think too much about, the loss too raw. But knowing he hurts makes me feel just a little better. All that time we were together, I got so little from him. I have to wonder if I did this in part to see if he cared. To prove to myself I was loved. I don’t like seeing this about myself. It’s selfish and insensitive. Worse, it reminds me of something my mother might do, then claim herself as a victim. It’s also, of course, what my father did. Rather than just leave the relationship with my mother, he had to do something unconscionable so she had no choice but to want out too. All that sideways communication. How would I ever figure out how to make a relationship work?
When I can’t stand thinking about it anymore, I drive out to the coast. Seagulls sit on the craggy rocks. Pines, permanently shaped by the wind, bend into melodramatic forms. I breathe in, listening to the soft, rhythmic sounds of the ocean. In Ecola State Park I tie on my running sneakers and take a jog on the trail. Pine needles fly up beneath my steps. The sun plays patterns on the tree trunks. Birds whistle above me. I don’t want to be in pain anymore. I want to be done, to be left unburdened and naked, to tear the hurt off my body like layers of clothes. At the end of the trail I stop and bend forward, hands on my knees, to catch my breath. I’m not healed, but for this moment, I’m better.
A new friend, Terri, the manager of the juice bar, tries to help me unpack my life. She’s twelve years older than me and has been through two divorces. She has wisdom to share. We sit at coffeehouses and discuss my past, how I’ve made bad choice after bad choice, and the reasons why. When I describe Leif and the ways in which he was emotionally unavailable, hoping to defend my actions, Terri just listens. She sips her coffee and looks at me in a way I’ve come to recognize will mean she’s about to challenge me.
“What about you?” she asks.
“What about me?”
“Whenever I see something flawed about the person I chose, I ask myself how I’m that thing too.”
“So, if Leif’s unavailable, how am I unavailable too?”
“Exactly,” she says.
And I think some more.
Inevitably, though, I get distracted. This time, the distraction’s name is Matthew, and he’s a chef in the restaurant next to the juice bar. Matthew is big and kind. When we have sex, he lifts my body into the air as though I weigh nothing. But Matthew is in love with someone else, and within two weeks he explains this to me and asks the girl to marry him. Next is Kyle, whom I sleep with on the beach when we get out of town during a heat wave. Then Miles. Then Jack. Then Randy. Each one I hope will be something more than just sex, or at least relieve me of my pain about Leif. And the latter they all do, albeit briefly. In the years following, I will jokingly call this my summer of love. But in truth, there is no love involved at all. When Leif and I broke up, I applied to MFA programs again, knowing I didn’t want to wind up back in Tucson with a broken heart. Now I get acceptance letters, and I decide to go to the University of Oregon, where I’ve been offered free tuition and a teaching fellowship. So at the end of the summer, I move down to Eugene with Randy’s help, and find a small one-bedroom house. The owners planted nasturtium and calendula in the small front yard. There’s a lush butterfly bush near the door. It is the first time I’ve ever lived alone and, starting this new program, I’m hopeful my life will begin to feel better. In the first week, I make a friend, and we go together to a party. Some guy’s house.
A boy quickly catches my eye.
Goatee, long hair. We watch each other a while, exchanging smiles. In the kitchen, he approaches me, and when he introduces himself as Dennis, I hear an accent.
“Where are you from?” I ask.
“Germany.”
“Your people did terrible things to my people.”
He laughs. “You are Jewish?”
“Ostensibly,” I say. “Can I say I’m Jewish if I was brought up celebrating Christmas?”
“You can say whatever you want to say.”
“Really.” I smile, move out of the way while someone reaches behind me for a bottle opener. I think about all the things I’d like to say. I want him to take me home, to kiss me, put his hands on my body. He smiles back. But I don’t say anything more. When I leave that evening, he has my number. So I wait. By the fourth day, I’m so distracted from my classes, I decide to take initiative. I go to the Modern Languages building where he told me he studies, find his mailbox, and leave a note. “Are you ever going to call? Your creative writing friend.” And I write my number again, just in case he lost it.
This time he calls. We set a date, and he shows up at my house with wine and a small bouquet. Within the first hour we’re on the floor, peeling off clothes.
“I haven’t told you something,” Dennis says, pushing my hair from my face.
“Let me guess. You have a girlfriend.” I smile, but inside my stomach sinks. Why can I never choose the right guy?
“That’s a good guess.”
“Then what are you doing?” I ask him.
“Things aren’t going well, so we’ve agreed to take a break and see other people.”
I brighten, seeing an opening. As the night progresses, more is revealed. He still lives with her, and he still loves her as well. In the middle of the night, in my bed, he wakes up crying.
“I’m sorry,” he says when he leaves. “I’m not ready for this.”
But I keep pushing.
I call. I find him at school. We spend more and more time together. And we have more and more sex. Eventually, he moves out, giving me hope. But soon after the move, whenever we have sex, he won’t kiss me. He still speaks regularly with his ex-girlfriend. Once, I force a kiss during sex, pulling his face to mine, but he pulls away. The next day, when I ask him what we’re doing, he reminds me about the other girl.
“I’m not going to be in love with you when my heart is taken by her,” he tells me.
So I move on. Sean, Will, Trent. A few more whose names I forget.
By the time I meet Toby, I’m so far down, so full of desperation, I’d take anyone, anyone who will take me too. We meet when his band comes to a local club. During the band’s break we make eye contact. He’s very handsome with a broad chest and shoulders that make me feel like maybe he could protect me. We spend the night in my apartment, and I travel the two hours to see him every weekend after.
Toby works for a contractor repairing and restoring boats, but what he really wants to do is animation. He shows me reams of paper on which he’s drawn characters smoking weed and plucking buds off plants. I know he does bong hits throughout the day. But until he opens up his closet to show me an elaborate setup of five marijuana plants, I don’t realize this is his passion as well. He takes me to see three other places, in hidden meadows, where he’s planted eight more. The stacks of twenties I see around his room, money I naively thought he earned at work, begins to make more sense. Back at school, with Toby choosing to be with me, I focus once more on my writing. I bang out story after story. One I land in a well-known literary magazine. Another my professor chooses for an anthology. The discussions about writing that I engage in with my colleagues excite me. Ideas about form and narrative. I gather a new language with which to talk about my and others’ work, a language highly intellectual and academic. On the weekends, though, I drop all of that so I can be with Toby.
Not that we talk about much anyway. Mostly we just have sex. Good, hot sex.
When the program comes to an end, Toby and I find a place to rent in a Portland suburb. I set up an office for writing and start teaching at a local college. Toby sets up his plants. And very quickly, things begin to disintegrate.
First, Toby gets kicked out of the band. Then he loses his job. My adjunct positions don’t make enough to carry us, so he takes various daylong warehouse jobs through a temp agency, making close to minimum wage. Anytime I try to talk to him about getting a real job, he gets hurt and defensive. I know from watching my own father that job issues are hard for men. They cut straight to their sense of self. So I learn not to talk about it at all. He also starts smoking more. Almost every day I come home from teaching to find him in front of the TV with the bong. After I express my dismay a few times, he starts relegating himself to the basement. Often, as I open the front door, I see a flash as he races to get down there, away from me and what he will call my “constant judgment.” At night, he goes out with friends, leaving me steaming and alone. I call Bevin, who has moved back East, and vent. Terri and I meet and analyze the situation. The bottom line, though, doesn’t take a whole lot of analysis. I shouldn’t be with him. I know that. I’m not stupid. Yet I make no moves. I tell a friend, “If I weren’t so
