CHAPTER THIRTEEN - CHEATER

Dearest Nurse, there’s something I haven’t told you about when Romeo and I were together…

You have to wear a dress when you go to The Huntington Library Gardens. You just have to. And that's not some pseudo-sexist, presentability-of-a-woman thing, either. Dudes should do it, too. If you don’t, you’re just not getting the full experience. For this evening’s trip, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind as to what dress I was going to wear.

Since I bid my (temporary?) farewell to Romeo on August 20th, I have been fantasizing about what the 24th of September will be like. How I’ll be standing, with my back to him, and my long hair out and wavy. How he’ll approach. What I’ll say…

“Did you just not want to stand me up?” With a hopeful half smile. He’ll smirk, shake his head ever so, pull me in by my waist, and kiss me. And in that moment I’ll know, I’ll know all the waiting and all the work was worth it.

And for whatever reason, whenever I have this fantasy, I’m always wearing the same dress. A strappy, sleeveless, black number with an open back, showing off my square shoulders, toned arms, and tattoos. I love my tattoos. But this mysterious dress, I did not have.

“Check out Free People,” CB had said during our order-in sushi dinner night, “I think they have what you’re looking for.” Career trophy wives know what they’re talking about when it comes to clothes.

I got on the website, searched for about five seconds, and there it was. And to my absolute shock and glee, it was under 80 bucks. When does that ever happen? It had to be mine, and so, it arrived in the mail three days later.

I slipped it on this afternoon like the sexy goddamn glove it is. I had gotten it in my head that I had to wait until the 24th to wear it for the first time, and then had a revelation: fuck that. This dress makes me feel like a million bucks, and I want that right now, Romeo or no Romeo. And so that’s what I did.

I had another topic planned for today’s post, but on the way to Pasadena, a song came up on my Yaz Pandora station that tugged at my heart and caught my attention: Midnight from the Upstairs at Eric’s album my mother used to play when I was a kid. I always loved the song, but I never really paid attention to what it was about. Today, however, was a different story. All I could hear was the pain in the voice of a woman who had done her lover wrong. Done him wrong by cheating, and now there was no going back.

I’ve thought about what I’m going to tell you many times since this whole thing began. I thought about it on the way to see Romeo that Friday night on the rooftop bar. I wanted to put it behind me, to hide it, tuck it away forever in a mental box labeled “junk”, have it sit in my mental car for a few months, and then take it to my mental Good Will… but that’s not what this project is about, is it?

So, here it goes: I cheated on Romeo when we were together. And no, he doesn’t know about it.

But here’s the thing, I. have. cheated. on. every. person. I. have. ever. been. with.

My first boyfriend who I lost my virginity to? Cheated on him with my gay friend one night in the high school gymnasium. The older Italian guy with the mustang? Cheated on him with the hottest guy in my grade. First college boyfriend? Cheated with a kid in my acting class who bragged about getting girls to go down on him and doing nothing in return. (I couldn’t let that one go. I got him to go down on me for a half an hour, got up, and left. Stupid punk.) Second college boyfriend was the incredible J, a love of all loves, and I cheated on him passionately, ruthlessly, and repeatedly with one of the most incredible actors I had ever seen. I needed to own that kind of talent however I could. Then the last college boyfriend? Cheated on him with a gorgeous woman I still fantasize about, as well as his best friend.

I’m not crazy. I knew what I was doing was wrong, but I was also conflicted about where that wrongness was coming from. It seemed to me it was only wrong because if they knew about it, they would be hurt. But the morality attached to monogamy never seemed to apply. I knew I was supposed to feel badly about it. Society tells you as much. But what I discovered, was that I could feel deeply and passionately about more than one person at the same time. It mystified me. I thought surely after a night with one, my feelings would be dampened for the other. That’s how we’re supposed to work, isn’t it? But they never were. In fact, in most cases, the flame one lit under me just poured gasoline on the other. My fire could burn in many places.

