I changed into my pajamas and curled into a fetal position under the covers. An empty bed had never been so divine. Maybe I should have been relieved, but I had the haunted shivers of a woman who felt the bullet whiz past her face. Now that my crisis was resolved, I could start beating myself up for the ways I had failed. All that I could have lost.
This was a familiar crouch—staring at the ceiling at 3 am, lashing myself. Such a wretched place to be. Alone in the dark, with your own misery.
The phone rang.
“I found a leather jacket in the bar,” Johnson said. “Do you think it’s yours?”
And here comes the part of the story I wish I didn’t remember.
JOHNSON STANDS IN my doorway. He’s so tall. He must be six two. My leather jacket is draped over his arm like a fresh towel. I stand there with my hand on the door and wonder how much to tip him.
“Can I come in?” he asks, and there is not an ounce of me that wants him inside my room, but he was so helpful to me earlier, and I can’t scheme quickly enough to rebuff him.
I step back from the door and give him entry. I’m still thinking about the tip. Would five euros be enough? Would a hundred?
He closes the door and walks to my bed. It’s not far from the entryway, but each step breaches a great chasm. “You broke my heart when you cried earlier tonight,” he says, sitting down on the mattress. He’s only a few feet from me, and I remain with my back pressed against the wall.
“I know, I’m sorry about that,” I say, and I think: Who is manning the desk right now? Are we going to get in trouble?
He leans forward on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. “I was thinking, a beautiful woman like you should not be crying,” he says, and puts out his hand for me to take. I’m not sure what to do, but I walk over to him, as if on autopilot, and let my hand hang limply against his fingertips. “You are very beautiful,” he says.
I blink and breathe deeply through my nostrils. Fucking Christ. It is a compliment that makes me want to wither away. I have spent years chasing after compliments, with the ridiculous hope that every man in the universe would find me beautiful. And now a man arrives at 3:30 am to tell me I have succeeded in my pathetic, girlish hopes and dreams, and I want to crush him. I want to scream.
“Thanks,” I say.
“I saw you Saturday night when you came in,” he says. I stare at the floor, wondering how to get my hand back. I’m not sure what makes me angrier: that he will not leave, or that I will not ask him to. For the millionth time, I’m enraged by a man’s inability to read my mind. Look at how I’m standing here. Can’t you see how revolting I find you?
“I’m glad I could take care of you,” he says, and he brings my hand to his lips.
“Johnson, I’m really tired,” I say. “It’s been a really long day.” I want him to leave so badly my stomach aches.
I think: If tell him to go, he’ll probably stand up politely and walk out of the room without saying more than a few words. So why don’t I? Do I feel I owe him something? That I can’t turn him away? That he’ll be mad at me? What do I feel?
He pulls me toward him, and we kiss.
The kiss is neither bad nor good. I consider it a necessary penance. I can’t explain it. How little I care. Zapping back to my life in the middle of sex with a stranger seems to have raised the bar on what I can and cannot allow. All I keep thinking is: This doesn’t matter. All I keep thinking is: It will be easier this way.
He tugs me toward the bed, and my body moves before my brain tells it differently. I let him run his hands along me, and he strokes my hair. He kisses my nose, now wet with tears he does not ask about. He moves his large, rough hands over the steep slope of my fleshy sides, up along my breast, nudging down my top and gently sucking on my nipple.
And the confounding part is how good this feels. It shouldn’t feel this way. My skin should be all bugs and slithering worms. But the truth is I like being held. I like not being alone anymore. None of this makes sense in my mind, because I don’t want to be here, but I can’t seem to leave. I don’t understand it. What accumulation of grief and loneliness could bring me to this place, where I could surrender myself to the hands of a stranger? Who is this person in the hotel room? And I don’t mean Johnson. I mean me.
We lie in the bed, and he strokes my face, my body. I can feel him hard against me, but he never asks for more.
At 4 am, I push Johnson out the door. I climb into my bed and cry. Huge howling sobs, and I feel a small amount of comfort knowing the story exists only in my memory bank and that I do not need to deposit it in anyone else’s. This whole episode can stay a secret.
REAL DRUNKS WAIT and watch for the moment they hit bottom. Your face is forever hurtling toward a brick wall, but you hope that you can smash against it and still walk away. That you will be scared but not destroyed. It’s a gamble. How many chances do you want to take? How many near misses are enough?
As I lay in my hotel bed, covers pulled up to my neck, I felt the gratitude of a woman who knows, finally, she is done.
But I drank on the plane ride home. And I drank for five more years.
SIX
THE LIFE YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED