(no subject)
i've been a terrible diarist lately. isn't diarist a grotesque word? but it's a word just the same--i just looked it up!
r. and i are broken up forever now. i got caught cheating. r. and i never ever fucked! and if we did i pinched my eyes shut and worried about whether we should take henrietta bean to the vet for her stomatitis and whether there were enough laundry quarters in the pickle jar. i had sex with another man in boston, and i didn't think about henrietta's gums at all. he stripped me, gently, and i was scared, and he said, "aw, darling. now you're not wearing anything but your panties," and i thought that was the sweetest, most deviant thing i've ever heard said to me in bed. he let me take extravagantly long showers in his bathtub. and when i took a bite of portabello flan at the nice italian restauant and declared it the most undigestable texture my tongue had ever felt, and i said, "i want it out of my mouth!" he held the napkin for me to spit it out. of course i swallowed the flan courageously--but he held the napkin out!
and then there was michelle in new york. i never would have went to the man in boston if it wasn't for michelle in new york. meghan, michelle, and i were sitting in a bar--it was near 3 a.m. by this time--and michelle got up to go to the restroom. immediately meghan and i leaned toward each other, and i said (having known michelle for a year and having spent at least every other day of that year in her company), "is michelle straight or gay?" "i was going to ask you the same thing!" replied meghan. and the next thing i knew, meghan was leaning in toward michelle instead of me, confessing her intimate bygone affair with her long-lost best friend and secret girl lover. and i had never seen michelle so riveted by a story in all our time. before that night we had all three of us slept together in her parents' bed in the flat on 53rd--but when i came home later that night to come to bed, they were already there, just two of them, tangled up in legs and bedsheets. i wasn't prepared at all. i could never have predicted my reaction--but i went to the bathroom and pressed my face into the monogrammed towel and cried over a broken heart for the first time in two years. i took two klonopin and went to sleep in the couch, but i cried in my sleep until my mascara bled all over her parents' designer throw pillows. and i took three more klonopin, but it didn't stop my heart racing, and i called the man in boston, and he bought me a business-class ticket, and i left for him while michelle was in the shower and i ignored all her phone calls until i was sure meghan had left the northeast for good, and that michelle and i could continue to spend every hour together in completely platonic bliss like always.
ever since michelle discovered she was a lesbian, she has started drinking every night, and i even love her for the vodka she puts in her water bottle before she delivers her lectures to her writing students.
when i told my sister i had broken up with robert and i had cheated on him, she said, "was it with michelle?"
"how could you think that?" i said.
"michelle was in love with you last summer."
and i didn't know back then that when i spilled wine all over my shirt and we took it off to dry over the radiator, that i should have sucked in my naked tummy for her, that i should have pretended to be so drunk that i didn't notice if i laid too close to her on her bed, that i should have told her in drunken intimacy that one time in fifth grade i pulled a girl under my bed and demanded that she kiss me the way she would kiss a man. but i didn't know then!
i loved r. dearly, but the real heartbreak is that i'll never cry into a monogrammed towel over him.