You're Not Pretty Enough (18 page)

There was another element to the eight o’clock classes, and that was the predominance of men in attendance. There were many times when I was
the only woman, and I wanted to look like a contender, not only for myself, but also for my sparring partner. I didn’t want any of them to think,
Great. Got stuck with the girl.
Sometimes I’d get in good blows, and the guys would light up, pleasantly surprised. Sometimes I’d do that, and the guys would get
angry and hit harder than necessary. One time a guy kicked me in the head, and I went
down.
Another time I surprised a guy with a hard roundhouse to his side. His face grew dark, and he retaliated by punching me so hard in the
stomach that I fell to the floor and crab crawled backward until I was against the wall and could catch my wind. Ivan came over and immediately bent down.

“Are you OK?”

I nodded. He yelled at my opponent and then turned to look
at me again. I waved him off and stayed against the wall, watching the others spar, until I slowly regained my breath. I took the tram home, and when I arrived I burst into tears. Dave sat me down, but it took ten minutes for me to
tell the story because I was catching up on all the crying I had held in when I was at the gym.

“I don’t know if I want to go back,” I said. As with the marriage decision, he left this one up to me.

Summer in Amsterdam was beautiful, and we could view its bounty at bloemenmarkts and other outdoor vendors. Shopkeepers in our local neighborhood were at first cold but polite. After seeing us regularly for a couple months, they welcomed us warmly.

“Goedemorgen!” they’d greet us. “Hoe gaat het?”
How are you?

“Goed, dank u vel. En met you?”
And you?

“Ah. Life is gezellig…”
Gezellig
was one of my two
favorite Dutch words. It is an adverb with no English translation, but it can mean cozy or fun or content depending on the circumstances. My other favorite word was
lekker
, which roughly translates as delicious. We heard it a lot in Holland. “This meal is lekker,” or “Did you see that girl’s ass? It’s
lekker.”

Twice between July and August, we traveled to London to visit our friends Angela, Neil, and Claire and walk around the city. Dave’s arm seemed to be permanently draped over my shoulder. He kissed me constantly on
the cheek and looked lovingly at me across many, many bottles of wine.

“Jen,” he said one night at dinner, “I know you haven’t made up your mind about getting married, but I need you to know…in the long-term,
it’s a deal breaker if you don’t.”

This was new information. “But why?”

“Because of what it means to me. It means that you chose me; that we chose each other. It means security…”

“No it doesn’t,” I cut in. “Marriage is
no
guarantee, and statistically speaking…”

“It’s not scientific,” he said, looking down at the menu. “It’s how I feel.”

Jen,
do not let him go.

****************

Italy.

Our wedding date was scheduled for September 24 in Positano, Italy, but we arrived in the country two weeks earlier. We had disagreements
about where we should venture. Dave wanted to visit Lake Como, and I wanted to go to Venice. Dave wanted to roam in Tuscany, and I wanted to go to Florence. Dave thought of places as eternal and therefore eternally available. I thought of them more fleetingly.
What if I’m never here again?

So Venice won out, but so did Tuscany.

We walked through the Venetian streets and window-shopped. We caught a performing arts preview with opera and ballet in the Piazza San
Marco, with lights twinkling from both the electronics and the stars. And then we took a ride through the canals. Our young gondolier spoke slowly and with a heavy accent: “On the left-a is-a the castle of the great-a lover, Cassanova…”

When we docked, Dave got down on one knee and proposed. I didn’t think of fear. All I though was,
…and his heart was going like mad
and yes I said yes I will Yes
^[5]
.
An American flag flapped softly in the distance in honor of the one-year anniversary of 9/11.

Dave’s birthday was the next day, so I surprised him with
breakfast in bed that I cobbled together from the continental breakfast in the lobby. I found a candle and placed it in a muffin. We took off for Tuscany with no agenda other than to find a place to stay, and find one we did. We stumbled
upon the Gargonza Castili, a castle that has huge rooms for one hundred dollars per night and a gourmet restaurant. The grounds alone were worth the stay. There were olive and fig trees and grape vines and forests and rolling hills. Our room was all dark wooden beams and sandy stonework. There was a private
fireplace set with kindling, papers, and matches.

We went to festivals and ate crazy-delicious pasta for two euros or stayed quiet on the Gargonza grounds, sipping wine in one of the many
private alcoves designed for such pursuits. After three nights we headed to Rome and continued to get high on the food, which was simple and sublime. I was surprised when we came out of a Metro stop and boom! There was the Coliseum
right across the street. I expected it to be more protected, harder to get to. But I suppose much of my imagination was attracted to what went on
inside
the structure. I hadn’t thought much about the outside. We toured the Vatican and tipped our sunglasses to the Swiss guards. “We’ve had your cheese.”

We headed to the Amalfi Coast and settled in a small apartment compound in Sorrento that smelled of lemon groves. Finally we got cracking on planning the wedding. Others in the compound were taken with our
plans, and because we were so relaxed, they took on our stress for us.

“Have you chosen your dress yet?” they asked. “Your flowers?”

“No.”

“AH! What are you waiting for, child?”

