10 Months
In April, he said that I was
adorable, that he had to get to know me, that he didn’t want a
chance at love to pass him by. I believed him because I wanted to,
because no one had ever called me anything but fat before, because I
didn’t want a chance at love to pass me by.
He was from Texas, visiting a friend, a female friend who was
probably a girlfriend, in Michigan, when he came across me. He
approached and stood silent, staring, while I wondered who he was
and what was wrong with him. We talked briefly, he boldly and I
hesitantly, and then we parted with a promise to meet again before
he left town.
I was happy, excited, nervous, scared. Male flattery was something
completely new to me and I didn’t know quite what to do with it. I
didn’t sleep that night.
We met again and explored each other’s thoughts, ideas,
perspectives. I found him odd in many ways, but my lack of
experience wouldn’t let me trust my own judgment, and so I carried
on. He asked if he could hug me before he left, and because I
couldn’t think of a reason to say no, I said yes. He hugged me and
did not let go. When I stepped back, he stepped forward. When I let
go, he held me tighter.
When I tried to
disengage, he buried himself in me
.
“I need to leave,” I finally said softly, and he slowly backed away.
“I hope we see each other again,” he said, and I could hear tears in
his voice.
“We will,” I reassured, and then I drove away.
In May, on the phone, he said he liked big girls, that they made him
feel safe, that he needed lots of hugs and he hated hugs from skinny
girls because they were all bones and their bodies hurt him. This
reassured me.
He said that he loved me, and he said that he didn’t want to be
alone, and he said that he wanted to get married, have kids, be
happy. He asked if he could come and visit me, because he was so
sure he loved me, because he needed hugs, because he needed to be
smothered with love. This frightened me.
The quiet voice inside of me replied that he didn’t know me well
enough to love me, that I didn’t love him back, that he was moving
too fast and his feelings were coming too soon. Aloud, I only said
that it seemed too soon for love. He cried and said that he wanted a
woman and he wanted babies, and he wanted love. I was afraid of him;
I was afraid of what he wanted from me, and afraid to hurt him by
telling him so.
But I couldn’t tell a soul that I was afraid. It seemed too vain to
say that someone loved me, and even more so to say I didn’t love him
back. What right do I have, I thought, to turn this man down, when
he’s the only one who will have me?
Each time he called me to cry and I verbally dried his tears, I hung
up the phone and my own tears fell free.
In June, he was happy. He didn’t cry at all, and although he
couldn’t keep from singing out his love for me, at least he stopped
asking me to love him in return. Life was good; though I didn’t like
to admit it to myself, it felt good to have someone love me,
especially since he no longer required any action or reaction from
me. He was safe. My fear subsided. Then he told me what he wanted to
do with me, all the things that men and women do, and fear lodged
itself within me once again.
“I’ve never done that before,” I whispered. He paused for five, ten,
one thousand seconds, and then asked me why. “I don’t know,” I
answered through my tears. “Maybe you should ask all the men who
never look at me, or talk to me, or touch me, that question. They
know the answer better than I do.” It was his turn to comfort me
now.
“It’s okay. I’m the man for you.”
In July, he cried again; he said, “They spit on me when I talk to
them. They don’t like me and I don’t know why. They hate me.”
I’m not your therapist, I thought, and I don’t know how to help you.
“Who are ‘they’?” I asked him.
“All of them,” he wailed, “All of them. I just want someone to hug
me. I hurt so bad. My feet hurt and my knees hurt and my shoulders
hurt and I just want someone to hold me until it all goes away.” He
cried himself to sleep on the phone as I pictured hundreds of
faceless bodies gathered around him, spitting.
“If you didn’t try so hard, come on so strong, they would like you
more. I would like you more,” I whispered, but of course he didn’t
hear me. He slept and I waited, resenting his intrusion on my time
and yet, somehow, unable to hang up. I was afraid I would hurt him
if I did, and he seemed to already be the bearer of more pain than
any man should carry.
“You still there?” he asked, startled from sleep by something
unknown to me. Maybe by my thoughts.
“Of course I am.”
“Don’t leave me.”
I wanted to tell him I had to go. I wanted to tell him he was too
much work for me, that I was suddenly far too tired to be his
counselor, his life coach, his mother, anymore. But who am I to
judge, I wondered silently. I am no better than he is. He is crying
to me about how lonely and sad his life is, and yet my life is even
more sad, even more lonely, by his standards. He has loved and lost,
and I have never loved.
I stayed on the phone, while he slept, for over an hour.
In August, he asked me for my professional opinion. “Do you think
there’s something wrong with me? Do you think I have autism, or I’m
retarded? Some people say so.”
“I don’t know. I can’t diagnose you. I’m not a doctor. I think that
all people are different, though, and if you know yourself, a
diagnosis does not matter. Just be who you are.”
He told me, then, about his past. He had been adopted, right after
he was born, and raised by a kind woman with a drug-addicted
husband. He had been home-schooled because he had problems, and he
had been lonely and treated badly, and as a result, had even more
problems. When he was eighteen, he had found his birth mother on the
Internet, discovered his twin brother, learned more about his life.
