Originally I had planned to get to New York the normal way, fly there, but then Harris and I had gotten into an odd conversation with another couple at a party. Our friend Sonja said she loved to drive; she missed having the time to drive across the country. And Harris said, Well, that figures.
What do you mean? we all said. Harris just shrugged, took a sip of his drink. He doesnât talk much at parties. He hangs back, not needing anything from anyone, which of course draws people toward him. Iâve watched him move from room to room, running in slow motion from a crowd that is unconsciously chasing him.
âWhy does that figure?â Sonja said, smiling. She wasnât going to let this go. And maybe because it was her, so charming with her Auckland accent and big breasts, Harris suddenly laid out a fully formed theory.
âWell, in life there are Parkers and there are Drivers,â he began. âDrivers are able to maintain awareness and engagement even when life is boring. They donât need applause for every little thing â they can get joy from petting a dog or hanging out with their kid and thatâs enough. This kind of person can do crossâcountry drives.â He took a sip of his drink. Dogs were a hotâbutton topic for us. Harris and Sam wanted one; I was ambivalent about pets in general. Are we totally sure about the domestication of animals? Will we not look back on this as a kind of slavery? But how to get out of it now when the world is so populated with dogs and cats that canât fend for themselves? Itâs not humane to just release them. It would have to be a group decision: No more pets after this. This is the last round of them. But that was never going to happen, even if everyone agreed with me, and literally no one did. Being antiâpet (proâanimal!) was one of my least winning qualities.
âParkers, on the other handâ â and he looked at me â âneed a discrete task that seems impossible, something that takes every bit of focus and for which they might receive applause. âBravo,â someone might say after they fit the car into an especially tight spot. âAmazing.â The rest of the time theyâre bored and fundamentally kind of . . .â He looked at the ceiling, trying to think of the right word. âDisappointed. A Parker canât drive across the country. But Parkers are good in emergencies,â he added. âThey like to save the day.â
âIâm definitely a Parker,â said Sonjaâs husband. âI love to save the day.â
âWait, parking is exciting?â said Sonja. âThat seems counterintuitive. Wouldnât driving ââ
âThink about it, hon, you have to get the angle just right ââ
âOkay, but are Drivers boring? I donât want to be the boring, dependable kind of person.â
âNo, not at all,â said Harris. âDrivers can have a good time more easily. Thatâs not boring.â
âI want to be a Parker,â Sonja said, pouting. âToo late,â Harris said. âYou canât switch.â
At this point I peeled away from the conversation. Message received. Harris and Sonja were grounded, easy going, people who liked to pet dogs and have sex whenever. And I was a Parker. What he called disappointed was really just depressed. Iâd been a little blue recently, not a lot of fun around the house. Not like Sonja. I watched the two of them chatting â his barrel chest and graying black curls somehow looked boyish and his level of animation was totally unfamiliar to me, I guess she brought that out in him. It wasnât jealousy exactly; being a third wheel is my native state. Sometimes Harris will seem to have rapport with a waitress or a cashier and I immediately cede to them as a couple â I internally step aside and give my place to the other woman, just for a few seconds, until the transaction is over.
There was a small group of people dancing in the living room. I moved discreetly at first, getting my bearings, then the beat took hold and I let my vision blur. I fucked the air. All my limbs were in motion, making shapes that felt brandânew. My skirt was tight, my top was sheer, my heels were high. The people around me were nodding and smiling; I couldnât tell if they were embarrassed for me or actually impressed. The hostâs father looked me up and down and winked â he was in his eighties. Was that how old a person had to be to think I was hot these days? I moved deeper into the crowd, shut my eyes, and slid side to side, shoulder first, like I was protecting stolen loot. Now I added a fist like a brawler, punching. I made figure eights with my ass at what felt like an incredible speed while holding my hands straight up in the air like Iâd just made a goal. When I eventually opened my eyes I saw Harris across the room, watching. I could tell from his face that he thought I was being âunnecessarily provocativeâ. Or maybe I was projecting my parents onto him â thatâs more something my mom would say â but heâs always leaned a bit traditional. On our second date I began revealing my peep show past the same way I always did, like a verbal striptease, until I noticed his face kind of shutting down. At which point I immediately began reversing the story, narratively putting my clothes back on, as it were, and minimizing the whole thing â a youthful misstep! Ancient history!
