Whip Smart: A Memoir (34 page)

After paying the check, Barrett and I stood under the awning over the restaurant’s entrance and smoked. Dinner had only taken an hour, and I tried to figure out the best way to prolong our date. Then the sky opened up. Torrents of rain pounded the awning above us, and pedestrians ran, shrieking, soaked magazines clutched over their heads. Barrett and I stood close, our shoulders wet, in a tiny room with walls of water. Ludicrously sexy.

“It’s early,” I said, our bodies so close I could smell his shampoo.

“Yup.”

“Do you want to come back to my place and watch a movie?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Okay. Good.” More smiling.

With subdued giddiness and wet hair we browsed the DVD rental/coffee shop next to the Snatch, cautiously commenting on things we’d already seen and had confident things to say about. In the beginning, there is such a hurry to leak identifying information but also to please and impress; every subject and activity is a nervous opportunity. We settled on the newest Terrence Malick:
The New World
. The symbolism didn’t occur to me then, though I sheepishly realize it now.

Before heading back up to my loft, we smoked a cigarette on the loading dock beside my building’s door. Swinging our legs, we watched the rain again pelt the parked cars and running bodies so hard that it bounced back off of them in halos.

“So, is it weird for you how we’ve met?” I asked, in a hurry to get the words out but consciously slowing myself down.

“Well, I thought it might be. Before, I mean. But you aren’t what I expected.”

“I don’t act like a dominatrix?”

“Ha-ha. No, you don’t. I mean, you don’t act like I would guess someone who used to be a dominatrix would act, if that makes any sense.”

“Sure, no, if I had never been one, I probably would be skeptical about going on a date with one. I mean, I wouldn’t think they’d necessarily be like me, if I can know with any accuracy what that is.”
Ugh
.

“Yeah, you seem really real. And no offense, but I would expect someone like that to be more affected or something.”

“Yeah, well, they can be.” I resisted the urge to explain that I was different, not really into it. “Is it weird that I was
Jacob’s
dominatrix?”

“Well, yeah. But I haven’t been thinking about it the whole evening, or picturing anything freaky, like I was afraid of doing.”

I laughed. “Well, that’s good.”

“Yeah.”

It was weird, but not too weird to go ahead with. It would be now. In fact, if the opportunity presented itself today, I wouldn’t go on the date. Whether Jacob was in a happy relationship now or not, knowing his former feelings for me and the nature of our former relationship would prohibit me from going there. I’m not sure what to make of that, as I can’t imagine my life today if my scruples had been then what they are now. But then, would they be what they are now without Barrett’s influence? It’s unlikely.

We made it about fifteen minutes into the movie before we kissed. It was so easy! That kind of kissing is what it is: like stepping into a sun-warmed pond at dusk. I’ll forgo further explanation; if you know what it’s like, you know, and if you don’t, well, I hope you someday do.

We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me.

“This might sound weird; it’s not typical guy response.” I froze, suddenly awkward. “I mean, if I didn’t feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I’ve rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake.” He shrugged
apologetically. “I mean, if it’s safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time.”

I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn’t quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was all my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved.

“Of course. I agree totally.” I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. “And yes, I am on the same date you are on.”

“I thought so,” he said. “I mean, I don’t think you can feel like this when it’s not reciprocal.”

He left at 2:00
A.M
. and called me at 11:00 the next morning to schedule our second date.

FOR WEEKS I LIVED
in a low-level state of delirium, which would have been heaven if I trusted myself more. Don’t mistake me; it was wonderful, but thrilling with a nervous edge, as if there might have been an unseen cliff’s edge just beyond my sight. It
was
different from the beginnings of past relationships, but I couldn’t point to exactly how, other than the strength of my feelings. It really felt like falling—my insides swooping downward while thinking of him on the subway, in the supermarket, during classes—the intensity unnerved me; instincts that strong had to be old, right? My newer instincts tended to be the safer ones. Not that that slowed us down at all.

On our second date, he discovered that I didn’t back up my computer regularly, only e-mailed myself drafts of my writing occasionally. On our third date, he gave me an external hard drive. I spent that night at his apartment and backed up the contents of my computer the following afternoon. Two days later, my computer crashed, rendering everything inside of it unrecoverable. I took this
as a sign in the parlance of a twenty-first-century cupid. We spent nearly every night together for the next month.

Our first fight happened about six weeks after our first date. An exgirlfriend of mine whom I’d dated as a teenager and had remained friends with ever since was passing through town and needed a place to stay. I didn’t think twice about sharing my bed with her. There hadn’t been sexual tension between us in a decade, although that wouldn’t have stopped me in the past.

Barrett got quiet when I mentioned it, but didn’t comment. I fleetingly remembered that Jacob had described him as the jealous type. “Sarah jealous” was his exact phrase. Sarah, Jacob’s girlfriend, was one of the reasons I should have stopped calling him when we stopped doing sessions. Not only had it been sketchy moral terrain to be calling a man known to have had unreturned romantic feelings toward me, but also his girlfriend actually forbade our talking. I thought him an idiot for telling her that I had been his dominatrix in the first place; what girlfriend wouldn’t have such a reaction? Still, I knew what “Sarah jealous” implied.

