Unwifeable(50)
Every week the ritual of doing the column starts feeling like an exercise in self-immolation. I can never write about the issues that I’m actually concerned about in the relationship. His urging of me to exercise more, the little white lies I catch him in. And mostly, his pointed censoring of my writing, which even now fascinates me. It’s so interesting to see what is shameful in someone else’s eyes. What we must do anything to deny, lest the world know that sometimes bad choices and bad things happen. Blaine’s editing notes read like:
? “What’s the point of writing that you were so drunk that you don’t remember having sex except to call attention to yourself and know that someone is going to read that sentence over seven times?”
? “Can you change ‘porn fetish loop in your brain’ to something tamer?”
? “Can you not imply that you went back to that guy’s hotel room?”
? “Can you take out the nipples thing?”
Rather than seeing these issues as the problems they are, I decide that the column is the problem and that I must find a way to change it lest I ruin my secret relationship, which I hope against hope will someday turn into a legitimate public union.
One weekend just the two of us travel to Newport, looking at potential houses Blaine might buy for fun, and I feel a wave of smug confidence. He’s taking me house hunting. Me. I’m like the best fake wife ever. I cannot screw this up. I need to take action right now to change the future of About Last Night lest I suffer another “Fakin’ It for Super Preppy”–size disaster.
Inspired and overconfident, I email my editor Lauren, being sure to mention that we are just having a chill Newport house-hunting weekend together, NBD, what are you doing by the way? I suggest that I think it’s best if we change my column into a weekly advice piece instead of a tell-all about my romantic life. Oh, the arrogance. There is no better way to piss off an editor than to assume that you have any say at all in changing the entire direction of something you were very lucky to get in the first place.
Lauren writes back to say we should discuss it in person. I forward everything on to Mackenzie, who asks if I will be okay if Lauren doesn’t want it to continue. But I am in a delusion of my own making, and I hardly even think of this as a possibility.
“I’m sure she will be open to it,” I tell Mackenzie. “I mean, I’m not worried.”
But Mackenzie calls it. Lauren has no interest in anything other than what the column has always been. So we make plans to discontinue it after it has reached a year of running, and I will announce the end of it within the pages of the Post.
It feels like a risk, but also like a relief. Blaine seems pleased at the idea of no longer being written about every week, but I notice he is also twitchy and stressed, as if I now expect something from him. Instead of expressing how I really feel, I provide nothing but reassurance to him, as always.
“I just think we should give this a chance, outside of the pages of the Post,” I tell him, patting his hand as we share a bottle of prosecco. “Don’t worry. I don’t expect anything. No pressure. I’m doing this for me.”
I am utterly and completely full of shit. I expect everything.
In my final About Last Night, I position it as the breakup that Super Preppy didn’t expect—but the breakup is with the column, not him, do you get it?
* * *
ONE NIGHT AFTER many martinis, I engage in a long conversation at Langan’s with Post editor in chief Col Allan, and I tell him boldly all about The Secret and vision boards I have made to try to get Blaine to propose. (Oh, and I don’t remember this part, but Mackenzie tells me later that I also apparently tell him that when I’m drunk I call phone sex lines. So that’s good.)
“You should do a vision board for increasing the newspaper’s circulation,” I slur. “Seriously. I’ll show you the one I made up with a bunch of engagement rings and stuff for Blaine.”
Col chuckles, and the next day, I triumphantly bring my big dumb hot-pink floppy poster board into the office and ask his assistant to give it to him. Honestly, I have a lot of drinking regrets, but thinking about this grizzled, legendary Australian newspaperman receiving my ridiculous vision board covered in Tiffany rings and Vera Wang gowns still makes me laugh to this day.
But when Blaine comes home with me to San Diego for his second Christmas with the Stadtmillers, it provides me with a small revelation that is a wake-up call and counterpoint to any vision-board delusions. There is a moment late at night in our austere hotel room after we’ve made all the visiting family rounds together.
“I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” Blaine begins, “but I have to ask because it’s been on my mind. If we break up, you’re not going to try to get revenge or anything, are you?”
It feels like a knife to the stomach.
“No,” I say coldly. “Do you want to break up?”
“Not at all,” he says. “I just wanted to ask because it was on my mind.”
“Why would you ask that?”
“I just wanted to put my mind at ease.”
Blaine’s doubts make me see very clearly where all this is coming from. It’s not even Blaine’s anxiety. He’s a fairly roll-with-the-punches kind of dude. It’s coming from all those people around him who are concerned about me. And make those concerns known any chance that they get.