I already know that Nomi is in trouble. She told everyone on Instagram that she’s taking a fucking gap year and putting NYU on hold to intern for Uncle Ivan in Denver. The hashtag made me sick: #ListenToYourHead
But you don’t tell me about Nomi’s bad decision. You barely look me in the eye. “That’s sweet of you,” you say. “And I promise, we’re good. Hanging in. Everything is under control.”
Yes, Mary Kay. Ivan is controlling you and he’s controlling the Meerkat and you buy three lattes—none for me—and you leave with a sexless wave—Bye, Joe!—and that shark is moving fast and the Meerkat is adrift. Technically, she’s an “adult,” but she’s a young eighteen and she needs someone to tell her that you don’t make life decisions when you’re in mourning. The iPhone killed romance and turned us all into lazy, nasty stalkers and now Ivan the iMan is killing us.
* * *
Three days later, it’s like you’ve gone to the dark side. I really don’t exist to you. I don’t go outside. Oliver’s so “worried” about me that he sent me a fucking cheesecake via Postmates, as if one cheesecake makes up for the thousands of dollars I’ve spent on him.
I’ve been playing “Hallelujah” on repeat, trying to hate you, trying to think of you as the woman who fucked your husband right in front of me, a semireformed brother fucker who didn’t catch on when her best friend was pleasuring her husband. I’m trying to accept that something about those men gets to you. Your rat dies and you immediately glom onto his brother. You have been brainwashed and I know that. I do. But I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop loving you.
So I send you a text: hi
You send me a text: hi
I send you another text: is it bad if I say I miss you?
You don’t answer me and eleven long minutes go by—oh, fuck you, clock—and I am the stupidest man on the planet and maybe I should kill your half brother-in-law because a man as stupid as me deserves to rot in prison for being stupid.
And then there is a knock on my door and it’s you.
“Hello.” You’re wearing a baggy dress I’ve never seen and it’s cult white.
“Hi,” I say. “Come on in.”
You enter in silence and you don’t notice the music and you don’t smile your foxy smile and you don’t cry your foxy tears. You are dead-eyed. You’re here but I don’t know who you are and you won’t sit on my Red Bed sofa and now your lips are moving. I follow your gaze.
“Mary Kay, are you… are you counting the red stuff?”
“Well, it is a lot of red, Joe. Is this meant to turn your house into a Red Bed?”
Yes. “No, I just like red.”
You nod. You’re still in there and you know when I’m lying and you tell me this says a lot about me and it does. But then you purse your lips. “You can’t make the world red. This was really confrontational of you, Joe. And overbearing.”
“Whoa,” I say. “Where is this coming from?”
You shrug. And I know where this is coming from. You listened to Ivan’s take on us. “Look,” I say. “I know you’re going through hell, but come on. It’s me. I love you.”
You close your eyes. “Don’t say that you love me, Joe. That’s just a physical sensation. It’s just a feeling.”
I recognize that you are in a cult and it is not your fault. The cult showed up on your doorstep and moved into your fucking house and you are in debt to the leader of the cult. But you’re in there, somewhere, and I have to try and reach you. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Mary Kay, but how’s that Kool-Aid?”
“Excuse me?”
And off you go, defending that monster who’s just looking out for you and I never should have brought him into this and you’re hiding from me by talking about him. You tell me that you know I didn’t mean to take advantage of you and I am on my feet.
“I didn’t take advantage of you, Mary Kay.”
“Oh no? You didn’t hang around my house knowing that I was weak, that my husband just died? You didn’t pop by with toilet paper and wait for everyone to leave and you didn’t prevent me from being alone so that I could take charge of my feelings and put my thinking cap on? You didn’t do that? None of it?”
“Mary Kay…”
“Because the way I see it…” I as in Ivan and he is worse than RIP Steve Jobs, hell-bent on owning the world’s most important pronoun, the one that makes you you. “Well, Joe…” You never talk like this. “I did not come here to fight with you…” Yes you did. “I did not come here to explain myself to you…” Yes you did. “I came here to hold you accountable for your behavior, your behavior that was very harmful to me, your behavior that, whether or not you intended it, did drive me off course.”
The Whisper Room is right downstairs and you are in a cult and you’re not eating enough—he’s starving you, it’s part of the brainwashing—and I want to keep you, save you. I want to wrap my arms around you and you stand.
“I’m not obligated to listen to what you have to say to me because it’s not my job to take care of you…” Yes it is. We take care of each other. “And yes, I have feelings for you… but you can’t trust your feelings.”
“Mary Kay, do you hear yourself? This isn’t you. This is him.”
“And you don’t like him.”
I won’t lie to you and I can’t lie to you so I don’t say a word. You look down at your white cult dress. “Well,” you say. “I will leave you to process your emotions and do for you what you did not do for me. I will give you the space to feel your feelings about the dissolution of this relationship.”
“Mary Kay, what are you trying to say?”
I know damn well what you are trying to say but maybe if I force you to say it, you will change your mind. “You know what I’m saying.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
You ignore one of my cats when he marks you as his territory and you tense up on me, on my cats, our cats. “It’s over, Joe.”
“So you want to break up with me.”
“No. People have to be in a serious relationship in order to break up…” We were serious to me. We are serious to me. “I was in a fog…” You are in the fog right now. “And Phil might be alive if you and I hadn’t been running around…” You make it sound like I grew the fucking poppy seeds and you wipe away a tear and the fog thickens. You shiver when I take a step toward you and your tear ducts go into lockdown. “No,” you say. “It’s over.”
Ivan won your head. He reconfigured your heart. I can’t give up. I tell you that it doesn’t have to be this way and I remind you of how long we’ve known each other, how hard we worked to get here, and you huff. “Yeah,” you say, and you’re not Ivan’s puppet and I wish you were but no, this is you, the woman I know. “You said it, Joe. And we really did fuck up. But I don’t want to hash it out with you.” You purse your lips. “And there’s no point…”