What usually ended those relationships, however, was the guilt. Not guilt over my lack of feeling for them, or love lost because of my infidelity, but because I was lying to them. I had committed myself to being with them and only them, because I thought that’s what I had to do. I was actively betraying their trust, and, try as I might, I couldn’t get past that.

With Romeo back in the winter of 2005/2006, things were a little different. As I’ve said, Romeo was the we-do-this-until-it-isn’t-fun-anymore guy. Yes, we had said we would be monogamous, but when we discussed it, it seemed the concern for him was more about STDs than anything else. Remember, he was afraid of commitment, so whether he felt this way or no, that’s how it sounded. Nonetheless, I had agreed to be exclusive. Again, because I thought I had to. He’s my boyfriend, and that’s what you do when you have a boyfriend. You shut that door. Or, you try to...

I went back to New York City for the Christmas holiday that year, and coincidentally, that was also where my last college boyfriend lived. We’ll call him JH.

JH is a fucking card. There’s no other way to describe him. He’s off-the-chain brilliant, hilarious, and always on. He also tends toward extremes, Howard Hughes-ing it up in his college apartment, not bathing and peeing in bottles at the end of his senior year while completing his triple major. But even then, he never lost his sense of humor. Even when I accidentally missed a few birth control pills, told him not to cum in me, and he forgot, resulting in an unwanted pregnancy and abortion, he never stopped joking. And, honestly, I was grateful for that. Every once and a while he still texts me on mother’s day, a sick salute to the cluster of cells we made when we were way too young to see it through. We have the same crooked sense of humor. I knew then I’d always love him. I always will in my own way, and he loves me in his. I know this about JH.

JH is also the only boyfriend I never broke up with. I couldn’t. Yes, I had cheated on him, but remember, that had nothing to do with how I felt about him. I could have stayed with him in New York. (Lord knows what my life would look like if I did. He’s a white-collar felon now, so that might give us a hint.) But I knew my destiny lay in Los Angeles. I had waited my whole life to get out there, and now that I was done with school (for the time being, but I didn't know that then) I couldn’t let anything stop me. Not love, not money, not JH. And so, rather than some tearful goodbye I knew I couldn’t handle, I wrote a note, slipped it under his apartment door, and headed out west. I cried a little that day, not gonna lie.

That winter was the first time I had seen JH since I'd left. And though I had fallen for Romeo by then, my feelings for JH were - you guessed it! - still there. Once again I found my affections for two different men - who coincidentally share the same birthday - were not mutually exclusive.

Sex with JH had always been fun because we made a big production out of it. Lots of moaning, groaning, dirty talk, and wild positions. It wasn’t the best sex - we’ve been over that - but fucked if it wasn’t fun. And so, in honor of fun, and the year we had spent together, we had sex, once, in my childhood bedroom in Manhattan.

I can still remember sitting on the living room couch the next day as my father cooked Christmas dinner. Smelling turkey and listening to his Roaches Christmas album as I stared at the carpet and thought of Romeo. I was his first real girlfriend. We had just agreed to live together, and now look at what I'd done. Did I feel any less for him? No. Did I miss him and want him and love him with my whole manic 22-year-old heart? Yes. Sleeping with JH hadn’t changed a thing about that. But I knew that if Romeo had seen the show JH and I had put on the day before, he’d be crushed. We even talked on the phone that day. I didn’t say a word about it. I never have.

“And I don’t want to be exclusive.” I had said to Romeo during that whirlwind reunion a few weeks back, as we laid sideways on my bed, breathless and post-coital. “I don’t think I ever want to be exclusive again.”

“Okay.” He chirped with a shrug. I knew of all the men I had ever known, Romeo was the one who might just be okay with this.

But I said a lot of things a few weeks ago. A lot of things that came directly from the fact that I had just gotten out of a ten-year marriage and was desperate to never feel that sadness, desperation, and isolation ever again. So, I said things designed to protect myself, and to hell with anyone else who might be in the equation.

