Adieu.
In which I end things with Nico, the world's most unavailable man.
My name is not Naomi. It’s a nom de plume to protect my identity. Though names and identifying details have been changed, all the stories in Gen XXX are true. My anonymity means that I rely on word of mouth to grow my reader base, so if you’re intrigued by what you’re reading, please do share with friends and consider becoming a paid subscriber.
The night I end things with Nico I go on a second date with the high school art teacher. I arrive at the bar, The Fable in Eagle Rock, before he does and order a house cocktail. Something with mezcal and hibiscus. When the bartender brings me the drink he gestures towards a patron at the far end of the bar and informs me that the bill has been taken care of.
I follow his gaze and see a young woman — maybe in her mid-to-late-thirties — with long, strawberry blonde hair and sparkling eyes. She smiles. I’ve never had a stranger buy me a drink before and I’m not sure what the protocol is, so I smile back, and mouth the words “thank you.”
The art teacher shows up a few minutes later. He’s wearing the same silly leather jacket he had on the first time we met, and his hairstyle could use a refresh, but his shoes aren’t as dumb this time and he’s as open and engaging as ever. We talk about popular culture and art and by the time we get to politics he has his left arm around my shoulders and I’m resting my right hand on his thigh.
“Want to go cuddle?” he asks. I nod my head “yes”.
Outside the bar I spot the young woman who bought me the drink.
“Thank you,” I say. “What a generous thing to do!”
“You have great energy!” she says.
“Well, you have great energy!” I say. I’m not sure what else to say, so I give the young woman a big hug and thank her again before heading to my car.
The art teacher lives about a block and a half away from the bar. He introduces me to his foster cat, an orange tabby named Thunder. Soon the art teacher and I are standing in his bedroom, kissing. The leather jacket comes off. Shoes are discarded. I rub my hand over the bulge in his pants and start to unbuckle his belt.
“Wait a second,” the art teacher says.
He unwraps some sort of Velcro strap from around his waist.
“I have a hernia,” he explains.
There’s a mirror on the art teacher’s bedroom wall in which I can see a reflection of him fucking me from behind. Thunder watches the proceedings from the inside of a plastic laundry bin. After we’re done, when I’m sitting on the edge of the mattress and putting my clothes back on, Thunder attacks my ankles from under the bed frame.
Later, after I get home, I see that Antoine texted me two hours earlier. “Good morning,” he said. I feel weirdly guilty.
Nico doesn’t seem entirely surprised when I tell him that things need to end. Earlier in the week he informs me that he’s not traveling to Northern California — his wife has to go on a trip to Chicago, he claims — meaning that we’re not going to meet in person after all.
“It’s a sign,” I tell him, after he breaks the news of the cancelled trip.
“Oh come on,” he says. “Don’t.”
Nico says that there will be other opportunities for the both of us to meet up in Palo Alto after the summer is over and he’s back from spending a few weeks with his family in Europe for a fancy wedding.
He’s “definitely” going to travel to Silicon Valley in September, he says.
This is fucking ridiculous! I think.
To be honest, I don’t want Nico to leave his wife. I’m not even sure I want to fuck him all that much. I just want his face near mine so I can inhale his scent, run my hands through his thick hair and hold onto his big strong shoulders as my legs fall out from underneath me.
I’ve been composing my goodbye note to Nico for a few days. I plan to send it to him the day after his birthday, which happens to be the day my newsletter publishes. I figure that it’ll give me the opportunity to share my good wishes for his 39th year before I switch gears entirely and bring down the hammer. Not that I have the guts for a hammer.
Knowing that I’m going to cut it off with Nico offers me the impetus for getting answers to questions I’ve always wanted to ask. For example: Is he happy in his marriage? I’m curious to hear the answer. Or hear what he believes is the answer.
Nico says that he and his wife are content together. They’re like “good roommates,” he explains, albeit roommates whose lives are dominated by planning and logistics around their jobs and their kids.
They also haven’t had sex in a year. “It’s impossible,” he claims.
I push back on this. Certainly he and his wife can find time to fuck?
“It’s impossible,” he says again.
I know that Nico thinks I’m naïve. Thinks that because I don’t have kids I don’t know what it takes to be a parent.
He’s is right of course. I don’t know what it takes to be a parent. But I do know that having sex with one’s spouse while parenting children is not out of the realm of possibility.
I propose some different scenarios. What if, for example, the nanny comes to the house after the kids are put to bed and Nico and his wife spend 3 hours at a nearby hotel?
Nico complains about the potential cost. The nanny’s overtime. Paying for the Uber to take the nanny home. The cost of the hotel room.
“I don’t know why I’m trying to convince you to go on a date with your wife,” I write.
“Maybe you’re trying to get me to stop bothering you,” he says.
“Maybe!” I say.
It is not lost on me that I break it off with Nico just five days after Antoine’s departure. It isn’t lost on my friend Viv, either.
Viv was one of the friends who believed I acted too harshly in calling off my trip to visit Antoine last autumn. She’s happy to hear that his visit to Los Angeles went so well. She also thinks I’m in love with Nico.
“I think I’m in lust with him,” I protest. But who knows? Maybe she’s right. The idea that I’m in love suggests that I’m not so much a loathsome addict but a clueless romantic. Lust is one thing; love is another.
Viv says that Nico and Antoine serve as Shakespearean foils to one another in the drama that is my sex and dating life. One is unavailable and incorporeal; a ghost. The other is a real live boy. That both of them happen to be French only adds to the narrative appeal.
I tell her that when I think of the experience as an epic drama, I have an ending all scripted out.
“I just want to meet him in person,” I say.
“You have to get closure on your own,” Viv says.
“I don’t know if I can,” I say. “My fantasy is that I’ll look him in the eyes and then the spell will be broken.”
“The man behind the curtain? Like The Wizard of Oz?” she asks.
“Exactly,” I say.
When I hit “send” on my goodbye note to Nico I start to cry. Part of it is because I’m sad. I’m also embarrassed. I mean, I’m crying over breaking it off with a man I never actually met!
“The thwarting of my desires in this area is painful and frustrating for me in a way I don’t think it is for you,” I write.
“Maybe I’m being overdramatic but it’s too much — I want you in my life, but with a feeling of evolution, not inertia.”
“So I propose we stop this.”
“And if and when you get serious about evolving I’m sure you can find a way to let me know.”
A few hours after I send my note, I still haven’t heard anything in response, though I can see that Nico’s been online, probably texting with one of his other digital mistresses.
This makes me exasperated. And sad.
I’m not so stupid to think that there aren’t other women, but I hate that there are others. And I hate myself for hating this. The whole thing is absurd. I’m a (secret) virtual mistress jealous of the other virtual mistress(es) of a man who has an (actual) flesh and blood wife.
Nico doesn’t protest the cessation of relations the way I’d hoped he would. But he wants to know if I plan to get rid of the app on which he and I communicate. “If you plan to disappear/delete it, let me know,” he says.
“I don’t know if I’m going to delete it,” I say. “I sent you words and pictures that I have no intention of just yanking away. They’re yours and were made in a good spirit.”
“I hope you have a great time in Europe,” I add. “I know you’ll look great in your gorgeous new suit and wish I could have seen it.”
“Don’t be so dramatic please,” he says. “I’ll send you pics of me in the suit.”
I reply the next day.
“Please don’t,” I write, before deleting the app. “Thanks.”