Recovering Fuckboy 1: Grace
It's not technically cheating if—
People sometimes ask me, “have you ever cheated on your girlfriend?” And the answer is, “I don't know.” Not in an amnesia way, or a we-were-drunk excuse, but in a... I'm not sure what counts.
And people hear me say that and lean back and sniff, and say something to the effect of, “if you're not sure, then it's probably cheating.”
And I'm like “whoa there Pedantry Jones, I also know of that rule, and my uncertainty is expressed while taking it into account.”
Except I don't say that. I too rarely get to call people Pedantry Jones in real life.
College!
My girlfriend pulled some shady fuckin' shit to try to get me to stay. Locking me in a room with her and weeping until I agreed to consider going to the local state school. Promising me all kinds of Best Sex Favors if only I'd remain. Contrasting the different schools, pointing out that mine cost $44,000 compared to her $3,000.
She made some good points. But fuck, was I stupid.
I arrived down there with my parents. A whole symbolic letting-go experience for them, in our culture of helicopter parenting and perpetual children. Or, that was my impression at the time—I was a pretty scornful eighteen year old. Really, I think my parents were picking up on the very real possibility that I might buy a ticket back home to my girlfriend, if they didn't chaperone my transition to this new place.
On the first day, surrounded by all the new buildings, out of my home state for the first time in my life and seeing all the new people I'd have to befriend, lest I be alone—I called my girlfriend, weeping.
I think I made a mistake.
And boy, if she didn't remember that and bring it up a lot. Occasionally I wonder how my life would be different if I hadn't been consistently punished for emotional honesty.
I met Grace the first day of orientation. We were both in “long distance relationships”, mine considerably more abusive than hers. We sat together, both very alone.
I fell in love with her, I think.
It was... partially reflexive. Terrified, I didn't want to be alone, and I didn't want to be uncool, and having a girlfriend always helped with both those things. It wasn't about the sex.
(We didn't have sex, then. The question of cheating would have a clearer answer if we had.)
We had... wonderful times. We went on adventures! Honest-to-there-is-no-god adventures, the sort that you only ever really get when you're falling in love, or pretending to.
One night, I mentioned that I was a swim instructor. This was even true.
So, naturally, we taped the doors of the swim facility open so we could break in at midnight and I could give her an impromptu lesson.
She wore a bikini. She looked great.
I was a perfect gentleman.
But we established a game of mutual brinksmanship, a slow, creeping, delicious one. She'd laconically lie back and demand I strip for her, in the middle of an otherwise innocuous night of bible study and Aramaic lessons. I'd tie her to the bedframe with her own clothes, while we sang old Irish ballads in harmony. She'd sing as I played piano accompaniment, and we'd both think about her fantasy of blowing a pianist as he played, and hearing how his tempo sped up.
I do still love her.
Surprise Visit!
Q. How do you know when you love someone?
A. When it's over.
My girlfriend River visited. This girl, whose family was not avoiding the trailer park, was a consistently shrewd reader and manipulator of me. During the four years we spent together, our games of intelligence, counterintelligence, and emotional blackmail got...powerful. Coming out of that, I was the most evasive and manipulative I’ve ever been, and I discovered I could get laid whenever I wanted, if only I relaxed my standards re: moral conduct.
River visited Grace and I. River could immediately tell that something was going on. We became caricatures, universal representations of a Jerry Springer conversation.
“So what's going on between you two?” she said, watching Grace's back with intense hate-beam eyes.
“What? No way, baby.” I shooshed. “We're just friends, is all. I help her work on her Hebrew pronunciation.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, she's not really good at the glottal stop.”
“The glottal stop?” River looked like she wanted to believe me, and also like she hated me. “Is that the one where your dick hits the back of her throat and then stops?”
Now, normally, when someone says something like that, you nod, and say, Yep, That's The One, to announce that you've gotten the joke and also that you're not into the joke. But, if I did that, River would scream and cry and probably also legitimately hit me, and I still wanted to get laid. So:
“What? No. C'mon. She's got a long-distance partner too. Last time we were working on Hebrew, she had to nip out and take an hour-long phone call to listen to him cry.”
I don't especially remember if this was true. Grace had a partner, at some point, but they'd broken up about the time I'd come into the picture. If only River and I had been so lucky.
Let's get on with it.
Phone Call
I didn't bring an Xbox with me, but I brought a game; Ninja Gaiden Black. A notoriously difficult experience, it was a source of some acclaim among the college people that I could Ninja Gaiden so well.
I look up from an unbelievably complex multi-boss run performed in front of couches full of impressed geeks, to find that I have twenty-seven missed calls from River.
I explain that I have that number of missed calls. People give me worried glances, not because they're worried about her, but because they're worried about me.
“That's insane,” someone said. “Is she crazy?”
I have never supported the practice of dismissing a person by calling them crazy. It's lazy. It's like calling someone a fool. C'mon, you can be more specific and I'll get a better picture.
“She gets single-minded about some things,” I say.
I call her back. She's screaming and crying about I-literally-do-not-remember-what.
“Would you even care?!” she eventually demanded. “If I broke up with you, would you even NOTICE?”
“It's not like I chose to be happy,” I say. “I'm sorry that long-distance isn't breaking my spirit the way it is yours. Does it necessarily mean that I love you less?”
