How to Be a Couple's Third
Issue #306 of One Story now available online
This story originally appeared in issue #306 of One Story. You can learn more and read my conversation with Patrick Ryan here.
Start talking to both at once on Grindr. Swipe through pictures of the first and spy his husband in some shots. Find the second and toggle back and forth, knowing you’ll blip a trail each time you view their profiles. They’re strapping. Silver hair and smile lines, mid-fifties. Ask the first, Are you a couple? Yes they are. Tell the second they’re really beautiful together. Find a deep soul connection with Husband 1. Flirt sultry with Husband 2.
Ask what’s on the table right away. Talk boundaries and rules. Listen mostly. They play apart, sometimes together. When asked if you’ve been with older men, say you’re exploring new things.
The truth: you’re hungry for connection but your ex looms large. You went all the way together and when you got there, he left. Now he’s in Los Angeles and you’re in New England, Portland, a small city, scouring the usual suspects on the grid every night. You’re not ready to go there again. Gay dating has beaten you down.
*
Go to work. Try not to hate your boss for a day. Say hello to all your coworkers as you wind through the office to the kitchen. Bring good leftovers for lunch—something cool, vegetable-forward—and stash them in the fridge. Bring new stationery and colored pens to your ten a.m. meeting. You feel inspired. You feel committed to this work you do forty hours a week plus another ten or twenty because you’re all family. Listen passively as your coworkers chat about workout regimens and recipes from New York Times Cooking. Your boss comes in five minutes late and says, “We’re behind where we’re supposed to be. We need to do better.” Remember how you hate him and this job. Think about lunch, when you can eat your chickpeas and shut the office blinds and try to nap. Write in your notepad, The Lord is a loving shepherd. The Lord is a shoving leopard. Over and over. Nobody notices.
Go home to your roommate and toss up your hands like a comic. “I hate ’em all! Fuck ’em!”
“What now?” Charlene asks. Charlene works from home and makes bank, spending her nest egg on high-end blush and eyeshadow. Your temper tantrum causes her to hit pause on her makeup tutorial. She turns to look and her face is half done-up—right eye with a green wing.
“They all suck. Fuck capitalism.”
With a beer in hand, open your work laptop and create an email folder. Drag in every message where your boss says something objectionable. Name it “Evidence” but then realize they might be watching you. Rename it “Projects, Ongoing, Tracking.” Finish a beer, another, dragging your boss’s passive aggression into the folder.
Let Charlene paint your toenails. Compile the evidence as Charlene holds you in a captive pedicure. Check your phone. Chew your lip when you see your texts.
Husband 1: How’s your day, sweet thing?
Text back: Good, how about you, handsome?
He asks if he can see you soon. Count to five before saying yes.
*
On Saturday, get invited to their house in Falmouth. Drive out of the city, sighing once you pass the baked bean factory, and cross the bridge, islands furred with pines to your right. The couple has been eager in their communications. They say “Oh my lanta” when you send shirtless pics. They’ve been in the open arena for years and say you could all have some fun together. And fun sounds good. You’ve gone out with everyone in this city once, maybe twice, before things fizzled, burned. Charlene has asked if you self-sabotage and you’ve begun to wonder if, ding dong, you’re a cliché, not over your ex. The couple’s offer is appealing—have fun with someone(s) new without worrying about whether or not they’re boyfriend material.
The GPS leads you to a road along the water. The house is stately, multilevel. Husband 1 greets you at the door, says 2 is away at an advertising conference. You feel some relief—you’re isolating your variables before going further. Say yes to the seltzer he offers you. With his back to you, slicing lime, scan the kitchen. There is a wedding photo—some island, must be Maine. There is a vacation photo—Sydney Opera House, maybe they were early forties then—more salt and pepper than silver fox.
You didn’t mention their age to Charlene before you came over. You tell yourself you’re trying something new.
