Unconditional Obedience
Sunday
Wide awake, three a.m. Still editing last week’s diaries. Determined to finish editing before I sleep so that I will not have to deal with any of these romantic, pathetic sentences about Tom in the morning. Want to wake up with nothing left of him to edit. Nothing left of him at all. Just the fading hickey on the left side of my neck and the bouquet of roses in the kitchen, to be tossed out at sunrise. The apartment feels quiet, empty. Keep thinking: what happens next? I am working on the diaries slowly because I am a little bit terrified of coming to the end, of having everything all tidy and formatted and ready for publishing, because what will there be left to focus on then? To keep me from unravelling?
It’s been ten hours since Tom left and I am desperate to fill the void. I go into the kitchen in my underwear and flood the dim room with lamp light. I open up the cabinets and then the fridge and consume practically everything in sight. Which is not much. Handful of dry cereal, handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips, stale bit of refrigerated French bread spread with the last bit of eggplant caviar, a couple of cornichons and a quarter jar of basil sauerkraut. I eat standing over the sink in a fugue state. And when I come to, I still feel famished. The hunger is bottomless because the hunger is psychological. I get back into bed and go on my phone and look at Postmates. Feel depressed by the five a.m. options. Decide that Starbucks is as good as it’s going to get. Put a venti iced caramel macchiato and a butter croissant in the cart and look at the price and find the fees ridiculous and wonder if I should just force myself out of bed and up the street to where my car is parked and drive to the Gower Gulch instead. But then I remember my heartbreak and decide that if there is ever going to be a morning to pay thirty dollars for someone to bring me a fucked up frozen croissant and three-hundred calorie cup of coffee, it is this morning.
I specifically request for my Postmate, a guy on a motorcycle named Davide, to bring my fucked up frozen croissant and three-hundred calorie cup of coffee directly to my front door. I give Davide the courtyard gate code and tip him well and everything, but the bitch does not comply. So I tie a kimono on over my bra and go all the way out through the courtyard to meet him. He is very handsome which disarms me and puts an end to my annoyance almost instantly. The air smells like fire and the sky is thick and yellow and confronting the morning light feels good, invigorating.
At seven, I finish editing. I paste the diaries into the blog and pick a title and a picture and publish and feel light inside. Seven a.m. The earliest I’ve published diaries to the blog on a Sunday morning in weeks. Months, maybe. I take a bite of my butter croissant. Tastes like nothing. Don’t know what to do with myself, really. I am free bleeding into my white bed sheets and feeling like sleeping soon is a pipe dream. Might give up, skip sleep entirely, get into my car, drive to St. Vincent de Paul and spend a small amount of money on a large amount of clothing to make myself feel better about everything.
I check the blog for comments. The first reads: you will be just fine. I reply: it’s been twelve hours since he left. I haven’t slept yet and can’t imagine sleeping soon. The sun is up. I haven’t cried since 3AM but I have been on the verge once or twice. Should I get high and wait in bed until sleep happens to me or should I get dressed and find coffee and drive to the charity shop I like ten miles away and spend a small amount of money on a large amount of clothing? I receive the answer I want to receive. Which is perfect because I am just beginning to feel bad for myself again, to cry and miss him, remember the way he’d kiss my shoulders in the morning. But this is nothing that cannot be forgotten (at least for a little while) in the densely packed aisles of a Lincoln Heights charity shop.
I sit in bed and roll a joint and smoke it. I put the first episode of the new season of Love Island USA on the TV and think about Tom and cry all throughout the introduction until I look up at the screen and happen to see a beautiful girl with a robotic leg lip syncing to a stupid song. Which immediately puts an end to my tears and dissociates me from my sad reality and immerses me into The Villa. God, I love this fucking show.
At nine, the urge to call Cal and ask him to come over and spend the day watching Survivor in my bed with me arrives. I push the urge away and get out of bed instead somehow. I go into the bathroom and look at my pink, puffy face in the mirror and brush my teeth. I put on a tank top and sweatpants and mini Uggs and collect my wallet and my vape and my keys and force myself out of the front door and up the block to where I parked my car. For morale.
