Thirty Nine: Hookers and Truckers
A month after Gabrielle moved out, I felt no better. In fact, I felt worse. I returned on a Monday after Zac and Kate’s wedding to a bed that was calling my name. I spent an entire weekend socializing with family, playing the role of the loving father who attentively chased his children around the reception, and pretending to be happy for Zac and Kate.
I guess I was happy for my little brother. I wanted my siblings to find true love and marry the girls they loved more than anything, just not before me. I resented that it was so easy for Zac and Kate to be together.
I crashed in my bedroom around 12 in the afternoon the day I returned home from the wedding and didn’t wake up until ten the following morning when Natalie gently shook me.
“I’m tired,” I mumbled instinctively as I pulled the covers over myself and tried to ward her away. “Let me sleep.”
“Hunnie, you’ve been sleeping for an entire day. You’re worrying me how much you’re sleeping… get up and let me cook you something to eat,” she babied me, but it was the one thing I appreciated from her so that’s why she did it. Taking care of myself was work, and my life goal at that point in my life was being as lazy as possible.
As much as love food, and especially my wife’s food, I still couldn’t seem to get myself out of bed. I’d lost my appetite months ago.
“I’m not hungry,” I groaned, burying my face in my pillow.
“Taylor…” she whispered, rubbing my back and sighing slowly before continuing her coaxing that I knew wasn’t over yet. “Hun, you’ve slept for 22 hours now. You’ve got me worried sick. Maybe you should see Dr. Jacobs…”
Dr. Jacob’s was my psychiatrist who prescribed me anti-depressants that never worked. I needed pills that would mend my broken heart, not alter the endorphins in my head. He was nice and not overly intrusive, but I still always felt awkward sitting in his office and telling him my life story while he nodded understandingly. As much as I hated my sessions with him, I’d been seeing him for six months and usually visited with him twice a month. It was bearable. I think, subconsciously, I thought he might really be able to help me. When I told him that I was scared I was failing my children, he gave me suggestions on small ways to start changing my role in their lives. When I told him that guilt for how I treated Gabrielle plagued me, he told me how to focus on having positive interaction with her. Most of what he said made sense and although I usually acted unimpressed by his psycho-babble, I really did respect it. I never did put his advice into action once I got out of his office. It required too much energy.
“I have an appointment with him this Friday,” I mumbled, recalling the spot on the calendar in the kitchen that discreetly said “DR. J- 2 PM” on the Friday square.
“I think maybe you should see him this evening. If I can book you an appointment for this evening, will you go?”
“If you let me go back to sleep,” I nodded. I drifted back to sleep not realizing that later that I’d regret that decision that that evening when I’d have to shove my mom’s stuffed shells down my throat and then race to Dr. Jacob’s office to make it on time.
“Your wife is worried about you,” was the first thing he said after he asked about Zac’s wedding. I’d spent the whole previous session rambling about going to it in order to avoid having to talk about my own issues.
“My wife worries a lot,” was my reply.
“She says your entire family is worried… your mom especially.”
“My mom worries even more.”
“Taylor,” he sighed, setting the notebook in his hand aside and leaning in towards me. In response, I leaned away from him and sat straight up in my chair with my head pressed against the leather back.
“Truthfully, I’m worried about you too. It doesn’t sound like you’re doing very well.”
“Of course you don’t think I’m well. If everyone was well, you’d be out of a business.”
He was my third therapist in the course of my life. I saw the first when I was 15 and my mother was nervous about how I was handling all the fame in my life. The second therapist was a result of my parent’s discovery of a baggie of marijuana in dresser drawer when I was 17 years old. Out of all of them, I liked Dr. Jacob’s the best. Imagine how I treated my previous doctors.
“I think everyone needs to work on issues in their life, including myself. Psychotherapy is good for everyone at some point in their lives… I think this just happens to be a point in your life you need it more. I hope we can actually try and work on some of the issues you’ve brought up in previous sessions. You think?”
I shrugged. I was indifferent, and perhaps that was my problem.
“Your wife told me you’ve been sleeping all the time lately, you’ve had no appetite, no energy… she says you’re drifting from the kids again. You were doing so well this past spring with spending quality time with your kids. What happened this past month? I feel like we were making progress, and you’re regressing. I don’t know you well enough to understand this, but I think you understand yourself very well.”