Husband 1 invites you to sit outside on the patio. Down their lawn, the Maine coast gets craggy. Sailboats boast along the horizon. This is wealth. Husband 1 is kind, mature. Conversation is mutually stimulating. Here is someone fully formed. Talk about everything. When you came out, when he did. Ask about being gay in the nineties. Don’t mention how you were also gay in the nineties but were a kid. Ask the rules. They share everything. Communication is key. We’ll figure it out together, he says. When he asks what you want, what your boundaries are, tell him you’re looking for casual, you’re out of a long-term thing. Let him into the guts of it. Los Angeles. Sushi. A dejected breakup confab by a rainbow crosswalk in West Hollywood. He stayed there forever. You left, moved here. Husband 1 nods reverently, serenely. He works his hand across the back of your chair, says, “That sounds really hard, Drew.” He sips his seltzer, caresses your earlobe. Bury your blush with a sip of seltzer. You can share your innermost feelings on the past. You can establish a meaningful connection. You feel the pulse of chemistry. Husband 1 kisses you slowly, draws his fingers down your torso, then pauses, says, “Let’s wait for the husband to get back before we go any further.” Kiss him goodbye, say see you soon.
Drive home that afternoon with furred islands to your left and blue balls. Furred islands. Urred fislands. Blue balls. Bue blalls. The bean factory, the city swallow you. Tell Charlene it was great. Message 1 to ask when you can do it again. Try not to read into it when he doesn’t text back until nighttime.
*
Collect more evidence at work. Read each of your boss’s emails for passive aggression, poor direction, bad policy. Have lunch with your coworkers, the other young professionals. The old guard calls you the Yo Pros. You’re young(ish) and spry and in touch with youth culture. You share fun videos before the staff meeting. You have a group chat where you feel entitled to bitch about work, how your Boomer and Gen X overlords suck. The injustices! The bullshit! With the Yo Pros at lunch, you’re first in line to order, so get something that seems healthy, fun. A fish taco.
“Oooh, look at Drew with the faco,” Eric chirps. He’s a stone cold power gay, your age, the closest thing to a friend in the office, but only because you share some life experience, and you don’t trust each other a bit and you’re not friends at all. Fish taco. Tish faco.
They all order side salads with a single grilled chicken breast. Sit outside and watch them savor each bite of iceberg lettuce like it’s a god-given gift. Zone out when they talk evening workout plans. Watch a butterfly flutter by. When you return to your desk, you have messages from both husbands.
Husband 2: My husband’s been talking about you. You sound like hot shit.
Husband 1: Were your ears ringing? Just talked to the husband about our day. Want to come over for lunch and meet him this weekend?
Toggle between the messages. Feel something flutter by.
Respond: That sounds delightful.
Respond: Jealous, hot shot?
Double check who’s who before sending them off.
*
Before you moved here, on a lazy Saturday morning—bed, sex, homemade pancakes—you and your ex mustered the energy to meander through your city, a sprawling town, between the beach and a river. Christmas was coming but you lived in the south, so you buttoned into jean jackets and power-walked to the farmers’ market, then the library, which smelled like a public swimming pool, where your ex liked to pick out rom-coms from the aughts for Saturday night viewing—The Proposal, The Holiday, 50 First Dates, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. DVDs in hand, you zipped along the river and grabbed your ex’s hand to enjoy the view. A tree had washed up in the last hurricane, lodged in the boardwalk’s wooden piling. Your ex pointed at a canvas jump rope tangled in the branches. “Rope snake.”
“Snope rake.”
He clutched your side and tickled your ribs. “You’re so bad at them.” Spoonerisms were his thing. He could whip them out and they’d make sense. Funny bone, bunny phone. Crushing blow, blushing crow. Here was someone who challenged you. You became a better person beside him. Things that were his you’d been slowly claiming, your thing, your shared thing.
He led you to a diner for an impromptu late lunch. The host sat you in the window seat, and you figured he must have read you as roomies so your ex grabbed your hand across the vinyl tabletop and kissed your knuckles. You shifted under radiant waves of overpowering, unnecessary heat. He drew dicks in the condensation on the window glass, and you relished how a day like this could unfold forever.
*
Plan to meet both for lunch at their house. Go to Trader Joe’s for wine. Do not buy Two Buck Chuck. Bring biscotti. Seem Italian. Husband 1 answers the door. Hand him the wine, the biscotti.
“Oh, you’re so sweet.” He pecks your cheek. “Honey! Drew’s here.” Follow him into the kitchen. Husband 2 is assembling a kale salad in a massive bowl, but you know the husbands are human and not Yo Pro cyborgs because this salad has a ton of real shit in it. Grilled chicken, sliced strawberries, nuts or seeds, goat cheese. Husband 2’s eyes go all steely. “So this is the man my husband’s gushing about?”
