Men

I was going to cut this chapter from the manuscript but it would be weird to only write about the bad boyfriends and this relates to other things.

I moved to New York to earn my MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Despite my positive experiences at Loyola I was initially afraid to show anyone at Sarah Lawrence my work. Sarah Lawrence proved to be the opposite of SAIC however. It was a community of writers who rather than trying to tear each other down were simply appreciative of being around other people who shared their passion for creativity.

I found an apartment with two other graduate students in Woodlawn, a neighborhood in the North Bronx. Over the summer I had applied for the position of Graduate Coordinator in the Young-Offenders Program of Right-to-Write, a joint program between Community Partnerships at Sarah Lawrence College and Westchester Correctional Facility. As graduate coordinator, I was responsible for designing curriculum for the program, teaching at the prison, supervising volunteers, and organizing reflection sessions where those volunteers could explore their responses to the experience. It was a lot of work but rewarding. I knew we were beginning to build trust when the men in the class began to encourage each other to share their work and delved deeper emotionally in their writing.

I met Steve at a local bar while out with one of my roommates. Steve was a beautiful blonde with owl-framed glasses. He invited us to play pool and after taking a shot and making it slipped a hand into his back pocket where he retrieved a bag of coke. He offered to let me take it to the bathroom with me to do a bump. When my roommate and I decided to head out he wanted to join us. It turned out he lived directly across the street from us.

Steve immediately wanted me to be his girlfriend. I was unsure about the label but eventually gave in. We were always around people and he seemed proud when he took me out. He drew me into his circle of friends. But I wanted love. I was still wearing the necklace with the pendant of the key. I knew what it was like to want one person, for everyone else to fall away. The first time I found my attention drifting to someone else I broke up with him. It was the right decision to leave but left me reeling. I did not consider that in giving up my boyfriend, I was also giving up my sense of community. I went home for the summer and Cat got me a job bartending with her.

Cat had broken up with both Danny and had another boyfriend by then. She was now with a slight, raven-haired man named Josh. Josh had once dreamed of being a musician but went to law school instead and was civil rights lawyer. .He often wore navy blue bandanas when he was off work. He had tattoos and a feminine sway to his hips. He and Cat were almost the same height. Her strong, steady presence balanced out his neuroticism and his intelligence and empathy seemed to motivate her. He encouraged her to earn a college degree and to create a website for her art.

Being around Cat and working helped me get through the pain of moving on. I knew I could not react like I had to Shane. My self-worth had to exist independently of anyone I dated, or the other person’s actions would take on more weight than they should, and it was not fair to put that much on anyone else. I needed to find men different from my father.

I met Ted on Tinder after moving from Woodlawn to Bronxville. Ted was from Connecticut but had been living in LA, where he earned his masters degree in screenwriting. He moved to New York for work and because Manhattan was the city he always wanted to be in. He had blue eyes, straw colored hair, and a goofy smile. He was a musician and writer like Shane, but without Shane’s roughness. We met at Maggie’s, a rooftop bar in walking distance of my new apartment before taking a cab to Woodlawn.

Ted was attentive and respectful, eager to exchange writing with me, to hear my feedback on his music. He went to LA to retrieve the rest of his things and brought me a T-shirt from a local radio station there. He was a real boyfriend. And yet it always felt like there was some underlying darkness in me he could not see and that prevented me from connecting with him completely. I ended things with him after six months but Ted wanted to remain friends and we are still good friends today. I am grateful for that. Ted made me less afraid of myself.

The next man I dated was named Dean. Dean was essentially Prince Charming and we met on Thanksgiving Eve at Maggie’s. I had gone out on my own that night. I felt like a drop of rain in the ocean and made eye contact with a man on the other end of the bar. Apart from having multiple piercings in both ears he looked like a GI Joe. A former personal trainer turned EMT, Dean was back in the area after having spent the past five years in Massachusetts, where he lived with his ex-fiance. He said he could roll down the hill to his home from the bar. I said I was going to Woodlawn and he asked to come with me. I got incredibly drunk but at the end of the night he merely escorted me home.

Dean and I did all the touristy things in New York I had been afraid to do alone. We went to museums. We had dinner and drinks in the city. He insisted on paying for everything. He was surprised when I ended things. But once again it felt as if he could not see or understand the darkness in me. I ordered pasta, ate until my stomach hurt, and went to sleep. Dean did not want to let go. He still texted me. He assured me he was capable of being friends and still wanted to see me. I finally agreed. We went to Rambling House, in Woodlawn. At the end of the night he kissed me. I reminded him that I was not sure I wanted to be physical. He said he would respect that. We began to hang out every day again. The only difference was there was no sex and I usually paid for my own drinks. When I moved back to Maryland after graduation Mike booked a room at a hotel in Ocean City, MD, and invited me to join him. He liked country music and we listened to the radio during the drive there. I was reading Educated. I put my feet up on the dashboard. Every so often, we shared a snippet of conversation.

There was a distance he was unaware of, one I felt bad about. But if we were going to have one last weekend together I wanted the memories to be happy ones. I put on a bathing suit for the first time since age fourteen and jumped in the swimming pool that night. The chlorinated water was glorious. I dived beneath the cool surface of the pool, arms spread wide, legs kicking. The following morning, we went to the beach. We threw a football around on the hot sand. The sun was blinding and Mike was not wearing a shirt. My jean jacket came off first, then my long skirt. We wandered to the ocean, where couples and families waded up to their waists and knees. I was aware of my body, but more aware of how the water was lapping against my thighs, how Dean was smiling, a gleam in his eye.

That night I stopped wearing the pendant.