It’s a Tuesday evening, and I’ve just returned from therapy. I pour a glass of wine before gathering the ingredients for dinner: six shallots, garlic, half a can of tomato paste, anchovies, and pasta. Outside, my neighbor who lives in the building behind mine pulls into the shared parking lot. Through his open windows, I can hear the song that reminds me of the guy I lost my virginity to in college. It has a funky bass line, the vibrations slightly distorted like it’s being played underwater. My roommates and I would listen to the album over and over our sophomore year, doing homework around the table in our suite’s living area and wondering if they’d ever come to Pittsburgh for a concert. I feel both the same and so different from who I was then, four or so years ago.
I peel the shallots and the garlic, tossing the papery shells in the trash. I hum as I slice them all thin as tissue. Today, my therapist asked me if I ever talk to my past self, the nineteen-year-old who oscillated between partying too much and working too much—the young woman who still existed in extremes. How often did I show her compassion, if at all? I told my therapist I don’t really think about her, but that wasn’t entirely true. I don’t consciously set out to think about who I used to be, but I am so shaped by her decisions. I can sense how much extra work she’s caused me in my journey to growth and healing. I do not like her and I do not want to be her ever again, and the thought of addressing her feels like daring to swipe the pad of my fingertip across a sharp knife, hoping the swiftness of my motion will preclude blood.
But the floodgates were already opened, and now I was listening to this song echo through the kitchen window as I tossed the garlic and shallot slices with olive oil and waited for the dutch oven to heat up. I was once a woman who dyed her hair dark, auburn red that almost veered purple, who showed up in a new city with new freedom and impulsivity issues my parents tended to chalk up to a lack of discipline and laziness. I was a “halfway girl,” who completed her chores only eighty percent, lacking the wherewithal to continue with them after I grew bored of the tediousness of washing silverware or dusting bookshelves or got a whiff of something more fun. I was the girl who studied every night with her friends but couldn’t seem to score higher than a B on math and science exams, whose teachers explained, “All her work is correct, she knows the processes, but she copies numbers wrong or forgets negative signs.”
College was rife with possibilities, a fresh start without my parents breathing down my neck. It wasn’t long before I fell into the habit of skipping classes and spending my weekends drinking at house parties, finding it impossible to say no to invitations that sounded like more fun. I spent lectures and office hours and library sessions counting down to the weekend, when I could feel my cheeks become fuzzy with liquor and responsibilities fade into the ether.
I was the girl dancing with her friends, the girl who didn’t give a fuck that there was a test on Monday. I was the girl ready to go from crowded fraternity hall to sweaty house party to random dorm hangout long after everyone else was ready to go home.
I threw up in shadowy corners at parties in trash cans filled with beer bottles. I got caught vomiting in the bathroom by RAs on duty, who called the campus police on me because I was so visibly intoxicated. The officer let me off with a warning after making me drink some water. I was picked up by campus police on the side of the street walking home with friends from a party, and I was lucky they were just concerned about us getting home and not about what we had been doing. I celebrated good grades earning hangovers, I mourned bad grades earning hangovers. I passed out on a fraternity couch with no recollection of how I got there. I ruined the rug in our friends’ house off campus after throwing up in the middle of the night while crashing there, having been too drunk to walk home with my roommates.
Most of the time I just wanted a break from my life, and I wanted all or nothing. Sometimes I just wanted to feel different. Sometimes I’d try to talk myself out of going to a party, but the embers of urge would still burn inside my chest as I tried to distract myself with homework or studying. I could sense my friends growing tired of me by our sophomore year after they had to leave me at a friend’s party once again because I was too drunk to make it past the security guard at our dorms. Couldn’t I just be mindful of my limits? I started to work more at my part-time job, volunteering for weekend morning shifts no one else wanted. Spring semester, I signed up for more credit hours. I tried to fill my time so I wouldn’t have time to party anymore, but never thought much about why I was drinking so much in the first place.