Feel the pull towards sincerity with Husband 1, the desire to be sarcastic with Husband 2. You’re a mirror reflecting whatever other people want. Maybe you’re a Manic Pixie Dream Gay. Decide you’re not. You don’t believe that. But you can’t figure it out in time so you just say, “Suppose so.” Add for good measure, “You’re the husband of lore.”
“Of lore,” Husband 2 clucks. He opens the fridge and extracts a bottle of wine. Look at Husband 1 for some reassurance, but you don’t know him well enough to get any through eye contact or body language. He smiles and it feels empty.
Sit on their sun porch for the interview. Husband 2 has lots of questions. Be coy, aloof when you talk about work, your love life, what brought you to this city. Husband 1 clearly listened last time. He fills in all the blanks your affected sultriness opens. Look back and forth between them to track their eye contact. How well do they know each other? How much do they love each other? 1 has joined you on the couch and has a hand on your knee. 2 comes over and takes the other side.
They’re working your clothes off as a team, gliding hands over every inch of your body. You all somersault in bed for turns to kiss and suck one another. Before you know it, you climax on your stomach. Husband 2 calls you a bad boy. You chew his earlobe and follow them both to the shower. Lather in expensive soaps. Push their heads together to watch them kiss.
Think, this is the most erotic day of your life.
Glow your way home. Tonight, you do not mind your tiny apartment, the nail polish remover stains on the coffee table. Wipe down your surfaces. Order fancy shampoo. Make a smoothie bowl. Start a group message with the husbands and thank them for a lovely day. They have their own ecosystem of language, intimacy. You feel fresh-faced coming through it. 1 responds, We’ll have to have you again soon, sweetie. 2 says, Anytime baby. They’re a team and they are individuals.
Think of them as squares and rectangles. You can have a relationship with the couple, and with the individuals in it, but those individuals will always be the couple too. Do not forget that a square is a rectangle. Square rectangle. Rare squectangle.
*
Spend all day in team meetings with the Yo Pros. Eric brings popcorn and black cranberry seltzer to boost morale. Tinsley baked gluten- and dairy-free muffins that are somehow good. Someone’s playing Beyoncé in the background. Someone’s rhythmically bobbing on a yoga ball. All of this is supposed to make the hours you have left in this conference room bearable. Check your phone for texts. When the group message is silent, do not convince yourself you did something wrong. You were sharp, not salty. Limber, not lascivious.
After work, Charlene asks if you want to make fun cocktails, fancy margaritas. She pulls up a recipe on her phone and takes an eon hunting down each ingredient from the back of your cabinets. Plop onto a counter chair and sigh, recovering from work. Charlene mixes drinks and asks how it’s going with the married couple.
“Is it weird at all?”
“Stop! It’s not weird.”
“I was legitimately asking. It’s not a leading question,” Charlene says.
Everything goes slower with a married couple. Sometimes there are gaps of time when you don’t hear from them—hours, days, you’ve barely talked since you all got together. They’re busy with each other, their committed lives. Maybe they’re renegotiating what the deal is with you. Tell yourself this is a good thing. You U-Hauled with your ex, so enamored by someone so smart and beautiful and funny and sexy. You burned out too fast. Now you’re taking it slow. You’re being adult about something new, approaching this form of being with people confidently, maturely.
Consider telling Charlene they’re squares and a rectangle. Or how bleak gay dating is, that you’ve been on so many excruciating dates with men interested only in themselves, but this couple cares to truly see you. Or tell her how they’re married; what they want is codified, immutable, so you can relinquish control and let them lead the way through dates and sex and finally enjoy intimate connection again. Consider telling her about chosen gay family, that love is expansive—you can have feelings for both of them and have sex with both of them—and also they’re your mentors, and you don’t have any gay friends. Your ex went west. You and Eric are pitted against each other in the office.
But don’t say any of this. Say, “It’s a gay thing,” and leave it at that.
*
Take their silence into your own hands and go out with other men. Go out with someone who says he can’t date another Lana Del Gay. Go out with a Gen Z-er who says Pride should be about comfort for everyone. Ask yourself if that really happened or if you descended so deep into a well of Pride discourse you willed this date into being. Suffer through a first date where he details each of his brothers’ jobs and relationship statuses. Stop asking questions and respond to his one inquiry—where do you see yourself in five years—“Same date, different city.”
Message with a DL guy like you’re volleying a ping-pong ball. He likes oral, doesn’t talk much. Say you could be chill with that. Offer to host, he’s busy. Ignore his next message, Hey.
