CREATIVE NONFICTION

By Kerry Neville

“Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed a little in love now and then. It is some­thing to think of, and it gives her a sort of dis­tinc­tion among her com­pan­ions. When is your turn to come? You will hardly bear to be long outdone by Jane. Now is your time. Here are offi­cers enough in Meryton to dis­ap­point all the young ladies in the country. Let Wickham be your man. He is a pleas­ant fellow, and would jilt you cred­itably.”—Mr. Bennett to Eliz­a­beth Bennett, Pride and Prejudice

“From here on out,” my ther­a­pist says, “we refer to him as L’Ass et Le Putz.”

I live in rural middle Georgia, so few in person ther­a­pists are avail­able. Instead, I’m having a tele-health appoint­ment with Charles on encrypt­ed video chat. While I’m pan­dem­ic trained to the con­trolled remove of Zoom, I’m not com­plete­ly com­fort­able with this format for therapy. One-dimen­sion­al screen and Touch-Up-My-Appear­ance filter run counter to the aims of trans­paren­cy and truth. Plus, no couch (just my crappy plastic kitchen chair), no white noise machine, and no tissues (not that I ever cry but the prop is reas­sur­ing should the dam break).

Oddly meta-self-reflec­tive, too—a doubled self-con­scious­ness as I watch myself blather on in the small video box. I am always in my field of vision taking mental notes while watch­ing Charles take written notes—noting being noted. I could hide that video box, but then, how would I observe my reac­tions and eva­sions, my self-presentation?

I imagine Charles’s notes: “Client K: Flyaway hair. Left side decid­ed­ly not her good side. Looks up and to the right when think­ing. Per­for­ma­tive think­ing? Appears cool and wry and in con­ver­sa­tion­al control. Stares back at ther­a­pist for much of the forty-five minutes as if in smiling chal­lenge: Can you see through my veil of words to my broken heart? Stares back at self with self—same challenge.”

So much for the unfil­tered subconscious.

In person? Fifteen years ago? I could barely meet my old therapist’s gaze for the shame of my stories (anorex­ia, self-harm, alco­holism, sui­ci­dal ideation). I did not want to be seen—by anyone.

Now, I smile, a lot. Deflec­tion? Seduc­tion? Seduc­tive deflec­tion? I try to make Charles laugh. Try to pretend that L’Ass et Le Putz is a funny anec­do­tal dating lesson: Beware the charm­ing man who calls you pre­cious (think “Silence of the Lambs?”). Try to pretend that I don’t feel hol­lowed-out-humil­i­at­ed? L’Ass et Le Putz had called from the grocery store parking lot and said, without warning or obvious prior dis­con­tent, “This isn’t fun anymore.” And “I’m not ready for a rela­tion­ship.” Then the deci­sive zzzzzip of his jacket, impa­tient as he was to buy oat milk and Diet Moun­tain Dew (cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance?). That was that, along with the leaden sym­bol­ism of the zipper (and, in-the-moment can­ni­bal­iz­ing of my pain, I vowed to use that detail in a future story: “She hears him zip his jacket, an imper­son­al, fas­tid­i­ous closure that neu­tral­izes con­ver­sa­tion, ques­tions, pleadings.”

“Isn’t this a con­ver­sa­tion we should have in person given all we’ve felt for each other?” I asked him.

“I can’t do that,” he said.

“Coward,” my friends said. “Who does that?”

I fought the urge to text him, call him, show up at his house with a boom box (surely Good­will would have one?). I stuck Post-It Notes all over the house: “Don’t. Dignity.” My teenage son who recent­ly broke up with his girl­friend (in-person and with kind­ness!) com­mis­er­at­ed: “We’ll get through this, Mom. It will be okay.”

Fifty not fifteen. It would be mostly okay. No moping around the house in ratty pajamas, no wal­low­ing in bed under the covers, no Smiths on repeat—“Heaven Knows I’m Mis­er­able Now.”

Charles doesn’t laugh. “Your pain isn’t funny,” he says. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

Charles thinks I’m lovely. Happy ego buffer. “You’re smart and kind,” he says. “But why give L’Ass et Le Putz any more of your time?”

Why, indeed. How to explain my ridicu­lous con­di­tion? That heart­break at fifty—with decades of adult foibles and fail­ures and res­ur­rec­tions behind me—feels the same as heart­break at fifteen only without the histri­on­ics (no cutting my fore­arms, no swigs of vodka, no hiding behind the locker door when the ex passes by in the hall). I tell Charles about a long-ago high school boyfriend who slipped a note through my locker slat: “I’m sorry. I’m break­ing up with you. You don’t know how to be a girlfriend.”

I didn’t know how to be a wife, either.

These seven post-divorce online dating years have been, without fail, wretched. “In my longing to be loved and to love, I have erred in judg­ment. Prodi­gious­ly,” I say, and offer up a sum­ma­tive, rep­re­sen­ta­tive sample.

