Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy (7 page)

The music was a different story. Forget about trying to like jazz; I couldn’t even understand the musical arrangement. It sounded disjointed and messy, like someone took a heaping box of notes and threw them all over the floor. I didn’t recognize any of the tunes, but I pretended to be engaged. That changed the moment Michael launched into his guitar solo. He played, looking at me with such intensity, it seemed that every note professed his love.

I relinquished control. My body felt like a chemistry set with all its Bunsen burners set on high. Had Cheryl and Diane been there in that moment, they would have taken one look at me, nodded their heads knowingly, and whispered, “Told you so.”

The show ended and Michael shook hands with the regulars, then walked over to my table with a couple of glasses of wine. Both starstruck and lovestruck, I tripped over my words trying to express how much I loved his playing and the show and the bar and that he was just . . . amazing! He suggested I drink up so he could drive me home.

Yes, sir!

We sat parked in front of my house, talking and laughing at his jokes, until we hit that pause in the conversation that I’d been waiting for. Michael looked at me, his blue eyes filled with intent, gathered me in his arms out of my bucket seat, and, with the gearshift between us, kissed me hard—not with spastic excitement, but with jazzy passion. It was perfect. I never wanted to get out of the car. But I did . . . three hours later.

The next night we saw a movie, but all I remember is the electricity I felt while holding his hand in the dark theater. Afterward we went to his place, or rather his parents’ basement, where Michael not only lived but also had constructed an entire music studio. He put on a variety of Miles Davis and Coltrane CDs, occasionally picking up his guitar to play a riff here and there. I’m pretty sure I just sat there with a big smile plastered on my face and big hearts in my eyes. Soon we were having sex, right on the carpeted floor of his soundproofed studio, and finally my sister’s prophecy came true. I felt something this time, and it was downright incredible. Although I didn’t have a huge sample size to compare it to, our sexual chemistry bubbled out of the test tube. This was it. The real thing. True love. A perfect match. I’d done it. I’d found it.

Life was magical. I actually saw sparkles in almost everything I looked at. He taught me about jazz, we explored museums, and we had tons of sex. Since we clicked so well in the bedroom, we consequently spent a great deal of time there, putting certain Prince songs on repeat. To this day, the first few chords of “When 2 R in Love” from
The Black Album
share a sexual trigger with tinted Halloween hairspray.

I don’t think Michael had ever met someone who idolized him the way I did. I told him repeatedly that I couldn’t believe someone like
him
could like someone like
me
, reinforcing that he could do better. Luckily he adored my worship, and after a couple of weeks together, he confessed that he was falling in love with me.

Like any seventeen-year-old girl head over heels in love, I wanted nothing more than to cancel my trip to Australia and stay with
Michael . . . for eternity. And like any typical twenty-two-year-old guy, Michael insisted that if I didn’t go, I would be making a huge mistake. “But what about us? What if I go and I lose you?” I implored. How could he stand a year of celibacy? How could
I?
He reassured me that nothing could shake what we had. It would be romantic—pining for each other. He also reminded me how much time I’d spent planning and saving, and he warned me like the wizened elder he was that I might never get this opportunity again. He assured me that we’d write and talk regularly, and the distance would make our relationship grow even stronger. It was going to be the trip of a lifetime, one that I’d never forget.

He was right about that.

Like a devoted cult member, I clung to his every word and obediently started packing.

I wrote him every day on that trip. According to his count, I sent him seventy-six letters, all ten pages or more.

He sent me four.

The trip itself got off to a rough start. After choking back tears at the airport, afraid to reveal that after all this effort I was scared and wanted to go back home, I waved good-bye to Michael and my family and dragged my backpack through security. Eventually, I made my way down the skinny aisle of the plane, dabbing my eyes, slumped into my aisle seat, and let out a huge sigh. I turned to acknowledge my seat neighbor and screamed. It was Tommy.

Apparently, he’d decided to go on the trip alone too.
Why hadn’t that occurred to me?!
I looked at him, completely dazed. I thought for
sure he would cancel. He was only going on the trip because I initiated it, and I never imagined he’d be able to afford the fare on his own. Evidently I was wrong.

