I Know What I'm Doing (17 page)

I logged off. I felt uneasy once he took it this far (and mentioned the Chelsea Hotel.) Twentysomething me wanted a long-distance British boyfriend who looked like one of the (again, hopefully the cute one) lead singers of Blur, but I kind of wanted to meet him, you know, in London. Not online.

At this point I hadn’t seen Gypsy in almost two years. I was now living in Brooklyn on the corner of Prospect Park West and Eighteenth Street. He’d been living on Seventh Avenue not even a mile away. We had been neighbors for six months and had no idea until one Sunday afternoon my cell phone rang. I don’t even think we were up to the technology of flip phones yet and texting was as sophisticated as spelling out a word on a push-button phone. Gypsy couldn’t have used Facebook at that time to find me because Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t even hit puberty yet.

“Kirkman? Aren’t you living somewhere in New York City? It’s a Sunday afternoon and I’m in Brooklyn by myself having mimosas at an outdoor café.”

“Gypsy! Are you gay now?”

“No. I’m a musician just waiting for my trust fund to fully kick in and the cheapest happy hour drink is cheap champagne and orange juice.”

And within ten minutes I was joining Gypsy mid-mimosa. It took me no time to get down there because I didn’t have to put on makeup or worry about the right outfit. I didn’t have to impress Gypsy. He’d seen me crying with snot running down my face listening to Cat Stevens. On our second drink, Gypsy told me that he still missed the artist girl but she had moved on to someone else. I updated him on my love life from the breakup with Patrick to the e-mail from Sid—my British online wannabe boyfriend.

Gypsy reacted with bold statements like, “He sounds like a serial killer. He loves the history of the Chelsea Hotel and his name is Sid? He’s definitely at least interested in murdering
you
. Don’t write that guy back ever again. There are tons of guys in New York City who would date you. You don’t have to fly in guys from England.”

“I wasn’t flying him in. Fine. I get your point. It was just so exciting to be liked.”

Gypsy invited me to go back to his place to eat ice cream and watch
Fletch
. Then we ordered a pizza and watched more movies. Both of us got up a couple of times each to pee and each time we came back to the couch, we landed an inch closer to the other. We were being very polite and welcoming to two invisible people if they had shown up and wanted to sit on either side of us. I didn’t want to leave. I wasn’t feeling attracted to Gypsy in that “do me then murder me in the Chelsea Hotel” way but something was keeping me from getting up and calling a cab. I think he felt the same way because after we ran out of movies to watch (this was before Netflix) we watched stupid infomercials as though our lives depended on it.

He wasn’t asking me to leave. Maybe he felt bad for me? I tentatively suggested that maybe I should go. Gypsy suggested that cabdrivers are all on speed at that hour and even though I only lived a mile away I should be careful. I offered that he could let me stay on his couch. He offered that I could stay in his bed. He asked, “That’s not weird, right?”

“Not weird at all! You’re like my brother! Why would that be weird?”

Maybe it would be weird since grown-up brothers and sisters do not sleep in the same bed? I threw in the “you’re like my brother” as extra protection in case Gypsy was asking me to share a bed platonically. I didn’t want him to think that
I
thought that
he
thought we were going to have sex or that I wanted to.

We crawled into bed and I made sure that, unlike our seating arrangement on the couch upstairs, I gave him plenty of space and I slept so close to the edge of the bed I had to stay half awake to make sure not to fall out. All of this just to let my friend know using body language that I
did not want to have sex with him even though I was very curious about having sex with him.

Never underestimate the very old heating system of an apartment in Brooklyn. By five a.m. I had a sunburn and beach hair from my salty sweat. I peeled off my clothes and got back under the covers in just my underwear. I wasn’t trying to be sexy or even sexy in a not-trying way. I was way too tired to leave. Shortly after that, I was woken up again, this time by the sun streaming in my face. No guy has ever mastered curtains that actually block sun out of their windows. Maybe they design it that way to annoy their one-night stands into getting up and leaving right away.