Walking up the hill, I pass these two kids getting out of the backseat of a beater, evidently being dropped off to spend time with their father who is standing in front of a dilapidated apartment complex. He bends low to hug and kiss them. They look so happy to see him. The kids are so young and tiny and when I hear him say how have you guys been, which implies missed time, I feel like I might cry. Today is Father’s Day. On top of everything.
On Riverside Drive, the sky is white and the palm trees are enshrouded in a low fog and the vines hang long over the overpass. Everything is blanketed in clouds but there will not be rain. No. The blanket is thin and there is bright light on the other side. I look out through the windshield and think: the city mirrors me, like an externalized nervous system. Any minute now, the sun will start to burn through the clouds.
Still, would kill for a klonopin.
I spend an hour inside St. Vincent de Paul. I fill a blue cart with clothes I don’t particularly like, get a little depressed and bored, put everything back on a rack and decide to leave with nothing. But then, on my way out, I pass the home section and end up purchasing a sapphire beaded rosary with a gold crucifix, a small white diner mug with a single dark green stripe, a pair of candle holders, a tiny crystalline stash box and a little brass tray shaped like a seashell. Treasures. When the cashier finishes scanning my things and tells me that my total is twenty one dollars I feel lucky.
On the drive back to Hollywood, I take the streets instead of the freeway because it sounds like a nice way to waste time. I think about Tom. I turn do not disturb off for the first time since he left last night and find that he called three times. I consider the power I hold in this moment and do not feel prepared to give it up. At least not now. Not yet. Who knows, might give it up tonight.
I pull off on Western into the Lazy Acres parking lot. Charity shop treasures in a paper bag on the passenger seat, heart aching I go inside and purchase two bags of air fried kettle chips, cherries, trail mix, dark chocolate, Annie’s cheddar bunnies, two enormous bottles of Essentia and a refrigerated box of tiramisu. Coping food, obviously. I park two blocks away from the bungalow in a spot where I know I won’t get a ticket and carry my bags uphill. Thinking of nothing but Love Island and my fluffy bed and the joint I am about to smoke.
At five, Tom calls.
I need to see you, he says.
Not now.
Over the course of the evening I smoke four joints, watch six and a half episodes of Love Island and eat about one thousand calories worth of coping food. I get bloated and hate myself. I go into the bathroom. I put my hair up and run my bamboo toothbrush under hot water and then snake it down my throat until a satisfying amount of coping food is out of my body and into the sink.
And at ten, Tom calls again.
I am going crazy, he says.
I am going to sleep.
Monday
Open my eyes. Nine a.m. Alone in bed. I am sweating a little and there are five missed calls on my phone. One from my mother and four from Tom. And a text from each. Tom says good morning. My mother says call me please.
So I call my mother from bed and spend half an hour listening while she psychoanalyzes the behaviors and habits of my half brother’s twelve year old son, Eli, who is currently nine days into a ten day summer stay at her house in Las Vegas. She complains about my brother’s lax parenting and confides in me about her anxiety that Eli might be looking at things God wouldn’t want him to be looking at on his unmonitored iPhone. She tells me that she is cancelling her trip to DC for the Fourth of July to drive up to LA and see me instead. She says she will come with her car this time and both of her dogs and two weeks worth of clothes so that she can stay with my aunt in Burbank for as long as she wants, until she feels like going home. She says I can’t wait to meet Tom and I say ummmmm mmhmm.
I keep looking at Tom’s good morning. I think about him and then I think about my power and then I think about him some more. I send good morning back and before a minute passes, he’s calling. I pick up. He begs to see me. I say fine, not now, later, but fine.
We hang up. I vacuum all over and change the litter and clean the sinks in the kitchen and bathroom with bleach and make the bed and shove stray things into cabinets and closets until I look around and feel pretty good, feel better. Then I run the bath hot and get in and exfoliate and shave everywhere. Reach for my toothbrush and can’t find it because I threw it out last night after using it as a tool to aid digestion (engage in self harm). I sigh and dry off. Put on a tiny black cotton halter neck dress and sit in my bed and get stoned in preparation of reuniting with my control freak boyfriend.