He was also at a total loss. It hadn’t dawned on either of us that this could happen. We’d clearly underestimated how like-minded we were. Since neither of us had bothered to create a new itinerary, we were stuck together not only on this first leg to Hawaii but also on all subsequent flights to Fiji, the Cook Islands, and New Zealand, before hitting Australia.

You can’t run away on an airplane, but you can beg for a new seat, which I did immediately. After our epic breakup, we completely avoided each other, to the point where I wondered if he’d left town. I just didn’t expect the answer would be yes, via my plane to Australia.

He seemed perfectly happy to watch me huff and hastily gather my stuff to move rows. The flight attendant directed me to a new seat at the rear of the plane. It was the last aisle, so it was a nonreclining seat, opposite the bathroom. As if that weren’t bad enough, the seat next to me was occupied by a nervous woman holding a fussy newborn. Perfect. At least the kid cried most of the trip so I didn’t have to.

Tommy must have shot off that airplane the moment we landed, because I didn’t see him in the baggage area. I’d made friends with a couple of backpackers who were also sitting in the back and followed them to a cheap hostel near Waikiki. I didn’t mention anything about Tommy to them. It was my way of writing him out of my future, at least for the next twenty-four hours. I bided my time by walking along the beach, perusing tourist shops, and writing
to Michael—basically waiting to get back to the airport so I could change my seat assignment for the next leg out.

When I didn’t spot Tommy in the departure lounge, I figured he’d missed the flight. Good. I changed my seat and joined the line for the bathrooms, relieved he wasn’t there. He was a stain on my relationship past, and I never wanted to see him again. This was my vacation, my trip of a lifetime. But then, whether by coincidence or design, there he was, standing right behind me in line.

My body pulsed with rage feeling his presence so close.

I turned around to face him and practically spat, “So. How was Hawaii?”

“Babe, it was so cool!” he said, raising his eyebrows to add emphasis.

How dare he call me babe! And how dare he look so . . . so . . .
smug
. He bragged about how surprisingly good he was at surfing, and how he caught a fish while deep sea diving, and what fun he’d had drinking on the beach late into the night—mai tais with models!
Seriously?
I thought.
All that in twenty-four hours?
Part of me wanted to call bullshit on his stories, or at least ask for names, but instead I tuned him out as he further embellished his exploits, and began plotting my next move. Now I understood what we were doing. It was a competition: Whoever was having a better trip was having a better postbreakup life. The game was on, and I was in last place. That was about to change.

My makeover plan was twofold. First, I required a physical transformation in the form of a golden tan. Once we landed in Fiji, I hit the beach slathered in SPF 2 and jumped into the ocean. While floating in the warm azure shallows, I conceived the second part of my plan: go
on an exotic adventure, like hunting for white men with Maoris, or do something dangerous that no mere tourist would do.

As I was dreaming up activities—like bushwhacking my way through the jungle to photograph myself draped in rare poisonous snakes or harvesting the summer’s first crop of cassava with an Aboriginal tribal leader, I felt a sharp stinging on my torso, like little razors raking across my stomach. I looked down to see red welts quickly forming on my midriff and ran to the lifeguard-on-duty in a panic. He gave me a condescending laugh and said I’d been stung by baby jellyfish.
Baby jellyfish?!
Being bit by baby jellyfish was about as pathetic as being devoured by a teddy bear. I didn’t plan for jellyfish, nor did I plan for the fragility of my lily-white Canadian skin, which had never been exposed to the intense equatorial sun and tropical humidity.

By evening, the jelly-baby stings were out-pained by a flaming-hot sunburn. It was so bad that my only relief was soaking in a bath filled with baking soda—at the hostel. Considering that hostel “bathtubs” are primarily used for feet and pets, I was lucky I didn’t walk away with fleas and a staph infection.