Gypsy woke up. I pretended to be asleep. What was I waiting for exactly? Did I really think he was going to roll over and say, “We should have sex”? Morning is the worst time to brew up anything but coffee. He got up and I heard him brush his teeth in the bathroom. I couldn’t decide if he was brushing his teeth because he anticipated kissing me or if he was just trying to start his day. If it was the latter, I was as good to him in that bed as a dead hooker is to a politician.

The bathroom door opened and then Gypsy was back under the covers. He gently tapped my ear. “Kirkman, you’re naked.” I had sort of forgotten that detail. “Kirkman, don’t you think we should have sex?” The calling me by my last name was throwing me off. I felt like we should be tossing a football around.

“Really? I never thought about it.”

“I thought of it when the sun was setting and we were walking and your eyes looked pretty.”

“REALLY?”

“Yes. And if this convinces you to not meet up with someone from England who is going to chop you up into little pieces—even better.”

This is where Gypsy laid out what would become the blueprint for our sex life.

“It won’t change anything. What’s good about this is we are friends. Just friends. I know you think I’m too flighty to have as a boyfriend. I’m bad at commitment anyway. I like you too much to put you through my issues. It’s perfect. We will never fall in love. We can have sex and now that’s another tool in our toolbox. We can use that tool when we want or we don’t have to but we know it’s there.”

“So we stay just friends but have sex when we want?”

“Yeah. And we stop when one of us gets a boyfriend or girlfriend.”

He didn’t invent the concept of Friends With Benefits but it was truly new to me. I stared at the ceiling. One of us was going to have to make the first move. “Okay. You start,” I said. And he kissed me. A million neurons fired as the molecules of our relationship changed forever. I was ambivalent about the kiss. His beard bothered me, but he knew just where to touch me as though he’d been born with the manual for my engine. Once the sex started there was a humor to it at first—catching each other’s glance and laughing at the fact that it is so bizarre to see your friend have an orgasm. Then we had sex again except this time there was no laughing.

“Kirkman. I had no idea we had it in us.”

“Can you not call me Kirkman? I mean, weirdly now that you’ve been inside of me you would think we would be less formal but I feel like I’m supposed to high-five you back when you do that.”

He held my temples with his hands and gently tapped his finger on my forehead. “There’s a lot going on up there, Kirkman. Shit. Sorry. I mean Jen.” There was affection and an acceptance between us. I walked home down Seventh Avenue, not doing a walk of shame but a swagger of pride. This really nice friend of mine thought I was sexy. I don’t have to be on the Internet trolling for love from a guy who definitely did not look like anyone from Blur and probably didn’t even look like the cousin of a roadie for Blur.

Gypsy called me that night and invited me to go bowling with a group of his friends. Admittedly, I felt a little disappointed. Bowling on a Saturday night? If we’re bowling, we can’t be making out. I mean, at least not simultaneously. I felt a little bit angry. What had changed in twenty-four hours? Did he not want to sleep together anymore? I started to feel resentment. Resentment can do only two things—stay chilled in the refrigerator until you throw it away, or you can pour alcohol over it until it reheats itself into a fury that is too hot to hold on to and therefore the only choice is to unleash it—in public at a bowling alley.

Gypsy wasn’t giving me any special attention at bowling. No wink. No hand on my knee. He was acting like my platonic friend, cheering with every spare I threw. With every gutterball he threw, I cheered, doing a little “in your face” dance to only him even though we were on the same team. He took me aside for a minute alone to ask me, “Are you okay? You’re being really aggressive toward me.” I took that as some kind of antifeminist statement. My resentment spouted. “Sorry I’m not some quiet hippie chick who finger-paints in the park!” (Now that I think of it, I’m
still
really sorry that I’m not some hippie chick who finger-paints in the park. That sounds relaxing.) Gypsy looked at me like he was a priest struggling to get into the mind of a possessed child before performing an exorcism. Where had Kirkman/Jen gone? Why was she talking in a deep growling voice and projectile-vomiting insults?

The next morning I felt like a piñata after a kid’s birthday party. I was empty and confused as to why I was on the front lawn—aka alone in my own bed. How had I killed my Friends With Benefits situation so quickly? And now I was left to call him and have one of my famous confrontations in Prospect Park.

