The Pisces
Page 22

“I called animal services on their asses,” she said.
Of course, when animal services arrived, the neighbors, who were merely putting groceries away, were livid. They banged on her door and screamed at her.
“You would think I’d be triggered or at least retraumatized!” she said. “But since I’m already being evicted, it felt empowering—as the victim—to stand up for other creatures who were being abused.”
Brianne, who looked to have just gotten some fresh Botox in her forehead, had met a man on OkCupid—a new foray for her. They’d even progressed from the messaging stage of the app to actual email.
“Of course, he’s on a business trip in Europe,” she said softly, her eyebrows arched like a child’s rendering of geese in flight. “But he said that when he returns he actually wants to get together with me. Face-to-face. In person. At a real restaurant. And I think I am going to go.”
I decided to come clean, sort of, about my two dates. I didn’t say that I went home with Adam and watched him jerk off or fucked Garrett on a bathroom floor, but simply that I had gone.
“The first guy was gross,” I said. “If they’re gross, I’m fine. I can take it or leave it.”
“Why did you go out with him if he was gross?” clucked Chickenhorse.
“I didn’t know he was gross beforehand,” I said. “It was an Internet date.”
“And the other one?” asked Dr. Jude.
“Well, that’s the one that’s the problem. He wasn’t gross. But he seems to have rejected me after. So now I’m all spun out. It’s not like I felt with Jamie. But it’s pretty bad.”
“Mmmm,” said Dr. Jude, sipping her tea. “What were you hoping to get out of the date exactly?”
I noticed that she had accumulated multiple strands of Tibetan beaded bracelets on her left hand. I wondered how many she would have to acquire until she reached enlightenment.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I hadn’t really thought about it. I guess to have some fun. Casual fun, you know?”
“It doesn’t sound like you are having much fun,” said Sara, offering me a banana chip.
I declined it. But she was right.
“Well, maybe I don’t like fun.”
“Of course you like fun,” she said. “Everyone does! You just don’t know what’s actually fun for you yet. I’ve had to try out a lot of activities until I found my thing. The heart-opening workshop was just okay. But now I’ve started improv classes and I am really loving it. It’s like my inner child is finally coming out to play.”
I cringed. Was there anything worse than improv? Maybe open mic nights.
“I also enjoy essential oils,” she continued. “It’s a form of self-care. Every night I give myself a little rubdown with a homemade blend—rose, bergamot, and a drop of frankincense—on my neck and shoulders.”
And probably your feet too, I thought.
“I like to take myself out on artist dates,” said Brianne, her face unmoving. “Just me. I will go to a museum or the movies, get inspired and really connect with myself one-on-one in a creative setting. Afterwards I will take myself out for a good dinner and also dessert.”
This seemed fucking annoying. I did not want to do any more connecting with myself. In fact I wanted to do less.
“I guess I could do that,” I said.
“I dare you,” said Sara. “I dare you to take yourself out on a date!”
24.
I left therapy and saw that Claire had called.
“Can you meet me at Pain Quotidien?” she asked. “I’m in hell. I’m dying.”
“Of course,” I said.
When I got there, she was crying in the corner over an almond Danish.
“I really felt like me and Trent had a connection,” she said. “I really felt like with this whole polyamory bit I would have enough going on to keep everything under control. Like I wouldn’t get too attached or too crazy about any single one of them. Now that’s all gone tits up.”
“Which one was Trent?” I asked.
“The old one with the ponytail.”
“Fuck him,” I said. “What an idiot. You can do better. You know who else was an old guy with a ponytail? This creepy guy who used to come sit in the library for twelve hours a day. He wasn’t homeless, he had really nice sneakers, but he would just watch all the undergrad girls all day. At first I felt bad for him, because he was old and would sometimes bring soup and there is nothing sadder than an older man eating soup alone. But then one day he was caught in the women’s bathroom. He had been hiding there for hours. His name was Ron. So this guy, Trent or whatever, is basically named Ron. Basically he is a seventy-year-old man with a ponytail named Ron who lurks in women’s bathrooms hoping to catch a sniff of them. Whenever you think he is great, just call him Ron in your head.”
I thought I had done a pretty good job. But Claire just cried harder.
“That makes it even worse. That someone like him could reject me.”
“He’s not rejecting you,” I said.
“Yes, he is,” she said. “His wife said she just isn’t comfortable with the arrangement.”
“So then it’s not even his fault. He isn’t choosing to reject you.”
I wondered how gross dudes like Trent scored both a wife and a woman like Claire.
“Yes, but he didn’t even stand up to her,” she said.
I wanted to be like, Look, this is what you get when you fuck a guy with a wife. This is what the polyamory people are like. You are never going to get to have the whole person. But I kept my mouth shut. Who was I to say anything? I’d just fucked a guy with a girlfriend on a public floor and wanted him to declare his undying love.
“How did the garters go?” she asked, as though reading my mind.
“Horrific,” I said. “I’m giving up men for a while.”
“No! But I adore this side of you! You were just getting started!”
“I’m just too crazy.”
“It’s that bloody group that got in your head, isn’t it? Ah well, I guess I’m on my own again to rummage through the cocks. Trent is dead to me, but at least David is more attentive now than ever,” she said.
“So pack it all into David. He’s younger and hotter anyway.”
“No, it’s too dodgy with him. He’s too hot. I might become too dependent. I need a buffer.”
“What about the guy from Best Buy? The really built one.”
“It’s not enough,” she said. “He was number three, remember? I need a new two. Or he can move up to two but I still need a new three. I have to have three.”
Seeing Claire’s insanity made me realize I was probably doing the right thing by being back in group. She could have a harem of a thousand studs, but the truth was there would never be enough to fill her need for attention—for devotion. That hole was bottomless. It was never-ending. She wanted their devotion, but should one of them—even one of the ones she liked most, like David—want her to commit, it would be over instantly. If he became obsessed with her, really fell in love, asked her to move in, she would grow tired of him in about a month. Maybe even less than a month. When I looked at Claire I saw that there was no human who could do that for us. Fill the hole. That was the sad part of Sappho’s spaces. Where there had been something beautiful there before, now they were blank. Time erased all. That was the part nobody could handle. Some people tried to shove things in them: their own narratives, biographical crap. I was pretending that nothing had ever been there in the first place, so that I wouldn’t feel the hurt of its absence. I wanted to be immune to time, the pain of it. But pretending didn’t make it so. Everything dissolved. No one really wanted satiety. It was the prospect of satiety—the excitement around the notion that we could ever be satisfied—that kept us going. But if you were ever actually satisfied it wouldn’t be satisfaction. You would just get hungry for something else. The only way to maybe have satisfaction would be to accept the nothingness and not try to put anyone else in it.