Jason took his turn, hitting a strike. He gave a congratulatory hoot, but the vibe of our date was now tense. My franticness was turning into resentment. A pressure behind my eyes. I didn’t know where I stood with him, and it wasn’t like a fun cat-and-mouse game. It was frustrating, especially since I cared so much about him so quickly. I knew he felt something for me too, but I couldn’t quite capture it.
Jason won the game by a ton of points, or pins, or whatever. And he thought I was too drunk to drive. I agreed. He lived close by, walking distance, and suggested I sober up at his apartment. Now we were getting somewhere, I thought. But when we arrived, he put a giant glass of water in my hand. He really did want me to sober up—this was not some ploy to get me back to his place and in bed. Jason had a two-bedroom, two-bathroom condo. He bought it three years ago, he said, only giving me this information because I asked direct questions about the building. He didn’t need so much space, but resale value on two-bedrooms was much higher than on one-bedrooms, so he went for the more promising investment. He was a real grown-up.
I sat on his couch, black leather, very masculine, and looked around. He was messy but not a slob. He had some framed concert posters, some cheesy art of waves, lots of camera equipment in black boxes that I would learn were called Pelican cases, and some meditation pillows in the corner. I could see a few beach towels lying around, and sand near his pile of shoes, which he seemed to kick off his feet right at his front door.
Based on his condo, sand and waves and all, he clearly loved the ocean. We had that in common. His frog lamp, now rewired, sat on his dining room table snug in bubble wrap, waiting to be given to his mother. Everything smelled like tangerine, in a good way. I recognized it from spending so much time at the beach. It was a type of surf wax. I then noticed a long surfboard leaning against a wall in one of the bedrooms.
Jason had still not tried to kiss me. I wasn’t the sort of girl who needed the guy to always make the first move, but with him I felt there was a wall. And I didn’t want to throw myself against it.
I finished my water and walked into the kitchen. His counters were cluttered but organized. There were jars of sugary goo packets, containers of glucose tablets, electrolyte powders, and large plastic vats of protein power. I knew what everything was because it was labeled. It seemed like the kitchen of a professional athlete. I realized, with a bit of sadness for Jason, that being a healthy type 1 diabetic took the same willpower, control, and maintenance as being a professional athlete does, but just to be average. I put my glass in his sink.
“I think I’m fine to drive now.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll walk you back to your car.”
“Nah. I’m good. I grew up on these streets.”
I knew I sounded ridiculous. Growing up in Miami Beach didn’t protect me from being mugged, molested, or murdered. But in that moment I felt safer being out there with crack-smoking, gun-wielding criminals than in here, balancing on the sharp edge of rejection.
I started to walk out. Things felt unresolved. But why? I had met Jason at the lamp-repair store only a few weeks earlier. Sure, we had chatted on the phone, and texted, and had three dates, but it wasn’t like we were lifelong friends. Or connected in any external way. It wasn’t like I was desperate to have a boyfriend. So why was I so intrigued by him? Why was I unwilling to just walk away and chalk it up to a non-thing when I’d been willing to do that plenty of other times with plenty of other men? Did love at first sight really exist? Or love at three dates? One does hear stories of couples meeting and knowing and getting married that same week and being together for sixty years of connected bliss.
I lingered in the doorway. And looked at him and his white teeth. Half sure I should walk out and never look back. Half sure I should turn around and say one last thing.
CHAPTER 21
SEX
Since most people lie, even in therapy, even in blind studies, even to themselves, it’s nearly impossible to know true average number of sexual partners. But I’m certain growing up in Miami skews what might seem outrageous in other parts of America as totally within reason. Miami is hot and steamy, filled with attractive people wearing tiny clothes, drinking rum, dancing to sultry salsa music all night long, gay and straight and every tick of the pendulum in between. There is no slut shaming in Miami. Instead sex is openly celebrated. It’s the prudes who feel uncomfortable and unwelcome.
However, I did develop my own sex rule. I would not sleep with more men than my current age. There was Carlos first. Then Mikey the water polo player, Kevin the vegan. Max the professor’s assistant. Plus Jake, Melody’s boyfriend. And a few more over the years. When I write all their names on a list, it seems like a lot of men. But then when I step back to do the math, it doesn’t. I’ve been sexually active since I was fifteen, so by my mid-twenties, having dated on average one to three men every year, that adds up to sleeping with over twenty men. When I think about it that way, my list doesn’t seem so long at all.
But that’s why I created my rule of never sleeping with more men than my age. Not to make myself frigid or ashamed or to deny myself pleasure and fun, but to make myself a little more thoughtful about sex. More aware that it doesn’t have to be a given with everyone I might date a few times. My rule also made me pause before going from one short relationship right into the next, allowing me to spend some alone time reflecting. Mr. Cat had his opinions too. Some men he liked, some he didn’t, and a few times while a gentleman caller was spending the night, he showed his disdain by pooping not in his kitty litter, but in the bathtub. His way of saying, Try and be romantic now, dickwad.
At the time of my bowling alley date with Jason, my ex Seth had been my longest and most serious relationship. We started dating my first year in graduate school, and we were together for a full year. He could quote Goethe’s Faust and John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink. His well-roundedness was very attractive. He was the first man I ever said “I love you” to in a romantic sense. Roman and I used to say it to each other all the time, with the ease of friends who aren’t physically connected.
I thought for sure Seth would be the one to say it to me first, since he was good at emoting, but I was caught off guard two months into dating, usually around the time I start to get antsy and have the distinct feeling I’d rather be somewhere else with someone else. One morning I watched Seth put on his sock and then his other sock and then his shoe and his other shoe. Something about the way he did it—rather than sock, shoe, sock, shoe—made me content. Instead of wanting to be somewhere else with someone else, I knew it didn’t matter where I was as long as I was with him. And I knew that was love. When he finished tying his laces, he looked up at me, caught me staring at him.
“What?” he asked.
It came out slow and awkward but deliberate, like a baby bird pecking through its eggshell and crawling out for the first time. “Nothing,” I said. “Just. I love you.”
He smiled an easy smile. “That’s good news. Because I love you too.”
That was three years before I met Jason. I had been twenty-two at the time. And since being with Seth, I had slept with a couple others, putting my number dangerously close to my age. Twenty-four partners. That meant if I had sex with Jason and things didn’t work out, I would have to take a sabbatical from sex for a while to let my age overtake my sex number. A lot was riding on this Jason decision since I would under no circumstances break my sex rule. Since I didn’t always follow other people’s rules, the laws of man, and some might even say the laws of God, if I started breaking my own rules, life would seem dauntingly limitless in its possibilities. Without my own personal self-imposed syllabi and code, I would have crumbled under the weight of an existence without any meaning or structure.