closest to the curb. Or sending cars to pick me up. He would nonchalantly move our café table away from foot traffic and glare at anyone who jostled me, as if prepared to draw his sword. I had a sharp sense of my own body whenever I was around him. I found myself doing things like blowing into my already-gloved fingers, announcing that it was cold. I’d touch the glass of an airplane window, knowing he was beside me, appreciating the silhouette of my ladylike fingers, speculating about the soft field of my thoughts. I was a fragile product of this big bad world. If I stubbed my toe, I’d say something like, “I don’t think it’s broken.” In bed, Knox was adamant about cradling my head to keep it from banging against the wall, even though our sex presented no danger. I’d sigh as I fell asleep, like a baby bear, with a little whistle out the nose and a nuzzle into the pillow, while Knox stroked my hair.

It made him so happy to do these things, it seemed like no sacrifice to pretend to want them.

One morning, our bodies skimmed by the sheets, Knox confessed the reason he taught himself to play the piano was so he could make something beautiful while his father beat his mother. On multiple occasions, the father tried to choke her to death. It fell to Knox to comfort her and then, when he was older, to call the police. The whole neighborhood knew how bad things were in that house, but they did nothing. They had their own problems.

After some prodding, I discovered that every woman Knox had ever been with had been assaulted, abandoned, neglected, or sexually abused, often by a relative. Knox’s broken-bird complex was not a tic, his aspirational Munchausen by proxy ran right up to the edge of causing trauma before backing away. The heavier the topic, the more Knox engaged with it. When I tried to move on from my own insufficient wounds, I could practically hear the cord of his attention being snipped. A hero without a damsel is a mere man. I found I could capture Knox’s attention only if I was upset. I’d leave parties in a huff, indulging in momentary emotion. Or I’d imply that Vadis and I had been discussing dark things, secret woman things when, in reality, we had devoted the better part of breakfast to identifying the color of a celebrity’s hair.

As our tolerance grew, we needed bigger hits of narrative pain to achieve the same high. I was running out of material. So I began telling flat-out lies. My dalliance with Aaron in the equipment shed became him cornering me against my will. Plus, I was a virgin. That much was true. But when that incident started running on fumes, I exaggerated a story of bad drunken sex in college. Smooth as silk, the drunken sex turned into assault “or something like it, these things aren’t always so cut and dry,” a reveal I made almost casually, over a plate of shishito peppers.

“I think of men like these peppers,” I said, folding a whole one into my mouth like a complete lunatic. “Sometimes they hurt, but mostly they’re sweet.”

I was a sane person imitating a broken person imitating a sane person, which did not feel sane, not at all.

“Did you press charges?”

I bowed my head and shook it. There was no end to the shame, the unfathomable, bottomless shame, I felt on behalf of women who had been sexually assaulted. I was perpetuating one of the more harmful betrayals of womankind. And yet I felt a perverse sense of vindication on behalf of every woman who is told a nonsense story by a man to get her into bed. Men going through an artistic block, men sad about the death of a distant relative or the closing of a record store, men passed over for a promotion who need pussy to heal. But there was no turning back. Knox lit up only when we discussed my turbulent sexual history, and became disengaged otherwise.

I tried to remember: Had something more than a little unpleasant happened that night in college, something more than stylistic differences? Probably. I did not have a great time, that’s why the night stood out. But it was so long ago, I had obliterated the truth of it. And now my fake rapist had set up camp, hanging above our bed like a bat.

No longer in the mood to faux-sodomize myself in order to keep my boyfriend, I knew what I had to do—kill the bat. So one afternoon, I showed up at Knox’s apartment. I sat on his settee, demonstrably upset. Knox put his hand on my knee while I stared at the carpet: My rapist, I explained, had died. How? A skiing accident. Where? Canada. How did I know? Google alert?

Guess we can explore the psychological soundness of that another time.

“Once a bad person,” Knox said, “always a bad person.”

“And now not even a person.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel free,” I said, the first honest thing I’d uttered in months.

The fake tormentor of my fake nightmares could no longer be tracked down. I had achieved closure by pressing Control-Alt-Delete. The problem was, I had finally told a lie so big, there was no way I could stay with the person I’d told it to. Keeping Knox around would doom me to this narrative, folding it into the couple’s counseling that was clearly coming. I could not stomach the idea of paying to lie to a therapist.

After I left his apartment, I told myself that at least I’d never have to see Knox again, never be reminded of my own capacity for manipulation.