“Hey, Mandy,” she says bluntly. “This reminds me of when Mom said to Dad, ‘I think I might want to get divorced,’ and then Dad was pissed, so he got divorced. Remember that?”
Of course I remember. Against all odds, my parents went on to remarry five years later and have been together since. But my mom acted impulsively. She acted out of rage. Then my father did the same. Shit blew up. Is that the kind of behavior I want to model in my own life?
My sister’s insight lands in a way nothing else does.
Examining where I’ve veered off course is so uncomfortable for me. It is for everyone, I suppose. It requires a level of personal accountability in admitting that you are wrong—and practicing what my therapist calls the art of “defenselessness.”
“Okay, I’m going to call him,” I tell my sister. “I hope it isn’t too late.”
“Good luck,” she says. “Don’t fuck it up.”
It’s near the end of the night, and I broke things off about six hours before. Pat picks up my FaceTime call after a few rings, and the look on his face is one of amusement.
“Hello,” he says. “You’re the last person I expected to hear from.”
“I screwed everything up,” I say. “I’m so sorry. I just shut things down because I was scared that you would reject me so I wanted to do it first.”
“Why?” he asks, seeming tentative.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s like there’s one part of me that wants to be open and vulnerable to love, and then there’s another part that’s all about self-preservation and survival—and I just want to run from anything that might end up hurting me. Or hurt the other person first.”
Pat is quiet, and then suggests a solution.
“What if we came up with two different names for those two different parts of yourself?” he asks. “We could call one ‘Deborah.’ And the other ‘Shithead.’ ”
I laugh out loud, and it reminds me of the level of joy this guy provides me. He is dark and irreverent, yet I can feel his honesty and openheartedness in the way we communicate. He can make a joke and then follow it up with an insight that speaks to a psychological vocabulary that surpasses my own.
“So,” he says, “what can we do so this doesn’t happen again?”
“I’m going to . . .” I stall, not wanting to commit to what I know I need to do. “Okay, I’m going to go to my therapist and AA meetings.”
Pat’s face melts into a smile.
“Good,” he says. “That makes me really happy.”
He sees me. He forces me to talk about my feelings.
It is a strange thing. So much of this relationship is strange—in the best sense of the word. It is some manifestation of years of work I have done on myself to heal that little girl inside who was her worst enemy in re-creating the chaos with which I was so acquainted. Those twisted familiar patterns that felt like “home” are now being redefined. Maybe home can be a safe place with someone whom I can trust and love and count on.
“Why am I so fucked-up?” I ask him, annoyed at my broken lizard brain, including all of the dark and disturbing sexual scenarios it frequently conjurs.
“You know what the most insane, crazy scenario might be for you, Mandy? A man who is madly in love with you and adores you and thinks you’re the love of his life.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say. “I think you’re right.”
Seeing myself get past my natural inclination to self-sabotage as a form of protection is no small triumph. It feels like a miracle.
AFTER SIX WEEKS together—and two weeks after my aborted breakup attempt—we start calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend.
And now I am watching my boyfriend perform onstage. It’s a slightly harrowing experience.
“My first two wives were both virgins,” Pat is telling the audience as I sit hidden in the back row after asking to tag along. “I guess it seemed honorable, a girl saving her sex for marriage.”
Inside Dangerfield’s, the comedy club where he is performing, the dim lighting and red-glass-lit tables create the effect of a Mad Men dive bar. There are about twenty-five people in the audience, tittering and shifting nervously as he holds court. He pauses to look into the eyes of the audience.
“After two divorces, I’m kind of saving my next marriage for a girl who really likes to fuck.”
He smirks at me when he says that, and I squirm in my seat like he’s just seen through me with X-ray vision. When I took some friends from the Post to see Pat, he did one of his jokes about how he’ll never get married again, and city editor Michelle Gotthelf whispered to me, “Too bad.”
So I don’t take this joke about his “next marriage” seriously at all. Besides, I’ve ruled that out for myself. I am a realist at heart, and now I’m just enjoying the ride.
“The girl I’m dating right now,” Pat tells the audience, “told me she sucked a hundred dicks.”
What the . . .
I spit out my Diet Coke. It takes a lot to scandalize me, but here we are.
“Does that seem high to you?” he asks. “How many dicks is a woman supposed to suck? I don’t know. She’s almost forty, she started ‘dating’ at fifteen. After twenty-five years of dating, that’s about four dicks a year. That’s not bad. It’s one dick, quarterly. A lot of small-business owners would be grateful for that option.”
I’m laughing and burying my face in the table. The waiter brings me another soda and smiles.
“My first wife, she was my high school sweetheart,” Pat tells the crowd. “You marry your high school sweetheart, it’s like you’ve said, ‘You know what—I’ve looked all over the school.’ ”
Pat is unlike any man I’ve ever dated before. He doesn’t give a shit. Doesn’t want to impress (or even offend) the right people. Doesn’t want to glad-hand those in
