Can't Think Straight:. Kiri Blakeley
people and thinks this is a better way to get out of the relationship.”
Aaron always wanted to be a rock star. Not too many record labels were rushing to sign up near middle-aged men, but his latest self-produced CD had gotten some college radio play, and he booked a future gig in upstate New York. I’d planned to go until he made some noises that “the band” didn’t want girlfriends tagging along. He’d also been exchanging a lot of text messages with the new girl in the band, Amber. Some long-dormant jealousy had stirred, and we had a couple of mild arguments about it. But Aaron had said, firmly, “I am not attracted to Amber.” And I believed him.
In our ten years together, I had never once suspected Aaron of straying. He never even looked at other women. If someone had told me he was cheating on me, I would have held out both my arms and said, “If you can prove this is true, cut them off. That’s how much I know you are wrong.”
Could this whole gay thing be what Tyler posited? That Aaron didn’t have any sexual issues other than wanting to tour with his band, have groupies, and fuck Amber?
Could anyone be this diabolical?
I pad into the living room and wake Aaron up. I sit across from him in the same chair I’d been in last night when he’d told me, in the same position, as if there hadn’t been a break in the conversation.
“Tyler thinks you just want to be single,” I say.
“Well, that’s not true.” He hesitates. “I’ve been looking at gay porn. Does that convince you?”
I’m surprised about him looking at any kind of porn, let alone gay porn. Sex shops, toys, role-playing, porn. Over the years, I’d suggested all of it. “Sure,” Aaron would say, his disinterest obvious. None of it ever happened.
I return to the bedroom to cry some more. I can’t be near this complete stranger. I call the magazine I write for, Forbes, and leave a rambling message on my supervisor’s machine about being sick.
Aaron decides to go into work for a few hours. As soon as he leaves, I run to our computer. Although we shared the Mac, I had never been to his side of it. It had never occurred to me to snoop on him. I’d done a little spying in our first year together, as I was jealous of an ex-girlfriend and kept looking for evidence that he was still in love with her. But after months of finding nothing, I’d lost interest.
And now, bubbling up from the deep recesses of my memory, his password comes to me. He’d mentioned it offhandedly maybe eight years ago. It hadn’t entered my mind since. I didn’t even know if it was still the same.
The password works. I click into his personal folder. I see JPEGs. I open them. There are pictures of Aaron—of his beard (which he refused to shave off, no matter how much I complained), of his face (he pouts into the camera like Zoolander doing Blue Steel), of his erect cock. That one is labeled “Piece.”
I see videos with names like Big Balls. I do not open them; the names are quite enough, thank you. I see pictures of muscular policemen in leather, like something out of the Village People. I’m almost more shocked at the bad taste—how cliché!—than the homosexuality.
I go to the browser history and pull down the menu.
Over and over, Craigslist ads come up. I click into them: M4M. Oral sex party this Saturday! Man looking to hook up tonight! Want to suck your cock right now!
Worst of all, many of them order: No condoms!
Oh … my … God …” my friend Julie breathes into the phone.
I’ve just told her what is happening. Julie has known Aaron for as long as I have. I read her a few Craigslist ads, and, since she’s a writer who works from home, tell her I am coming over.
I get on the F train and stumble off at her stop. I stand on the street corner, completely disoriented. I have been to Julie’s apartment dozens of times, and yet it’s as if I stand in the middle of a strange city I’ve never been in before. I call her from my cell.
“I don’t know how to get there,” I say. I can feel the hysteria rising, my breathing getting shallow and rapid.
“Take a left,” Julie stresses. “A left.”
“Oh God,” I wail. “Which way is left?!”
Julie has to come get me.
I call Aaron at work. “You’ve been cheating on me,” I say, taking a chance. I don’t really know if he has responded to any of the ads.
Aaron is silent. Then I know it is true.
“How long as this been going on?” I ask in a monotone.
“Two years,” he says.
I only go home to get some things so I can stay at Julie’s. I warn Aaron not to be there. I try to go straight for what I need and not look at the rest of the apartment: the furniture, the appliances, pictures on the walls, knickknacks. Anything and everything we had bought together. Anything and everything a big fat lie.
There is a long handwritten note on the kitchen island. I can barely look at it. My eyes fall on one sentence:
“I separated sex from love,” it says.
I throw the letter in the trash, where I hope Aaron will see it.
At Julie’s, she and her boyfriend, Jake, occasionally force me to down a little soup. I have zero appetite, but I think of a male friend who, when he found out his girlfriend had cheated on him, stopped eating and ended up in the hospital with an IV drip in his arm. I want to avoid that fate.
I had hardly been in the office all week. Went in for a few hours here and there, just to try to feel normal. It didn’t work. I tell my supervisor, also a friend, what is happening, because I need people to understand why I might appear a red-eyed zombie. “Take whatever time you need,” she tells me.
I cry so much that when I suddenly stop, I wonder if it’s because my body simply can’t produce any more tears. Then I need the stability of familiar surroundings, my cats. I call Aaron and tell him to get out of the apartment. He says he will stay with our friend Ben, who I know is in the process of divorcing his wife.
“Is it him?” I ask. “The timing seems rather coincidental.”
“Ben is not gay so far as I know.”
I don’t know anything anymore. Anything seems possible.
The night I return home, I dig through Aaron’s personal belongings. I find a bank statement, call the number on it, and listen to the automated teller run down his checks and balances. I find his passport and Social Security card and hide them. I have no idea what I’m doing other than trying to figure out whom I’ve been living with for ten years. Maybe I’d discover identification that said he was someone else—someone who’d been on the run for a long time, who had been holing up with me, pretending to be Aaron, pretending to be a straight man who loved me and wanted to marry me.
I sleep on the couch with pillows stuffed up against me for comfort. I can’t be alone in our bed; I’m terrified I will smell him on the sheets. I leave the lights and TV on all night, like I’m five years old and scared of ghosts.
In the morning, there’s that initial moment when I swim to consciousness and life is familiar and normal for a half a second—then everything rushes back, and I’m trapped in a strange new world I can’t shake off.
Occasionally, someone puts forth a theory as to why Aaron has chosen this particular time to come out. One friend suggests that it’s all an ego thing—since my career is doing better than his. After all, while Aaron was sputtering along with his homemade CDs and sparsely attended local gigs, I’d been in Los Angeles, making the rounds of Oscar parties for my Forbes celebrity beat. At the Vanity Fair shindig, I’d accidentally