Chapter 9

2020 was rolling along. There’d been more dates and more wasted hours – each time a slight variation on last but always ending the same. Bryn and I went out for a girls’ Saturday. We ate boeuf bourguignon and sipped sparkling wine at a quaint French bistro. We strolled amongst the remaining quaint shops of Old City, a neighborhood morphing into a playground for the crowds from Jersey as they came in for raucous party weekends. Storefronts closed – systematically bought out by restaurant after restaurant.  As women in their 30s do, we bought extortionately priced scented candles and chatted about life and love – or lack thereof. 

I never thought my friends meant any harm as they gave me their dating insights – sometimes lofty and unrealistic, other times harsh and bitterly pointed. For many of them, it’d been a long time since they’d been single and their insights felt, well, dated. 

A bit of advice last month flipped to its exact opposite the next week. Find someone who enjoys the same things and has the same values – but also make sure he “looks nice.” Be open to possibilities and get out there – but remember to take care of yourself. Get out of your comfort zone, give new types of guys a chance – but remember to focus on what you’re really looking for, never settle.

All of my best friends met their guys in real life – two at parties, and one at a wedding. What a cliché! Like your friends have nothing better to do than make eyes across table number seven at someone at a wedding, like they’re in a rom-com, fall in love, get married and have a baby. Sigh. I needed to keep my eyes peeled, alert to any and all possibilities. 

I wondered: Maybe I should go to the dog park more? Maybe I should spend a little more time perusing the aisles of Whole Foods, really inspect the fiber content between breakfast cereals? Maybe I should rock up to a bar, looking cute, drinking a dirty manhattan all by myself? On the other hand, better not to portray myself as an alcoholic dog owner who was a bit irregular and smelled of olives.

The advice wasn’t so much the problem as its repetition. I’d heard that record too many times before – five years of playing and it skipped and wobbled round the turntable. The long and short of it was, I was lonely. Everyone’s answer was always, what about your dog? What about your roommate? You’re not alone! But let me tell you, a partner isn’t the same as a dog or a girl who forgets to put her clothes in the dryer, again, Kelty! I was hitting the age where having roommates was no longer advantageous – I got older, they got weirder. I found myself alone with a dog whose life goals were walks and treats. Maybe those things weren’t so bad after all…

With so many parents lacking a choice for names thirty odd years earlier, I went on a date with my second Josh of 2020. Bumble Josh, as opposed to Tinder Josh, had a slightly vague look about him, with big blue eyes and wild, wavy dirty blond hair. Bryn shook her head when I showed her his picture. “Ah babes, not another one,” she sighed.

We were still on our brunch-and-shop. “No?” I looked down at my phone and shrugged, “Meh, why not?” Bryn ignored me, flicking through the racks. I texted him back and set a date for that night. 

Bryn held up a top, “Cute, no?” 

Fluffy, tight and made of yellow-dyed angora, it was a cross between an Amy Winehouse mod-girl top and a baby chick. “You need to get out of wearing the same old baggy clothes, show it off a little!” she goaded.

The entire neighborhood was out that night – enjoying a sneak peek of spring weather early in March. I walked with purpose in my baby chick top, tight black jeans and new Doc Marten Chelsea boots to meet him at the Pope. A dark and dingy bar but with some decent beer and pub food, the Pope was a crowd favorite on weekends, filled with non-locals looking to get that authentic South Philly experience. We found a spot at the back, beyond tables surrounded by old pews, and began chatting. I realized quickly why I had been drawn to Josh. The way he slouched a little when he laughed, the way he drank his beer, his eyes boring right through me. He was just like my college boyfriend, Graham.  

It was a situationship before anyone ever uttered the word. For most of my university days I called Graham my boyfriend. As to whether he thought of me as the same,  I was never quite sure. Only once, standing next to a display of Halloween skeletons, he referred to me as his girlfriend to a grandmotherly employee in Michaels. He never told me he loved me either but I was fairly confident there wasn’t anyone else. I was eighteen and naive, how could I know any better? I drifted helplessly into love. 

At the end of my senior year of high school I worked as hostess at a popular Kennebunkport restaurant, famous for lobster rolls and pasta specials. The restaurant was divided into two sections. My hostess station sat by the store-front windows – flanked by rows of four-top tables. Passing through an archway, guests were led into the larger dining room, anchored by a large bar with a mirrored wall reflecting rows and rows of liquors. On weeknights the bar filled with lobstermen in from a long day at sea and other local tradesmen. One night as I sat a couple by the front window, I noticed a cute wavy haired blonde guy, hunched over his beer in a tie-dyed Grateful Dead shirt. Any guy under forty stood out – I kept my eye on him. 