His birth mother had been told that he and his brother had cerebral
palsy, and she hadn’t felt equipped to deal with that, so she had
given them away to someone she trusted more than she trusted
herself.
Then it turned out there was no cerebral palsy, just some minor
brain-stem damage. (Later, this would explain a lot.)
In September and October, I did not hear from him. At the same time
that I was relieved to be free of our awkward two-hour phone calls,
I missed him. I wondered if he still liked me, or if he had found
someone better. It seems to be a flaw of human nature, I thought,
that it hurts to be rejected even by those whose opinions we reject.
I did not call him because I did not wish to pursue. I didn’t want
to want someone who didn’t want me back, I didn’t want to take the
lead, and I wasn’t sure his absence from my life was a bad thing.
Finally, there was an e-mail message: “I can’t pay my phone bill.
Phone got shut off. Lots of love.”
He still liked me! I smiled. Lots of love—he still loved me, too. My
smile faded. I was confused.
In November he called me, excited, at four a.m. “You’ll be so proud
of me!” he shouted, then rattled on. “I paid for my phone and it’s
prepaid so as long as I pay ahead they will never shut it off and I
have text messaging now and I paid my car insurance so it’s legal
now and I got my electricity paid so it’s turned back on and I had
to go to a bunch of different offices but I did it and it’s all
done. Are you proud of me?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“And I want to come visit soon. I work for Continental so it only
costs me twenty-five dollars to fly and I can fly into Green Bay and
you can pick me up there and I can leave my car in the west parking
lot because it is free and I can stay at your house and we can do
all kinds of things together and I want to come as soon as I can.
Can I come this weekend?”
“I—don’t know. I hadn’t planned on having company.”
“I only work Mondays through Thursdays so I can leave after work on
Thursday on the 8:15 flight and transfer in Chicago and get to Green
Bay by noon and then I can stay until Monday because I can take
Monday off so I will leave on the 2:30 flight Monday afternoon.”
“Can’t we wait until after Christmas? I don’t really have time for
company right now.”
“Yes,” he said, slowly and quietly.
In December, he called and said January fourteenth, and I said okay.
And in January, he came to see me. I was afraid. Afraid of him,
afraid of me, afraid of what might happen between us, afraid of what
might not happen between us, afraid of everything. I was afraid to
go pick him up. I was afraid to move. I was afraid that when he saw
me again, I would suddenly be too fat, too ugly, too anything, and
that he wouldn’t like me anymore. I was afraid he would like me too
much.
The day that I picked him up, everything was fine. My heart jumped
into my throat when I saw him walking toward me, more from nerves
than from excitement. He looked just the same. He had the posture of
an upper primate that was not quite human, arms dangling from his
shoulders as he walked quickly towards me, shoulders slumped
forward. I could see the brain stem damage, but I convinced myself
it didn’t matter, that he was more human than he looked, that things
were going to be okay. He still liked me. I could still pretend I
liked him back.
And then things changed.
I didn’t let him stay at my house because I didn’t know him as well
as I would have liked. Instead, we split the cost of a hotel room,
and for that first night, he wanted me to stay with him. I was
unsure and I was afraid and so I refused. By the time I got home, he
had called me twice to make sure I was okay and to ask if I was
really going to come back the next day. I reassured him. He called
again fifteen minutes later, just to be sure. I told him I needed
sleep and I would see him at noon. At 9:30 in the morning, he was on
the phone again, to see when I was coming back. He called twice
more. Finally, I got back to him; he was still afraid I wasn’t
coming back.
He told everyone we saw that we were dating. It was hard to dislike
someone who was so proud to be with me, but after hearing for the
thousandth time how we met as he explained the whole thing yet again
to some uninterested passer-by, it began to make me feel ill.
We went out with friends and he spent the entire night with his head
on my chest, like a breast-feeding infant. He couldn’t pull himself
away. Every second that we were not in physical contact, he looked
like a lost child. I could not be by myself for more time than it
took to use the bathroom, and whenever I did use the bathroom, he
panicked and asked my friends where I was and if I was coming back.
We watched movies at a friend’s house and he picked his toe jam from
between his toes and sucked it off of his fingers. He refused to
bathe unless I showered with him; since I refused to do so, he never
showered at all. He asked me if I loved him, if I liked him, how I
felt about him more times than I can count. He wouldn’t let me
breathe.
Finally, finally, I delivered him back to the airport. I hugged him
good-bye. I kissed him, one last time. He cried when I left him. And
then, I left. I left him behind and I could breathe again. I drove
home, a little sad because I could feel his sadness, but mostly
light-hearted. I was free!
He called me again, and again, and again. For a while I played
along, but whenever I did, I cried. I didn’t want to hurt him, and
in not hurting him, I was hurting him even more. After a while, I
only answered every third phone call, or every fifth. And soon I
never answered at all.
At the end of January, he left me alone. And I missed him. I hated
him and he scared me and I didn’t enjoy his company and he turned my
stomach, but I missed him. I missed the way it felt to be loved. And
I cried.
