Page 10 of Fun Together
“Don’t lie to yourself and pretend you had something with him that you didn’t.”
Is that what I’m doing—lying to myself? Hating to come home to this empty apartment, more specifically my empty bed, every night is not a lie. That’s a truth I avoid by sleeping on the couch. If I pretend hard enough, the back cushions feel a lot like a supportive chest at my back. It’s hard not to miss having someone there next to you, even if you don’t touch anymore. Even if they roll over before you have a chance to touch them.
She continues, “He’s off on his healing journey to do drugs and go to sex clubs. Let him be free. And you’re free, too!”
I sit back up and finish my glass. “You know Andrew would never go to sex clubs. He’s way too worried about disease.”
She refills my wine. “Still, you get what I’m saying. You deserve some good old-fashioned debauchery.”
“I just don’t know how.”
“How to what?”
“How to be fun!” I point to a beautiful woman in a commercial for some kind of heart medication. She is laughing on top of a mountain with her hands placed triumphantly on her hips. “Like her. I bet she’s fun.”
“I’m sure she is, but so are you. You just need to get out of whatever funk you’re in right now.”
“And you think that starts with dating someone new?”
“Among other things,” she says.
“What other things?”
“I see it kind of like this.” She goes over to her bag and pulls out a notebook and pen. I watch her draw a pyramid divided into five sections. She writes the wordsocialin one of the sections.
“Are you doing like a hierarchy of needs thing?” I briefly majored in psychology in college, so this is something I vaguely remember.
“Exactly. Except more like aHierarchy of Fun. This can be your guide.” She fills in the rest of the sections. I see the wordssexandcareerand I’m already regretting asking for Rett’s help with this. She’s drunk on more than the bottle of wine we’ve downed. I’ve made her way too powerful.
“Does that say ‘environmental?’ What does that even mean?”
“It means your apartment. Your car. It means you need to stop living like you don’t understand the concept of a nightstand.” She holds her arms out wide. “You have your own place, which is fucking amazing. You can do whatever you want with it.”
She writeshobby, and I really start to squirm.
“It seems like a lot, though.”
“This is just my suggestion. You can change these if you want, but I think you should try to dosomethingto get out of your comfort zone a little.”
I look at the pyramid, and part of me knows she’s right. I can’t wallow forever. “Let’s say I agree, where do I begin?”
“I think you should start with this one.” She points to the sex section. “Let’s go out next weekend.”
I groan.
“It’s that, or I make you join a dating app.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You need to stop punishing yourself and go home with a guy with stick-and-poke tattoos who you meet in a shitty bar with cheap well drinks and a questionable sanitation score.”
“And that’s fun?”
“If they know what they’re doing, it is.”
Drunken sex with a stranger you meet in a bar does seem like a post-breakup rite of passage, but how cliché can I be? I haven’t slept with anyone new in six years. Am I really going to waltz into a bar with the sole purpose of finding someone to go home with?
“I feel like I’m too old for that kind of thing.”