And before two, my control freak boyfriend is standing on my doorstep in jeans and a white tee shirt with clean hair and weed and a carton of apricots in his hand.
After an hour of French kissing and reconciliation, Tom tells me that his car needs to be looked at and asks me if I’ll come with him to the service center on Wilshire. Fine. So we get into his car and drive over and when we pull in, it’s nostalgic. He says remember the first time you came here with me? and I say yes and try to remember something specific about that day and can’t think of anything other than the denim Stussy shirt I bought that morning on La Brea to wear over my dress before I met him there.
The guys at the service center tell Tom that they’ll need the car for the afternoon. So we walk down 4th Street and sneak into Park La Brea behind an old woman with a ratty little dog. The physical and energetic atmospheres are each equal parts numb and placid. The mundane, manicured landscaping of Park La Brea. The tepid weather. The banal conversation. The blunted feeling. We wander the grounds with a lit joint, exit through a set of gates on 3rd Street, cross, walk through Pan Pacific Park and into the Erewhon on Beverly.
I shop alone while Tom and the dog, who is not allowed inside, wait at a little wooden table on the sidewalk. It’s crowded and I feel hot and agitated. I go to the tonic bar and order a cowboy brew and a cococcino and then walk around while I wait and purchase spicy tofu, dried mango and a very perfect looking container of cut kiwi. And just as I am on my way out, passing through the doors, cradling my things and walking quickly, I pass a beautiful girl with a familiar face walking in. She has her arm looped through a man’s and she is leaning into him and saying I think I want a smoothie. We lock eyes and it registers who she is. Kai’s sister. And she’s giving me this look like my familiar face has registered for her too, but neither of us say anything. Keep walking.
Tom and I walk down Beverly to Fairfax and then down Fairfax into The Grove. We do a lap around the farmer’s market and then the main square and I can’t stop thinking about Brandy Melville and say I want to buy underwear. Tom says amazing. So we go through the little alley past See’s and Drake’s stupid store and the pizza cafe and a line of like, one hundred people waiting for La La Land and enter Brandy Melville. The security guard looks at the dog and then at Tom and shrugs and waves us in. We roam around both floors of the store. I stuff my arms with cotton bralettes and underwear. And when we go to check out, the disdainful teenage sales girl (who interrupts our interaction to roll her eyes and scream NEXT at a vacant girl waiting in line on behalf of her shy coworker at the till next door) announces the total and Tom taps his card. I feel self conscious in front of the disdainful teenage sales girl but kiss his cheek anyway. And to my surprise, when I turn back to her, she smiles earnestly and says have a great day you guys and really kind of sounds like she means it.
On the walk back up Wilshire to the service center, Tom and I stop at Walgreens so that I can buy a bottle of organic coconut water and a new toothbrush. We make it back to Hollywood around seven. There’s a perfect parking spot on my block and when we collapse into my bed with the air conditioning on, he says feels so good to be home. I ignore the word home and integrate the sentiment. We sit in the low light with our laptops and a bag of dried mango with the bedroom windows open until ten p.m.
And at ten p.m., we leave the bungalow for the Target on Sunset and Western because I need cat food and Tom needs some adapter. We listen to Larry June in the car. Warm summer night. The moon is small and bright white and sliced in half in the sky. And it’s so beautiful but I feel a little bit sick, looking at it through Tom’s windshield. Half moons always remind me of that slit open eye in Un Chien Andalou.
For dinner: Superba delivery. The usual perfect feast. Bread with salted butter and fresh cheese and brussel sprouts and Caesar salad and rigatoni bolognese. We get stoned and eat every last bit in bed and everything feels nice. Fall asleep watching Succession and holding each other codependently tight.