*
Husband 1 breaks the silence. The two of you go downtown for lunch. Everywhere is closed—you’d spent too long in bed and now it’s past two p.m. You slot into the window seat of a diner and snarf down chocolate chip pancakes.
Husband 1 asks about your job, what you do for fun, if you’re seeing other people. Tell him: work to live, live to work; cut coupons; his husband, in case he forgot. Outside, two women perambulate with shopping bags, swinging from their hands so freely they must be empty.
Meander through the city without holding hands. Listen to the story of how he and 2 met, a gay bar in Boston. Husband 2 asked for Husband 1’s number, but 1 wasn’t sure.
“He wasn’t my type.”
Say, “Tall?”
“Mean,” 1 says. “In advertising.”
But they strung their romance along weekly dinner dates. 1 remained skeptical but stuck it out. There was no one else in his orbit. “Then one day, I was toast. Realized I was always waiting for his call after we went out. I’d even started to like Pepsi because of him.”
Say, “Gross,” but the details make you smile. They respect each other. They’re really in love.
Say, “I never go to gay bars.” There’s one in town that Eric invited you to your first month on the job. You planted at the bar and he filled you in on all the office gossip, secret rivalries, resentments born from your boss’s favoritism. Eric told you how he moved here for this job and then five years passed, single, stalled, and sour.
“That was much more of a thing for our generation than it is for yours,” 1 says.
Are gay bars not a thing for your generation? You and your ex only went to one together. During a visit to his family in Chicago, you hit up Boystown. You drank Modelos and shot pool, felt domestic when you were in bed at your Ramada watching TV before midnight. You still want to plant at the counter, get your drinks picked up by a foxy man in the back.
“Why don’t we go there sometime?” When you say it, the feeling is a gut punch. You want to share something real with them, to drink cheap vodka sodas as a throuple at your city’s lone gay bar. Where did these ideas, these feelings come from?
Husband 1 pulls you into his side and squeezes your bicep. “Of course, sweetie.”
*
Go to your cousins’ wedding and cry through the ceremony. It’s beautiful. They’re so in love. Get seated at the kids’ table. Order Negronis at the open bar and rove your gaydar over all the wedding attendees. You haven’t seen this much family since before you came out. At dinner, when your aunt asks if there’s a special guy, say, “There’s a couple.” Dance like a cartoon to Madonna. Duck off the dance floor with your few single cousins whenever a slow song comes on. Watch the empty seats beside you, forlorn. Slot in Husband 1. Slot in Husband 2. They can’t fill the seat. They’d be spectating from the sidelines, whispering to each other things you’d never hear. Ride the shuttle back to your hotel and watch all the couples go syrupy and sweet at the end of this festive day, even your parents. Join your cousins for the hotel lobby afterparty. Fuck a stranger. Slip back into your hotel room with your parents. Plan what you’ll say in the morning when they ask where you were: you all played Celebrity in the Hampton Inn lobby and lost track of time; you split appetizers at Ruby Tuesday; you had sex with a stranger and cried on the toilet after. They don’t ask. Take Gatorade and Advil at the airport in the morning.
*
After the wedding, do things for yourself. Get perspective. Go for a run. Download an app that tells you ab exercises to do. Cook a dish that features Brussels sprouts. Burn them but pretend you don’t notice. Eat lunch with the Yo Pros outside the office. Don’t be dumb and say, “I cooked Brussels sprouts.”
Eric lifts his eyebrows at your Tupperware. “Looks like Drew’s the epicure today.”
“I cooked Brussels sprouts.” Watch Eric’s face and attempt to parse his judgement. He has fox eyes. Eric’s always judging someone. Maybe he’s judging you positively. Maybe he’s deeming you a formidable opponent.
Maybe you do have game. Let the couple reach out to you first. In the interim, hook up with all kinds of men—older, younger, closeted, married. Keep names, biographical data, sexual interests catalogued on a note on your phone so wires don’t cross. You’re a switchboard operator. You’re down for everything. Notice that all the men in your cycle are softer, bellies folding into their laps when you go down on them, faces less symmetrical, minds weaker, conversation dull. Realize this is an ugly thought. The DL guy messages and finally he comes over. He’s cute in person. You feel a flutter of attraction. He gets naked in repose and you get to work. He zips himself up after and says thanks. Wish you’d told him, please don’t thank me. Finish alone and watch goat videos on YouTube. Text Husband 1, thinking of you. Slap your phone face down when he replies with a thumbs up.
