The Secret, Volume 2

THE SECRET

“You are the love of my life. And you are such a bitch,” he said, slurring. He was in an Uber on his way home to his wife instead of on his way to my place.

He was slurring because he hadn’t done cocaine as per usual on a Friday night out at his normal club, the one filled with cheaply dressed 20 something eastern European women and bad music. Because his wife found out he had used cocaine, so for some fucked up reason, he felt he could carry the moral high ground by being honest about that one thing. It was his code of ethics. Meanwhile he was fucking me as much as his diminishing libido would allow, and then pushing himself into my mouth so that I would swallow his sweet cum. Telling me I was his love. He was eating me out for ages until he could feel my body shake and taste my cum. He was feeling me squirt all over his body as I rode him. He was flying me to Paris, to Ibiza, to Costa Rica, to Montreal. He was talking to me on the phone every day, all day, between text messages, voice messages, and phone calls. And I was simply the latest in a list that had gone on for years, including a 3 year affair, many bathroom hookups, prostitudes, paid-for S&M experiences, visitors to his home when his wife was away to visit family, Chinese massage parlor hand jobs, and god knows what else. Not that I was judging his sexual exploration, to be clear. What I did ultimately question was the double life he was living, initially characterized to me as an open relationship with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and ultimately revealed to be very far from the truth. And even in that complexity, I wouldn’t have been one to condemn, except that I had become a culprit in his behavior. And more than that, an object for his entertainment and pleasure rather than a full human being to treasure.

He would leave his house every morning for a coffee run, to either Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, or McDonalds. That was the big excitement of his day, deciding which kind of coffee to choose in his otherwise drill life. I’d hear his voice through his porch blue-tooth, “hi puppy,” he would say softly, reveling in those small moments with me. Was he more excited about the sneakiness, or at the opportunity for me to entertain him with various stories about my previous night adventures, or to connect with me? I’d never really know.

I always sugar-coated my stories to him when we spoke. I’d say things like, “Oh I was hanging out at a Bushwick rooftop party with my Ukranian friends. Or, I had dinner at Rachel’s place.. and then launch into some detail to distract him from asking further questions, to fill the time with some random detail that took up the minutes that I knew were running by, knowing he was watching the clock before he had to get home to his wife. What I didn’t say was what had really happened… how I’d fucked man after man in anger as a way to get back at him for not being in my bed. It was a way for me to punish him, and myself, for his inability to be mine, and for my inability to drop him. I knew that he sensed it. Which I relished in some ways, knowing there was nothing he could say about it. I would let his texts go unread for hours or in rare cases, days, to make him feel out of control. He deserved it, after all.

Sometimes when we spoke, I’d use the time to ask him for work advice. I realized that one of the benefits of our relationship was that there was nothing to lose, and nothing to gain. So I could just fully be myself. I told him about when I royally fucked up. I told him when I was treated poorly. I asked him what I should do to fix a situation, or to manage someone who was making my life challenging. He had the experience as a CEO so it was useful for me. Sometimes I had him read emails to confirm I wasn’t missing any nuance.

I didn’t care if he thought I was a mess, exposing it all. What I did care about was that he knew I was smart. That part mattered to me. Because it was my standout feature for someone like him. I was beautiful, yes, but there are millions of beautiful people. And he already felt the love and caring that I tried to not bestow too deeply upon him, given my Florence Nightingale tendencies, given the tendencies of women overall to “fix” problems and care for their men. I was already providing him with detailed edits on his track. I had already created a brand platform for his forthcoming production label. I went to most of his performances, bringing a crowd to fill the room.

I listened to his stories, even ones related to fights with this wife, up until the moment I decided to use that as ammunition against his character.

Which I then decided to destroy for him, piece by piece. “Grandma,” I said, pretending to catch myself in the word when describing his wife. “Oh I thought she was in her mid 60’s,” I said. He corrected me, but the comment hit the target as intended.

“Matt asked me how you get these young women to follow you and I told him that you buy them drinks and drugs, and let them know you are both rich and a rising DJ,” I said in passing as we walked towards our table at a restaurant. I pretended it was a throw-away comment, not a well-aimed dagger. He gasped when receiving the puncture. I feigned surprise. It was accurate, after all. And it was said with intention to wound.

I wanted him to feel small, to feel inadequate, to feel cheap.

“Don’t come to me,” I said one night, after a homeless man had tried to break into my apartment. I already knew he wouldn’t come anyhow, given his wife was watching the clock.

And in addition, I had already asked someone else to come into my bed that night to hold me and fuck me, so that I wouldn’t feel the space and the distance and the despair that bubbled up in my throat. Rather, I’d prefer another dick in my throat to choke out my own sadness.

Our last time together in the same room, he had walked me into my apartment, although I knew he would have rather kept the same uber to carry him back to New Jersey. But I was tripping out of my mind, and I asked him to give me a few moments. It was the least he could do, after all. It had been our breakup night. I had said it as a joke, hoping he would refute it. But instead, he had held me all night, murmuring into my ears words of love and affection, locking lips with me to savor the connection we had that was in parallel to nothing either of us had ever experienced before. Holding me tightly to feel my warmth against his, as ever-fleeting as it was.

I laid on the bed next to him, dizzy and experiencing a world in parallel, one where we were talking but then snapping myself out of it to be present in those final moments. I wanted to be there, to be present in those seconds. He laid next to me, and I knew he was thinking about how long he needed to stay to be decent before heading back home to the growing wrath from his wife. I remember looking at him in a moment when I was back into reality and seeing someone who looked old and tired. Someone who was at the end. Someone who was counting the seconds before they could leave me. My bones vibrated and my belly ached, spilling out bile from my empty stomach the moment he left.

How does one leave their love when knowing they are sick and tripping and sad and heartbroken? They only do it it its not their real love. I was in a way one of those parallel universes that I experienced in that trip, a figment of his imagination of what he’d like me to be, not the real thing.

And thus I was discarded, in preference of some kind of stable framework for life. Because there was a tradition to maintain. There as a friendship to maintain. Because there were expectations. Because there was pride. Because ultimately, there wasn’t the true capacity to love me truly. I never tried to prove my value to him, knowing it was self evident. Knowing that I contained a lifetime of love and partnership and experience and truth and presence and participation and energy and vitality that wasn’t what he was ultimately able to bare, or didn’t even want. And while he discarded me in a phone call two days later that left me weeping uncontrollably, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about how no matter the pain, no matter the rejection, that it wasn’t me he was rejecting. He was rejecting first himself. He was rejecting his family. He was rejecting truth. And I was only one of the casualties of his life of lies.

And moreso, that while it would take me time to truly process and understand the experience with him and make peace with it, that no one can throw away something they never actually had to begin with. And that was the gift I gave myself, the line that I toed. I had found a way to be both completely genuine but also unreachable. I had managed to turn his small behaviors against me into a bigger picture of his character that I threw in his face to diminish him as punishment for the feat he tried for and failed at.