“Gabrielle left,” I said simply and quietly.
“To go where?”
“She got an apartment in downtown Tulsa, I guess. She says I was driving her nuts… she thinks we both need a break of not being around each other.”
“Have you seen her since she left?”
“She’s come by for dinner some nights and one weekend… she flew out for the wedding with the rest of us this past weekend.”
“How did it feel to be around her? Did you feel anymore released from her?”
“No,” I replied flatly. In fact, I felt horrible. Being away from Gabrielle was painful for me.
“It didn’t make seeing her easier…?” he asked tentatively. I guess he was thinking the same thing Gabrielle had- that space would make things hurt less. But I’d told them all… I’d told Gabrielle and I’d told Dr. Jacobs that when I’m apart from Gabrielle, I feel worse.
“I’ve been suffocating ever since she left.”
“Suffocating?”
“She’s my air.”
In the end, Dr. Jacobs forced me to confirm that I wasn’t suicidal (which was true, I wasn’t) and suggested that I try and spend some quality time with my wife. When we actually talked about me and my “issues”, the conversation between he and I was almost completely about Gabrielle. And yet at the end of each suggestions, as he wrapped everything up and gave me goals for the next two weeks, he never mentioned her. It was if he didn’t know what to tell me since he knew the only way to fix me was to tell me to betray my wife. He even suggested, as I was standing up and helping myself to a mint off of his desk, that maybe I attempt to spend “romantic time” with her. He danced around the “sex” word probably due to the 20 year difference between him and me.
Since my wife and I hadn’t slept together in months, when I got home I crept up my bedroom stairs hoping that the kids were asleep. I found her in a towel in the bathroom. Perfect.
“Hey,” I wrapped my arms around her body and kissed her shoulder when I entered the bathroom. She jumped a bit, surprised by my presence.
I wasn’t thrilled to have sex with her. Honestly, I had lost most of my sex drive some time in my life although I wasn’t exactly sure when. I hardly even fantasized about Gabrielle anymore. Sex just no longer thrilled me. It was too exhausting. Although sex wasn’t my favorite activity, I figured if it was one way I could help myself and work on my “issues”, then it was the route to take. Sex was easier than talking to my wife.
“How was Dr. Jacob’s?” she asked in extremely maternal and non-sexy tone of voice.
“Fine,” I mumbled, my lips against her skin as I traced them along her shoulder to her neck. “I missed you,” I added for seduction purposes.
“You missed me? That whole hour you were there?”
“Of course…” I mumbled, frowning when I noticed she had turned on the blow dryer in her hands. “What are you doing?”
“I was planning on blow drying my hair…”
“Don’t blow your hair…” I tried again, pulling her further from the bathroom counter until the blow dryer fell from her hands into the empty sink. “Blow me,” I smirked, impressed with my spontaneous ingenuity.
She laughed and patted my arm gently. “Taylor, I’d love to… but I was all ready to go to bed. I expected you to come home and crash and I’m just really exhausted…”
We almost never had sex, and now that I was actually trying, was my wife actually turning me down? I frowned at her.
“Exhausted?”
“Taking care of your children everyday can be more than tiring,” she said, her voice bordering annoyance.
“I’m actually making an effort here, Nat, and you’re turning me down because of exhaustion?” I asked, just to clarify, and stepped away from her. Suddenly I was angry… at Natalie, at Gabrielle, at Dr. Jacobs, at Taylor Hanson.
“You’ve turned me down because of exhaustion time and time again, Tay. I think you can handle it,” she said, and I think she was trying to make a statement she had wanted to make for months.
“You know what?” I sighed, searching for the words to express my disappointment, my shame, and my anger all at once. “Fuck this… just fuck this.”
That was the best I could come up with. I went to leave the bathroom, but she reached out and grabbed my arm. I angrily shook her off of me.
“I’m sorry, Tay… I’m not that tired… come here and let’s start over.”
“Forget it,” I grumbled, yanking my arm from her and stepping towards the bathroom door. “You already ruined it.”