Now he touched two fingers to his forehead and I did the same, relieved. Weâd done this saluting thing the first time we ever laid eyes on each other and across many crowded rooms ever since. There you are. He didnât look away. Dancers kept moving between us, but he held on for a moment longer, we both did. I smiled a little but this wasnât really about happiness; it hit below fleeting feelings. At this slight remove all our formality falls away, revealing a mutual and steadfast devotion so tender I could have cried right there on the dance floor. Sure, heâs goodâlooking, unflappable, insightful, but none of that would mean anything without this strange, almost pious, loyalty between us. Now we both knew to turn away. Other couples might have crossed the room toward each other and kissed, but we understood the feeling would disappear if we got too close. Itâs some kind of Greek tragedy, us, but not all told.
I wandered off the dance floor and into the master bathroom, washing my hands with the hostâs facial cleanser. Of course it wasnât too late to switch from Parker to Driver â anyone with a driverâs license could drive across the country. I could see myself pulling up in to the driveway with dusty tires, Sam running to greet me and Harris just standing in the doorway. Heâd salute and Iâd salute, but this time Iâd walk into his arms, knowing I was finally home in a way Iâd never been before.
By morning the idea had taken hold. Why fly to New York when I could drive and finally become the sort of chill, grounded woman Iâd always wanted to be? This could be the turning point of my life. If I lived to be ninety I was halfway through. Or if you thought of it as two lives, then I was at the very start of my second life. I imagined a vision quest â style journey involving a cave, a cliff, a crystal, maybe a labyrinth and a golden ring.
âIâve driven across the country,â said Jordi. âItâs not that great.â
âItâs not supposed to be! Is a silent meditation retreat âgreatâ? Do people hike the Pacific Crest Trail because itâs âgreatâ? And this is even higher stakes because if my mind wanders too far Iâll crash and die.â
âOh god, donât say that.â
âBut my mind wonât wander! Iâll be totally present all the way there and all the way back. And for the rest of my life Iâll tell people about this crossâcountry drive I did when I was fortyâfive. Thatâs when I finally learned to just be myself.â
Of course I was always myself with Jordi; she knew I meant be myself at home. All the time.
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Harris had found an old foldout map of the United States and was tracing his finger across it. âIf you take the southern route you can go through New Mexico and spend the night in Las Cruces.â I was holding a plastic hairbrush and trying to focus on all the red and blue squiggles, but my eyes bounced off them.
âCouldnât I just put New York City into my Google Maps?â
âBut there are different ways to go. Different routes.â
He said I should take an extra week so the drive wouldnât eat into my New York days.
âReally? Thatâs more than two weeks without you guys.â I had never been apart from Sam for that long. Each time they ran past us I tried to hand them the hairbrush; surely at seven one could be the steward of oneâs own tangly hair.
âWell, you donât want to drive for a week and then just turn around and come home. You should really take three weeks to make it worth your while.â
âThree weeks? No, that would definitely be too long apart.â He was being generous because I had done a lot of childcare recently while he worked with his twentyâsevenâyearâold protĂ©gĂ©e, Caro. Is protĂ©gĂ©e the right word? Ingenue, whatever. Heâs a record producer, which is actually ideal â thereâs no competition between us but he knows what an artistic soul needs. Early on I called her Caroline; Caro felt too intimate, like a pet name.
(âOnly the press calls her Caroline,â Harris had said.)