I told Romeo I never wanted to get married again, never wanted to live with someone, never wanted to have any more kids no matter what, never wanted to commit myself to anyone, and that I wanted to be free to fool around with whomever I wanted whenever I wanted.

I realized the day before we parted ways that some of this A. wasn’t fair, and B. wasn’t true. I don’t want to get married again, that much is true, but I do want to commit myself to someone again. I love the idea of a long-term relationship. Growing with someone. Knowing them more intimately than anyone, and them knowing me. Loving me beyond my faults, beyond my bad habits, beyond my past. That was what I had wanted with Paris. Why I stayed as long as I did. But it never, ever happened. He may have kept loving me in his own, strange way, but my faults were always at the forefront of every argument, every day, and sometimes in every passing glance. Most of the time I felt like he really didn’t like me.

I remember the day I asked Paris about potentially, maybe, kind of having an open relationship, sorta. I had been thinking about it for weeks, a co-worker of mine telling me about her open marriage and how great it was for them. I had finally mustered the courage to broach the subject, and in a half a second, wished the words had never entered my mind, let alone come out of my mouth.

“WHAT!?” Paris had said, his dark eyes burning with hatred… or was it fear?

“Never mind….” I tried to retreat, but like a back brake on a child’s bike, all I did was stall.

“No! What?… how could you?”

He looked at me like I was scum. Shit on the bottom of his shoe. Just asking was a betrayal, and I felt in that moment he would never forgive me. Like he never did forgive me…

Because, Dearest Nurse, when I said I cheated on everyone I had ever been with, that means I cheated on Paris, too.

We were half-way through our first year of marriage. Both only children coming from single parents, there was no one around to tell us just how hard the first year could be. To top it off, I had started an incredibly demanding graduate program overseas. Paris had come with me, but, not being legal in the Asian city state as I was, had to scrape for work, getting paid under the table in a country with corporal punishment for such things. It was brutal.

A few months in, I missed a period. Turns out, I was just really stressed, but at the time, I feared I could be pregnant. I told Paris, who was on his way to another country on a job he had gotten for a few weeks. There was a long silence on the phone. Did he give a shit? Plus, I had found oddly flirtatious messages on his Facebook with a woman he had met out there. Who was this guy and what had I gotten myself into?

So, that night, feeling very self destructive, I went out with a few kids from my program, got wasted, and made out with one of them in his apartment. I wanted to have sex with him, badly, but I didn’t.

“I’m not ending my marriage!” I shouted in the middle of things, unprompted and out of nowhere. And that’s when I called myself a cab.

The next day I wanted to kill myself. Really and truly. I gazed out of the 30 story window of the apartment we had rented with a Parisian couple, willing my hungover self to jump. To end it. This is what I dreaded. I literally had nightmares about cheating on Paris. I had finally found someone willing to marry me, and this is what I did, after only six months.

The guilt ate at me like a hungry demon. Just chewed and chewed and chewed. Some days I thought I was fine. For weeks, even. And then the demon would come back, gnashing its teeth, ready for more pain. And so, over a year later, I finally told him.

“No. No!” He had cried at first, holding his head in his hands. Then he had raged, pointing a finger in my face like he wanted to gouge my eyes out. He put his hand around my throat at one point, screaming. But I just stood there, stoic. I was ready to take it. All he had to give, because I deserved it. I had betrayed him, and I was willing to accept whatever he needed to dole out.

“This stays here.” He finally said, and he meant it.

We never talked about it again. Not over the next nine years, and not through two rounds of couple’s therapy. It was dead, but never really buried. I should have known asking about an open relationship wouldn’t go over well.

But just because I feel like I never want to be exclusive again now, doesn't mean I’ll never want to be exclusive again ever, does it? Like I said, in spite of the laundry list I had given to Romeo of all the things I didn’t want, I have realized through this process, that some of them, I might…

Like I said, I want to be with someone in a long-term relationship at some point. It didn’t work out great with Paris, but that doesn’t mean it can’t with someone else.