I put my dutch oven on the stove and turn on the heat. I look out the window. My neighbor has turned off his car and has gone inside. Someone unloads groceries from their trunk. A woman walks her dog through the parking lot and towards the driveway. It’s springtime, but the air coming through the screen smells faintly of rain. Two tablespoons of oil in the pot. Throw in the shallots and garlic to caramelize. I stir them around and around and around.
I think about how the spring of sophomore year, just as I was getting a grip on responsibility, a roommate presented a challenge to me and our other roommates who were still virgins—lose it, or let it remain the butt of too many jokes for the rest of the year.
I rolled my eyes at her when she grinned at us, cheeks plump with pride at the plan she concocted. I knew her well enough after living in close quarters with her for almost two years to recognize this as hollow posturing, an empty challenge meant more as an excuse to boast about her own lack of virginity than anything else. But as the days went on, I thought more and more about how good it would feel to prove her wrong, and that maybe it would make me feel better about myself.
I met the guy on a dating app, and after a few days of messaging back and forth, we made plans to get together. I told him I was a virgin and he told me we’d take things slow. In his apartment I sat on the edge of his bed, out of breath from how anxious I was, he stroked my cheek and said, “Just let it happen.” He turned on a playlist of indie bands I recognized from the music festival my friends and I went to over the summer, songs and bands I would stop listening to after our encounter.
In the morning we drank glasses of orange juice standing barefoot on the linoleum tile in his kitchen and I wondered who this guy thought I was. In the way I’d assumed things about him based on the little information I had—his neighborhood, his job as a nurse, the way he dressed—he must think something of me. It didn’t matter so much to me what it was, but that he had to fill in the blanks. I liked that I could feel so close to someone without having to reveal so much of myself.
After the first guy, I spiraled as I searched for that feeling weekend after weekend, online stranger after online stranger. I swiped with reckless abandon on dating apps, and talked to men throughout the day to keep as many options open as possible. If my top choice wasn’t available, I’d move on to my second, then my third, then my fourth. After a bad test or a tiff with a roommate or a fit of profound boredom, I sought comfort in the beds of men who didn’t ask questions, who whisked me out of my world and into another.
I loved masquerading as older than I was, drinking beer or wine in nice apartments I hoped to one day afford. I leaned into the inherent sexiness my promiscuity thrust upon me, unabashedly bragging to the men about all the other men I’d been with. It was intoxicating for them to call me sexy, to say I was the hottest woman they’d ever fucked. They built personas around me that were easy to fill, that didn’t require me to be direct when answering their questions. It was easier to treat the men who objectified me poorly, to remain unattached enough from them that I could discard them when I grew tired of them.
The shallots turn golden, sticking to the bottom of the pot. My apartment will smell like alliums long after dinner, possibly into tomorrow.
I cook the pasta until it’s just shy of al dente, save two cups of starchy water. Only use half of the tomato shallot paste, keep the rest in the fridge for another time. Outside kids cheer from two houses over. I picture them zooming through someone’s lawn, trying to catch each other in a made-up game. My neighbors tend to their garden, on their knees and work the soil with tiny shovels, getting it ready for a fertile spring and summer. Another car parks in the lot, crunching the gravel under its tires.
I think about how I was threadbare and clinging to the idea I was still having fun the summer before my senior year when I went on a date with a guy from another university. He was handsome and incredibly tall, played basketball for his school. He graduated in April. I matched with him initially because I liked the idea of fucking him and he was also a creative writing student, like me. We agreed to meet up for ramen at a place near both of our colleges and the night before we were supposed to have lunch, he told me he was celibate. He was a religious studies major and grew up Jewish, but he converted to Christianity after deciding that he resonated with it the most out of all the religions he studied.
I struggled to find a way to answer him. I thought about canceling our date, which clearly wouldn’t lead to us rolling around in a bed together. I worried he’d be able to look at me and know I was faking something.
“What do you believe in?” he asked me before I could answer his first text.
I told him I liked to think about the universe in terms of energies aligning and moving from one thing to another, and he told me he thought this was incorrect, but he respected my beliefs if they helped me process life. I didn’t know if they really did, or if I even held them deeply enough to feel something close to comfort from them.
