I think it’s fairly clear in that email that I’m pissed, right?
Instead of offering any kind of acknowledgment as to how this was yet another insult in a long line of them, Blaine replies: “Garth seems like a nice guy though I guess discretion is not his middle name! Funny picture and saw no need to advertise it, hope all is going swimmingly with you. Can you help us out with an event in December we are doing?”
So fucking tacky.
I’ve never felt so glad to be single. No matter how much I am spiraling out, I feel a weird sense of freedom in knowing I refuse to ever sink as low as that relationship brought me again.
BUT . . . LET’S BE real. I am so, so spiraling out.
The newest wrinkle in my sex life is that I have now recruited my friend Bianca (who I met while on retreat with Amma, the so-called hugging saint of India) to be my partner in crime. It’s so perfect somehow that I met her at this super-hippie patchouli-scented spiritual convention, and that instead of praying or whatever, we end up having a bunch of creepy sex romps. We have one, then two, then five three-ways. We’re definitely not average on the Kinsey scale to be sure, but neither of us is really all that into pussy. No, I would say these three-ways are our sad aging-party-girl versions of slumber parties where we get to dish on the man afterward—and not feel dumb when he doesn’t call. I suppose, in some ways, they are also my meager attempt at having love and consistency in my life.
But that isn’t even the spiral-out part. Where it gets really dark is when I begin an affair with a married man—something I said I would never do.
The night we meet, I don’t go home with him, nor does it even come up—but he does roast me in a way that is slightly thrilling. He is an award-winning comedy writer whom I’ve met in the course of covering the scene. I go to see him perform at his suggestion, and afterward we grab a drink at the bar . . . talking. Because you know, that’s beyond reproach, right? Nothing wrong with that. Men and women do that all the time.
When the bartender comes to get my drink order, I proudly stick to the no-alcohol rule I’ve kept up for a few months now since the Gawker photographer no-condom debacle.
“I’ll get a water,” I say, and then apologetically offer by way of explanation, “I stopped drinking a few months ago. I’m just so over the top as it is, you know.”
He looks at my six-foot-two frame.
“You’re a pretty big girl.”
“Whoa.” I laugh. “Don’t ever tell a girl she’s ‘big.’ I’m tall. And I fucking hate it when people give me shit about my height.”
His eyes twinkle.
“Why?” he says. “Just because your height makes you a mutant, is that what you mean?”
I laugh. I am amazed, horrified, delighted. I like dickhead funny when it is actually funny.
“Yeah, I just try to look like a model,” I say. “That’s what I can only hope a guy will fetishize, you know. Being pretty and skinny.”
He glares at me. A glimmer of a smile.
“But you’re not,” he says. “Pretty or skinny.”
“Man,” I say, laughing louder than I have in a while, “I love what a cocksucker you are. That’s hilarious. It’s fun to be eviscerated in such a clean, asshole-y way.”
That night he requests me on Facebook, and we keep in touch.
When I write a satirical piece in the Post giving advice to men on how to have an affair—based on the shit show of a tabloid story that is ESPN talking head Steve Phillips’s cheating scandal—not too long after, with perfect irony, I get a message from the Married Man.
“Excellent article,” he writes. “You certainly know your infidelity.”
I lie to myself and think: Wow, this guy thinks I’m really funny and what a great ally he’ll be to me in the entertainment industry. Instead of the truth of the situation: This is chum. He wants to have an affair.
This guy doesn’t like my talent. He likes my insecurity—and my fear that I have none.
Soon after, the text comes. “Want to get together tonight? My wife is out of town.”
“Wait,” I text back. “You’re married.”
“Yes, I am,” he replies. “Want to come over?”
So now the moral question is laid out in front of me with perfect transparency.
I can’t decide to do something like this on my own. I need some kind of magical realism outside person to blame for what I do or don’t do. So I duck outside of the Post and call an old married friend of mine who is the perfect husband, thinking he can talk me out of it.
“I don’t know,” my friend says. “I don’t necessarily think it’s such a bad thing.”
“Wait,” I balk. “Do you cheat on your wife?”
I can hear his hesitation on the phone, and because I’m a human bullshit detector, I know.
“Well, clearly you do,” I say. “Let me just give you some advice. If your wife ever asks, don’t pause—not even for a second.”
I end the call, stare at my phone, and write the Married Man back asking what time I should come over.
I’ve just been given the “everything is shit anyway” mental justification I was looking for in talking to my friend. When in reality, I’m the one who is actively making things shit myself.
When I was married to James and found out about my ex-husband’s affairs, I recoiled, emailing these women years later at 2 a.m. from my work computer at the Post with the one-line message “Just wanted to say you’re a cunt.”
Oh, how wrong I was. I am the cunt. The Married Man is the cunt. We are all the cunt. Anyone who has ever cheated (and
