But I was going to make shit awkward. I clumsily knocked a bowl of mussels into prospective boyfriend Michael’s lap after wagging my tail at the bar, wildly happy that our fever dream of a courtship was starting to gel into something real despite the fact that I had worn a diaper to a De La Soul show we’d seen the week before, that I had successfully hidden most of my maladies long enough to win him over with my personality. Michael was a person who had lived in my computer for a Very Long Time before we Actually Met in Person. That kind of shit used to happen to me all the fucking time when I was trying to get the Internet to find me a goddamned boyfriend: superficial asshole with decent taste in music finds my dating profile witty yet approachable, sends me a message despite the fact that “plus-size” was the only available body-type box he hadn’t checked, starts lobbying in earnest to become my new best male friend. Except who the fuck ever got on OkCupid to find another one of those? “My best guy friend” is like the fat-girl consolation prize, and if we’re all being honest with ourselves, I’m not looking for another person to eat greasy cheesesteaks in my pajamas with. I have Brooke for that.
But, like the inner thighs of my most beloved dark-wash, curvy-fit, slightly flared jeans, I wore Michael down. Not through any wizardry of my own—there’s just only so long you can keep having the best conversations of your life before you decide to get over your weird fear of bloated ankles and ask that fat bitch you can’t stop rushing home to e-mail to meet you in a bar you know your friends won’t be at so you can make each other laugh in person. And things were going okay, I think? We’d gone out a handful of times, already had a number of inside jokes, I’d given him my last two Advil when he got a headache at roller derby. Then BLAMMO! I’m wedged next to where he’s sitting at the bar making jokes while he tries to figure out a way to both eat mussels and look cool, and one careless gesture later the bowl is in his lap and people on either side of us are doing that horrified jumping out of the way thing panicky people in close quarters do, like if they don’t squeal and knock barstools over, the Ebola virus you just spilled is going to splash all over them. Michael didn’t text me ever again after that, and I get it. He’d suffered a lapful of lukewarm beer broth in the middle of a trendy restaurant at my hand, AND I GET IT; but I was disappointed nonetheless, because he’d made me a mixtape—an actual burned CD with the artists and song titles printed neatly on a sheet of accompanying notebook paper. That is the kind of thing that signifies the possibility of true love. I’ve been accused often over the years of not being romantic, but here is where it all oozes out: a list of songs felt by you and presented to me, rendering me flushed and swooning and poring over song lyrics to determine their hidden meaning. The week I spent afterward, one when I pretended to be indifferent to the deafening silence coming from my phone, created a self-consciousness in me that couldn’t be explained away by some imaginary event on his side of the universe. I had fucked that whole thing up royally. Back into my celibate cocoon I retreated. And I stayed there for two years, which, contrary to what you might think, made me realize how much sex I actually don’t need.
I mourned that relationship with Fred. I mourned it hard. Wrote a eulogy, had a funeral, shed a few tears, put flowers on its grave. When you break up with an asshole, it’s easy to just set fire to the shit and move on. But no one talks to you about ending a relationship that never sucked kinda amicably with your homie whom you still love to a degree and for whom you sort of want the best. No, you actually want him to be prosperous and happy. Not more prosperous or happy than you are, for sure, or all up in your face with it, but you aren’t actively wishing for homeboy to wind up homeless or hit by a city bus. I felt robbed, cheated of my silly daydreams of scribbling manuscript notes in a Moleskine as Fred stood in front of a nearby easel painting while listening to Kind of Blue on vinyl, but I wasn’t really mad at him. And I found myself wondering what he was doing. A lot. I’d hear a Quadron song and have to resist the urge to text him about it, or I’d throw my phone across the room like a grenade to keep from calling him to talk about a hilarious episode of Black Dynamite. I wanted to see Hiatus Kaiyote at the Double Door with him; I wanted to take him to this Afghani spot I had found in the suburbs with the most delicious mantoo and murgh chalau; I wanted to get his opinion on holistic remedies for my shitty, failing knees: I wanted my fucking friend back.
I dipped a toe in the water and almost got frostbite. In six months I’d gone from heartbroken baby animal to FACEBOOK DELETER AND BLOCKER, and the response I received to my “I’m ready to be friends again!” e-mail was terse and cold and suspicious. Because, in Fred’s mind, we still could’ve been friends all along. He didn’t not love me; I didn’t not love him: we just weren’t each other’s person. But, reasonable though it may have been, that talk had left me touchy and defensive, so I let his e-mails and texts go unanswered while I licked my “never gonna spend the morning cuddled at the Hyde Park library together” wounds. I didn’t take any parting shots before quietly scrubbing that picture of us at Big Star from my timeline, no nasty voice mail warning him never to call me ever again, and I assumed that guaranteed my seamless reentry into his life when I finally got enough distance from the hurt to allow him back into mine.
I suggested Au Cheval for dinner, because that place is loud and sexy and dark and I knew that Fred would pay for however many $14 cocktails I ordered plus maybe a cheeseburger. I made sure to wear basic, dishwater-gray friendclothes and my house glasses. I probably didn’t even wear deodorant. Because this was a friend meeting, between friends. When he walked in I was flooded with relief, and when he bent to wrap his arms firmly around me I nearly burst into tears. I’m not often very good at exposing my innermost feelings: I am self-deprecating; I avoid tough conversations; I joke my way through uncomfortable emotional moments. But I stood in a corner of that restaurant and poured out my soppy feelings, and I listened to Fred pour out his, and we started laying the groundwork for a friendship. And I’m not even gonna front, I have never been able to navigate a postrelationship relationship with someone whose testicles have been in my mouth, but somehow this is working. Maybe in this life you get all kinds of soulmates, multiple people who vibrate at the same level you do. I think that’s what Fred is for me; I just don’t get to see his penis anymore. So, no, I didn’t get my happy-ending tongue kiss in the rain, but I did get my friend back. And I don’t have to worry about running these busted knees around after any babies.
The Miracle Porker