Bad Romance

Bad romances, huh? Yes, indeed, I’ve had a few. One of my first really bad romances occurred while I was an undergraduate at a small liberal arts college. I was 20 years old and I met a woman at a party early in the second semester of my sophomore year. I knew her through mutual friends, but that night we wound up getting drunk and making out on a couch while everyone continued partying all around us.

I called her a couple days later and she asked me to come to her dorm room to visit. I walked over and when I got there we awkwardly chatted a little as I looked around her ultra-girly pink and fluffy room. Her bed was covered with stuffed animals and a shelf was lined with porcelain horses and unicorn figurines. In the scheme of things, I was inexperienced with women. Most of the sex I’d had with women involved alcohol. So, being sober, I really had no clue what to do with this woman I really did not know. Judging from the way her bedroom was decorated I was guessing we had nothing in common.

I was shy and so was she. She was sitting on the edge of her bed and I sat down next to her. Neither one of us said anything for what seemed like forever. It was probably ten seconds but it felt like ten minutes. I started to turn toward her and as I opened my mouth to say something she kissed me. She put her arms around my neck and we made out.

That’s how the rest of the semester went. I’d go over to her dorm room—she never came to my dorm that semester; I had a roommate and she had a single—on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday night, we’d goof around, have sex, lie in bed exhausted, whisper into each other’s ears, tickle each other, laugh, and then I’d get dressed and cruise. On the weekends, I’d go out with my friends, be as open as ever to meeting other women. Not that I did too often, but I was always open to it.

I didn’t know what the hell my relationship with Natalie was. I didn’t think about it much. The few times I did think about it I’d generally tell myself, “What are you doing? Stop thinking! You have a perfect relationship with this woman. You go to her place during the week, you talk and laugh, and then you mess around with her late into the night before going back to your room. Enjoy yourself, you idiot!”

I enjoyed the hell out of it. Sometimes I’d want to bask in it, though. But basking, turns out, is related to reflecting. Inevitably, I’d start thinking about who she was, how I felt about her, what we were doing, where this was going, and on and on. Did I … love her? Whoa, hey, whoa, enough of that talk, man. Let’s not go getting all, you know … you know?

It was easy to keep thoughts like that at bay, though. When I wasn’t with her I was going out with my friends, getting loaded, going to parties, road-tripping to some concert or event somewhere, always searching for a higher high, a better buzz, more action, more adventure, more wildness. When was I going to reflect, really? During classes? When I went to my classes I slept. I was always short of sleep, always felt like I was living a waking dream, wondering if I’d ever slow down enough to rest.

The summer came, I went back to Arizona to stay with my folks, and I worked in a gold mine. I called Natalie once, she called me once, but otherwise she was mostly out of my mind. I imagined I was out of hers, too. I had never wondered what she did on weekends during the previous semester. We had never talked about dating, going to see a movie, to dinner. I brought her no flowers, she gave me no presents.

By mid-August, though, I was thinking about her again. A lot. I was anticipating seeing her when I returned to school. I had signed a lease for an apartment off-campus with a friend, a two-bedroom attic apartment in a huge Victorian downtown. Natalie kept her single dorm. I called her the night I got back, a Sunday a few days before the first day of classes. She invited me up to her place. I walked up the hill, a farther walk now than it was the previous semester.

When I arrived and walked in the door, she was lying naked on the bed, rose petals spread everywhere, as many on her body as on her bed and the floor surrounding. That changed things. We went out more together, to parties, to movies. Friends asked me about my girlfriend. When I saw her friends they asked how Natalie and I were doing.

We’d become a couple. Somehow. We saw each other on weekends now. Sometimes. She still went back to Chicago to visit her family now and then. I never went with her. I never met her family. She never met mine. We hardly ever talked about our families, our futures, what we wanted to do with our lives, or where we wanted to live after we graduated. Nothing like that, as if we existed in a bubble of time that was somehow eternal, an infinite loop of college semesters playing out where we’d have great sex and appear to be a couple but without ever really knowing each other, without discussing anything significant, and while still living mostly separate lives with closer connections with our respective friends than with one another.