With each seating, I would glance to see if he was still there – nursing his beer, glancing at the Red Sox game playing on the far wall. Tourist season was revving up and between greeting guests, answering phone calls and helping bus tables, I didn’t have much time to think about him. Eventually, after an hour or so, he was gone. 

The next night I came in for my Friday evening shift. The afternoon buzz hadn’t died down and I was put straight to work. “Here, put these in the kitchen, will you doll?” a passing waitress shoved a pile of plates in my arms – bits of lobster roll clinging to their edges. I smiled obligingly, pushed through the right-hand swinging door to the kitchen. There he was – that same hideous tie-dyed t-shirt, now partially covered by an apron as he washed dishes in the corner. 

I froze. Holy shit, he works here now? As any good eighteen year old girl would do when faced with a boy she liked, I looked right through him. He didn’t even exist. I hurried back to my hostess station and stared at my feet.

Everything was fine. I was totally cool about it. So cool. I decided I would remain aloof – yeah that was it, aloof. So aloof. Meanwhile, I became the most helpful hostess in the world, bussing tables left and right, leaving little work for the actual busser who was now enjoying more cigarette breaks than she’d ever had in her life. 

Again and again, I shouldered my way through the swinging doors into the bustle of the kitchen at the peak of the dinner rush. Plates clinked, pots clanged, shouts of orders blew down the line. I kept my gaze off of Graham, picking half-eaten dinner rolls off dirty plates as I placed them in the wash tub. “You know,” oh fuck, he was speaking to me, “the sky,” he pointed out the tiny window above his dish station with his elbow, “is blue today.”

“No it’s not. It’s orange. Colors are just a construct.” I rushed out of the kitchen – swinging doors flapping in my wake. 

Colors are just a construct?!? What the fuck was that?!? Right as I stepped out, Dee, the manager shoved places in my face, “Pop these in there, darling.” Terms of endearment ran rampant in that restaurant. I was always someone’s doll, baby, or darling.

“Sure,” I mumbled. Fate pushed me back into the kitchen. I was no longer aloof.  

“What’d you mean by that?” Graham smirked. I could feel the line cooks’ eyes boring through the back of my head.  

“Uh, just that we give colors names, like what makes orange orange, or blue blue? It’s all a made up construct, like what if you look at the sky and see blue but what I see is what you would normally call orange?” This was some serious eighteen year old Gen X shit. He nodded sagely, his blue eyes bright with a look that would destroy me again and again over the next four years. 

Graham was different from the other boys – he felt like an adult. He was 24 and I was 18, but about to turn 19, my still-developing brain eloquently reminded me. He drove a small black truck with a skateboard in the back and lived with his parents, but it wasn’t like, a thing. He had great taste in music. He loved Nirvana. I loved Hole. 

I asked him what the deal was with the hippie t-shirt – he certainly didn’t listen to that type of music. The shirt had belonged to his brother who died two years earlier from a morphine overdose. That was all that I was ever told about it, but I could feel his brother’s death hanging heavily over the family – a quiet dark cloud that never cleared. His parents were Mormons, both hardworking and devoted to their church, a place he stayed clear of. They had moved to Maine when he was a teenager, like me, when his father took a boat building course. Their house was a typical Maine home with creamy yellow siding and a long dirt drive up from the main road. His grandmother lived in the bedroom downstairs, 62 and already falling apart. Her days were spent between the living room recliner and her bed, waiting for her son to arrive home in the evenings to prepare her dinner. She was only a couple years older than my mother. I couldn’t imagine how someone’s life could go downhill so early in life. 

As June began, with high school over and my tenuous connections to the other kids from school already petered out, Graham and I started spending most of our time together. I’d only lived in Maine for two years and had always struggled to feel connected. I had plans to go to college in Philly in the fall but I was so happy to finally have someone to share my summer with. 

It’s funny how time passes. At times excruciatingly slow and others so fast you blink and it’s gone. In just four short weeks my life had completely changed, I had a real boyfriend and felt like life’s opportunities were endless.

It didn’t take long before Graham and I slept together for the first time. It happened in his bedroom as his grandmother watched TV downstairs. Through the eyes of a young and inexperienced woman it felt wild and passionate. And it felt empowering, having someone want me in that way.  He was rough and unyielding – like a man, I assumed. It was also unprotected. 

My reserved parents never spoke with me about anything when it came to the workings of life. Never about drugs and certainly never about sex. I always said that they were lucky – I could’ve been a heroin addict with five kids by the time I was 25 with all the knowledge they imparted to me. They lucked out, raising a child who was naturally prudish, against drugs and nosy enough to learn about all the unwritten rules of life from her friends and cable TV. I knew Graham and I shouldn’t have done things that way, but I was already falling in love, or lust as it were, with a man who appeared to be my romantic ideal. We both spent the next 3 weeks worrying and waiting. It made me feel closer to him – trauma bonding. In the end, everything was fine but I learned to never put myself in that position ever again.