The man who:

—showed up for a first coffee date despite spend­ing the pre­vi­ous night in the ER after over­dos­ing on two speed­balls. He was impressed by my autho­r­i­al output and won­dered if his chronic weed smoking was getting in the way of his own productivity;

—enraged by the happy sex scene in one of my essays, hacked my author website, deleted the content, and texted “You fucking whore bitch.” He was, of course, untrou­bled by the scene of sexual assault;

—turned out to be married with young chil­dren and with zero qualms about deceiv­ing me or his wife. “I work hard,” he said. “I get to have fun.”

Fun.

This isn’t fun anymore.

This = Me.

Default posi­tion: I am simul­ta­ne­ous­ly too much and not enough. Though isn’t this the bull­shit nar­ra­tive we tell our­selves to find reason in the unrea­son­able? The all-pow­er­ful self at the center? It must have been some­thing I did or didn’t do that caused him to_____.

Charles’s expla­na­tion? Simpler and closer to the truth: “He’s an asshole. Who does that?”

Indeed, hard to rec­on­cile the man who showed up at my house late one night to say that he was falling in love with me (yes, cue boombox, falling snow, and rose petals) with the man who couldn’t tell me he’d fallen out of love with me to my face. Somehow, I had con­vinced myself that after the string of dating dis­as­ters that L’Ass et Le Putz was the payoff: a good man with a good heart who wanted to make a good life together.

“The problem,” I say to Charles, “is that I have to see L’Ass et Le Putz at the gym. He looks through me as if I don’t exist.”

“Have to,” Charles says, and dra­mat­i­cal­ly raises his eye­brows. “Let’s talk about ‘have to.’”

“He’s there when I’m there. Strut­ting around like a swole frat boy, puffed up chest, tight tee-shirt, side­ways flex in the mirror.” Car­i­ca­ture as defense mechanism.

I could go to the gym in the late after­noon or evening, but that’s incon­ve­nient after a long workday. Early morn­ings are better, and I wasn’t about to cede anymore ter­ri­to­ry to him, given he’d already once claimed my heart.

But what I said and how I said it: “I have to see him.” Freudi­an slip? As if a required or desired col­li­sion. Or willful asser­tion of vis­i­bil­i­ty. No hiding behind the locker door. No numbing out with vodka shots. Remain in his field of vision. Also: masochis­tic histri­on­ics. I walk by him in my leg­gings and tank top and feel his eyes briefly settle on me, and then turn away. Fuck you, I think. But equally, Fuck me. Sweet self-right­eous height­ened agony.

“There is a danger,” I say, “that he will mean more than he does—or ever did—if I talk about him.”

“You don’t have to,” Charles says, “but you want to.”

I shrug. “I’m not artic­u­lat­ing this as I hoped.”

He is right. I want to talk about L’Ass et Le Putz, as if the talking will set me free of the tangle. “At the gym this morning? We were the only people there and he walked around me as if I was the Stair­climber. For­get­table machin­ery. Fuck that. I walked up to him and said hello. The decent and adult thing to do. He mumble mumble mumbled, and quickly turned away. Red-faced.”

Weeks earlier? He’d whis­pered, “I love how you taste,” his head between my thighs, and when he kissed me, I could taste myself on his lips. Now? The memory of that inti­ma­cy summons shame. Phys­i­cal prox­im­i­ty mis­tak­en for emo­tion­al connection—the ephemer­al for the lasting. Now? I am an anony­mous, unim­por­tant body lifting, pushing, and pulling weights along­side other anony­mous bodies in crop tops, sports bras, and teeny tiny shorts. I feel how old my body is by com­par­i­son. Midriff covered up. Under­wear lines. Twang in my knee when I squat too low. Push presses, assist­ed pull-ups, and kettle bell squats in mer­ci­less sweaty protest against mor­tal­i­ty and middle-age invisibility.

I check the time. Ten minutes left in our appoint­ment. “Isn’t it strange,” I say, noting my rea­son­able Singin’ in the Rain smile, “how bound­aries blur when we fuck? I let him see my unabashed naked self and now the spiked fortress walls are up. Estranged stranger. I match his blank stare, pretend he never said that he wanted to be in my life for as long as I’d let him—and I was going to let him stay forever. I run past him on the track, cir­cling like some planet out of whack, out of orbit—secretly hoping that he’ll notice me, apol­o­gize, throw himself at my feet for throw­ing me over. I feel…ridiculous.”

Accusato­ry glance at myself in the video box. Fie. Silly woman.

“That’s at the center, isn’t it, feeling ridicu­lous?” Charles says.

Undig­ni­fied dis­pro­por­tion­ate emo­tion­al response. Grow the fuck up already.

“That note from my high school boyfriend?” I say to Charles. “Still dogs me.”

I tell Charles how I had opened my locker and the folded loose­leaf fell to the floor. “Kerry,” written in his choppy scrawl.

