The Perils of Intimacy Read online

  But it woke her up in many ways, that was for sure.

  When I started going to NA, Miriam was the first person to speak to me. I was quick to judge and tried to get away from her, in her sweater set, pearls, and pressed slacks, her beige pumps and pulled-back reddish hair.

  What is her game? I’d wondered. What does she want with the likes of me? A super-skinny druggie with a septum piercing, bleached blond dreads reaching scraggily halfway down my back, and a hollow, vacant stare.

  But she was in a different place and knew what a smile, a word of welcome, and a hand on a shoulder could mean. If anyone should have judged someone by outward appearance, it should have been her judging me. After all, I looked like the homeless derelict I was. She looked like one of the 1 percent.

  Thank God for Miriam.

  She picked up on the third ring. “What’s up, handsome?”

  I pictured her getting gingerly out of bed, next to her sleeping husband, to take my call. I saw her move from the bedroom to stand somewhere else, maybe a tastefully appointed room with a desk and bookcases, looking out at the moonlight reflecting off Lake Washington.

  I didn’t know what to say, how to tell her. I cast around inside my own head for how to begin.

  She came to the conclusion most sponsors would come to when confronted with a middle-of-the-night phone call, especially when the caller was having obvious trouble mustering up the courage to speak. “Hey,” she said softly, her voice warm. “Are you using?”

  One of our ground rules, when we’d first formed this sponsorship relationship, was a promise on both sides that we’d tell the other honestly whether we were using again. I was relieved I didn’t have to answer her question in the affirmative.

  “No. It’s not that.”

  She blew out a little sigh—relief. “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Would I mess up two years?”

  “Oh, sweetie, I’ve seen people throw away twenty with a single moment of weakness. You know I wouldn’t judge you if you had.”

  “I know. Thank you.”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “I met a guy.” There’s a lot of talk in NA meetings about romance and love, relationships. Addicts and love often do not mix, because when in the grips of something like Tina, no thing or person can hold a candle. And the secrets and lies? They’re just toxic to a good relationship. Every twelve-step tradition I know of cautions against getting involved with anyone romantically until you have at least a year of sobriety under your belt.

  Miriam says cautiously, “That’s great, honey. What’s his name?”

  “Marc.” I sigh and look around on my nightstand for my cigarettes and remember I smoked the last one before coming inside for the night. “But that’s not the issue.”

  “What’s the issue?”

  I swear to God, I can hear her thinking, the wheels turning. If there’s one flaw Miriam has it’s that she sometimes wants to help too much. She isn’t good with simply listening, which is exactly what I need her to do right now.

  She spits out her first assumption. “It’s not too soon, you know. You’ve got two years under your belt!” she informs me. “Go for it!”

  “I know. You’re right. I shouldn’t be afraid.” I debate and debate and debate—should I tell her?

  She rushes to conclusions again. “That’s great! And he knows about you? And he accepts you?” She chuckles. “Why wouldn’t he? You’re a catch!”

  I shake my head. I want to laugh, except the situation isn’t funny. “You’re not getting it, Miriam,” I say, maybe a little too sharply. If she’s anything, Miriam’s big-hearted. I immediately regret my tone, that I let my impatience get the better of me. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  I take a moment to compose myself, to think how to put things, and I hope that Miriam won’t rush in to fill the silence once again. I really need to talk to her tonight, and if I can’t, I’ll never get to sleep.

  “I met him when I was using, like I said. It wasn’t a pretty thing. We hooked up online, and I went to his place for sex.”

  “Okay….” In Miriam’s world, I knew, such encounters probably didn’t happen so much. Miriam herself had once told me she met her husband on a blind date set up by her sorority sisters.

  “Gay guys do it all the time.” I feel the need to explain. “Straight people too! Lots of people meet online now.”

  “I know. I know. Geez, I wasn’t born yesterday.” She laughs, and I feel a little embarrassed for underestimating her.

