Greek Tragedyhi

stage hands

We became "just friends" in that way where "friends" seemed to fit like a condom. As my we're-just-friends-now ex, Turner veiled his jealousy behind a scrim of concern when he said things like,"So what's the deal with this Ashton guy you're dating, anyway? What kind of name is that, even?" You don't know him, and it's Oliver, not Ashton. And you're one to talk, Turner.

I liked when Turner played the big brother, overprotective guy. "That's not a good restaurant," he'd pout. "Why are you letting him take you there? See, now that just upsets me." If the old woman who lived in a shoe opened a bed & breakfast in her heel, Turner would have eaten there and asked for seconds. He was no food snob. He was a dating snob, believing that where a man took his date was a reflection of his taste and upbringing. "It's just rude to take a date to Irving Plaza. I don't care who's performing." His warped rules made me like him more, not less. "Cancel on him, and let's go get the tasting menu at Blue Hill."

Turner became jealous in a light cream sauce way. He certainly wasn't controlling, but he gave good pout and could mope like it was his day job. It was a cute jealous, the kind he never really was when we were a we. It made me feel wanted, and I felt myself smile when he begged me to stay for another drink. "Call him and tell him you've changed your mind." But I haven't, I'd say. "Tell him," he'd push. No, I'm looking forward to dinner. "No, you tell him you've changed your mind about him." Silly. You're being silly.

Despite his pleas, Turner still managed to come off soft. His body was too loose to ever be intimidating. He was always relaxed, even pushed up against a deadline with partners phoning and emailing on a Sunday. He was a total type-B. And for a long time, I believed he was the perfect type for me. But then I reminded myself what a great guy I'd found in Oliver. I'd never jeopardize what we had by being reckless with Turner, a guy who only seemed to want what he couldn't have.

Going back would just be going backwards, I reminded myself. And if you turned to Turner, and suddenly said, OKAY. I'm totally on board. I want you. Let's make this work! He'd put his tail between his legs and limp off like a wounded dragon. It was all smoke. He was fine with expressing how much he wanted me because he knew he couldn't have me, and it was a game, one he really didn't want to win. I shared this with him, and he, naturally, repudiated my theory, insisting I let him prove it. I already knew he was all talk. He was the kind of guy who'd lean across the table and touch my face, only because he assumed I'd shoo his hand away, maybe playing coy. But I'd let him touch me as long as he liked, which turned out to be too long for Turner.

seeping with the enemy

Usually dibs implies a gentleman's agreement. Two ascot clad men shaking hands, one vowing to stand aside as the other puts forth his most gallant efforts to woo a dame. Or it's to secure a spot in the front seat near the air-conditioning vents on a crotch-hot day by screaming "shotgun" like one of those grown men who should've outgrown calling shotgun. The kind that still race down the aisles of the supermarket riding the back of the cart as if it were a scooter. The point is, the whole need to call "first dibs" implies that there's something of value at hand.

When I think back to my relationship with Turner, it's hard not to also think of Oliver. Turner had dibs because we'd met first.He didn't call dibs or anything. I mean, not that it should work that way with dating, but when that first guy comes along that you actually want to call you (and who actually does call), you start to hope things might work out. And you kinda favor him because it had just been so damn long since you were that damn happy. I saw the red flags but waved my hand at them, thinking maybe they're really white flags--urging me to surrender-- that somehow got thrown in with that one red sock. I didn't want to see what I should've be seeing. Just let me have this, damn universe!

In the end, I told him I couldn't see him anymore. I stuck to it. I felt sick. I called Poppa and cried. Why can't I just meet someone already?! So fucking annoying. I'd kept thinking it might go somewhere, bought the new bra and fun top, those cute earrings. I cooked him things. Assembled salads. Composed a grapefruit brulee (basically just wanted to show off my blowtorch). But all the hair blowouts and new pairs of "they make you look soooo skinny" jeans couldn't make us work. My friends thought he was a drip. "Actually, Stephanie, we didn't say 'drip'. We said 'dud'." Yeah, but I like duds. "Yeah, milkduds. In your popcorn! Not in the man you're rolling around with." Who says "rolling around with" anymore?

I told him not to contact me, that it made it too hard, that we couldn't be friends. I mean it! Then I hit refresh waiting for the emails. Had the cell on vibrate, waiting. And waiting. Then I stopped waiting and started dating Oliver. Started liking Oliver. Wow, maybe this can work. And that's exactly when the emails and phone calls came. When I was finally over it. Typical.