I did love her less. Everyone involved knew it. But I still think my reasoning there was valid.
“Y'know what?!” she screamed. “Fuck you. We're breaking up.”
“'kay.” I said.
“Okay!” she said. “So... that's it!”
“'kay.” I said.
“Ugh!” she said. She hung up on me.
Immediately, I turned off my phone. I leaned against the wall and panted.
Oh my god. I thought.
We broke up.
I listened nervously to myself for any feeling like my heart tearing apart, or whatever. I didn't detect anything, so I shrugged. I have never been very good at knowing what I feel.
I met up with Grace that evening. We noted that we were both single.
She blew me.
It was... pretty okay. I discovered that it was her very first time blowing a guy! Which was sweet, but also, not super satisfying. Y'see, I'd been training River for, oh, two years, at this point, in how to blow me, so she had a bit of a leg up.
But also... incredible! A new person! And I like this person so much!
By the end, I basically held her head in one place as I humped, which worked well enough. It was like a... really loose, wet/warm handjob. Also, I was eighteen, so I came almost immediately and like a champagne bottle.
She spit it into my bedside cup, which was endearing, in a “wow, fuck you” sort of way.
We cuddled. I wondered what the hell I had just done. But holding her felt really right.
This was one of the few times I've had sex where my emotions were involved in any way, so. Forgive me if I do not wax rhapsodic about the stirrings of my heart. I've felt my heart stir maybe eight times in total, and it tends to make itself known strongly in those cases. This was not one of them.
This was instead a quiet... fear. Fear that I'd made a mistake with River, fear that I'd messed things up with Grace, fear that something terrible was going to happen, some retribution because now I was A Filthy Cheater.
We were on a break!
My roommate at the time was a Christian metal-head named Taylor. Having an unmarried woman in the same room as him caused him to reliably break out into full-on Good Host mode, where he'd enthusiastically show her around our single room and offer her snacks. So we'd be sleeping over at her place.
I always found peace in sleeping with her. She'd snuggle up against me, using the difference in our sizes, wrapping around me like a cat around an engine block heater, like tinsel on a tree, so I could warm her all night.
Nowadays, Grace sleeps differently. I worry about her, and what happened, between then and now.
We slept together, innocent, like little angels who had recently done oral sex. It was sweet. It still makes me ache to think of how... uncomplicated it was.
Well.
Morning came, as it always fucking does.
On my walk to class, I toyed with the idea of not turning my phone back on ever. But she'd contact me via email, through public facebook posts and mutual friends. To ignore her was to ignore your house burning around you. So I checked.
I had a lot of voicemail. I listened to each one with a this-is-uncomfortable cringe and deleted them, sometimes half through.
I called her back.
“Hey.” She sounded relieved, and afraid.
“Hey,” I said.
“Did you even notice?” she asked, bitterly.
“I threw up.” I lied.
And like that, we were back together. With false vomit, our bond was restored.
Christmas
I had told Grace that I would break up with River over Christmas break. I was unable to.
River had pulled out, if not all, most of the stops. We had a house sitting house together, and it was bleakest winter outside, so we had nothing to do but cuddle and fuck and watch absurd tv romances.
Occasionally I wonder how my life would be different, if I'd realized younger that I could turn down sex. But then, I bet a lot of women wonder that too. Apparently, there's no obligation to fuck someone just because they like you and want to fuck! The things you learn at twenty-five.
I was having a phone call with Grace. It was not going well.
“Did you love me?” she asked.
“I did and I do.” I promised.
“But not... enough.” she said.
I flinched.
“Do you even care?” she asked.
“I'm crying.” I said. It was even true.
“Right.” she said, with no indication of believing me or not. She was crying too. “I guess...I'll see you around.”
She always got...polite. Stiffer and formal, when wounded, defaulting to her prim, upper-class upbringing.
I continued on with River for another two years, despite the shouted advice of my long-suffering friends. Grace lost her virginity to a regrettable bozo. Everything was imperfect.
That's life.
Melancholy
The ending isn't tidy. It's sticky and unsatisfying. That's what it is to be a grown-up. You get handed something that's kinda good and get told to learn to love it.
I wonder if I do that to people, in handing them myself.
Grace and I kept talking, a little. We missed one another, and never really stopped loving each other. It didn't hurt that for the next three years, both of us were judging every new partner in contrast to our shiny memories of What We Could Have Had.
We eventually met in person and made up, and we did even fuck. It was very tender, and nice, for all that I was terrified to have my emotions involved.
Grace and I. It's... novel, to have made a true friend, instead of simply knowing them for as long as you can remember. I can see why rich people send their kids to school with one another. The ability to make friends you can actually trust is such a tremendous advantage in a room full of cautious strangers.
This ending isn't tidy. That's because it's not an ending. You hardly get those, anymore, once you're a grownup. School ends, and the regimented time fades out, blurs together. The march of the clock rules your day but there's no clear tick-marks on your life.
Grace and I...now we hang out. I almost wish there was a clear arc, a final “Will They Or Won't They” segment, where we make a lasting romantic bond or break forever.
But I also don't. We're not the people we were then. We're new people, probably not better people, but complex.
An adult will be more complex than a child, if by no guarantee happier.
Sure, she and I could try things again, try to get back to that place, but, that would sort of, neglect who we've become, wouldn't it?
And the people we are now, I want them to have a place of their own.