Dave’s parents met us in Italy. We had planned a vacation with them in that region, and, coincidentally, it was the only place we could get legally married as Americans, so they served as our proud witnesses. My
parents called us the night before and blew kisses through the phone. We were not nervous. We exchanged vows at the Italian equivalent of the justice of the peace at 2:00 p.m. on a veranda in Positano that overlooked the cliffs sliding into the Mediterranean.

We celebrated with totani e patate, a calamari dish with potato and cherry tomatoes, pasta with sea clams, and chocolate almond cake
from Capri. Then we checked into the honeymoon suite at a hotel in Ravello and barely left the hotel for two days.

On the way back to Amsterdam, we went to Brussels and stood still for several minutes in front of Jacques-Louis David’s
Death of Marat
and marveled at a gallery’s worth of Bruegels. Amsterdam was colder than we had left it, and with money dwindling, we decided we’d return to the states in December. With an expiration date announced, we had a steady stream of visitors
from October to November, including my mom, Dave’s brother, and friends. We joined them to partake in all of the touristy things we hadn’t yet done and some we had (like the amazing museums). We walked around the Red Light District and saw a sex show, which was clinical and choreographed and rarely sexy. It
had an air of performance art, so I spit out my drink when a friend said, “It’s like Cirque de Soliel, but with
fucking
.”

After Thanksgiving the last of our friends left, taking some
of our things with them to lessen our load on the way back. We spent the last couple weeks saying personal good-byes to our favorite people. When I said good-bye to the Boom Chicago staff, they offered me a part-time job to stay on
as their marketing manager. Dave nudged me to consider it, but I wouldn’t budge.

“Babe, it’s only part time, and I doubt we’d even get past the visa issues. It’s time to go home,” and then I rubbed his back for comfort.

I stuck with Muay Thai. When I revealed to my kickboxing friend Kim that I was a little scared to go back in because of the hits I took, she said, “I will protect you. We take little steps, OK?” After a little while, I forgot my fear again. During the last class, I told a stocky Asian woman that
I was leaving to return to the states. I had never talked to this woman, didn’t even know her name, but we sparred together regularly because we had a rhythm like a harmony, so it would feel weird not to say good-bye. She had a wicked
left hook, which she landed on my upper arm with painful frequency.

“Shit!” she said after I told her, and she stopped hitting me for a minute. “I’m gonna miss you, man!” And then she pulled back that arm.

Dave and I walked around a lot that last week, waxing nostalgic on the places and experiences that formed our seven-month bubble of an existence.

“Back to real life now?” I asked him, my head on his
shoulder looking up at his face.

I thought he might cry.

If you followed this story from the beginning you might think I got a happy ending. Young girl full of spunk draws some porn, eats some
cat food,
almost
marries Jon Bon Jovi,
actually
marries the wrong guy, plunges downward for a while, reemerges better/stronger, meets the love of her life and elopes in Italy! The fairytale, right? Wrong.

Guess what princess, happy endings are hard to come by.

In early 2011 I was sitting in my marriage counselor’s office waiting for Dave to arrive. I planned on telling him that we were going to separate, effective immediately. That I was leaving after the session to
stay with my sister for a week and that he needed to find a new place to live. All I felt as I waited was heaviness—heavy weariness and heavy sadness.
How did we get here?

When we returned from Europe, we returned to our old jobs: me
to consulting and him to bartending. Only for Dave time away did not make his heart grow fonder. He didn’t realize how much he hated the crowds of young drunks and the late hours and the hassle of scheduling time off until he had
been away from it for a while. Within four months, he was gone.

Now if there’s one thing I stand for it is the pursuit of happiness. It drives everything I do. What the fuck is it all for if not to be happy? And so I supported him as he went to find his. But what do people do if they
don’t know what that is? Where does a person start? In Dave’s case, he shuffled around, trying out new professions by way of process of elimination. “Nine-to-five desk jobs just aren’t for me,” he’d say and move toward another
path. He always worked, always contributed, just not as much as he wanted, and at amounts that were inconsistent, which made him feel “less than.”

Meanwhile, I became the breadwinner, the “stable” one, the
one who kept us in health insurance. I went all in with my job, working seventy hours a week. First, it was to prove myself invaluable so that I wouldn’t get cut as clients’ budgets began to shrink. Then seventy hours became the norm, the expectation. I guess I wanted something tangible as a reward for “my
sacrifice,” so we bought a house, which only increased our bills, the pressure, and the disparity in our contributions. I was growing resentful and feeling sorry for myself (
Where’s
my
opportunity to figure out my life?
Where’s my Rumspringa?).
We began doing more and more things apart.

In the beginning, we didn’t communicate clearly or directly about what was happening or how we were feeling, choosing instead to sweep it
under the rug. I’d reach a point of saturation—a point where I couldn’t work another night until nine and then get back up at 6:00 a.m. to do it all over again, including on weekends, all while trying to be a good wife, a good daughter/sister/friend, take care of myself, get groceries, pay bills, and so
on. When I felt this way, I would cry. And not just a little bit, but a full-on sob fest that came on strong and lasted for ten minutes, like a summer storm.