“I know the celibacy thing can make people feel uncomfortable,” he texted. “But I see it kind of like this: when we have sex with someone, we give them part of our energy. And if we keep giving that energy away, what do we have left for ourselves?”
I didn’t sense judgment in his words, but they made me pull my blanket over my head as I sat on the couch and cried. I pictured all the pieces of myself scattered throughout the city and wasn’t able to shrug it off as radical feminism through reclaiming my sexuality as a woman like I usually could. It used to be easier to make excuses, to fuel my desire with empty mantras about confidence and womanhood. I knew I wasn’t doing this for feminism, but I also couldn’t succinctly describe what I was doing it for other than I just didn’t really want to stop.
At lunch, he ordered fully vegetarian, more committed to respecting that I didn’t eat meat than any man I’d been on a date with. We talked about our favorite parts of the now-dwindling summer. He asked me about my nose ring, about my thoughts on altering our bodies. We talked about where we went on summer vacation, what we did with our friends. He adjusted his round glasses and asked me how I decided to go vegetarian. We slurped our noodles and talked about short stories, about our favorites from Raymond Carver and Denis Johnson and Tobias Wolff. He asked me about my Feminist Theory class, wanting to know which theorist I found most intriguing. I told him about a paper I wrote talking about Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me through the lens of Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and found myself surprised when he said he wanted to read it. He asked what made me decide to stop eating animals and I told him about attending the 2014 Climate March in New York City, and how afterward I felt too guilty contributing more than I needed to our country’s unsustainable practices.
His eyes were bright and eager, and when I tried to turn the conversation to him so I wouldn’t have to keep telling him about myself and listening to his praise, he’d pivot right back like he was genuinely interested in knowing more. We weren’t going through the motions, being polite before leaving and fucking in someone’s apartment or car. His curiosity about me was like a spotlight I couldn’t outrun, but the light was warm and flattering.
After lunch, he drove me back to my apartment. He took the long way, pointing out past apartments of his, places he liked to go, a coffee shop he saw Jake Gyllenhaal in when he was in town filming a movie. A few blocks from my place, he broke the news that we probably wouldn’t see each other again.
“It’s not because I’m not interested in you,” he said. “This was one of the best dates I’ve ever had.” The issue was that he was moving to New York City in a couple of days, and the news left me speechless. I hadn’t realized until that moment that I wanted to spend more time with him.
“I just felt like I needed to meet you before I left,” he said as he pulled up to the curb in front of my apartment. He kissed me on the cheek and told me I was an amazing woman.
I stood on the sidewalk and watched him drive away, unmoving. I decided I wanted to be the kind of woman he saw in me, which meant that I wanted to feel like myself again. But I felt like there was no way to return to her without all I carried with me now. There’s no way to uncrack an egg, put it back together after it’s spilled out of the shell.
I stir the pasta into the paste with the starchy water. Stir and stir and stir. Turn off the stove, sip the wine. I take a deep breath because sometimes when I’m too focused on something, I forget to breathe. Sometimes I get so lost in remembering the details, I forget to come up for air. I look out the window next to me, the breeze grazing my face. The kids still play in the distance. Birds chase each other from tree to tree.
I think about how I once got a text from a friend shortly after I turned twenty-one after I met the Christian and took a short vow of celibacy to try to sort myself out. Her words made my chest fill with dread like a ship taking on water after hitting something large in its path. A ship that would inevitably sink.
“There’s a guy on this dating app who says he knows you,” she said. One of her pictures was a group photo with our other friend, taken at a bar earlier that summer. The guy recognized me and asked how she knew me.
As she responded to my request for a picture, I braced for the worst. During my time chasing sex and lust mistaken for love, I shape-shifted to get what I wanted from men. I could be a mousy vixen or a dominating sweetheart. There were times I begged men to spend time with me, desperate for whatever I could get from them. I was always happy to let the men take the reins, telling them I’d do whatever they wanted me to. Kneel here. Take that off. Kiss harder. Let me smack you.
Once, I tried to convince a guy to cheat on his new girlfriend. I sent pictures of my naked body to married men who claimed to adore me. I hooked up with a married man who texted me terrible things about his wife. I had sex with three men in one day once and bragged about it to the men I knew it would impress. I was a one-woman show, keeping myself busy and keeping them interested so my reserves would never run dry.
