The Pisces(36)

Yes, it certainly seemed like the human instinct, to get high on someone else, an external entity who could make life more exciting and relieve you of your own self, your own life, even for just a moment. Maybe once that person became too real, too familiar, they could no longer get you high—no longer be a drug—and that was why you grew tired of them. That was what had happened to me and Jamie. It was only when he was pushing me away—and then after he was gone—that he became a drug. It was so much easier for someone to be the drug before or after the relationship. When they were absent they were exciting. When they were right there it was a different story.

But some human beings did want simple partnership: someone with whom to weather life, like Annika and Steve. How did they stay so into each other living side by side, everything out in the open? How did they simultaneously have each other and still want each other? To want what you had—now, that was an art, a gift maybe. But whenever I felt I finally “had” Jamie, the nights in his bed seemed suffocating. I preferred the acquiring, the almost-getting, the moment before he was mine again. What was left to look forward to after you got a person? To “have” seemed nauseating. Then again, I was the sick one—the one in group therapy—not Annika.



The women in group told themselves they were looking for symbiotic companionship, something like Annika and Steve. They thought they wanted a man to show up for them. But I didn’t believe them. They were choosing men who couldn’t be present, so it probably wasn’t really what they wanted. It certainly wasn’t what Claire or Diana wanted. It wasn’t what I wanted.





28.


For the next few days I rose at dawn and walked Dominic to Oakwood Park, where he would run around and chase birds. I felt like a wild woman as I ran beside him, a primal lady of the wolves. He thanked me gleefully, jumping up and licking my face, his cold, wet nose brushing up against mine. I couldn’t believe that his love for me was still so pure and unwavering, and I didn’t even have to work for it. Could a love like that really be trusted? Who was I if I wasn’t trying to make someone love me? I knew that Dominic, unlike the men, would never hurt me. But why then did his pure love feel a little scary while the others had strangely felt safe? I suspected that I was afraid it might make me lazy, not through any fault of my own, but because of a lack of friction: a gradual atrophying of the muscles with nothing to push against, nothing to resist. Or maybe it was something else?

Since my mother’s death I had been mistrustful of love, or anything, really, that came too easily, as though it were fool’s gold and could one day, just like she did, disappear. I had spent so much time creating friction for myself: not only in whom I chose to love but in the work I did. I’d made my thesis impossibly hard—harder than it needed to be, ensuring that I might never complete it. Somehow it always felt safer psychologically to do that. But where had it gotten me?

Well, now I was doing things differently, living in a state of what might be called sisterly purity. Upon returning from the park I would feed Dominic and make myself a breakfast of Greek yogurt, honey, and nuts, like I had done when I’d first started my thesis. I felt that if I could eat like Sappho I could somehow get closer to her. Looking at the ocean, a different ocean from hers but also the same, might have a similar effect.



Unlike my apartment in Phoenix, Annika’s house didn’t make me feel like I wanted to put my head in an oven. But just in case, I made sure to spend some time away. I would go to a café and drink espresso, writing for hours, feeling a sense of purpose and meaning that I hadn’t felt in years. Skater boys, surfer boys, and boys with guitars floated in and out the door: shirtless, shorts low-slung, lean and muscular above the pelvis alluding to what was below. But I felt like a goddess, above them somehow. Something removed them from my field of want, as though I were protected. I wore white. Twice that week I went to group and felt more of a sense of sisterly love toward the other women. Now I was able to help. I was even maternal in a way that didn’t feel scary, but strong.

I had figured it out. If you just stayed away from everything dangerous long enough, other people in your life would show you yourself and what you shouldn’t be doing. You could get high on their conquests but not have to suffer their losses. Diana, who was suffering, called every day. Most afternoons she went to tennis and was ignored by both of the instructors she had blown. In trying to avoid Caleb, her son’s young friend, she found herself on Craigslist now posting about being a MILF. Had she never heard of Tinder? I guess she was afraid her photo would be seen. Now she had begun fucking strangers in cars in dark parking lots. She always felt demoralized after, but before it she was electrified.

Claire had not found anyone to take the place of Ponytail Man as a third member of her harem. It seemed she’d been right: she could not emotionally handle being with David alone—without a buffer of other men. First it started with missed texts. She found herself double-texting him to try to get his attention. Then he canceled plans to go see an outdoor concert in Santa Monica. The night of the canceled plans she called me and said that she just couldn’t do it anymore. She was trying not to feel for these men. She was trying to keep her emotions inside, to think and act with her pussy alone, but she couldn’t help herself. Now she was in love with David.



“I understand,” I said. “I have no desire to feel in a contained way. For me it is all or nothing. I don’t know that I can really enjoy the sex unless the person really wants me. And if the person really wants me, I don’t want them for very long.”