The Washingtonienne (21 page)
T
he next morning, we made plans to move to New York, where we could both start over. Marcus would get a job at a law firm, and I would . . . do what exactly, I didn’t know.
“This is our chance for a fresh start,” he told me. “I don’t want you pursuing any book or movie deals, or doing anything related to the blog. I just want to forget this ever happened.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with my life?” I asked. “I can’t get a job anywhere, I’m a laughingstock! Why shouldn’t I make money off this mess?”
He went on to tell me about some episode of
True Life
he had seen on MTV, about a crack-addicted porn star who had turned her life around by leaving the skin-flick industry, going back to school, and becoming a counselor for teen prostitutes or whatever.
I did not appreciate the analogy he was making.
“All I’m saying is that you have other options,” he said.
Since I was willing to do anything to win Marcus back, I agreed to go back to school. I wasn’t one to turn away from love, even when I knew it might not work out.
My friends were furious when I informed them of my decision not to pursue the media deals that were being thrown my way.
“You went through all of that bullshit, just to end up with
Marcus
?” Diane asked incredulously.
“Why is that so hard to believe?” I wanted to know.
“It just seems like you’re not thinking clearly. Have you been taking your medication?”
“
Yes
,” I replied firmly. “I’m not crazy, you know.”
“Jackie, you’re the craziest person I know—that’s why Naomi and I are friends with you! But you’re just not yourself right now.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked. “This is me, being myself, and this is what I want to do.”
“Jackie, I will not let you pass up a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Honestly, I cannot believe that you would even consider it!”
“But I love him, Di.”
“I don’t want to see you end up heartbroken,” Diane warned me. “You’ll end up with nothing but regrets. Before you do anything, I think you should talk this over with your doctor.”
I called up April and Naomi, who said pretty much the same thing as Diane. I thought they would all be happy for me, but instead, they scolded me for taking my eyes off the prize: the chance to use my newfound fame to become independently wealthy.
“If Marcus loved you, he would let you do it. You never know, he could be playing you,” Naomi warned.
“But when we were in bed last night,” I sighed. “You can’t fake that.”
“Are you serious?” Naomi chortled. “How many orgasms have you faked in your life? Jesus, don’t be so naïve.”
I went to Dr. Klein’s office later that day, sobbing about how confused I was.
“I don’t want to make the wrong decision!” I cried. “What should I do?”
“I can’t tell you what to do,” she replied, “but I can tell that you have mixed feelings about going to New York with Marcus.”
“It’s my friends—they have me all mixed up!”
“Forget about your friends for now. Forget Marcus, too. You have to be true to yourself, Jackie.”
I nodded, but it was obvious to Dr. Klein that I was a basket case. I couldn’t trust my own instincts anymore because they had led me to disaster.
“Why is it so important for you to be with Marcus? It isn’t as if he were the last man on Earth,” she reminded me. “Nevertheless, you seem terrified of losing him. Can you tell me what makes him exceptional?”
“I can’t exactly
quantify
it,” I replied, “it’s just—he’s
different
.”
“How is he different from other men you’ve known?”
I shrugged.
“He’s nice,” was all I could come up with.
“And the other men weren’t nice to you?” Dr. Klein asked.
“No, not really,” I replied. “Most of them were total douchebags.”
“Maybe that’s because you weren’t very nice to them,” Dr. Klein surmised. “I think what’s missing here is
respect.
You seem to have a profound disrespect for men.”
“You mean, I’m a
man-hater
?” I asked.
“I think that you objectify men.”
“Not to trivialize this,” I said defensively, “but aren’t people objectifying each other all the time?”
“Is that your perception?”
“Of course it is! You’re a woman, Dr. Klein. Don’t you feel it?”
“But how does that make
you
feel, Jacqueline?”
“I hate it,” I replied. “I hate that women are stuck on this planet with such awful creatures as men.”
“So do you think that it’s fair to treat men with the same disrespect? Do you think that it’s right?”
I shrugged.
“I think I’m just running around in circles,” I admitted.
I grabbed a tissue and waited for Dr. Klein’s response. She sighed and shook her head at me.
“Then why don’t you just stop?” she asked. “Take a break from men. If they’re such ‘awful creatures,’ why not eliminate them from your life altogether?”
“But I can’t give up on men,” I told her. “I want love.”
I hated to admit it, but it was the truth: I knew only stupid girls fell in love with the men they slept with, but I had somehow managed to make that mistake.
I left Dr. Klein’s office with a prescription for Zoloft and a grudge against Marcus for making me choose between love and money: There was no reason I couldn’t have both.
I WENT BACK TO MY
apartment and pouted for about an hour before there was a knock on my door.
I tiptoed over to the living room window to see who it was.
“Jacqueline?”
Fuck!
He saw me.
Fred was at my door, reaching into his pocket for the key.
“Jacqueline, I have to talk to you!”
“Go away!” I shrieked. “I don’t want to talk to you! If you come in here, I’m calling the cops!”
I scrambled toward my bedroom, where my cell phone was on the nightstand, but Fred was already inside the apartment.
I kicked and scratched at him when he grabbed me, terrified that he had come here to strangle me, or slash my face with a razor blade. (Which is what
I
would have done if I were him!)
He put his hand over my mouth, and I thought,
This is it. This is how it’s going to end. Well, I’m ready. Bring it on.