I asked Gypsy to meet me for coffee. I wanted him to call it off to my face. I wasn’t going to let him get away with that thing that guys do where they just act like nothing ever happened and us girls go completely mental wondering what we did. This was on
him.
We walked through Prospect Park with our to-go cups and I told Gypsy that I didn’t understand what the whole bowling thing was about. He explained that the bowling thing was about going bowling because he knew I liked bowling and so he invited me along. God, guys can be so simple. Gypsy was confused that I had taken an invite to go bowling as a rejection. He meant it to be inclusive and he hoped we would go home together and have sex after. He said if I had suggested it, he would have skipped the bowling altogether to have more getting-to-know-each-other sex.

I would advise anyone embarking on a Friendship With Benefits to not do what I did. It’s not oxytocin—it’s ego that takes over when you do the most intimate thing you can do with a person and then decide that it would be improper to try to also communicate feelings to that person. I should have just said to Gypsy, “Bowling? What about boning?” But instead I had to act cool and when I was about to crack from the pressure that I’d put on everything, I watched my dignity go down the gutter. Because neither of us said anything—I had no idea that Gypsy wanted to have sex again and he had no idea that I didn’t feel that I could initiate sex again because I feared looking needy. A great tip for anyone who actually wants to look needy—try to not look needy and you’ll achieve your desired effect.

We talked about our feelings. We worked it out. We promised never to hold anything in again, to strive to be fully honest, and to keep checking the temperature of our Friendship With Benefits to make sure that each of us was still benefiting and our friendship had the perfect amount of space to flourish.

ROMANTIC COMEDY MOVIE VERSION OF HOW THAT WEEKEND ENDED:

I get up out of bed and trip on his mesh laundry basket—embarrassed that Gypsy saw me. I say something like, “Well at least you put out a net.” I get up to leave and go home. He grabs me and spins me around to face him. “I don’t want a pop-up laundry hamper to catch you. I should be there to catch you. Every time. I love you and I’m ready to jump right in. Forget this Friends With Benefits stuff. You’re the one, Jen. You’re the one I want and I’m not going to treat you like a white shirt that I separate from the pile. I want you to mix into my life.”

REAL-LIFE VERSION OF HOW THAT WEEKEND ENDED:

I walked around with Gypsy in the park. I knew in my gut that he wasn’t what I wanted for a long-term boyfriend but I wouldn’t mind another go around. I went back to his place and didn’t leave until the next morning. I got back to work and deleted the e-mail in my in-box from confused Sid wondering why his Nancy wasn’t getting back to him.

14

DOCTORS WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

The most exquisite pleasure in the practice of medicine comes from nudging a layman in the direction of terror, then bringing him back to safety again.

—KURT VONNEGUT

I mean, some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral.

—KEITH RICHARDS

I
never thought I would have a story about my primary care physician/gynecologist in Woodland Hills, California, Dr. Beverly. I only see her annually for my Pap smear, blood tests, and so she can hit my knee with the little rubber hammer. Nothing was different when I went for my first post-divorce checkup. My insurance was the same. I had the same old allergy to penicillin, the same old mild asthma, and the same old disdain for the way parents allow their children to completely take over the waiting room.

The receptionist, Dina, asked me if there were any changes to make in my file. Temporarily forgetting that marital status is a thing that needs to be indicated on a patient’s record, I said no. She ran down the list just to make sure.

“Phone number still . . . ?”

Yes.

“Address is still . . . ?”

Yes.

“Still married?”

No.

She looked up at me in shock and whispered, “I’m so sorry.” People in the waiting room looked up. The best way to get everyone’s attention in public is to whisper. They were probably wondering why the receptionist was giving me the news in front of everybody and the fish tank that I was dying. I whispered back, “It’s okay. It’s just a divorce. And it’s not a secret.” In a regular voice I asked if she could just cross that “M” out and circle the “D.” Dina fumbled with my paperwork and said, “No. No. I need to fill out a whole new sheet for you. Your husband was your emergency contact.” I was tempted to keep him as my emergency contact. If they ever found a lump in my breast they could call him. “Your wife has cancer.” “I don’t have a wife.” “Well, somebody here has cancer. We thought you should know.”