  “Anyway, I was a different guy back then, as you know.”

  “Oh, I remember that guy.” She goes quiet and then says, voice barely above a whisper, “He was lost.”

  “Yeah,” I respond. “That’s a nice way to put it. Anyway, the thing, the date, the hookup, whatever you wanna call it, didn’t go well. In fact, it was disastrous. More for him than for me. I was so fucked up at the time, disaster was just an everyday fact of life, like the sun coming up in the morning.” I pause, debating whether I want to tell her the whole story, what I actually did to Marc.

  She wouldn’t judge, but… I’m just not ready. Hell, I can barely chance glimpsing my own reflection in my memory mirror.

  I go on. “The truth is I left his place with him probably kicking himself that he ever let me in his front door. And probably hating me with a passion.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.” She waits a second. “But I’m not putting this all together. Does he remember your night together or not? Because if he does—”

  “Yeah. You got it. He doesn’t remember me.”

  “Then you’re in the clear. Sweetie, you are not the person I first met lo these many years ago. Not. At. All. You are a recovery story for the ages. I’m so proud of you.”

  I wish I could bask in her esteem. “I don’t know if I’m in the clear. And thanks for the kind words. I’m just trying my best, just like you.”

  “Aww,” she says.

  I scratch at my back and go on. “He could remember. I think he doesn’t because I look so different. But I’m still me, you know? Different hair, no nose ring, weight piled on, I certainly don’t match up to what I used to put out there. And we just met the one time, and that was two years ago. But still….”

  “You worry?”

  “Yeah.” I tell her how Marc came into the diner that morning and I waited on him. I tell her I felt something for him even back then, and even though I was fucked up and it was far from magic but closer to criminal, that I never forgot him.

  “I know I should walk away. Forget him.” I shake my head in my dark little bedroom, pretty sure I don’t have that much strength.

  “You’re being too hard on yourself,” Miriam says.

  “I don’t know if I am. I hurt the guy.”

  “Yeah, I hurt lots of people when I was using too. Now you tell me—does that mean I should suffer for the rest of my life for what I did?”

  “But you don’t know what I did to him….” I shudder just a tiny bit at the sound of myself, the whining.

  “I wasn’t asking a rhetorical question, JD.”

  “No one calls me that anymore. That was the old me.”

  “Okay. I wasn’t asking a rhetorical question, Jimmy.” She takes a breath and goes on. “I forgot to pick my kids up at school one time—left them for hours. I was high. I almost burned down our house once when I left a pot of tomato soup simmering on the stove and fell asleep on the couch. I forgot birthdays, holidays. Heck, I forgot who I was at times.

  “And you know what? My big accident—my hitting bottom moment—wasn’t my first accident.” She laughs, but there’s little mirth in it. “They knew me by name at our body shop. But getting back to my question—do you think I should suffer forever for what I did back then?”

  “No, of course not. You’ve cleaned up. You’ve made amends. You help me. You help other people. You’re good, Miriam. Real good. I want to be like you when I grow up.”

  She laughs. “
So, let me get this straight—you’d forgive me for all the crap I pulled when I was high and running around like Nurse Jackie?”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course.”

  I listen to her breathing. It’s like she’s waiting. And then she says, “Then why wouldn’t you forgive yourself, Jimmy?”

  The idea hits me—hard, causing tears to spring to my eyes. I have no answer. I could easily forgive other people for screwing up, for hurting others, for doing bad things, wrong things. But why couldn’t I find that same forgiveness in my heart for myself? Why did I think so little of me that I couldn’t even consider forgiving me?

  I sigh. “I guess I should.” I say the words, but I don’t know if my heart is convinced. And I wonder again: do I hate myself? Or do I hate myself that much?

  Wasn’t hating myself exactly why I used in the first place? To escape? Because I didn’t think enough of myself to treat myself better? I shudder.

  “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Miriam. Thank you.” I’m guessing sleep isn’t in the cards tonight. Maybe I’ll walk over to the convenience store down the street and pick up some smokes. I can wander around the waterfront and ponder.