And that's when the seep happens. When you think it's safe to let the past back in because you're finally composed and happy, and let's be honest, totally the one in control with the upper hand. You make him eat it. "Sure," I said over the phone, checking out my reflection in a makeup compact, "I'll meet you for a drink after work, but just one because I'm meeting Oliver for dinner." Salt, meet wound.

Except guys don't think this at all. All he really hears when I agree to meet him is: she still wants me. Maybe I'll get laid.

the man is the gas, and the woman is the brakes

Value added. It's an economic term referencing "the amount by which the value of an article is increased at each stage of its production, exclusive of initial costs." When working in advertising, our goal on behalf of our clients was to offer customers a perceived added value: something that was cheap and easy for our clients to offer their consumers, just enough to entice them to sign up, rejoin, or tell a friend. When it came to our relationship, Turner should have charged a VAT.

Each step along the assembly line of our relationship, he'd add just enough to keep me there. Some people refer to these as steps in a dance. "The Dance of Intimacy," or some such horrific term, with the man taking the lead. I think of it more like Ford's moving assembly line. Over time we learn more about each other, interchangeable facts are added in a sequential manner, to create a relationship. Turner was becoming my Model T, and it was then that I learned the man is the gas, and the woman is the brakes.

The man needs to be the one pursuing, wooing, courting, the woman, and it's up to her to determine the pace of the relationship. She sets the speed of that assembly line. If he's not revved up enough, if she's wanting more, then it's really not a good match. Turner's engine seized up way too quickly, and I realized I'd never get what I deserved as long as I stayed with him.

Sorry, I'd say come one of our regular drinking Sunday nights, I just can't do this anymore. When he sensed these talks were coming, he always tried to sweep them aside. Come on, he'd say, let's go for dinner at Annisa; you love that place. "No I don't. It's too sterile." Then pick a place, anywhere you want to go. He was trying to add value, to tempt me with food like a terrier. I'd decline, and he'd need to offer more, just enough to keep me on the line. But Linus would miss me, he'd say more to Linus than to me. When I wouldn't break a smile, he'd need to switch gears.Look, he'd say, you know I'm crazy about you, and I wouldn't just say that. I know what you've been through, and I'm a good guy. Now please, just come here.

Then he'd pull me into him and make me believe. I second guessed. Maybe he really was crazy about me, in his way, not mine. Or maybe I was just making excuses because ending things seemed too hard. He was too comfortable, and it wasn't as if he was a bad guy. He hadn't made it that clear cut. When it's explicit, when he's unforgivable, it's easier to sever things, because you can always look back and point to that shitty thing he dumped on the line. You regret less. But when he just isn't pursuing you enough, you begin to think, maybe I'm too needy. Maybe this is all he's capable of, and if that's so, can I live with that? Can I be happy this way?

Then we do our own form of unforgivable. We ignore our answer to the question and turn to our friends to see what they think. Am I asking too much? As if they know what it is that we need inside. Instead, what we're really asking is for them to decide for us. But we ignore all the advice we don't want to hear anyway, and then we're still just left with our answer. No. I can't be happy this way. I wish I could, but I'm not built like that. Maybe I could've been okay with it two years ago, but I'm not okay with it now.

It would have been a hard next day, a hard next week and maybe even month, had we ended things. Maybe I'd just see. I was making excuses, falling into that "don't be so dramatic" trap. The words said by the person who doesn't want to deal with emotions, or the words said to yourself when you don't want to face what you really feel.

We'd come to this point too often, and I was beginning to lose respect for myself. I knew it would be hard, that I'd miss the way he saw the world, his walk, and the way he crawled the halls with Linus. I'd miss our meals and the way he loved my cooking. His guitar and our whiskey. And come the following afternoon, after hitting refresh all morning, there still wouldn't be that email where he asked me to take it all back. I'd phone my father and tell him how miserable I was. Won't I ever meet anyone? And then, mid conversation--while I'm at the office, unable to get any work done--I'd say, "son of a bitch" aloud. "He's changed his profile to single."

I might have been the brakes, but I wasn't really ready for a break.

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too much

Turner told me I was adorable and had great boobs. This made me like him more. Too much more.

We went to brunch at Balthazar on a summer afternoon, and with mild food coma, we slugged our way out its doors, stalling outside the entranceway. We had to choose a direction. I stood looking at the small shop next door, a window of confections and crusty breads with white powdered tops. I was sated, but it didn't stop me from looking. I suppose it's the way we all feel sometimes, just not only about food.