Even so, whenever I walked into her room that semester, it was an inferno. The previous semester we were like too clumsy teenagers trying not to embarrass ourselves by making the wrong move. Sometimes we’d lose our self-consciousness, but not for long and not often. By the time we started up again the following semester, most inhibitions had disappeared. The sex was now torrid, the hunger ravenous. When I walked to her room I’d sometimes catch myself licking my lips, my chest heaving, breathing hard and heavy, like the foreplay had already started. I’d arrive in a fever, open the door, and find myself in a sweltering jungle, a wild-eyed woman, naked, sweat beading all over her body, her muscles tightening, crouching, and then leaping at me like a panther. We had sex like our souls were at stake, like we’d just been to the Pearly Gates and Gabriel told us that we had one last chance to make up for all of our passionless moments, that if we fucked until we could no longer breath that maybe God would smile on us for eternity and let us do this forever and ever and ever.

We became more intimate as the semester passed. I’d stay the night at her place and occasionally she’d come to my pad and stay with me. After sex, she’d rest her head on my chest, caress my stomach with her hand, and slide it down my thigh. Sometimes I’d hear her sigh or giggle and I’d say “What?” She’d lift her head, turn back to look at me, her eyes beaming at me, an open-mouthed smile. She’d blink, dip her head a little, look up at me, pretending to be shy, and she’d bury her head against my stomach, her hair shrouding her face so I couldn’t see her. She’d curl up next to me, on top of me, and she’d put her arms around me, hug me as tight as she could, and she’d say, so softly I could barely hear her, “I like you.”

I would melt. I was falling for her, this woman I did not know. We went to some sort of end-of-the-year bash together, had an amazing time, went back to her place, and made love. When I woke up in the morning she was staring at me. I looked back at her and we gazed at each other, wordlessly, for several minutes. I fell deep into her and I let her swim as deeply as she wanted within me.

She went to Chicago over the holidays and I traveled back to Arizona. I called her house on Christmas day, wanting to surprise her (since we never did that sort of thing), and her sister answered. She said Natalie was in Arizona on vacation. I said, “Where?” She said, “I don’t know. I think she’s in Winslow, or something like that.” Winslow? Northeast Arizona? Why? Weird.

I thought about her the entire break. I kept imagining myself with her, imagining her in bed, daydreaming about her laugh, her smile, everything. When I got back to my apartment I called Natalie right away. She answered and seemed surprised to hear my voice on the other line. I skipped the small talk, “I want to see you right now and when I get there I don’t want you to be wearing anything.”

She interrupted before I could get another word out. “Michael, now’s not a good time. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

I was bursting. There was no way I could wait until tomorrow. I had to see her. “Why? What are you doing that’s so urgent right now?”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now, Michael. Just … I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

I was impatient and frustrated, my mind wandering. “What were you doing in Arizona?”

“This isn’t a good time.”

“I’m coming up if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”

“No! Don’t come up here right now.”

Now, naïve and simple as I was, even I started to understand. “So, you’ve got some guy up in your room right now.”

Silence.

“Are you kidding me, Natalie?”

“Michael …” I heard her sigh. She was crying, softly. “I got engaged on New Year’s Eve. My fiancée is in town. He’s going to be here soon.”

“What?! You're engaged?! Who's the guy?!”

“He’s … my high school sweetheart.”

“Are you kidding me? What the fuck, Natalie?!”

“I’m so sorry, Michael.” I heard a few sobs over the phone.

Shocked. Stunned. Overwhelmed. Something inside “clicked” and I shut off all of my emotions. Looking back, it was probably a good idea because I would have exploded otherwise. I just said, “Wow. Well, congratulations. Have a nice life.” Then I hung up.

I found out later that that she’d been seeing him on and off for years. What was I? A fling that became too serious? I wondered. A few of her friends called me within the next couple of weeks, telling me Natalie was distraught, that I should talk with her. I was still hurt and angry. “She can call if she wants to talk to me. Otherwise I have nothing to say.”

That wasn’t true, of course. I missed her, I was heartbroken, devastated. But I also felt humiliated and furious at her. But why? I never said a thing. I never said, “I love you, Natalie” or “What are you going to do when you graduate? I have another year to go after you’ve finished. I hate to think about this but I want to talk about it because I don’t want to lose you.” I realized that was true too late. She was gone.

But how could I have known? How could I have left for Arizona worrying that, of all things, she would get engaged? Yes, there were signs she may have been seeing someone else, but not to the extent that she’d wind up engaged! Still, she was rarely available on weekends and went back to Chicago a lot. I was young, inexperienced, and foolish. I didn’t even care one way or the other most of the time we were together. It was near the end of that second semester together that I really started to realize how incredible she made me feel, that she made me feel exactly like I wanted to feel, and that I didn’t give a shit that I knew so little about her life. I knew enough, I thought, enough to know that I loved her. She never knew that, though. I never told her.