I'm Glad My Mom Died(67)
We have sex for the first time and it’s incredible. The typical commentary that rattles through my brain during sex is nowhere to be found.
The times I’ve had sex have always felt like a thing that’s happening in the background of what’s going on in my head. I throw in some moans for good measure so they can’t tell. But not this time. This time, I’m lost in the moment. Steven makes me forget myself. I love that.
I start to cry. Steven asks if I’m all right. I tell him the truth. I’m crying because I’m realizing that this is how sex is supposed to feel. He kisses me harder. We have sex a few more times. He asks me to sleep over. He says he wants to never not fall asleep next to me. Christina compliments a young woman wailing a Whitney Houston number. All is well.
69.
I’M IN MY LIVING ROOM sitting on my overstuffed couch. Billy’s jackhammering away upstairs. I’ve been back home in California for three long weeks and the magical fairy dust of Toronto has settled.
My fixation on Steven had curbed my anxieties about the quality of the non-Netflix show and the overall state of myself, but now, without Steven in close proximity, the anxieties are back.
Will this show end my career? Or worse, will it explode into another embarrassing phenomonen that eclipses my identity?
What is my identity, even? What the fuck is that? How would I know? I’ve pretended to be other people my whole life, my whole childhood and adolescence and young adulthood. The years that you’re supposed to spend finding yourself, I was spending pretending to be other people. The years that you’re supposed to spend building character, I was spending building characters.
I’m more convinced than ever that I need to quit acting. That it doesn’t serve my mental or emotional health. That it’s been destructive to both. I think about what else has been destructive to my mental and emotional health… the eating disorders, of course, and the alcohol issues.
And then I realize that, as much as I’m convinced that I need to quit these things—acting, bulimia, alcohol—I don’t think that I can. As much as I resent them, in a strange way they define me. They are my identity. Maybe that’s why I resent them.
The stress of the realization draws me to the toilet, just like any stress does. I purge. By the time I get back to my couch spot, I see a missed call from Steven.
Steven and I became official the day I left Toronto and my God was I relieved. I was terrified of our relationship being nothing more than a blip. A fling. Something to pass the time that would have otherwise been spent bored in a workplace. That would mean I misread, misinterpreted. Was foolish. I was convinced there was something real between us, but I needed the label to back me up, support my reality.
The morning my flight was set to take off, Steven woke me up with a love letter asking me to be his “woman.” Leaving him was true agony. The moment of getting into my cab and saying goodbye was one of the most intense feelings I’ve ever felt in my life—shaky, terrified, passionate, and powerless. I had no idea where the future would take us, especially with us being long distance. It’s possible that the past few months have just been a fantasy, a delusion. Maybe Steven will go back to his life, and I’ll go back to mine, and we’ll just fall into our usual old patterns and slowly forget about each other, even with a label.
That’s why now, when Steven’s calling me, I’m relieved. I know what this call means. Last night while we were on our nightly three-hour FaceTime, he mentioned he was going to look at flights to LA and call me in the morning if he was able to get on one last-minute because we couldn’t stand being apart from each other any longer. This call means he was able to get on one. This call means Steven is coming out to visit me… today. This call means our relationship wasn’t a fling.
* * *
Steven’s plane lands. He only packed a carry-on since he’s only staying for a couple days, so he’s in his Uber quickly and we text back and forth his whole ride over. I cannot wait. I kick Billy out. He leaves his tools everywhere. (WHEN will this guy be done with his refurbishments? It’s been over a year.) There’s a knock at my door. I let Steven in. It’s wild to see him in person after only seeing him through a phone screen for three weeks. We’re timid at first. The conversation is slow. I’m terrified. Is this LA us? Was magical us Toronto Us and LA Us is whatever this is?
Finally, after the longest three minutes of my life, Steven grabs me into a hug and we start making out. He takes off my clothes and I take off his and he takes a condom out of his pocket (of course he does) and pulls it on and wields his condom-clad penis toward me and I am enthralled. We fuck three times on the couch and afterward we start talking and everything feels back to normal. Easy. Comfortable. The awkwardness was just the sexual tension. Yay.
After an hour of cuddling and chatting, Steven goes to the bathroom to pee. He walks back into the room slowly and with a concerned look on his face. He stops in the archway of the living room, keeping his distance from me. He seems guarded. He doesn’t say anything.
“What?” I finally ask.
“Jenny…” Steven says worriedly.
“What?” I ask again, more concerned than before. “You’re freaking me out. What’s going on?”
“It’s just…” Steven looks down and scuffs his socks against the hard cherry wood floors. I have no idea what Steven is about to say, and his hesitance is nerve-wracking to me. I just want him to get it out.