He’s a solid lover. My first. I didn’t tell him that as he explored my body for the first time. I watched his eyes as he looked at parts of me I used to be too ashamed to look at myself. I didn’t experience any pain, and it was all very surreal. Johan kissed me when it was over, and went to sleep. You can never tell the extent of what he is feeling on his face or in his body language. He’s meticulous in his care of me—always meeting my physical needs—asking, serving, believing. And while it is not necessary in the dealings of love, it is terribly romantic to have a man look at you like you’re the last glass of water on Earth. I wonder after my own heart. Why I need to be caressed and assured, fussed over and made to feel edible?
Perhaps because a man has already given me this gift, and I have the taste of it in my past. Perhaps television has worked hard to assure me that this is normal. But I will not be undone by the past. I will adapt. I will see love in the light of truth rather than experience. Only then will I strengthen my own self and speak fluently the language of love. That is my mantra. My saving grace.
It doesn’t work. I think only of Judah when Johan kisses me. Only of Judah when Johan touches my body. I think only of Judah when his body goes slack on top of mine, his passion spent. I think only of Judah, my elusive unicorn. Johan doesn’t notice my mental absence. He is too busy noticing the way I laugh, which he compliments often, the curvature of my legs, which he compliments often. He thinks I am strong, and thus beautiful because I am strong—like those two things go together simultaneously. A man who values muscle and capability in women, and who laughs at the debutantes who trot across the street in their designer heels. Sometimes I think he sees me more as a companion than a lover. I meet his need for camaraderie, and it leaves me feeling like less of a woman. But, still, we work, and he doesn’t ask questions.
We eat enormous amounts of seafood, and spend time on his uncle’s fishing boats. I don’t care for the water. It frightens me like it did my mother. But. I am too embarrassed to admit my fear—me, a woman who tied up a two hundred and twenty pound man and tortured him for two hours. So I join him on the water as often as my schedule will let me. I find myself making compromises in a relationship that I don’t much value. How weak I am. How much I itch to be of use, to not sit idly by on fishing boats with Johan’s arm draped across my shoulders, while the world swings by in a blur of color.
We’re now five months into our relationship of blackened salmon, grilled salmon, cedar plank salmon, mango salsa salmon, and salmon lemonaise. I think I’m going to go crazy.
Judah comes for a visit. Johan listens to me recount our friendship with a pull of tension between his bleached eyebrows. When I get to the part about Judah being in a wheelchair, he visibly relaxes. A wheelchair does not pose a threat to the tanned, rustic Johan. He insists on inviting Judah onto his boat for a day of fishing and grilling salmon in the Sound. When I text Judah about it, he expresses surprise.
Didn’t know you were seeing someone!
It’s pretty new, I lie.
I guess I should say that I can’t wait to meet him, but I’m not sure I mean it.
That part makes me smile. When I pick up Judah at the airport a few days later, he has a wide smile and a deep tan.
“Look at you! All California and shit.”
“And shit,” he says as I lean down to give him a hug. He’s wearing faded blue jeans and a tight white T-shirt. He doesn’t look like a poor boy from the Bone. He looks healthy and well. I help him into the front seat of my Jeep, my eyes scanning for any traces of my hobby, though I know there aren’t any. When his chair is folded into my trunk and we are on the road, I turn to him and find him already looking at me.
“You’re so different,” he says. “I can’t believe how much.”
“You too,” I say. “It’s like once you leave the Bone, you are free to develop into the person you were supposed to be.”
“Maybe,” he says thoughtfully. “Or maybe we just grew up, and it would have happened anyway.”
“Yeah right!” I tease. “Like you’d ever have a tan like that in the Bone!”
He laughs in the way that I remember and love, and I feel warm all the way down to my toes.
When we get back to my apartment, Judah insists on wheeling himself up the ramp and into the elevator of my building. I am embarrassed by the slight urine smell in the elevator, and then I am embarrassed by the empty sack of McDonald’s someone left outside the door of the elevator on the twelfth floor, sitting proud and stinking of fried oil. Judah doesn’t seem to notice any of it. When I open the door to my apartment, he waits for me to walk in first before wheeling himself behind me. He looks around my space like it’s the first time he’s seeing it. My teal walls, hung with prints of Seattle that I found at Pike Place Market. The striped black and white sofa that I bought from my neighbor when she moved to Baltimore. The flourishing potted plants that I stick on bookshelves and windowsills. His eyes linger longest on my books, piled everywhere in stacks of brightly colored dust jackets. He takes it all in and sighs a deeply satisfied sigh.
“What?” I ask him.
“I like where you live,” he says. “I like how you fix your space. It feels like a home.”
And I like that he notices. Johan never notices the things that make me a woman: the nesting and painted nails and the trimmed hair. But if I caught a big one on the glimmering fishing rod he bought me as a gift, oh boy!
“Do you like salmon?” I ask him. “I’m making it for dinner.”
“Sure.” He shrugs. “But I kinda wanted to take you out for dinner. Would your boyfriend be okay with that?”
I grin at Judah, suppressing a larger smile. “You are my oldest and dearest friend, Judah Grant. I don’t care what Johan thinks about that.”
We change our clothes and head to an Indian restaurant a few blocks away. I offer to grab a cab, but Judah shakes his head. “I like to see the city this way.”
They seat us outside, next to the hustle and bustle of the city. The air is rich with the scent of the red and green curries they carry out on large servers. I eat my beef curry too quickly, relieved to be having something other than seafood. We laugh and talk, Judah telling me stories of the school where he teaches in LA. When our dessert arrives—two silver goblets of rice pudding filled with raisins—Judah’s face becomes serious.
“Margo, I’m moving back to the Bone.”
I drop my spoon. It clatters onto the floor, and I bend to retrieve it.