“I’m done,” I said. My spine straightened in the truth of those two words.
Dr. Rosen held his arms out straight in front of him, palms turned up. Then he slowly turned his palms over. “This is how you let go.”
I wasn’t following. It looked like tai chi. My group mates put words to the gesture.
“Stop calling him.”
“Stop trekking to that shithole apartment after work.”
“Stop paying for everything.”
If I just stopped—the chasing, planning, schlepping, conniving, cajoling, cleaning, shopping, pining, buying, and sucking—it would all be over. On his own, Jeremy wasn’t going to pop over to my house. He wasn’t going to make a dinner reservation or get tickets to see Wilco at the Riviera. If I let go, there would be nothing. I would be truly alone, but I would be free.
“So if I let go—” I said, grabbing Dr. Rosen’s hairy forearm with both hands. I leaned toward him until our faces were less than a foot apart. I wanted him to finish the sentence. Whatever he said, I was going to hold him to it.
“You’re going to find out what a real relationship feels like.”
23
“Can you let yourself have an orgasm with him?”
Dr. Rosen and the morning group were waiting for an answer from me. I was three months out of my relationship with Jeremy and two weeks into a flirtatious fling with a Skadden intern who was in pursuit of a full-time job offer.
“Aren’t there laws against this?” I asked. “I’m not supposed to bed the job aspirants.”
“You’re the lawyer,” Nan said.
“I don’t do sexual harassment.”
“Apparently you do.”
I’d met “the Intern” at a dinner the firm hosted at Japonais. Over a steady stream of raw tuna and unagi, I let him compliment my eyes and insinuate that his sexual prowess would blow my fucking mind. He was such a boy—cocky, loose-limbed, and unabashedly sexual in his designer jeans and hipster Adidas tennis shoes. He was six years younger than I was, but it felt like more. He grew up driving his dad’s brand-new Lexus SUV and taking SAT prep classes. He’d never worked a full-time job. I accepted his offer to walk me home from the restaurant, thinking that a wiry thing like him would never be able to batter through the invisible fence that kept sexually alive men away from me. But he sailed over the fence, and in one smooth moment when he pressed his lips to mine under a busted streetlamp on Clark Street, I opened my mouth and received him. As his lips moved softly against mine, there was a zing between my legs, and my appetite for anything in the world other than his lips on mine vaporized in an instant.
The next day he tracked down my personal e-mail address. That was some kiss, he wrote. I didn’t tell him I’d stayed awake all night thinking about it. I didn’t tell him that every one of my limbs was thrumming with activity—still, after fifteen hours. I didn’t tell him that I’d skipped breakfast and didn’t have lunch until almost three because I was feasting on the memory of that kiss. What I told him was: I’ve had better. A delicious lie that drove him to promise me that he would be the best I ever had. Prove it, I demanded.
Dr. Rosen was impervious to sexual harassment laws. “So? Will you let yourself have an orgasm with him?”
Yes, I desperately wanted to bed the Intern and let him make good on all his promises. I wanted him to lick my honey until the sun rose over Chicago. But I also wanted a real relationship, a go-to-Costco-on-Sunday type of thing. And this boy-child didn’t seem the type to appreciate a woman in her sweats, face dotted with zit cream after a sixteen-hour workday. In his third e-mail, he confessed to being both bi-curious and recently snorting cocaine in Miami.
“Nothing on his résumé screams ‘suitable lifetime partner for a woman in recovery.’ ”
“You could fuck him and find out,” Dr. Rosen said.
Toto, we are not in Catholic school anymore.
Our first date was on a Monday night, a few days after he accepted his offer from Skadden, so I was no longer in violation of harassment laws. He had classes all day Monday, so he pulled up to my office in his shiny black Lexus after his constitutional law seminar. He opened my door like a valet. The car was spotless—shiny black leather, clean cup holders, and a sound system that lit up the dashboard.
“My usual move is to take girls to Jane’s in Bucktown and then to a neighborhood bar, but you’re getting the deluxe treatment.” His smile was sly. He’d already put more thought into this date than any man had ever put into planning time with me.
He drove to a bistro on Grand Street. I’d written him off as a smart-ass player, which he most definitely was, but underneath his relentless sexual swagger, he displayed a fascination with legal ethics and the contours of civil liberties. His face softened with genuine tenderness when he talked about holding his baby niece for the first time. He lost points for having voted for George Bush, but earned a few back when he mentioned his therapist.
“It’s not Dr. Jonathan Rosen, is it?” He shook his head. Thank God.
By the end of the pumpkin soup course, I was ready to go full Luther Vandross with him. He brushed my calf with his foot, and I felt that heat between my legs again. As I sliced through my sea bass with the edge of my fork, I had only one thought: Oh my God, I’m having sex tonight.
When the check came, he pulled out his wallet and slipped a black American Express in the pocket of the leather folder. He scribbled a figure for a tip, signed his name with an illegible flourish, and stood up. “Let’s get out of here.” He held out his