*
“Projects, Ongoing, Tracking” is filling surprisingly fast. Drag in the email that says, “I don’t have time for this. Look at my calendar before asking these sorts of questions.” Drag in the email that says, “Refrain from gossiping in the kitchenette.” You snatch up your phone when Husband 2 finally messages you. I’m hooooorny. Skip lunch with the Yo Pros and close your office door and all the blinds. Ruffle your hair. Make smoky eyes in the first selfie. When he asks for more, unzip your pants. Try to find a good angle; they all look a bit awkward. You can never find good angles. Compose a whole essay in your head about how sexting disembodies us. Here’s a penis. Here’s a butthole. Here’s a torso without a head, a reverse centaur, what’s out of the frame could be a horse. Decide you trust Husband 2 enough to include your face.
Send a series of the pictures you manage to take. He says, I’m gonna cum, and sends a picture once he’s done. Text back, hot. Put your phone face down. Shovel salad into your mouth while looking at job postings. Write the first lines of cover letters for jobs in the state government, at a study abroad company, at a museum in town.
I believe I would be an asset to your team.
It is my dream to sell juice to the people of Portland.
I believe in a life gourmet.
Gourmet. More gay.
When the Yo Pros bellow back into the office, laughing, cackling, refueled for an afternoon of team meetings, jolt from your work trance. Open the blinds. Unruffle your hair. Wash your Tupperware in the office kitchen. Eric passes by, snapping open his post-lunch seltzer. “We missed you at lunch today.”
Shrug. “Trying to get ahead.”
He gives you his weird eyes. “Right.”
Stand up straighter. Grind for the next hour before your meeting. Furiously check your phone for texts from Husband 2, hoping for a How’s your day, a What’s new, hon?
*
They barely message you. They half-heartedly dash a thumbs up in response to shirtless photos you send after running. Go out with an endearing, soft version of Jude Law. He’s beautiful! He’s smart! He talks about himself too much, but you can work with that. He has potential. When he goes to the bathroom, check your phone. Husband 1 asks what you’re doing. Reply: Date! The sex is amazing and while cuddling he says you’re the first since his breakup, then talks about his ex, then says I shouldn’t be talking about this, then leaves. Your messages stretch apart, an overworn pajama shirt. You message, Hey, then only get as far as, What’s up. Throw in the towel. When Husband 1 asks what happened, say you’re saving face this way.
*
Husband 1 is out of town for business. Husband 2 wants to take you out. Feel vaguely annoyed about the causality, but you’re too tickled to do anything about that. Wear something flamboyant—a patterned silk shirt, a gold chain. Charlene keeps saying, “I need to do something new with my life.” She wants to practice her male eyeliner on you. Let her. Cuff your jeans on your way out the door. Husband 2 asked you to meet at their house. He offered to DD and wants to canoodle beforehand. It’s a beautiful September night. Wave at the baked bean factory with your hand out the window. Husband 2 answers the door with a peck on the lips.
He asks, “Are you wearing guyliner, handsome?”
On the counter is a folder from a travel agency, finger mountains over turquoise water. “You going somewhere?”
“Want to come and be our sex Sherpa?” He works his hand down your pants and then is on his knees, pressing your sacrum into the granite countertop. He spanks you on your way out.
Ride back into the city but do not wave at the bean plant. Follow him into a Mexican restaurant and give his ass a love pat on the way past the host station. He swats at your hand like you’re a horny caterpillar. Corny haterpillar. Lost punch seltzer. He says he’s weak with spice, so order a strawberry jalapeño margarita to seem more adventurous. Let him get you all the things you can’t when you’re paying. Chips and guac. A second drink. Flan.
Under colored lights shaped like tiny peppers, sink into conversation. He tells you about his exes, his love life before Husband 1. He tells you about San Francisco in the ’90s in his twenties. Ask how he liked it, and he tears up, sips his drink, says, “It was time to get out when I left.”
You want to ask more. How long since you’ve had someone to talk about this with? Husband 2 wipes his eyes. And then, suddenly, he’s asking about you. What do you look for in a partner? What’s your romantic history? Why are you interested in two old married guys?
Answer, sanity, speckled, capitalism.