An evening a week or so later, Barrett and I were walking through Madison Square Park, an oasis of benches and sculpted foliage in the middle of the busy intersection just north of the Flatiron Building. I commented on his uncharacteristic quiet.

“Something on your mind?”

He sighed heavily. I sensed his reluctance and felt a pang of both fear and excitement. Any kind of disclosure in the beginning is exciting.

“What?”

“I just feel a little weird about your ex sleeping over. In your
bed
.”

I paused at this, unsure of my reaction.

“What’s to feel weird about? We have been friends for about a hundred times the length of our romantic relationship. I’m not attracted
to her at all; there’s
nothing
sexual there
at all
.” I understood needing reassurance in such things and was happy to give it.

“Yeah, you said that before, but it still makes me uncomfortable.”

Here I started to feel annoyed.

“Well, why?”

“I know I can be kind of conservative or old-fashioned or something about these kinds of things, and I don’t want you to feel accused in any way, because I believe you that nothing happened, or could have happened. …”

“But?”

“But it’s more the appropriateness of her sleeping in your bed.”

“You think it’s
inappropriate
?”

“Not because you did anything inappropriate, but more in it’s relation to me. I mean, I just wouldn’t even consider having an exgirlfriend sleep in my bed, not because I think there would be even a remote possibility of anything happening, but just out of respect to you.”

I simmered. How dare he? I could be friends with whomever I wanted and could invite them to sleep wherever I deemed appropriate! I was a feminist, for crying out loud! He had no right to impose his Waspy values on me! He couldn’t tell me what was
appropriate
! I prided myself on the level of physical comfort that such boundaries (or lack thereof) implied. I hadn’t been raised to fear sexual connotations, I thought, and believed that this confidence suggested a sophistication that transcended the rote adherence to antiquated social mores and manners. In slightly calmer tones, I told him as much.

“Autumn and I share baths together, for God’s sake!” I said. This did not relieve him. I had never seen him look that way before. He was
angry
. As righteous as I felt, there was something that scared me in the tightness of his face. Was he going to hit me? Leave me? Had I fallen in love with a crazy, possessive control freak? It did occur to me that had he done the same, I would have
been furious; in fact, hearing him reference such a possibility gave me pangs of jealous outrage. “Okay,” I said. “Can we just table this for now? I mean, it only worries me because I am friends with a lot of my exes, and not that they will be all sleeping in my bed, but I do talk to them.”

“I understand that,” he said. “A lot of people do. I can only speak for myself when I say that, for me, it’s not appropriate. I’ve tried to be friends with exes, and there is always some element left over, something I get out of it that is different than other friendships, and that I don’t think is fair to the person I am actually dating.”

“Well, that makes sense. I just think differently.” And we let it go.

To my surprise, as much as I judged him for those statements and had felt judged, my feelings for him seemed to grow instantly stronger. The sex we had that night was our best yet.

“I mean, that’s ridiculous, right?”

My therapist smiled.

“No? You don’t think it’s totally controlling and possessive.”

“I don’t.”

I threw up my hands. “So am I just totally off the map when it comes to appropriate boundaries in relationships, or what?”

She smiled. “No. …”

“But what? I must be.”

“No, you don’t have a great knowledge of those boundaries, but you do have a desire for them.”

“Are you talking about sex here? I told you we have totally normal sex—to both of our surprise, actually, I think.”

“No, I’m not talking about sex. I think that your desire for strict boundaries in sex, your desire to be dominated, comes partly from a desire for nonsexual boundaries. Emotional boundaries. Just plain old limits.”

There it was again—the reverberation of truth, humming like a tuning fork into the silence. I knew she was right.

“You mean that I
wanted
him to tell me it was inappropriate for my ex to sleep in my bed?”

“And for you to take baths with someone other than him.”

“That, too? But I said that to calm him down!”

“I think you said that to provoke him.”

I sat back in my chair.

When I examined a list of my exes to whom I still spoke, it was obvious that Barrett was right. Those relationships fed my need to be desired, to feel as if I had more than one pot on the stove, just in case. When I was fearful or bored in a relationship, I started calling them, offering subtle encouragements for them to think that maybe someday we could try again. I started fantasizing about them when angry at my current partners. The ex who had slept in my bed didn’t fit that description, but what was the difference in relation to Barrett? What a mundane revelation, that there should be certain courtesies extended to your partner out of consideration or as a simple gesture of commitment. And yet it had never occurred to me. It would have occurred to me when appraising someone else’s relationship; I could have prescribed behavior for a friend based on such a belief, but I never practiced it myself.

Only when I stopped did I realize how much energy I put forth in seduction. Everyone I met! I wanted everyone I met to be a little bit in love with me. There was magic in the way that Barrett’s setting limits relieved me of this need. It reminded me of when Greta had told me I couldn’t lie anymore, that lying needed to be taken off the menu. What a relief! The craving was lifted, just like that. It turned out to be a surrender to values I already had, which had been buried under some more desperate instinct. No one had ever given me a “no” that I believed in. Was that all I was looking for? For someone else to tell me that I wasn’t capable of anything, that
I didn’t make up all the rules? In a way, it made sense. What a responsibility!