(âThatâs fine. I donât mind being like the press.â)
But it wasnât just that he owed me childcare; Harris doesnât have a lot of conflicted feelings visâĂ âvis the domestic sphere. I didnât either until we had a baby. Harris and I were just two workaholics, fairly equal. Without a child I could dance across the sexism of my era, whereas becoming a mother shoved my face right down into it. A latent bias, internalized by both of us, suddenly leapt forth in parenthood. It was now obvious that Harris was openly rewarded for each thing he did while I was quietly shamed for the same things. There was no way to fight back against this, no one to point a finger at, because it came from everywhere. Even walking around my own house I felt haunted, fluish with guilt about every single thing I did or didnât do. Harris couldnât see the haunting and this was the worst part: to be living with someone who fundamentally didnât believe me and was really, really sick of having to pretend to empathize â or else be the bad guy! In his own home! How infuriating for him. And how infuriating to be the wife and not other women who could enjoy how terrific he was. How painful for both of us, especially given that we were modern, creative types used to living in our dreams of the future. But a baby exists only in the present, the historical, geographic, economic present. With a baby one could no longer be cute and coy about capitalism â money was time, time was everything. We could have skipped lightly across all this by not becoming parents; it never really had to come to a head. On the other hand, sometimes itâs good when things come to a head. And then eventually, one day: pop.
Harris was using a highlighter directly on the map and telling me I could always decide later to stay a few extra days.
âThatâs the great thing about driving; you can play it by ear.â He could be generous like this for the reasons I just explained. Not me! I always wanted him back right on the dot â extended trips, school holidays, a child being too sick to go to school, these things run a chill down the spines of working mothers whose freedom is so precarious to begin with. Still, I loved this about Harris, how he always encouraged me to stay longer and have fun. I reminded him I had to be back by the fifteenth anyway. Of course, he said; obviously.
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Jordi and I were sipping milkshakes; mine strawberry, hers chocolate. Once a week we meet in her studio and eat junk together. Usually desserts weâd eaten as kids but almost never again since weâd discovered the healing power of whole grains and fermented foods and how sugar was basically heroin. This was part of a larger agreement to never become rigid, to maintain fluidity in diet and all things. At home I baked highâprotein, dateâsweetened treats. No one knew about our medicinal junk food, are you kidding? Harris and Sam would both be jealous, each in their own way. Similarly, I never told Harris what I jerked off to.
âBut maybe you guys could roleâplay it?â Jordi suggested. âDo you guys roleâplay?â
âNever.â
âWe donât, either.â
We decided then to tell each other exactly how a typical fuck played out in our marriages. We couldnât believe weâd never done this before. If there was a good reason, neither of us could think of it.
âWho initiates? You, right?â I knew she was that sort of totally present, bodyârooted lover who felt like sex was a basic need.
âYes,â she sighed, âitâs always me.â
âIâm the initiator, too, actually, but only because Iâm trying to get out ahead of the pressure.â
âHow often?â
âOnce a week.â
âWow,â she moaned. âI wish I was having sex once a week!â I laughed. We were so opposite.
âI see it like exercise,â I said. âYou donât ask yourself if you want to exercise, thatâs the wrong question.â
âYou donât exercise.â
âI know, but if I did, I imagine it would be similar. I also donât love getting in pools, by the way. Sunday nights! Packing for trips! Any transition. Whatever state Iâm in I just want to stay in it, if thatâs not too much to ask.â It was, though, for a married person. Sometimes I could hear Harrisâs dick whistling impatiently like a teakettle, at higher and higher pitches until I finally couldnât take it and so I initiated.
I went step by step, demonstrating some movements, saying who put what where, how many times I came, how it ended.
âGeez,â said Jordi. âSo many positions.â
âYeah, thatâs more his thing. Iâm completely inside the movie in my head. Itâs like I have a screen clamped in front of my face.â
âWhatâs on the screen?â
âOh, you know, Iâm a gross stepfather getting a blow job from my nineteenâyearâold stepdaughter, or Iâm the stepdaughter, getting tucked in. Or Iâm flipping back and forth between them. Thereâs a lot of special tucking in involving boners.â
âA stepfather and sheâs over eighteen,â Jordi laughed. âVery legal.â
âItâs consensual! Theyâre mutually obsessed with each other; thatâs a big part of it. You probably just think about Mel.â âYou donât think about Harris?â
âNo, I do. Same dynamic, but with an intern or assistant. Usually Iâm Harris being seduced by her. Sheâs reassuring me that my wife will never know and finally I just let her suck it.â
âGeez, I feel so unimaginative,â Jordi said. âIâm just like, âBody feel good. Me want.ââ
âYouâre present â thatâs much better! A bodyârooted fucker.â
âIs there another kind?â
âMindârooted.â I pointed my thumb at myself. âBut Iâm hoping to be more like you after my trip. Now you go.â
âOh, itâs so boring compared to you guys.â
I was pleased she felt this way.