Tuesday
I wake up in the middle of the night, itching all over, thighs and stomach and neck and chest covered in tiny flesh colored welts. I untangle myself from Tom and go into the bathroom and get close to the mirror and pull up my shirt. Blood underneath my fingernails. Skin covered in scratch marks. I open up the medicine cabinet, swallow a benadryl and get back into bed.
Seven a.m. White sheet-staining period sex. Then Tom gets into the shower and takes a work call from my living room. I continue to lay. Touch my stomach. Survey my rash. Wonder if it’s diet or stress. Hope it’s diet. Something more scientific. A matter of elimination. Feel excited by the idea that my rash is a matter of diet because now I get to conduct a new set of experiments on myself. I get up. Shower. Reach into the black paper bag, take the tags off of a new bra and then a new pair of underwear, put them on and get back into bed. I push open the curtain a little, let in the green light, open up the window and then my laptop.
At ten, Tom finds me in the bedroom and tells me he has an hour free. So we walk down Franklin in the warm gloom to Solar de Cahuenga even though I hate Solar de Cahuenga. We sit beneath a plastic tree on a leather couch with stuffing busting from the seams while a stressed out gay guy with bleached hair works the bar alone. We wait thirty minutes for two cappuccinos and then walk uphill back to the bungalow.
At one, Tom leaves Hollywood for a meeting in Beverly Hills. While he is gone I shampoo my hair in the shower, dry off, go into the closet, take the tags off of another new bralette and pair of underwear and put them on. I light a joint and lift the blood-stained top sheet off of the bed and find that nothing seeped through and feel relieved. I go into the kitchen and eat cherries and Annie’s cheddar bunnies. I take pictures of my body in the mirror. I feel unsatisfied with the way that I look. I do one hundred hip dips on the hardwood floor. I try on a pair of white cotton bloomers I bought at that thrift store in Ojai a couple of months ago. I like the way they feel. I don’t take them off. I do another hundred hip dips on the hardwood floor.
Later, after sunset, sitting at the kitchen nook across from the giant vase of rotting roses, enveloped in their beautiful smell, I watch Tom make spaghetti bolognese and listen while he tells me that despite understanding my hesitant position, he believes that I should at least consider accompanying him to tour a couple of apartments. Let’s really embody the reality, he says. Sounds like me. He tells me that he will pay the rent and the bills and everything else, pay for whatever I want, add me as an authorized user to his card. He says that his budget for rent has no limit and that I can pick out the place, somewhere beautiful and expensive in the hills or the canyon. Just for a couple of years, of course. Then a mortgage. He spoons the bolognese into two jade bowls and sits across from me and tells me that he wants to give me everything. He smiles. And all you have to do is give me everything in return.
Wednesday
Wake up at noon feeling docile, anesthetized. Briefly wonder what’s the cost of being taken care of? Then think: now is not the time. Sex instead. Smoke a joint. Shower languidly. And at three, a walk down Sunset to Superba for lunch. We sit in the garden and order two black sesame matcha lattes and two chopped chicken salads and bread with salted butter and fresh cheese. He fantasizes aloud about the potential features of our imaginary future apartment. I dissociate a little and stare for too long at the woman sitting two tables away. Thirty something and beautiful and dining alone with her baby, a tiny thing in a striped onesie sleeping in a stroller. She is drinking a glass of wine and eating something I can’t identify out of a low bowl, the sugar snap peas maybe. I feel jealous. I want to have a baby and then put my baby in a striped onesie and bring my baby to Superba.
Tom and I make it back to my apartment around five and lie in my bed and begin to argue and don’t make up until nine. And even though we make up, there is no resolution. The closest thing we have to a resolution is the mutual recognition that we are at an impasse and that it’s getting late and that there is leftover Superba bread and chopped chicken salad in the fridge and that we just want to get high and eat. I say let’s pray about everything for a few days and feel like my mother. He agrees, retrieves the leftovers from the kitchen and gives it a rest. The mood is fragile. Emotionally exhausted. We smoke, pick at the food, watch an episode and a half of Succession in silence and then fall asleep early, something like nine-thirty.
Thursday