I stopped struggling and looked Fred in the eye. What was he waiting for?
Do it.
“Jacqueline, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, keeping his hand over my mouth. “Just listen to me.”
He let go of me and we sat on my living room floor. (I still didn’t have any furniture.) It was the first time I had ever seen him in his “casual clothes.” He actually looked sort of cool, sitting there, playing with my puppy, who had turned out to be an ineffective guard dog.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“Why aren’t you at work?” I asked him. “Did anyone find out about this?”
“It hasn’t even come up there, but my wife knows. She saw your picture in the
Post
and remembered that I had your number in my BlackBerry.”
I had forgotten all about that. I might not have come forward if I had remembered. But at the time, I could only worry about myself.
“Jesus, Fred. I’m sorry,” I told him. “But you have to know that I never meant for this to happen.”
“So you didn’t plan this?” he asked.
“You think I
wanted
any of this to happen?”
“No,” he replied. “I know you better than that. But Jill wants a divorce. She’ll probably get everything.”
“Jill is your wife?”
He nodded. I had never heard him say her name before.
“So what are you going to do?” I asked him. “Are you staying in Washington?”
“I want to get out of here, but I’m waiting to hand in my resignation. It wouldn’t be prudent to act now, but if we lose the election this year, I’ll lose my job anyway. What about you? Are you leaving?”
I shrugged.
“I really don’t know what I’m going to do,” I told him.
“Why don’t you move to New York with me?” Fred asked. “We could get a place in your name and just
disappear.
”
I could not believe that he was serious.
“What about your baby?” I asked. “You’re never going to see him again?”
“It’s a
her,
actually. But she doesn’t need someone like me in her life.”
Why was I more concerned about Fred’s family than he was? Fred disgusted me, but even more so, I was disgusted with myself for putting myself in this situation.
“Fred, we can’t do this,” I told him.
“You
owe
me,” he said. “After what you did to me and my family—”
“What
I
did? You did this to yourself!”
Fred got up from the floor and stood over me.
“You didn’t keep up your end of the deal,” he said.
“So what? You’re going to kill me if I don’t give you your money back?”
Fred looked down at me and scowled.
“You’re not worth it,” he said, and he kicked my dog on his way out.
“I can’t believe the president would be friends with someone like you!” I shouted after him, and he slammed the door hard enough to make the room shake.
I PUT BIFF IN HIS
Kate Spade carrier, grabbed my bikini, and caught a cab to the Omni-Shoreham in Woodley Park, the hotel with the nicest pool in town. (On hot days, the girls and I would talk stray male guests into signing us in.) From the patio, I called up Laura and asked if I could stay at her place for the next few nights.
“You should report Fred to the police,” Laura said, “or send his name to Blogette!”
“I don’t want to piss him off! Now he has nothing to lose and I’m afraid he’ll come back,” I told her.
“You can stay over, but I don’t have much room since April moved in. She got evicted from her apartment last week because she couldn’t make the rent.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?” I asked.
“She didn’t want to ask you for any favors because she still feels guilty. But don’t worry about April—I got her a job at my firm,” Laura told me. “
You’re
the one I worry about.”
“You do?” I asked, surprised that Laura even cared.
“Of course, Jackie! You’re the closest female friend I have. We’ve been through some pretty crazy shit together—I mean, we’ve seen each other
naked
!”
I realized just how much we were alike, we Capitol Hill career girls who came from meager beginnings, with nothing but our feminine wiles to help us get ahead in this town. Players knew game when they saw it, which made us competitors first, friends second.
Laura and I never got past the sexual politics that prevented us from having a true friendship, which was something I always regretted: Women could forgive men for almost any terrible thing that they did to us, but when it came to each other, we just weren’t worth the effort.
I told Laura that I would ask Marcus if I could stay at his place instead, and she said, “I just know things will work out with him—I could tell, he would do anything to make you happy.”
She wished me luck, as if she knew that we would never speak again. But whatever, bygones were bygones.
So I called Marcus at work and told him about what happened with Fred.
“Are you okay? Where are you right now?” he asked.
“I’m at the pool,” I told him. “Can anyone in the office overhear you talking to me?”
“No, I’m here alone.”
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He sounded strange to me.
“I got a prank phone call from some radio station this morning,” he told me.
“Was it on the air?”
“I would assume so.”
“That’s awful. What did they say?”
“I don’t remember. They said something about the blog and then I hung up.”
“You hung up on them? That was probably the
worst
thing you could have done.”
“What was I supposed to do? Have a conversation with them on live radio while I was at work? Now I can’t even answer my phone.”
“I’m sorry, Marcus. I wish there was something I could do. It’s beyond my control.”
“I just want it to stop,” he said, “but I think you want it to keep going.”
“No, I don’t!” I protested. “I hate this.”
“Then why do you keep feeding into it? You give all these interviews, attracting all this attention to yourself and the blog—it’s like you
want
people to read it!”
Marcus was right. My attitude up until this point was, “Why
not
feed into it?” I didn’t care if people knew my shit anymore, but I realized that it wasn’t just
my
shit that people were interested in. Degrading myself was one thing—if a woman did it to herself, she was in control. But I was humiliating a bunch of other people along with me, in effect,
victimizing
them.