In the reflection of the window, I saw him checking out my ass. I liked that he did. Behind both our behinds were the tourists, running their fingers along tables of knock-off sunglasses and plastic beaded jewelry. Something about the light that day felt more like winter. I expected gloves and ski caps. I heard one woman ask her companion what she thought and assumed she was holding up a necklace of buttons or wire-backed earrings made of stones she took to be semi-precious instead of wholly-horrendous. But when I turned around, I realized the voice was coming from another table.

The vendor beside the knock-off jokes was selling artistic prints, Polaroids, smeared and exposed onto watercolor paper. The woman who ran the booth, mid-thirty with brown hair mid-way down her back, had a foreign flat look to her. German, I thought. Hungarian, maybe. Pretty, certainly, especially in that boho, I like to drink tea and wear things braided and made of wool, kind of way. She was posing tourists in the street, directing three brothers to look at their mother, while the mother looked straight into the lens. The young woman took four shots with an old-school Polaroid camera that resembled a miniature accordion, then hurried to her station.

As she ripped the Polaroids apart, before they had time to develop, I pulled Turner to the table with me. "Let's see," I said. We fingered through boxes of $5 prints: window sills, flowers, a blue bowl filled with pomegranates. "Aren't these beautiful?" They really are he said. I'd never heard Turner say anything disagreeable, and despite this, I'd never describe him as kind or boring. We stood, just watching, as she ran a q-tip along the edges of a print, smearing it.

"I want one," I said, jerking his hand.
"I'm not photogenic," he said, resisting, giving me that half-laugh that begged to be begged.
"You're beautiful," I said without looking at him. And he really was. Oh, come on, he said. "And, you're easy," I said, luring him into the street, signaling to the photographer that we were ready.

Personality and sweet palatable neurosis aside, some men are cute. They don't want to be, but they'll take it. It's the dimples or the eyelashes. The coy smile that creeps wider, and you feel they're letting you in by letting it slip. Keeping mannerisms, intelligence, and humor out of this, others are just plain manly, and even if they're ugly, they're sexy. It's the intensity of their gaze. You're always the first to look away or blink. And they'll continue to stare even after you've asked them not to. "I enjoy you," he says without ever saying so. Some are sexually attractive in the way they wear themselves, in a lean, their gait, or signaling for the check. Turner wasn't any of these things.

But he was beautiful. Beautiful without being effeminate, cute, or cliche. I could stare at his face for hours, for so long it stopped looking like a face. I studied his nose, the dip beneath it, his freckles, and strong chin. I never wanted to stop touching his hair. And he liked how affectionate and clingy I could be. "Don't stop," he'd say if I let my hand drop. I liked how much he liked me. Too much.

First she had us look at each other, and I worried it would be this awkward bridal pose. Something befitting a field with long grass and yellow flowers. As bad as those school portraits where I was instructed to rest my chin in the bowl of my hands. "This is weird, huh?" I said as we looked at each other. Everyone's looking at you, he said, not me, so I don't feel weird. But I didn't believe him. It must've been a line he heard in a movie trailer. His eyes were like the lake your parents take you to when you're young, at the house of some relative you didn't know you had. He reminded me of a cabin with worn floorboards and Irish sweaters. He was safe, and I couldn't do anything wrong.

"How many?" The photographer asked us.
"Two," I said at the same time as he said, one. "One?"
Well, yeah, you can have it, he said. And then, even though I was still smiling, I felt something inside me fall.

He doesn't want to keep it in his apartment, I thought. In case it kills his game with another woman he brings home. He'll have to remember to take it out of a drawer when he knows I'm coming over.

"Okay," the photographer said, "now you, you look here--no, there, at that sign, okay?"

Let it go, I thought. Don't ruin the day. But it was too late. He could tell.

Okay, two, he shouted to her. But I knew he'd only said it to please me. He didn't think of us like that, of two people who wanted a beginning they could point to someday. He didn't think of anyone like that. I'm a guy, he would've said had I brought it up. And guys don't think like that. You don't want a guy who thinks like that,do you? That's not the point, I thought in response to all my other thoughts.

We waited for our prints to dry. What's wrong, he said. "I just wonder how they turned out," I said. But I already had my answer.

Click to read the continuation...

turner and hooch

Turner and I liked to drink.  With a name like Turner I half expected it to be the case before we even met.  When we were just phone conversations and static photographs passed between emails and match.com profiles, he struck me as a WASP who liked very little blood in his Marys.  Turner, I thought, it's like Classic Movies.  Then I imagined him in loafers and a classic button down shirt, the sleeves rolled, a sweater vest, and a cable knit sweater.  Far too many layers for a person, but on a mannequin, and in my country club imagination, it worked.  When I agreed to meet him, on Valentine's Day, at Smith and Wollensky, I found myself looking for a walking mannequin with hair I could run my fingers through, and hoped for both our sake he was anatomically correct.  And I was right.  On all counts.  Except he didn't wear cable knits. "I'm not gay."   On his best day, he looked like Hugh Grant and told me so.  But then he'd deny ever saying such a thing. 