And on the kids front, I know me. I don’t want to have any more kids now because I have a two-year-old who drives me fucking insane. Who can think about making more people when you have that on your plate? I was the same way with Big. I couldn’t even fathom having another child until she was four years old, going to preschool regularly, and I had a couple years of feeling like a normal human being again. And then, once I did, I wanted Little more than you can imagine. I dreamed of her. I panicked over the trouble we had conceiving, imagining that she would never come to be. My baby. The second baby I just knew I needed. And it turns out, in spite of the hair I've lost since her arrival, I do.

So, do I really know right now that I’ll never want to have another child? No. I don’t. I still have a few fertile years left, and who knows? I might want to use them. I also might not. Right now it's difficult to fathom, but, like I said, I’ve been here before and things changed.

I also said I never wanted to share a home with a significant other again. But in recent weeks, that is also something I’ve come to wonder about. Do I like having my apartment to myself right now? Hells yes. But am I also a nester? Indelibly attracted to domesticity? Hells yes, yet again. I like waking up next to someone special. As I mentioned, Paris and I hadn’t shared a bed for years before I left him, but that was never what I wanted. Morning sex is favorite, along with snuggles and coffee in bed. So even though I don’t want to share my space right now, that doesn’t mean I’ll feel this way forever. Again, it’s hard to imagine, but I know my nature, and I am a domestic beast at heart.

Which left me with the issue of monogamy. Was I just saying I never wanted to be exclusive again because of what I had been through? The awful year of guilt over cheating on Paris, and then afterwards, feeling trapped in a sexless, passionless marriage, convinced romance had left my life forever?

It was a question worth asking.

But just like sharing my home with someone, I had to look at my nature. I have never been monogamous in my entire life. I tried. I tried because that’s what I had agreed to, because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do, but I was working against my own nature. Monogamy has just never agreed with me, and that’s the honest truth.

Was what I did to all those boys wrong? Yes. Absolutely. Because I agreed to be with them and only them, and I violated that agreement. But was it wrong because you can only have romantic feelings for one person? Wrong because we as human beings are meant to be with only one partner at a time? And are we bad humans if we aren’t built for that? For me, now, after giving this a shitload of thought, I think not. My answer is no, and it will always be no.

And so, if it is in my nature to “cheat”, I will take cheating off the table altogether. Not by being monogamous, but by refusing to write checks my ass can’t cash. I can not agree to be exclusive ever again because, what I think, is that I am an ethical non-monogamist.

Wow. That feels amazing to write.

Omigosh, I’m going to try this again. I am AN ETHICAL NON-MONOGAMIST.

Fuck. If only I had the courage to say that back in college. Back when I first met Romeo. The courage or the wherewithal… I just didn’t know I could. I honestly didn’t know.

But I know it now. I know it with every fiber of my being, and I will never compromise who and what I am for a relationship again. It’s just not worth it. Because at some point, I will step out, and I never, ever want that stepping out to be cheating again. And I won’t let it. It sucks and it’s wrong, and I have suffered for it along with the men I betrayed, for many, many years.

Romeo said he was okay with that, and you know what? I believe him. Funny, it’s hard to imagine now wanting to be with anyone aside from Romeo, but there will come a time. JH is still single. That’s supposed to be a joke, but it’s also true. And you know what? Fuck it. Who knows? I’m tired of being a square peg in my own life, trying to squeeze into a round hole. I never make promises I can’t keep in my career, why the fuck would I do it in my personal life? Well, no more.

And will I tell Romeo about what happened with JH back when we were together? One hundred percent. Not just because I’m tired of hiding who I truly am, but because he deserves to know. It’s never too late to show people the respect they deserve, and I am all about respect. It’s called ETHICAL non-monogamist, remember?

So, in sum, I was a cheater, Dear Nurse. And a serial one at that. And though I have a lot to figure out when it comes to the other items on the list I served up to Romeo a few weeks back, the one thing I do know for sure is that I will never, ever cheat again, because I will never promise monogamy. It’s just not in my blood.

Sincerely yours,

Juliet