âJust tell me.â
She took a sip of her milkshake and pulled her mountain of black curls into the hair band she always wore around her wrist.
âSometimes it starts when weâre asleep, we just kind of start having sex without even knowing it. So weâre halfâawake and sort of sloppy and then it gets more heated and . . . oh god, itâs not . . . sexyâsounding like you guys.â
âKeep going,â I said. I was starting to have a bad feeling.
âWell, often weâre in a kind of ugly position, like with both our legs wrapped around each other, kind of in this tight ball, and I really like my mouth to be overfilled so almost her whole hand might be in my mouth so thereâs drool running down the sides of my face and weâre just, you know, humping, kind of like animals. Iâve actually thought about how ugly this must look, like two desperate cavewomen. Usually weâre too asleep or lazy to go down on each other or use a dick so thereâs just, like, a bunch of fingering, or not even that, just grinding. Sometimes I will literally just hump her butt until I come, without even fully waking up. Sometimes I fall asleep with my fingers in her cunt and when I wake up theyâre all pruney.â
I was quiet now, bludgeoned by this vision of intimacy. It wasnât a matter of having lost at this conversation; I had lost at life.
It was almost midnight. Moonlight and lamplight came through the window and her sculptures gleamed around us. They were Jordiâs own body but morphed, ghoulishly skewed toward animals, cars, monsters, always headless, in wood or limestone or plaster. We wouldnât see each other again before my trip.
âYou know you can just fly if you want,â she said. âAre you saying that because you think Iâll crash?â
âNo, no, not at all. Just that if you donât transform . . . thatâs fine, too.â
I stared at her in the halfâlight and she looked straight back at me.
âIâm just making it harder for myself, arenât I?â
âMaybe.â
I came into the house my usual way, like a thief. I turned the lock slowly and shut the door with the handle all the way to the left to avoid the click of the lock. Took off my shoes. Rolled my feet from heel to toe, which is how ninjas walk so silently. I was often two or three hours late because I had trouble admitting that I was planning to talk to Jordi for five hours. But how could it be any shorter, given that it was my one chance a week to be myself? My heart was pounding as I tiptoed through the living room. I know the quietest way to wash up, too: picking up and putting down the cup and face wash with this technique where you pretend each thing is heavier than it is. Imagine the cup is made of brick, so that as you put it down youâre also lifting it up, resisting its weight â the opposite of this would be just dropping it, letting gravity put it down. When I walk past Harrisâs bedroom I think glide, glide, glide.
When Harris comes in late he slams the door cheerfully behind him. Heâs trying to be quiet, but not that hard. His mind is on other things, and why not? This is his house. Why behave like a thief? He doesnât see how each moment can be made terrible if you only try. There can be a problem every second so that life is a sort of lowâgrade torture. Then, when you are free, like when I was eating dessert with Jordi, it feels really, really good, like a drug high. So: grit, grit, grit, then: release. Joy. This works especially well for a life built around grueling selfâdiscipline culminating in glittery debuts and premieres. Grit, grit, grit, then: taâda! The thing that links the two states is fantasy. As a girl I fantasized about the perfect dollhouse, now I fantasize about the moment when I would finally reveal what Iâd been making in the garage and be suddenly seen, understood, and adored â or at least get to stay in a nice hotel. These rewards really took the edge off life, carried me through the endless cleaning and cooking and caring and working. As a child I knew these werenât just fantasies. One day I really would leave this house, these people, this city, and live a completely different life.
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Image © Niamh Brannan