How I slowly unfold­ed the note in exquis­ite antic­i­pa­tion of ILoveY­ouEv­ery­thingAboutY­ouI­Wan­tY­ouAn­dOn­lyY­ou. One last crease, then “I’m sorry…”

How I folded the note into a small, tight square then tucked it under the cuff of my button-down shirt. Words pressed to my pulse point.

How at lunch, I announced the breakup: “Too busy with his band. But he said maybe in the future when it’s less crazy….”

How I lied. And laughed. How I made a joke of it. “He was a ter­ri­ble kisser,” I said, “his tongue flopped around like a dying gold­fish.” I blushed at the thought of my own tongue awk­ward­ly sweep­ing his mouth, bumping his teeth. My friends laughed. “Asshole,” they said.

How I felt the note—and its sharp truth—pressed against my wrist. “You don’t know how to be a girl­friend, to be lovable, to be any­thing at all.”

How I locked myself in a bath­room stall, sat on the toilet, and unclasped the gold kilt pin that held my plaid uniform skirt together.

How I unbut­toned my shirt cuff and the note dropped in my lap.

How I dragged the sharp tip of the kilt pin across my forearm raising beads of blood. Then, with grim deter­mi­na­tion, scratched a word into my skin: Die. No longer trying to be.

“Do you think you might ease up on your­self,” Charles asks. “He broke your heart. They broke your heart. Please don’t play it like some aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly inter­est­ing line of philo­soph­i­cal inquiry.”

A pause as I think of some­thing clever to say, “The Phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of the Zzzzzzzzip­per: Jilted by the Jerks?”

Charles shakes his head. “Try again.”

“But it is the zipper that sticks,” I say, “or the sound of it as his fingers pulled it closed, locking the teeth one after another. Precise, effi­cient, and final.” A furtive glance at the video box. I am about to cry, the thing I never do, and I don’t want to see my middle-aged tears, my crum­pled face, my red, snotty nose—which I must wipe with my shirt sleeve.

I tell Charles about four­teen-year-old me who had hoped for so much with that boy—pink Valentine’s car­na­tion deliv­ered to my home­room, furtive late night phone calls, kissing in the laundry room at base­ment parties, ten­ta­tive grown-up desires scrawled on loose­leaf pushed through the slats of our lockers: ILikeY­ouLoveY­ouWan­tY­ouDoY­ouLikeMeLove­Me­Want­MeToo? To be wanted meant to be seen, to be desired, to be imag­ined and sum­moned in the dark hours of night and I was not wanted, not anymore.

I tell Charles about how much I’d hoped for with L’Ass et Le Putz who had also once hoped for so much with me: June in Ireland, lake house with bed­rooms enough for all our chil­dren, dinners cooked togeth­er, two tooth­brush­es in the bath­room, two mugs of coffee in the morning, a simple shared future.

“We can give the high school boyfriend a pass,” Charles says. “But L’Ass et Le Putz? Fifty-five, not fifteen. No excuse.”

“I’m not without com­pas­sion,” I say, and imagine him alone in his car in the grocery store parking lot, oat milk and Diet Moun­tain Dew in the empty pas­sen­ger seat, unzip­ping his jacket and taking a deep breath. Done. Sad and relieved? Maybe both. He no longer had to pretend to be every­thing he said he was and was not.

I don’t need to glance at myself in the video box to know I am crying. Fifteen and fifty. Hello dear sweet heart­bro­ken girl. It will be okay. I wipe my nose on my sleeve. Charles holds my gaze and nods.

“We’re not good at leaving each other, are we?” I say.

“It’s why my appoint­ments are all booked up,” Charles says.

And really, what do I know of endings, then and now, except that they are painful and often inex­plic­a­ble? The why, the why would you, the why now might as well be enig­mat­ic symbols carved in stone: incom­pre­hen­si­ble, open to inter­pre­ta­tion, but per­ma­nent­ly fixed. That high school boyfriend? Only fifteen. What did he know of endings? Of kind exits? He knew bass guitars, Bud­weis­er, and New Wave bands. Given that few escape the painful wages of love, I imagine that he, too, has been jilted by someone who fumbled the ending.

As has L’Ass et Le Putz whose (ex)wife left without warning (“I fucked up,” he’d con­fid­ed without elab­o­ra­tion and was unable to meet my gaze for the shame of it).

L’Ass et Le Putz. This nickname—sharp with snark—renders him ridicu­lous and incon­se­quen­tial. Don’t we choose such expediencies—the dashed note, the curt phone call, the dis­mis­sive text—as pro­tec­tive armor? Yes, he fumbled the ending, but I have, too, in my refusal to admit heart­break for fear of seeming ridiculous.

That pointed self-charge: Ridicu­lous! As if fifty insures steely insu­la­tion for the heart.

“Our time is up,” Charles says. “You’ll take care and reach out if you need me before next week?”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you.”

This story orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 19. Support local book­sellers and inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers by order­ing a print copy of the mag­a­zine.

Photo by Photo by Eka­te­ri­na Novitskaya