Lorelei does everything in her power to drag me along to a movie premiere that she’s been invited to cover for her gossip column, but it’s still not enough to make me go. Once I promise her for the thousandth time that I’m fine, and just need some time to myself, and a big tub of ice cream, and no, I won’t watch any more of his entries, Lorelei leaves me with the promise that she’ll call to check up on me. I nod gratefully and wait for the sound of the door shutting, then go straight to the computer.
And so began one of the worst nights of my life.
Cross-legged on the office chair, Haagen-Daaz on my lap, and lit only by the glare of the computer screen, I embark on a journey of a thousand humiliations. A stomach-churning ride through the darkest side of the man whose baby I’m pregnant with. There are hundreds of videos, each one seemingly more graphic, more explicit, than the last. A personal horror movie that lasts for hours. I try not to cry, but by the fourth my sweatpants are drenched with tears, and the tub of ice cream has melted from the heat of my misery.
I go numb as the man on the screen continues to talk in graphic terms about his sex life, struggling almost to believe it’s really Nate, but knowing somewhere deep inside that this is more Nate than the guy I felt I knew. Every word seems to push me further away from him, and every encounter he talks about makes me a little colder toward him, until I lose every sense of connection and compassion I built up with him. Years of friendship are torn away, and my feelings for him are overwritten by a steely, calm indifference, the best emotion I can muster for whoever the person on the computer screen is.
And that’s before I even get to the recent entries, the ones Nate made after we got together. I know I’m there because the comments all mention Nate’s ‘disappearance,’ and in the first video back there’s a difference, a new tone. Darker, sexier, more serious – and even more stunningly unbelievable.
If realizing for how long, and how seriously, Nate had been making these videos pushed me to the point of despair, seeing him make a video about fucking – while the only person he was fucking was me – makes me boil once again. Suddenly I’m out of my seat, screaming at the screen with more hardcore venom than any football fan in the country. I’m pacing up and down, my hands wringing an invisible Nate’s neck as he talks about the finer points of going down – in a video posted a day after he did it to me. There are other offenses, other examples, other humiliations, and I cringe so hard I almost turn inside-out, get so angry I elbow-drop my couch and throw punches at the pillows, find myself so shocked I have to rewind parts to double-check I’m not imagining this.
Around midnight, going through the last – the most recent – of his videos, I’m finally half-insane and distraught enough to answer back as the sound of his sordid thoughts fills the room. With the last video done, I sit back down in front of the computer, the sudden silence almost unbearable. I almost don’t notice that I’m crying again, given that it’s become almost irrelevant now, and through the blur of tears I stare at the giant play button.
This was the guy I thought I could have something real with. The guy who’s just described in no less than three minutes how to make sure a woman enjoys anal sex. The guy who has three videos about involving food in the bedroom, one giving tips on harmonious threesomes, and countless vlogs devoted solely to doling out sex advice or answering heaps of e-mailed questions. A guy who can talk for four minutes about nipples.
Actually, forget all that. I can deal with nipple-talk. That’s not what’s making me bawl my eyes out. That’s not the part that makes me want to throw this computer out the window, and then follow it. The problem is this: in every single video, Nate makes a point of mentioning how much he hates the idea of settling down, how much he loathes commitment. His devotion to staying single and free from accountability – it’s almost obsessive. The man on the screen hates marriage with a passion, fears it and detests it to the depths of his very soul. I mean, I always knew Nate didn’t believe in getting married, but to see him tear into stable, serious relationships at every opportunity, to see just how deep his dislike – bordering on fear – goes, is more than I can ever forget or forgive.
This is a guy I would have to be stupid to think could be anything more than a one-night stand – let alone a father, a husband. Even just thinking that thought makes it seem impenetrable, hard and cold. A slab of truth that chains me to it. Nate won’t ever be the guy I need him to be – and where does that leave me? Alone. Until this baby arrives, and then…
I drop my head onto the desk, forehead against the keyboard, and let the wave of sobs and hurt come to the fore again, draining me of what little energy and fight I have left.