But Husband 2 doesn’t take it. “Why is everything sarcastic with you?”
Swirl your margarita in its glass. Lick the sugar off your lips. Stare into your lap. “I can be sincere.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“I was with my ex for three years. We reached a life transition.”
“Life transition?” Husband 2 asks, eyebrows high, a deep pull from his drink. “Do tell.”
“He was moving to L.A. He thought we’d grown past each other and told me not to come. We’d settled into something more platonic.”
“Been there,” 2 says.
Swipe a chip through guac. Finish your margarita. Recline. “Dating sucks. Nobody can keep up. I like you two because you’ve already got your shit sorted out.”
“Damn.” His smile flashes canines, devilish. “Such emotion. Such high praise.”
“Whenever I go out with people my age, I feel like I’m sitting outside myself, watching myself assess these people, waiting to see what role I’ll play.”
Don’t say how sitting across from him in this Mexican restaurant, you’re here. Wherever you go, there you are. When you’re here, you’re here. Here is someone who gets it.
And underneath his devious smile, you see he’s seeing you too. You thought when you’d met this would be casual, no strings attached. But you are starting to share something of your own. Walk back to his car, swatting at each other’s hands. Have sex in their bed, sweetly, slowly. Be held after. Count on one finger how many nights you have slept beside someone since your breakup. Wave goodnight to the bean factory on your way home. Wish you were waving good morning instead.
*
Earn your boss’s praise for good work. See how little his praise does for you. Use this as an exercise in mindfulness. This is how it feels in your chest. This is how it feels in your stomach.
When Husband 1 is back in town, you meet again. You needed a breather after your date with Husband 2, and now there’s buffer room to reconfigure all together. The sex is naughty, acrobatic. Join the husbands after in the shower. Lather every square inch of your body with Aesop body wash and shampoo.
“Somebody’s going to be squeaky clean.”
“Cleaky squeen.”
Overdetermined, Husband 2 asks, “Cleaky’s Queen?”
“It’s a spoonerism,” 1 says. “Our friend is very keen on them.”
“Weird,” 2 says. They’re a team. They always will be. Squares, rectangles. You’re a right triangle, inscribed into their corners.
Watch 1 and 2 vacate the shower. Wash the crevices you never bother with—toes, belly button, behind your ears. Wait for them to pass you a towel. 2 sings a song that goes, “Bum bum hum,” like a bumblebee as he thumps naked around the bathroom. “Hon’, where’s a towel for our friend?”
Disinterestedly fiddle with the shower dial. Your ninety-five-year-old great uncle has a “live-in” “friend.” Your dad introduced your ex as your “friend” at your brother’s wedding. 1 hands you a fresh towel with a wink. Huff the fabric softener from the cotton. When they offer coffee, dip out. Say, “Gotta get home. Job applications.” Let them text you first to say how much fun you all had.
*
You do not know them like they know each other. Five weeks versus eighteen years. You can score a bump of their love, you can be the thing to reinvigorate it, but they’ll only offer its entirety to each other. You can be intimate with them, but they’re a fortress. Sydney Opera House. Marriage bed—his side, his side. Your superpower to them is the same fatal flaw for you: you’re an outsider to their relationship. Write “twerp” on your thigh with a Sharpie. Hook up with the DL guy who won’t see it because you get on your belly and anyway he can barely look at you until he’s hit his poppers three times.
Apply to a job in consulting.
Apply to a job writing rich kids’ college essays.
Apply to a job at a café. Go in for the interview and realize one of the baristas is the Lana Del Gay hater. Give him another onceover. He has auburn hair and wide shoulders, a certain panache when he pulls a shot. Say hey to him after, ask what’s going on. He makes you a flat white, on the house. Texts you after, maybe we can meet up again.
*
The Yo Pros have another marathon meeting. Everyone is in good spirits. Tinsley brought her muffins, this time with gluten and dairy because she doesn’t have any allergy restrictions anyway. You’re making headway on this project. You’re synergizing solutions. Somehow, you finish early and together emerge from the conference room for a coffee break. Tinsley and the others circulate from office to office, taking drink requests from the whole team. You and Eric hang by the front door and he sighs, asks, “Any weekend plans?”
You shrug. “I have a date, maybe.”
He monotones, “Nice.”
“Is gay dating fucking bleak in this city, or is it just me?”
