Unsurprisingly, this birthday evening humiliation—along with all the other little slights I’ve felt and enabled—feels like a death by a thousand cuts.
I revert to my spend-less-time-with-Blaine-to-make-him-love-me strategy. About a month later, when I am booked to perform at a comedy show with several friends, I ask comedian Jessica Delfino to hang out with me afterward instead of just heading straight over to Blaine’s. I’m feeling amped, and the show was so fun it’s like I’m on a natural high soon to be enhanced even further by many unnatural ones. This is the night I finally throw my “detox” to the wind. As we down our first of many martinis, I tell her we should take sexy pictures of ourselves sipping them, and I’ll post them on Facebook to make Blaine jealous.
Jessica laughs—probably at the fact that a thirty-three-year-old has the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old—and we proceed to carry out my plan of attack. The second and then the third martini hit me hard, and I begin babbling on to Jessica about how I’m trying to spend less time with Blaine in order to increase my value—and that includes withholding sex.
“But I’m so horny,” I whine to Jessica. “Maybe we could just go back to my place and fool around? You’re a girl, so it wouldn’t really be cheating.”
Of course, that’s totally cheating, but never mind that.
“That sounds really fun,” Jessica says politely, while also slickly employing every man’s favorite word. “But I can’t because I have a boyfriend.”
“Oh, I totally get it, no worries,” I say. “I should just go over to Blaine’s place, but I’m really trying to do better about making myself less available.”
Still cruising on the elation of the show and now the solid intoxication of a three-martini punch, I walk out of the bar to head home. I see two men on the street smoking, and I realize I should definitely bum a cigarette. I haven’t smoked in years, but tonight feels like the night.
“Hey, got a smoke?” I ask. Looking a little closer, I realize, Holy shit, these guys are hot.
“We are pilots,” they tell me in heavy accents, as they dispense to me many cigarettes and look me over, “visiting from Italy.”
I have zero filter at this point, and I am 100 percent pure unadulterated id.
“Man, if I wasn’t in a relationship I would totally go for you,” I crow. “You guys are super sexy. Here, come with me, I’m going to introduce you around and get you laid.”
They are charmed. I lead them up into Sixty Hotel in SoHo, a celebrity hideaway where I once spent the day staking out Paris Hilton with a tattoo-covered paparazzo I was profiling.
“You’ll love this place,” I say. “Let’s get a drink, and I’ll introduce you around.”
As I nurse my fourth martini, I begin my totally-not-weird-at-all quest of hawking these Italian pilots’ sexual wares to confused single women. The pilots finally put an end to the performance I am putting on and corner me in the middle of the bar.
“But,” Pilot #1 says, brushing up against my arm, “we like you.”
“I know, right?” I say cockily. “I wish I was single.”
I wish I was single.
My heart is thumping. I sip my drink, nibble on my olive, and think about that statement, wishing I was single. Suddenly, I have the justification-for-cheating epiphany to end all epiphanies.
Aren’t I, though—pretty much? I’m in a relationship with a fantasy lover kept in secret who is perpetually disappointed with my ability to be good enough for him. These last several months especially, I’ve been making a fool out of myself trying to change for someone whom I should have let go the instant he didn’t want to have his picture taken in public with me.
You know what? I wish that lawyer family friend had written up something threatening me not to ever write about him again.
Fuck Blaine. And fuck me for having tolerated this for so long.
I look at these hot Italian pilots in front of me, with their black curly hair, olive complexions, and hedonistic smiles. I kiss one of them. Then I kiss the other. This shit is on.
We sneak to the back of the bar, and Pilot #1 (I find names so formal, don’t you?) drapes his coat over my legs and begins to finger me while Pilot #2 kisses me in exactly the way I like. Kissing that says This Is Exactly What I’m Going to Do to You.
“Do you want to see my place?” I ask, and we walk to my apartment, where, all full of bluster, I show them a picture of Blaine, then turn it over, and we all proceed to: Tone. It. Down.
FLUSHED, SWEATY, AND still very drunk, when my new pilot friends leave, I wake up to reality. Like, reality reality. Oh shit. That just happened. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
My entire “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it” drunken epiphany I had earlier has transmuted into a dark pit in my stomach filled with fear, personal loathing, and regret.
I stand up and immediately fall over my plastic tower of CDs, bruising my leg badly and sending the jewel cases shattering everywhere. I find my cell phone and dial Blaine’s number.
It is two thirty in the morning. “Hello?” he answers.
“I just had sex with two Italian pilots,” I say.
“What?” he asks groggily. “Why are you telling me this?”
“I’m coming over,” I say, and I grab a cab to head to his place.
I wave hello to the doorman—he’s the third one I’ve gotten to know in our nearly two years of dating now—and head up to Blaine’s apartment.
“So, do you want to break up?” I ask.
“I need to think,” he says.
A small smile shows on his face.
“Maybe we could all get together and