  “It’s not really so much to think about, hon. One thing I’ve learned is we humans, with our monkey minds, tend to overcomplicate, when life really is so simple. Love yourself, Jimmy. With all your heart. That’s the only way you’ll ever find real happiness.

  “We all make mistakes. But I always remember what my sponsor told me—mistakes are the soil we grow from. Every mistake, every bad thing we did shouldn’t be a regret, because everything we do is simply one more step on our journey. Without the mistakes, we’d never grow.”

  “You’re right.” I know I’m still not entirely convinced. The old me, the addict me, probably doesn’t want me to be. And why is that? I ask myself. Because that’s just the kind of thinking that would lead next to me asking—Where can I score?

  “Just believe, right down to your little toes, that you’re a good person. You deserve love. You deserve forgiveness. Especially from yourself. Now step into the present, stay here, and just go to sleep. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  And she simply hangs up. Miriam’s like that. When she’s said her piece, she’s done.

  My current addiction—nicotine—is calling. And my need to be out and about on the dark and still late-night streets beckons.

  But before I go, I act impulsively. After all, the phone is still in my hand. Without giving myself a chance to second guess, I quickly text:

  Hey Marc. Hope I didn’t wake u. Love to see you sometime. Call me in the morning. Jimmy.

  I hit Send before my monkey mind steps in and tells me I’m being rash, or before the self-loathing part tells me I don’t deserve to explore where things might go with this good and handsome man. That part has names for me. Impulsive. Reckless. I cling to what Miriam said and think that I’m just going after good.

  Good that I deserve. I can choose good or I can choose bad. I choose good. I choose happy.

  Yeah, now I just have to make myself believe that.

  I get up from my bed and creep silently from the apartment, my phone tucked hopefully into my back pocket, longing for the twinkling tone notifying me I have a text message.

  Tuesday

  Chapter 4

  MARC

  THE SUN peels my eyelids open. I sit up in bed, surprised, shaking my head a little and finally smiling. A little song of unexpected joy dances a jig in my heart.

  Waking to sun in February in Seattle is a rare and wondrous thing.

  It’s also an alarming thing when it’s a workday. When the sun does deign to come out, it isn’t until after seven thirty or so. Which means I have little to no time for getting ready for work and certainly none to stop for a leisurely breakfast at Becky’s Diner. Before I went to bed last night, I’d thought about doing just that. It was a pleasant thing to look forward to as I toddled off to my room after binge-watching four episodes of The Good Wife on Amazon.

  No worries. I just need to hustle through the morning routine, skip breakfast—at least until I can get to the office, grab Don, and head down to the Starbucks on the concourse level of our building—and manage to catch my bus across the street on Dexter Avenue.

  I hurry through the routine, skipping shaving—hey, the stubbled look is hot, right?—and getting in and out of the shower in five minutes flat. A quick brush of the teeth and a floss and I’m ready to pick out my clothes for the day. Piled atop my bedroom chair are several pairs of previously worn jeans and shirts, almost all of them T-shirts. We’re casual at Panorama but not that casual. I rifle through the top shelf of my closet until I find a comfortable old gray ragg wool sweater, pairing it with a white button-down shirt, black jeans, and black Chuck Taylors.

  I hurry out the door of my apartment building, pausing for a moment when I hear the sound of an air horn blasting on Lake Union. It’s a signal to the Fremont Bridge, a little north, to raise itself up so a boat with a high mast can get through. I like the sound. It reminds me I live near the water.

  Ah! My green and gold Metro transit bus, the number sixty-two, is just now making its way southbound up the hill toward me. I’m grateful it didn’t get held up by the bridge and grateful that timing seems to be on my side today.