She stood the before me in a towel that was about to fall with eyes so sad that I couldn’t look into them. I saw what I was doing to my wife, and it killed me. But I couldn’t fix it and I couldn’t motivate myself to change.
“Well I just ruin everything, don’t I Taylor?” she said, but we both knew she was talking about more than sex. We were talking about Gabrielle, about my life, about our mistakes.
“A lot of the time, yes,” I replied but wanted to grab the words back as I watched her eyes well with tears.
“I’m really fucking sorry, Taylor… I’m really fucking sorry you couldn’t have your happily ever after you know, but I’m not fucking happy either.”
She’d said everything she’d been feeling for four years in that single statement, the curses and all. She knew I loved Gabrielle. She knew I preferred Gabrielle. She knew that if it weren’t for our unplanned pregnancy and shot gun wedding that I would still be normal, happy, and healthy- that I’d be spending the rest of my life with Gabrielle Carter in paradise. Natalie resented me for resenting her. She had every right.
“I’m really fucking sorry too…” I mumbled, unable to stand there in the bathroom with her any longer. Her stare was making me feel smaller by the second and I suddenly felt a knot of guilt in my stomach that usually did such a good job of hiding itself.
Somehow, I ended up half an hour later at a bar outside of downtown Tulsa. I took off driving, not really heading in any particular direction although I knew I was heading towards Gabrielle. I stopped at the first bar I saw that looked like it wouldn’t be filled with hookers and truckers.
“Get me something strong,” I mumbled to the bar tender, realizing it was the day I’d always hoped to never have- the day I ran from my wife and coated the pain in bitter liquor. I sat there gulping down drink after drink while I half-heartedly watched ESPN. I felt like a character in a movie- a character that I both pitied and blamed all at once. It all felt so cliché.
After I consumed more in one hour than I probably kept in my own liquor cabinet at home, I got into my car and dialed my cell phone through fuzzy eyes.
“Isaac?” I mumbled into the phone. “Where is Gabrielle’s apartment? Tell me now… don’t fuck around me with… it’s important.”
Detecting that I was shit-faced, he tried to tell me to tell him where I was so he could come get me. But I didn’t want to see my brother. I wanted to see Gabrielle. Eventually, he had no choice but to explain what building she lived in. Somehow, I ended up on her door step pissing in my pants with my face pressed against the doorbell.
“What are you doing here?” she asked me when she swung the door open. “How did you know where I…”
“I don’t even care that my wife doesn’t want to have sex with me,” was what I said, my body rocking and my speech slurred. “I wish I cared, Gabrielle, but I don’t.”
“Come inside,” she wrapped her arms around my waist much like she had during my drunk episode years before. “Are you drunk…?”
“I tried to care! I tried to go out and drink out of anger, but I’m not angry about that!”
“Taylor,” she sighed, pulling me into her warm apartment and letting my fall onto the couch she’d taken from an unused room in my childhood home. The apartment was stifling, although I wasn’t sure if it was because I felt so disoriented and fucked up in general, or if it was because Gabrielle doesn’t believe in air conditioning. She says it feels too artificial and heat is a beautiful thing.
“I didn’t want to have sex with her either.”
“Did you drive here drunk…? Are you stupid?” she lectured and I tried to look at her, but my eyes drunkenly wandered. “I can’t believe you got here alive… did you piss in your pants?”
I covered my hands over my wet jeans and looked sheepishly at her- like a dog who had just pissed on his owner’s couch. And since I was sitting on her couch, I suppose that’s almost exactly what I was.
“Taylor,” she repeated, still trying to figure out what to do with me. “Get up and… I’ll get you a pair of pants or something.”
“I didn’t want to go home,” I managed to articulate when she returned to the room with a pair of her yoga pants that would be too short on me for sure. “Isaac told me where you lived… I didn’t want to go home and let Natalie… baby me. I just… I just…”
“So you came here so I could baby you?” she tossed the pants at me and went into her small kitchen. “Change into those. That’s so gross, Tay…”
I guess if I weren’t so trashed, I would have felt utterly horrified by the situation. Standing there, drunk as hell, I knew the situation was awkward and I even knew I’d regret it all in the morning. But I felt almost shameless as I dropped my pants to the ground and yanked on my boxers. They fell to the floor as well.
