realize the harm sheâd caused, she said, but when I got home there was blood all over the apartment and I had to rush the cat in to get surgery to remove the rest of her tail. She stayed with Paul for a while after that.
We had talked about getting married but he wanted to live near his parents; he wanted a housewife, I thought, and wasnât interested enough to ask which graduate programs I was applying to. He wanted a calm sort of life. And so we broke up, not long after the dream about olives; I told him that we wanted different things.
Later we would sleep together when he was seeing other women, when I was seeing other men. It was easy to have a drink or go to dinner and by the end we would be holding hands again, looking at each other as if we were still in college. In a way I think I wished we were.
So when I told him, years later, that I thought we should give it another try it did not surprise me that he responded by saying that his mother never thought I would be good with kids. That I would work too much and not be willing to be a stay-at-home mom. It felt as if he had been waiting to hurt me with something for a while, maybe deservedly.
He married someoneâsmart, blond, prettyâwho wanted the same things that he did. They bought a house in the same town as his parents and had two kids. He seems happy.
GRILLED CHEESE
THE DAY AFTER HE FUCKED ME WHILE I WAS UNCONSCIOUS, I HAD Carl buy me a grilled cheese sandwich and french fries.
I had gone to his apartment the night before with my sister because he was having a few friends over and she had nothing else going on. She left early in the evening and I got drunker than usual faster than usual. The next morning, I woke up confused and with ten missed calls from my parents. I was naked.
When I joked to him about date-raping me, he shot back: Donât worry, I went down on you first.
I DONâT REMEMBER HOW OR WHERE I MET CARL, BUT I IMAGINE IT must have been at a bar, and it must have been in midtown because he worked in finance and there were none of those types in Williamsburg yet. I also donât remember liking him much, which doesnât say a lot for my taste or mind-set at the time.
Carl wasnât great-looking or particularly charming, but he had a decent sense of humor and I was bored and dating a lot.So even though he had visible blackheads in his ear and I found him somewhat disgusting in bedâall sweat and frecklesâI kept seeing him.
Whenever I spent the night at his placeâa high-rise in Manhattan overlooking the riverâhe would give me money for cab fare home. It was often more than I needed and I could never figure out if I thought this was gentlemanly or if it made me feel like a prostitute.
He came to visit me in Brooklyn once, to look at the loft I had just rented with a girl I used to intern with and her boyfriend. It was huge and illegal, like any decent apartment in Williamsburg in 2002. I had to bring one monthâs rent in cash for the building manager as a âdown paymentâ that I would never see again before we could move in. Then I had to pay the building super extra to build walls for bedrooms.
I took Carl to my favorite bar in the neighborhood, a place on Bedford Avenue, but he wanted to leave quickly. That was weird, he said. When I asked what he meant he said he felt like a âcrackerâ because we were the only white people at the barâwhich Iâm pretty sure wasnât true and I thought was such a strange thing to notice in any case. I had never heard anyone use the term âcrackerâ before in a way that suggested anything but irony.
After that we stopped talking. For months, I think. I donât know how long it had been. I do know I hadnât seen Carl in a while when he invited me to come over to his apartment for a small party.
That night at his place, where the only other partygoers were a small group of his male friends, I found out that
We had talked about getting married but he wanted to live near his parents; he wanted a housewife, I thought, and wasnât interested enough to ask which graduate programs I was applying to. He wanted a calm sort of life. And so we broke up, not long after the dream about olives; I told him that we wanted different things.
Later we would sleep together when he was seeing other women, when I was seeing other men. It was easy to have a drink or go to dinner and by the end we would be holding hands again, looking at each other as if we were still in college. In a way I think I wished we were.
So when I told him, years later, that I thought we should give it another try it did not surprise me that he responded by saying that his mother never thought I would be good with kids. That I would work too much and not be willing to be a stay-at-home mom. It felt as if he had been waiting to hurt me with something for a while, maybe deservedly.
He married someoneâsmart, blond, prettyâwho wanted the same things that he did. They bought a house in the same town as his parents and had two kids. He seems happy.
GRILLED CHEESE
THE DAY AFTER HE FUCKED ME WHILE I WAS UNCONSCIOUS, I HAD Carl buy me a grilled cheese sandwich and french fries.
I had gone to his apartment the night before with my sister because he was having a few friends over and she had nothing else going on. She left early in the evening and I got drunker than usual faster than usual. The next morning, I woke up confused and with ten missed calls from my parents. I was naked.
When I joked to him about date-raping me, he shot back: Donât worry, I went down on you first.
I DONâT REMEMBER HOW OR WHERE I MET CARL, BUT I IMAGINE IT must have been at a bar, and it must have been in midtown because he worked in finance and there were none of those types in Williamsburg yet. I also donât remember liking him much, which doesnât say a lot for my taste or mind-set at the time.
Carl wasnât great-looking or particularly charming, but he had a decent sense of humor and I was bored and dating a lot.So even though he had visible blackheads in his ear and I found him somewhat disgusting in bedâall sweat and frecklesâI kept seeing him.
Whenever I spent the night at his placeâa high-rise in Manhattan overlooking the riverâhe would give me money for cab fare home. It was often more than I needed and I could never figure out if I thought this was gentlemanly or if it made me feel like a prostitute.
He came to visit me in Brooklyn once, to look at the loft I had just rented with a girl I used to intern with and her boyfriend. It was huge and illegal, like any decent apartment in Williamsburg in 2002. I had to bring one monthâs rent in cash for the building manager as a âdown paymentâ that I would never see again before we could move in. Then I had to pay the building super extra to build walls for bedrooms.
I took Carl to my favorite bar in the neighborhood, a place on Bedford Avenue, but he wanted to leave quickly. That was weird, he said. When I asked what he meant he said he felt like a âcrackerâ because we were the only white people at the barâwhich Iâm pretty sure wasnât true and I thought was such a strange thing to notice in any case. I had never heard anyone use the term âcrackerâ before in a way that suggested anything but irony.
After that we stopped talking. For months, I think. I donât know how long it had been. I do know I hadnât seen Carl in a while when he invited me to come over to his apartment for a small party.
That night at his place, where the only other partygoers were a small group of his male friends, I found out that
Similar Books