Eric shrugs, “It comes with the territory. Just give in to it.” You never see him on the apps. Maybe he’s taken a monastic oath, jonesing for seltzer, angling for a promotion. Maybe he’s cut bait. Maybe he’s looking for jobs elsewhere, will give love a try once he’s in a different pool.
Go home and find Charlene hunched into herself on the floor, flexing her toes toward her face as she scrubs off the polish. Her beauty blender, makeup remover wedges encircle her on the floor, battered and war-torn, coral blush bleeding out their spongy hearts.
Ask, “What’s up with you?”
“I think I fell so deep into the makeup world I came out the other side,” she says. “Wanted to go natural.”
What she thought she needed won’t get her where she needs to go. You don’t want to stay in with Charlene tonight. Text back the Lana Del Gay hater and meet for a drink at a cocktail bar downtown. He comes in wearing a cable knit sweater, olive pants. You both order old fashioneds and hunch over the bar, slanting parentheses into each other on your barstools.
Ask why he’s so anti Lana. Ask what she ever did to anybody.
He says, “That’s a loaded question. It’s not about Lana, really.”
He uses heuristics. He’s still figuring out his type. Sometimes he thinks he’s a big fish in a small pond. Sometimes he thinks he’s a toy fish in a pediatric dentist’s aquarium.
You cannot predict where this is heading. Is he a new friend? Are you going to hook up? You walk up the hill to the Eastern Prom and watch boats blink along the horizon. The night is delicious. You both let your sides brush into each other, your hands briefly graze the other’s back to acknowledge the thrum of electricity crackling between you. He texts you after, That was fun. Let’s do it again soon.
Before you even have a moment to assess, you text back, Agreed! You don’t regret it.
*
They want to take you out before their trip. For two weeks, they’ll tour vineyards in Mendoza, wend their way through Buenos Aires, finish with Patagonia, Torres Del Paine. At lunch, they show you pictures of yurts like igloos where they will sleep.
“You hike?” you ask.
“We can hike, bitch,” 2 says.
1 sips his Chardonnay. “It’s more like glamping.” He winks at you.
You’re here after meeting at their house, discovering new positions in bed. Your bodies twisted into steel contraptions—a train, a tower. They changed into button-downs and khakis after your shower. Ask if you missed some memo. They tell you it’s casual. The restaurant is dark, oaken. If you offer to split the bill, it will feel like a joke. Leave your barn coat on. It has a collar.
And over cocktails and salad and pasta with seafood, they ask about your future.
“We’ve really enjoyed getting to know you,” 1 says.
“Are you ending things?”
2 shakes his head. “No. We just don’t want to be holding you back.” They’ve rehearsed the day together, will rehash it sipping malbec 5,200 miles away from you.
“Our trip is good timing,” 1 says. “You can focus on other people.”
They have attained enlightenment—non-monogamous marriage. They let you in to spice up their love and then shut you out so they can start over with just them—or with someone new and easy. They’ve forgotten what it’s like on the outside. You can go out with someone once and text flirty forever. You can ditch a date and then months later things feel fresh. They’re open but coupled. Their time is different. They’re squares. They will never give you what you need.
Play with your martini glass. Impale the last bite of fried calamari with your salad fork. Leave them the banana peppers.
“So you both see other people apart from each other?” you ask.
They nod.
“And you’re still in love?”
They nod again. Smile. Sip your cocktail. Make the devious eyes you know they like. Say, “Well, you can let me be in charge of myself, don’t you think?” They say fair enough, and that is that. Your second round of cocktails lubes the day. Ride home in the backseat with 2. Say goodbye at their door. “Bring me back something French.”
Drive back to the city. Your phone buzzes. Husband 1: Thanks for chatting. Please know we care about you. You’re a special guy. Husband 2: Our offer still stands, sherpa. Respond to both with a thumbs up.
On a whim, turn left onto the furred island. Park. Get out. Walk the path through the woods and find a swinging bench. From here, you cannot see the bean factory, just boats, the hill, the observatory, the Prom. It’s a beautiful day. Everyone is out there with dogs and blankets and books and picnics. And you’ll join too. You text someone to find you there.
Reference Section
This story was inspired by “How to Be an Other Woman” by Lorrie Moore, which appears in her collection, Self-Help.
A song I listened to a lot while working on this:
Friend of the newsletter Lisa Histon has a poem, “Terra Vita,” in The Slowdown this week. A major coup, and I’m so excited for her!!