I was at the point in my dating where I simply didn't give a shit what it might have said about me that I had no other plans for Valentine's Day.  I'd just come from jean shopping.  Because I was in a place in my life, where I actually did things like that.  Went jean shopping.  Not just regular, "Hmm, maybe I'll find something I like in a cute store" shopping but, "I need yet another pair of jeans I can outgrow and feel like shit about."  When I charged into Smith and Wollensky, all I really cared about was sitting.  I'd walked far too many blocks in heels.  Once I secured a seat, I surveyed the room for Mannequin Man.  He wasn't there yet, which left me time to primp and perhaps get a drink in.

At the time, I was no whiskey girl.  I drank sweet mostly-clear things, like Stoli Vanilla mixed with Sprite or ginger ale.  Never pink things with puree or cranberry juice.  And never a cosmo (I don't even like the word), though I did like a good French martini, foam and all. Sometimes a floating orchid or a sugared rim, but only if it was the specialty drink of some bar known for its spectacular adult beverages. I didn't like what a pink girly drink said about who I thought I was. I was tougher than pink.  I didn't want to be like every other girl and somehow believed if I had a handbag without an obvious label (or no handbag at all), and my drink was man enough, I'd have less of a stereotype to work against.  "Single girl at bar."  How fucking predictable.  How terribly ordinary.  So I made a practice of going alone.  Okay, not really a practice, but at least once a week. Sometimes I wouldn't even drink.  But alone at a bar, when you're not awaiting a date or for a friend to join you, I thought, said something about who I was.  I'm not afraid of what you think, and that makes me different than any woman you've met around here.  It gave me a good start.  Except, I was just like every other woman at those bars. I wanted to meet someone.  Not just someone.  I wanted it all.  The I love yous, lazy weekends, a date to weddings where I'd know there was at least a chance it could be us up there at the altar.

On the unremarkable match.com night we met at Smith and Wollensky, Turner was wearing a dark pinstripe suit, a uniform I called, "The Lawyer."  I'd finished a glass of red wine by the time he arrived, and just before he had, I wondered if I was being stood up.  It's okay, I thought, it'll be like something out of a classic movie.  I'll get stood up, and another man will show up, the man I truly should have been waiting for all my life anyway.  Because life would work that way, should work that way.  When we think it can't get any worse, stood up on Valentine's Day, it doesn't get worse.  I lived in these scenarios, weighing the chances, and wondered if anyone in the room was my destiny.

Turner began with a panting apology, rambled on about work detaining him, then he ordered a double whiskey.  I wondered if really he'd been on an earlier match.com date that hadn't worked in his favor.  Once he settled in and had a chance to breathe, he smiled, as if he'd been caught at something, then told me I was a vision.  Maybe he was gay.

He insisted his hair was red. "Auburn" he said.  I guess it was.  His beard, when the stubble came in, some of it was red, so I gave him that.  He smelled like Aveda hair products. I called him Aveda Boy, which he said he hated, but he laughed each time I said it, and I knew it made him feel loved having a nickname. He wasn't the type of guy to ever have a nickname, not really a guy's guy.  He was lucky he was handsome.

We drank enough.  He needed to return to the office and insisted he have the car drop me off at home.  He wouldn't let me leave without agreeing to a proper dinner date.  He didn't need to insist.  I liked him.  6'3", Yale Law, superior law firm, handsome, and what I liked most: how much he seemed to like me.  Story of my life.  I walked into my apartment empty handed and drunk.  I'd forgotten my jeans at Smith and Wollensky.  Turner, after learning as much from one of my drunk emails, said he'd called the restaurant and that I could pick them up any time. 

On our first official date, which wasn't a meet and greet as much as it was that insisted upon dinner--because I didn't count the first meeting as a first date, unless food was involved-- when I was living on the Upper Least Side, still in my "hospital housing," there was a snowstorm, rendering the evening down to pushing him into a cab, so he could make it back to the Upper West Side, or pulling him away from one so he'd spend more time with me. 

We stood in the cold, the wind whipping ropes of hair into my lipgloss.  My fists were trying to hide in my sleeves.  I could see my breath.  We'd just finished a bottle of red and shared a dessert.  And then we found ourselves in the cold, snow beginning to stick, standing like two people hoping to find a cab, yet hoping very much that no cab would come at all. 