“Tay!” she shrieked as she walked back into the room with a glass of water in her hand. “Oh god, just… just go into the bathroom,” she said with her back turned to me.
“It’s not like you haven’t seen it before,” I mumbled as I fumbled the yoga pants in my hands.
“This is completely… I can’t believe you’re standing without pants in my apartment at eleven o’clock at night. Just… put those on.”
I absentmindedly began to wonder just how many men she’d slept with since me- if she’d slept with that fellow she denied as a boyfriend but went on a date with. I wondered how sex with me compared to sex with other men.
“Tay!”
“Alright,” I grumbled, pulling them on, and then added with a drunken chuckle, “Do I have to do yoga in these pants? I hope not cause I think yoga is dumb.”
“You don’t have to do anything in them except… fall asleep on my couch,” she said and set the water next to me, finally feeling brave enough to look at me. She laughed at how short the pants were on me. “And drink that water.”
“Is there ice in it?”
“Taylor, just drink the damn water.”
I chugged it upon her request. I was sick of hurting her, I realized, as she walked back into the kitchen. Harassing her and ignoring her feelings had done nothing but caused her to move away from me. I didn’t want to make fun of her liberal views anymore or harass her about her eccentric style. I didn’t want to insult her career goals or roll my eyes when she introduced the family to tofu. I was done with all of that. I just wanted to love her- plain and simple.
She returned to me with an empty plastic bag that said ALBERTSONS on the side of it. She held it out wide.
“Put those clothes in this…”
Again, I obeyed.
“Call your wife and tell her you’re here, that you’re drunk and are going to pass out on the couch,” she handed me the phone.
And I dialed, but not because I cared about how nervous Natalie was about me but because I wanted to place Gabrielle.
“Hello?”
“Nat? I’m at Gabrielle’s…”
“You’re… why?” her voice sounded nervous when she finally replied.
“I went drinking at the… place at the bar near… I can’t drive home and I was near Gabrielle’s house… place. She said to me to say to you I’m sleeping on her couch.” It was a battle to spit it all out, as expressing my thoughts was nearly impossible in my intoxicated state, but I managed.
“Taylor,” she sighed the same way Gabrielle had. It seemed like everyone had been saying my name in the same tone lately- a heartbroken, distressed tone. “Do you want me to come pick you up?”
“No!” I think I said far too quickly. “I’m tired. I already got undressed and stuff.”
Gabrielle frantically grabbed for the phone and held it to her ear, “I gave him a change of clothes!” she quickly explained, not wanting to give my wife a heart attack. “He pissed himself… so I found him a pair of my pants he could wear. He’s really screwed up, Natalie, so it’s probably best to just let him pass out here and I’ll send him home when he wakes up.”
They talked for a few more moments in a way that bothered me- in a way that caused me to realize just how little they respected me. They’d come to see me as a burden, it seemed like, a child who needed to be monitored.
“He hasn’t thrown up yet so I’m hoping he’ll be okay,” Gabrielle spoke into the phone.
I sat on the couch and stared at the ground, half wondering when it was that I had become so pathetic and half wondering what Gabrielle would do if I tried to kiss her.
“The bathroom is over there,” Gabrielle pointed to a doorway when she hung up. “If you feel sick in the middle of the night, go ahead and use it. If you have to go to the bathroom, don’t go on my couch. Got it?”
I wasn’t a child, I wanted to tell her. I was a grown man who could take care of myself, I almost shouted. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t even fucking take care of myself. I needed my mother to force me to see a psychologist, my wife to make sure I was getting out of bed, and Gabrielle to knot the bag with my urine stained clothes and place it by the door. I had once been a self-reliant, strong man with aspirations and a love for life. Somehow, along the road of my depression, I had withered to nothing more than a pathetic child again.
“I’m sorry,” was my only verbal response to my revelation.
“You’re sorry about what?” Gabrielle looked down at me.
“That I’m fucking everything up,” I sighed, laying down on her couch and trying to get comfortable. “I’m sorry about fucking it all up, Gab.”
And I didn’t even try to kiss her. I slept the night at her house without sneaking by her bedroom trying to catch a glimpse of her in her underwear or making any sexual innuendos in her direction. She deserved my respect.