On Friday night, Diego came over for some drinks before we were to head out to a bar to go dancing. A friend doing that thing, casually asking about gossip he heard concerning a friend, he said to me, "Wait, so what happened with you and Jacob and C?" I was embarrassed that he had heard about this, had pretty much forgotten about it. I think it was at this point that not only my night, but my entire weekend, began to take on a different course than it otherwise would have. My head started to throb with anger. It was basically a scene from Kill Bill where the Bride sees an enemy, red flashes over her eyes and "Ironside" playing. The beer I was drinking wasn't strong enough to stifle this anger I felt coming over me. I took a shot of whisky immediately. I tried to act casual, asked, "Wait, what did you hear?"
The answer was something along the lines of: "Nothing, just that Jacob and C had been hooking up and you got really jealous and freaked out." I explained what happened to Diego, asked him how he heard about this, heard that C told some person who then told Diego. More flashes of red, "Ironside" blaring.
The reason I was getting so angry is because Diego knew more about this than I did, that it seemed a few people did. I was very angry because Jacob had clearly lied to me when he told me the one time I did freak out on him via text message that C and him were just hanging out, that I was acting crazy. C is a person that we had a threesome with early on in the summer. Jacob continued to have a crush on him after the fact, which I was vaguely aware of in the way he continued to talk about him and the fact that they would often text each other. I was a bit suspicious that there was something more going on, but also didn't really want to know for sure. But a month or so ago, he told me he was having dinner with him at the Indian place that we always went to. That sounded too much like a date to me. It also made me insanely angry that it was at a place the two of us often went together. I was high I believe and stared texting him nasty things, things along the lines of "Have fun hanging out with your new boyfriend." He came home many hours later and told me that they had just been hanging out. I knew he was lying. I know that that Indian place doesn't let you linger post-dinner at your table, that they rush you in and out.
So to hear a story from Diego that contained details confirming Jacob had been lying really, really upset me. Diego and I got very drunk and watched lots of Beyonce videos on YouTube. We did not end up going out. At some point, Jacob came home from work and Diego stumbled home. I asked Jacob why I would be hearing this story from Diego, how he would even know about it, was quite angry that Jacob had shared my feelings with this guy, C, very, very angry that this was now making the rounds of gossip for New York queerdos. Again, he told me that C and him had just been hanging out. I was very drunk and I started yelling truths I knew, told him he was lying, that I knew they had been fucking. He admitted they had been. And it came out, finally, some honesty.
I was angry and felt sick. Something had been broken that I cared a lot about; a schoolyard bully had just stepped on an art project I had made with popsicle sticks. We were supposed to be honest with each other. We had an open relationship, yes, but we were also honest with each other, were supposed to be. This was deception, lying, cheating. I told him that I didn't want to be with him anymore, that he should fucking call C and move in with him. Lying is a huge deal to me and I was quite heartbroken by this. I wanted to go back in time and allow honesty to try to occur, that now and always our relationship would not be capable of total trust, that now I would always have reason to doubt, that I had already been lied to. The thing had been broken, stomped on.
Yesterday, while he was at work, I wondered if I was still supposed to buy him a Christmas present, if we were going to be together or not. I tried to figure out what I wanted, kept wishing I didn't need to, kept wishing he would not have lied to me. I cried because I thought this was something different, because I didn't want to say goodbye to another person close to me, didn't want to have another person floating around in this city that I used to be so close to and now never talk to, a beautiful past conjured with seeing them out at bars, and that contrasted with the sorry state of present things, saying hello and quickly moving past each other. Over texts, we agreed we should talk last night.
He came home and we talked. We ate Mexican food and played on our respective Apple products. Later, I asked him if I should turn off the lights in our bedroom when I saw him asleep in bed, book fallen to his side. He said yes, and told me he also wanted a hug. We hugged and I told him that he couldn't lie to me anymore, ever again, that this other romance needed to end. I turned off the bedroom lights and went into the living room. I read David Remnick's excellent piece about Russia in this week's New Yorker, often having to reread certain paragraphs, his narrative blurring with my own, that despite my eyes scanning these lines and reading them, my mind thought about this boy asleep in the other room and my relationship with him, about what one is to do with life, how one best goes about it, the things we endure.
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