By the end of the week, I had two additional problems: little blisters had formed on my back, which the Fijian pharmacist identified as a heat rash, and my big toe was infected from the dampness and dirt that had collected in my closed-toe sandals. Closed-toe sandals made perfect sense in Calgary, but not so much in a place where you’d actually
need
sandals. I was given medicated white powder to sprinkle on my back, and iodine to treat my infection, which was a perfectly legitimate disinfectant, but it stained my toes a rust color. I struck quite
the image: cherry red from head to toe, with a dusting of white on my shoulders, like sugar. I felt like a Willy Wonka reject.

Obviously, I needed new shoes, so I stopped by one of the sidewalk vendors and picked out a pair that looked like a trellis of black leather straps woven together. I put them on.
Hm
. Pretty stylish, pretty comfortable. They’d do. When I returned to the hostel, the girl at the front desk looked me up and down and asked, “Why are you wearing men’s shoes?”

All of a sudden, it made sense why the vendor had a hard time finding my size. I looked down at them in a new light. Oh man, they
did
look like men’s sandals. The kind an old Greek man would wear to fetch his morning paper. I was embarrassed by how much of a dumb tourist I was. My face would have turned red if it wasn’t already.

Then there was my expensive spiral-permed hair. It was an increasing burden, knotting and wrapping itself into dreadlocks because of the dense humidity. A haircut would make me feel better. I thought of Zoe, a modern ballet dancer that Michael had told me he found really attractive. She sported a short, elegant, bi-level bob.
That’s it!
I thought. I would be free of my wasp nest,
and
Michael would find me irresistible. Done.

Word to the wise: Never get your hair cut out of desperation, especially in a foreign country.

I went into town, which consisted of one dusty street, and walked into the first beauty parlor I saw. Three lovely women welcomed me, but we suffered a language barrier, and they tilted their heads in confusion at the word
bob
. They handed me a stack of outdated hairstyling
magazines and told me to point. I found a couple of photos that were close to what I was after, especially if you employed a bit of imagination. They smiled and nodded enthusiastically in response, so it seemed we were good to cut.

I got my hair cut all right. They chopped it right off, leaving just a few inches, each strand cut a little differently. I didn’t recognize my own reflection. I looked like a young boy who’d been mistaken for a garden hedge. At least it went with my mandals.

Next stop: a Fijian wig store.

As I shuffled back toward the hostel, where I could lose it in the privacy of my bunk bed, I contemplated whether I should just surrender and hightail it back to Calgary and Michael’s arms. I was no Zoe, but I was confident he’d lovingly stick by my side as my hair grew out and my sunburn faded.

Then I heard an all-too-familiar voice. “Hey! Hey! Ophira! Ophira!”

Great. Nothing like adding insult to hair injury.

Tommy appeared in front of me like a shitty magic trick. I let out another big sigh as he slowly took me in: All in all, I looked like I’d barely survived first day on deck as an entry-level pirate.

He, on the other hand, was sun kissed rather than scorched and looked better than ever.

“Oh my god, Ophira,” he said. “I barely recognize you. You’ve totally changed!”

I know he didn’t mean it as a compliment, but I chose to hear it that way. For better or worse, I couldn’t deny that things were changing. If I returned to Calgary now, my life would go back to what it
was. The fatalist in me mused that all the crap Tommy and I had gone through was preparing us for this moment, so he could say that to me.
You’ve totally changed
. Yes, I had. It wasn’t how I thought I would, but everything was certainly different.

I brightened up and asked him how he was doing. He was fine, hanging out with more models, drinking more mai tais, being surprisingly good at more things. Whatever—it didn’t matter anymore. Our lives were on different trajectories. We had crossed that point where we could move on without petty resentments, or even longing. Our hug good-bye was friendly and light, and I somehow knew I wouldn’t see him again during the trip. I think he did too. We both had new lives to get back to, and I felt reinvigorated to continue with my life-altering trip that would surely make Michael proud of me.

I
f there were a travel brochure for my year abroad, it would read “Australia: A Series of Distractions in between Calling Michael.” I really was living the trip through his eyes, seeking out experiences for the sole purpose of relaying them back to him later. I had cinched myself so tightly in a corset designed to win his approval, sooner or later a ribbon was bound to snap.