  I look both ways and dash across the street, dodging the flow of cyclists on their way downtown in the bicycle lane. I swear some of them look at pedestrians as competition—blood sport. I make it to the other side as a bicyclist comes straight at me, then swerves dramatically to miss me at the very last second. How dare I set foot in the bike lane, interrupting his course! I consider giving him the finger but let him off the hook because I see the bus is almost there.

  No harm. No foul. We are all where we’re supposed to be, at the right time.

  Once on board, I pull my phone from my pocket and see that there’s a text. I open it and think I have one more reason—in addition to the sunshine and this morning’s perfect timing—to grin.

  Jimmy has gotten back to me! And the same day! That’s a good sign, right? None of this waiting around for some weird “appropriate” time to pass before getting in touch. God forbid someone should appear too eager. God forbid someone should actually know they’re liked in return.

  His message is sweet and simple—to the point, just as I imagine him to be. Just as I hope he is. My sad story is that the men in my life have come with more baggage than a cargo hold on an Alaska Airlines plane. It would be refreshing to get with one who doesn’t know the meaning of “it’s complicated.”

  I’m glad he texted instead of called. For one, seeing the time stamp on the text, if he’d called, he’d have woken me up. For another, I’m a hopeless introvert. Texting was the best thing that ever happened to electronic communications, in my opinion. I never, ever like talking on the phone. Just contemplating it sometimes can set my heart to pounding and palms to sweating.

  Texting gives us a measure of ease, some time to think about what we want to say and how to say it. And even though Jimmy said to “call” him, I figure his message to me means he won’t look down on me for texting back. Besides, I’m not about to have a conversation with a boy I like on a crowded bus full of strangers. Sure, they’re all hunched over their own smartphones and tablets, even the ones standing in the aisle, but I get nervous enough about talking on the phone without the added stress of thinking someone might be eavesdropping.

  So I tap out a quick text back. Something—maybe the rare winter sun—has put me in a good, and bold, mood. Waking up late and being in a rush seems to be sending a message to me that life is short, and if I want something, I need to grab it. No hesitation. What’s that old poem say? Gather ye rosebuds while ye may?

  I also figure I have nothing to lose. I ignore the mom voice in the back of my head that’s always there, buried deeper at some times than others, telling me that when you feel you have nothing to lose, that’s the precise moment when you have everything to
lose. It’s like asking “What could possibly go wrong?” It’s reckless. Heedless.

  Shut up, superego. I want to see the guy again, and not when he’s serving me breakfast.

  Unless it’s breakfast in bed…. I accompany the thought with a Groucho Marx eyebrow wiggle.

  Hey you… you didn’t wake me because it’s morning. Looks like you’re a night owl.

  I pause, wondering just how stupid I sound. I glance out the window at yet another high-rise building going up on Dexter. It seems like every other day they start building a new one, the downtown mushrooming north on my street.

  What do all those buildings have in common? I ask myself. Hope. They’re all built with many things, but I bet you every one of them was predicated on the simple fact of hope. So I know I need to banish my self-doubt, be confident that my own stupid self is the only one I have, and doggone it, it’s good enough. And I need to hope:

  That he still thinks I’m cute.

  That he wants to see me again.

  That my offer of a date real soon will be music to his ears.

  You working tonight? If not, do you want to meet up for a drink? Dinner?

  My finger hovers over the little blue Send letters. Hopeful as I am, cheerful and optimistic as I view myself right now, I still have little gnats of doubt and maybe even dread hovering about the perimeter of my confidence.

  Am I being too quick?

  Too pushy?

  Do I sound desperate?

  So what if I do? So the fuck what? I ask myself.

  If I don’t do this, what are the odds I’ll be sitting across a table from Jimmy tonight? Zero. Those are my chances.

  If I overthink how I’m coming across in a frigging text, how am I going to be able to even string together a coherent sentence when we are together, assuming he says yes?

  Before I have a chance to decide for myself whether I’ll revise and rewrite, the bus lurches to a sudden stop, sending all the passengers in the aisle grabbing on to the handgrips, and in some cases each other, for support. One woman screams.