Graham was hard to read. He had a connection to Dee, the manager of the restaurant that I couldn’t figure out. One night, Dee’s daughter came into the bar. Graham had come out from the kitchen to get a soda refill. I, of course, stopped to speak to him – our bodies closer than regular co-workers. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her watch as I brushed my fingers down his arm. 

The next afternoon as we walked back to his truck after a lunch shift, I asked, “Hey, what do you think about Dee’s daughter? She’s pretty, huh?” 

“I think she’s a saucy minx,” he snickered, dumping his skateboard in the truckbed. 

Turned out she was his ex, who had left to do a short stint in rehab, but he had no interest in her now. Or, potentially, it was her that had no interest in him. To my young eyes, Graham was an enigma, and I would crack the code. I would fix him and we would have a love that would last forever. 

In early July, a mere six weeks into our glorious summer love affair, Graham broke. I never found out exactly what happened that night as Graham refused to explain – something I would grow to realize was common with him. Early during the lunch shift, he had a huge fight with someone at the restaurant. I never knew what was said or by whom. I only saw him as he seized his skateboard and flung the back door wide as Dee rushed off in the other direction, mumbling discouraging remarks. I followed him. “Hey! Hey!” He crossed the parking lot, “Graham! Stop!” I shouted. He swung around. Our eyes met. I’d never seen anyone look the way he did in that moment – lost, hopeless and resigned. It was as though he already knew there was no one who could help him. He turned, trudging off towards the river.

I went back to my hostess station. There was nothing else I could do. Don’t worry, he’ll be fine, everyone said. I dutifully went back to work, seating guests and making small talk with tourists. When I got home, my parents were oddly waiting for me at the front door. “Graham was here,” my father said. 

“He was?” I asked – feebly pretending I had no knowledge of what had occurred just a few hours ago. “What did he say?” I also felt so special, he cared enough to come to my house.

“He was looking for you.” He paused, tilting his head, “Why would he be looking for you?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged.

“He was all wet,” my mother interjected. “Why was he all wet?”

“I have no idea,” Wet? I thought to myself. “What’d you say to him?” I could hear the tone of my voice, rising involuntarily. 

“That you were at work.” She looked away. “Then he left,” she relayed with disgust. 

That was the moment my parents decided they hated Graham.

Throughout the evening I tried calling, again and again. Either the phone rang out or his mother would answer, sighing, relaying that Graham couldn’t come to the phone. There was something in her tone – a God fearing woman uncomfortable with lying. I’d never been this worried about someone before in my young life. It was clear. The world was trying to hold back this unique and soulful person. I had to help him. If not me, then who? 

The next morning I told my mom I was going to the mall and took the forty-five minute drive to his house. As I drove the winding back roads my heart pounded. Was he in trouble? Did he hate me? Would he even be there? I had to know. I pulled up the dirt drive – house hidden among the trees. Only his truck was in the drive. I knocked. No answer. I let myself in. I could hear the television playing off to the living room, his grandmother either deaf or indifferent to my entry. I crept up the stairs to his room at the end of the hall. I knocked. A quiet yeah came from the other side. He knew it had to be me, who else could it have been? I went in. 

That day, our real relationship began – whatever it was. We were no longer two kids having a summer fling. I would help him, I would fix everything. 

When you’re young, things always seem to bounce back quickly. Soon, we were spending our summer doing things that kids did. Hanging out, swimming along the rocky river edge, eating pancakes at IHOP, wandering shops and going to movies. I felt so grown up – riding the back roads of Maine in Graham’s truck, music blaring with the windows down. 

When we’d moved to Maine, before my junior year, I was ready for adventure. To their credit, my parents asked me if I wanted to move or not. They understood that it was a transitional period of life for a teenage girl and maybe a big change like that would have been too much. I had an average teenage life back in Pennsylvania, growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. I did well at school. I had some friends – even a small high school romance or two. But I thought, why not? It couldn’t be any worse than my already angsty 90s teenage existence.

Turns out it was. I was miserable. What I had no way of knowing was that in small town Maine, it was all about being local. If you weren’t born there, you weren’t from there. And if you weren’t from there, you weren’t important. For months, my only conversations at school were during class time. I would silently walk from class to class and eat my lunch alone, perched at the end of the nerd table – even they didn’t want to know me.  It took almost the full two years to accrue a small, but tenuous friend group, preparing for their next big adventures. When Graham appeared, everything changed. I found my escape. An older man, more mature, who had gone places and understood the world far beyond the pettiness of my teenage life. What a dream.