When a cab became available to us, I clawed my way across the seat, and Turner slid in behind me.  Then we did our "Holy shit!  It's so fucking cold out!" routine.  First date and already we had a routine.  The plan was to drop me off then to head west.  I should have been sending him on his way.  Instead, I pulled him out of the cab with me and invited him upstairs to "meet Linus."  He was psyched.  I liked his company, and he adored Linus.  Seriously loved the Lineman.  Called him Labrinus.  I felt, even that early on, the balance of our relationship and knew I'd be the one who called the shots.  He liked it that way.  Loved taking me out, loved how much I loved food, and loved when I cooked.  He liked to be entertained.  My friends called him a dud. 

"He doesn't add anything to your life."  But I liked that about him, that he wasn't hungry for attention, that he was simply happy to be told what to do.  Most likely he grew up with a firecracker of a mom, or older sister, with a quiet father.  I liked that he was never "me me me," and so easy to be around.  And he loved my "me me me."  So it worked.  I liked that he liked when I made fun of him, liked his laugh, liked his emails and fingers.  Liked. Until I wanted more.  He struggled with more. 

That first date turned into The Marathon Date.  He slept over and agreed to watch my chick flicks, allowing Linus to sleep between us.  We made out.  He wasn't an extraordinary kisser, nor a particularly bad one.  He was soft.  In so many ways.  When we awoke in the morning, and attempted to air out Linus on a walk to Fourbucks, we realized the gravity of the snowstorm.  Cars were snowed in.  The streets weren't cleared.  All of Manhattan was closed.  We were open to anything. 

Incidentally Dulce had an overnight date with her ex, only a few hospital housing floors away.  She, too, was snowed in and unable to get home.  So I welcomed her in for our date, where I composed Wolfgang's Chinese Mustard Chicken Salad--I surprisingly had all the ingredients on hand.  Then I baked two batches of cookies.  Before long Dulce made it back to her side of town.  Turner and I decided to spend another night together.  Drinking.  Then spent the next day together, too, brunching, more movies.  He eventually needed to change his clothes and go home.  As he left my apartment, he ran into The Wasband in the lobby of our building.  Ran into, isn't right.  "I saw him," Turner phoned to say on his walk to thrid avenue for a cab.  Turner and Gabe had gone to undergrad together, though they didn't know each other. This detail, realizing Turner knew exactly who Gabe was, made me somehow think it made him want me more.  "What an idiot," he'd said of Gabe.  "He's pretty horrible in a liar with a starched collar and polished shoes kinda way.  It's creepy."  So was his description of it all.  But we toasted to it just the same on another date.  We weren't sure which number date it was now that The Marathon Date had kicked into play.  But we drank to new beginnings and fresh starts.

Like I said, Turner and I liked to drink.  We didn't lick booze off each other or do body shots.  We weren't one of those couples that fed off each other, literally or otherwise. He hated his job, so he liked to drink on Sundays enabling him to spend his one day off without dreading his Monday.  I loved my job.  And my drink.  I didn't make excuses.  We drank whiskey, on the rocks, though sometimes neat when I ran out of ice cubes, but then he was mostly the one who drank. 

Turner drank Jack when he came over.  And then he'd kiss me, and lick my neck, and I began to associate the taste with sex and Radiohead's Karma Police.  So I began to drink Jack and Gingers, until I thought it was cooler to just drink Jack on the rocks.  I never drank it neat, aside from an occasional tip of his, but I thought, and still think, I'd be cooler if I did. 

Turner and I loaded up on liquor and mussels, brunch beneath awnings, dog run with Linus, then I'd beg him to play me his acoustic guitar. And he would, but he wouldn't sing. That's when he began to play me Radiohead.  Then I'd attack him.  I told him to talk dirty to me, but he didn't know what to say and said as much.  I left it at that and decided to try to figure out how to get that need met when we weren't in the throes of it.  Eventually, because of his inability to commit to more with me, we became "just friends," which he came to admit was a serious mistake on his part.  But I'll get to all that much later, particularly when discussing The Blackout, and how he showed up at my apartment, despite my being involved with Oliver.  The point is, once we were "just friends" he also confided, "you'd be really proud of me now.  I can now talk dirty."  Yeah, with a twenty-year-old whose first language was not English.  Good for you, Turner.  "Baby steps, baby" he said.  I laughed, and then he offered to show me.  "How 'bout I just take your dirty word for it Aveda Boy."  Then he laughed, and I missed the way we used to be, but knew he wasn't capable of more with me, despite how much he insisted otherwise.  Then we grabbed a drink.

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