Up the Ante on Your Happiness

 I’m sitting on a couch in a backyard and there are piles of junk everywhere. Old TVs, broken tables, road signs, guitars with missing strings, empty boxes.  I can see the inside of the house through a giant window with a sign hanging over it that says simply, "NO." A boy in a band lays on the couch near me and strums notes on a guitar while a girl with giant boobs and perfect eyebrows loads bowls of pot. I assess the scene, I feel like I’m in high school. I text The Boy what’s happening and tell him he should come over. He texts back, "well, if you’re getting your tenth grade on I guess I have to." "yes" I say, "I need a buddy."

Earlier in the night I was dancing at a wedding with an open bar and pretty older ladies in blue dresses with red shoes and pink flowers. It was casual but not tacky; with gourmet chicken wings for appetizers and beautiful hanging chadaliers. Perhaps it’s the girl in me, but I do love a good wedding.  And it’s hard not to run my eyes over the color of tablecloths and choices for music and think, "if it were mind, I’d do it this way." Since most days I slum it on a server’s salary, the prospect and access to delicious free food and an open bar was absolutely gleeful for me. Each time I came to the bar and ordered a glass of red wine I wanted to say to the cute bartender, "so, you mean, this time too I just don’t have to give you any money at all." I kept my excitement at bay though as I mingled and danced and smoked gross fancy cigarettes with a blonde girl called Erin. 

I’ve never denied the fact that I absolutely love weddings. I love getting dressed up, wearing more makeup than usual, high heels and ribbons in my hair, seeing the other dresses, what the bride looks like, what the food tastes like and how they look at each other when they have their first dance: are they really even in love? Not only that, much like a shitty romantic comedy with Jennifer Heigle Lopez, it can and does make you strikingly aware of your own singularity. While most of the time I am fine embracing the idea of being a "strong, independent woman" or whateverthefuck that one black chick sings about, there are moments when you’re watching a trashy looking made of honor talk about barfing out the groom’s BMW when you think: hmm, even if I DID meet someone right now like today it’d still be at least a few years before I got married which means I’m more likely to finally catch up on Game of Thrones than I am to have one of these things. Nonetheless, I put on a fake mustache in the photobooth and made small talk about my new job. It was, as expected, a blast. 

After the event I end up at a friend’s house near where The Boy lives and I’m too drunk off free wine to realize smoking pot is probably a bad idea. He spent the evening at a comedy show in The Bay and when he shows up and squeezes next to me shares stories of jokes and comics and funtimes. He asks me to come home with him despite the fact that I’m drunk and he hates when I’m drunk. I agree anyway, and slip into his yellow KDVS tshirt before falling face down on the bed and going right to sleep, much to his annoyance. 

In the morning I open my eyes and for ten full seconds I don’t know where I am. Then I notice the vintage SNL record tacked to the wall. "Oh yes, here again." We toss and turn together in the morning before I end up under his arm and then under his chest and then down below his waist until his toes tense up and he cums in my mouth. When we first started being physically intimate he assured me that he "didn’t really like blow jobs" but lately he seems to have changed his mind a bit; affectionately telling me that I’m the only girl that can get him off that way. I don’t deny this, because he is often hurtfully honest about sex. After, I lay under his shoulder and we talk before he prefaces something with "I was maybe not gonna tell you this but I’m supposed to go on a walk with this girl today." 

And why shouldn’t he? We have no labels, no definitions, I’m not his girlfriend, we’re not exclusive and despite all of this when he said the words it made my stomach tighten and I immiediately decided that this would be the last time I’d be in his bed. You are not this girl, Jaime, you are not that girl to someone. In light of this, I talk to him about something I’d been meaning to bring up but hadn’t always decided not to in favor of having a good time with him instead. I tell him that I’m trying to progress, I got a good job, I’m moving into a new house in midtown, comedy is going well, and that I function better in a partnership with someone and I’d like to find that again. And I can’t do that when I’m with him, because I close the door to all other opportunities. I say, 

"I want to work towards all the things I want, and part of that is being with someone again, it makes me happier on a day to day basis. And it’s been 8 months with you. 8 months. I’d like something more with you, but if I can’t have that, just let me go so I can be happy with someone again."

And he says, 

"So, you want me to up the ante on your happiness? And keep doing that and keep doing that until you get a diamond and then you keep doing that after you’re married except then she’ll stop having sex with you."

I laugh.

The conversation dwindles with him deflecting the subject and we drink coffee in silence at his table. He says, "are you mad?" I don’t say anything. He leaves at noon and I stand in his shower for a long time and stare at the water circling the drain until I have to snap myself out of it. I put on my wedding clothes from the night before and lay down on his bed. I have to let this go, I think, this feels horrible. I go over all the reasons I have to, I try and read but can’t get through a page without looking at the time on my phone. I have to let this go, I have to.  

When he comes back he lays on the bed and looks at me and pulls my book away and says things like "I’m sorry" and "lets go on a trip." I goof around and lay on his stomach eventually and I want to pretend like it’s as real for him as it is for me but I know it’s not. He knows I’m on my way out, especially after what he did that day, and when I leave I hug him and say "goodbye forever" and he laughs and says "I’ll see you tonight probably." 

The more I slip into a comfortable space with him, the more it hurts when he pulls away, makes mistakes, or forgets to think about me.