There are so many corners of Pittsburgh I wish I could avoid not remembering the men I clung to, the version of myself I’d started to become.
In Oakland, the guy who had the wife, and the guy who was in town for business, and the guy who accused me of stealing his wallet.
In Bloomfield, the guy who took his condom off and didn’t tell me, and the guy who was the same age as my father, and the guy who made me walk home in the rain.
In Regent Square, the guy who made me catch the bus at six in the morning even though I barely knew where I was.
In East Liberty, the guy who asked me if I’d meet up with him and two of his friends for a “good time.”
In the South Side, the guy who berated me for getting mascara on his bedsheets, the guy who still had pictures of his ex-girlfriend on his bedside table, the guy who left his post as a referee at a hockey game for a quickie in his apartment.
In Squirrel Hill, the guy who played Fleetwood Mac, who, two weeks later, ignored me when I saw him on the 61D heading to work.
The moments of escape felt too good when I was in them, and I chased that feeling all around the city until I started to feel emptier than before. I’d return home from a man’s house in the late night or early morning with a heaviness in my stomach like I’d swallowed a bunch of marbles. I’d look around my apartment, where I lived without roommates, having backed out of signing a lease for a house with the girls I lived with before. All the hollow spaces were so deafening that my ears would ring.
My friend sent me a picture of the guy. I didn’t recognize him. She said he matched with me before, but we never went out with each other. Reading her message, I was grateful for the relief. Grateful not to have to admit I’d lived another life once, a life she might judge me for. A life I started judging myself for.
I still don’t know what came first: the immense desire to be someone else, the nagging force that made pleasure impossible to say no to, or the realization that pleasure was a great distraction from all I didn’t like about myself and my life. Perhaps I don’t feel shame about the sex itself but about this trait of mine, I might always have, the part of me that struggles to resist quick, intoxicating solutions to boredom or pain or sorrow. Maybe I’m embarrassed that so much of my twenties was ruled by instant gratification and convincing myself I was building a life rich with experience, not a shallow existence marked by feeling out of control.
Maybe even years later, I still wish I could be someone else if for no other reason than it seems easier than being me.
I take a pair of tongs and stir the pasta again before plating it up. I look out the window, where the sun spreads and stretches itself out across the tops of buildings, the streets, and the sidewalk. Sometimes I want to stand out in the sun until I can feel it cleansing me. I want to soak it up into my cells and feel them change. My neighbors still kneel in their garden, sowing seeds in the muddy earth. As they sprinkle life into the dirt, I picture vines with large leaves, sunflowers, tulips. Dozens of births to new life blossoming.
I don’t know what their garden usually looks like in bloom, this is my first early spring in this apartment. This apartment where there are so few memories made, and still so many yet to make, where the living room is drenched in sun twice a day.
I sit down to eat my dinner at the dining table given to me by a writing friend before I moved out of my old place, the tiny apartment with two windows, a mouse problem, and bad plumbing. The ceilings were slanted, making it difficult to decorate beyond a couple posters and tapestries. I was nineteen when I toured it, with no idea what to look for beyond cheap rent and space. I was twenty-four when I moved this past summer when I donated two-thirds of my belongings—anything that reminded me too much of college.
I told my therapist I didn’t know how much the old apartment was weighing me down until I left it behind. When she asked me why I thought that was, I told her it was because it didn’t feel like it belonged to who I was becoming.
One day, I will be able to face it all head-on. I will eventually have a partner who I love, who will still love me even after I reveal the past to him. I will be grateful my younger self carried me through however she could to the next chapter. I will still struggle with impulses that take over my brain and threaten to topple over the life I’ve built, and I still won’t know exactly how to get rid of them. The stakes will be higher, they will force me to seek out help and really mean it. I will have a name for all the grief I couldn’t see through my rose-colored lenses of being a teenager, and I will tend to it and it will teach me how to live.
But for now, I have this little life and this little apartment, and everything is bathed in gold.
Photo by Dingzeyu Li on Unsplash
