When I returned to the room, Jeremy was asleep on the bed, his study guide tented on his stomach. He smiled when he opened his eyes. I lay down next to him, our bodies barely touching. In silence we watched the light fade from the window as the sun sank behind the Duomo.
That night after dinner, he clicked off the light and lay down on his back. Would we have sex? I breathed deep and commanded my body not to want. I folded my desire like a tiny origami crane and tucked it away.
“I’m going to masturbate before bed. You’re welcome to join me.” Jeremy slipped off his boxer shorts, and his busy elbow tapped my forearm with every stroke.
“Want me to do that?” I whispered, a strand of my desire shaking loose.
“I’ve got it.”
I rested my hand on his shoulder, grateful he let me keep it there.
After Italy, I started working the long hours of a first-year associate at a big law firm, never leaving the office at night before seven. Suddenly I had a secretary, an expense account, and an office with a window overlooking the Chicago River. During my sixth week of work, I pulled my first all-nighter. My main task as a young lawyer was to review financial documents ten hours a day for a client whose beverages I grew up drinking. Skadden also sent me to the client’s headquarters to interview the bigwigs who set up their sales strategy so we could defend them to the SEC. After a long day of back-to-back meetings with the all-male-except-me team and a long dinner, I would collapse on a hotel bed and call Jeremy, who was home playing his NetHack.
“You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you,” Jeremy would say.
While I was off learning how to be a Skadden lawyer, Jeremy slipped into a depression. He gained weight, stopped shaving, skipped AA meetings, and sat at his computer playing his game most of the hours he wasn’t at work. Mr. Bourgeois puked up a hairball that languished in the middle of his living room for a week. The bathtub grew furry with hair and scum. When I spent the night over there, I held my pee as long as I could. I could almost make it eighteen hours. And we were always at his place these days. I understood he was unable to expend the energy to come all the way to my house.
In my spare time, I tried to pull him out of it by buying him groceries and suggesting he hit a meeting or call his sponsor. In group, I begged Dr. Rosen to help him. “Can’t you see he’s depressed?” Dr. Rosen’s answer was always the same: “What are you feeling?”
The feedback from both of my groups was unanimous: “Concentrate on your new career.”
“Focus on your new Skadden life. Maybe your tastes will change,” Dr. Rosen said. It sounded like an offhand comment. My tastes?
I craved action. My boyfriend was not going to mentally deteriorate, or God forbid, relapse on alcohol, on my watch. I bought him a new comforter—a masculine plaid—took a bottle of bleach to the bathroom, and pulled globs of God knows what out of the drain. I scrapped cat puke out of the rug. I stocked his fridge with fresh fruit and lean proteins, his pantry with low-sugar cereals.
In my frenzy, I remained deaf to the one need he had expressed—to be left alone. Today, I have compassion for him and the illness that robbed him of joy and energy. I also have compassion for myself as his ex-girlfriend who thought she could cure his malaise with new linens and fresh pineapple. At the time, all I could manage was scrambling harder to “fix” him by fashioning him into the man I wanted him to be.
One night during this dark period, under the stiffness of Jeremy’s new plaid comforter, I shimmied down to give him a blow job. I’d been working as a lawyer for six months. My standard of living had shifted from law student to Big Firm attorney. I occasionally let myself shop at Whole Foods. I bought a full-price skirt at J.Crew. My savings account swelled to two grand. During the daylight hours, I squared my shoulders and stood like a woman worthy of the thick white business cards Skadden printed with my name on them.
At night, I slumped and ached.
The blow job was my idea. An attempt to bridge the wide gulf between me and Jeremy. As my head bobbed between his sweaty thighs, I had a single thought: I don’t want to be doing this. I violated myself by forcing the blow job and violated him by feigning desire and using oral sex to get him to pay attention to me and arrest his clinical depression. Jeremy hadn’t showered in days—his body smelled sour with neglect and so many days’ residue. I breathed out of my mouth, trying to ignore the stench of his body and the swells of my own disgust.
The following Tuesday morning I didn’t mention the blow job because I was ashamed. Jeremy’s unwashed body felt like something I should protect, even though Dr. Rosen advised me all along to bring everything to group. I was also ashamed that I forced a blow job I hadn’t enjoyed. My relationship was a farce, and I continued to act dishonestly and against my own interest and pleasure. By the afternoon, everything I wasn’t saying about my relationship was a loaded gun pointed at my throat. During a lull in the conversation, I spoke up.
“I don’t want to suck dirty dick.”
Everyone turned toward me.
“What did you just say?” Marnie said.
Nan’s eyes grew wide as I described the blow job. “Hell no,” she whispered.
When I finally looked at Dr. Rosen, I saw compassion in his eyes. “You don’t have to suck dirty dick,” he said.
My eyes teared up. He said it again very slowly. You. Don’t. Have. To.
