Free Screw Everyone: Sleeping My Way to Monogamy by Ophira Eisenberg Page B

Slowly I calmed myself down and gathered my abandoned bags and didgeridoo. We immediately went out for my favorite meal: grilled cheese sandwiches at Denny’s.
    It was difficult to know where to pick back up as a couple after so much time apart, so three hours later we were still laughing and replaying the scene I caused at the airport. The mixture of jet lag and the culture shock was jarring, and I didn’t know where I was, who Iwas, or what anything meant. It was like I washed down a few Oxycodone with a Jolt Cola. It was one in the morning in Anaheim, which meant noon the day before last month to me, and Michael suggested we scale the fence and hang out in our motel’s now-closed pool. While treading water, he asked, “So, start from the beginning, and tell me about your trip.”
    I’d been living with him in my head for a year, but now that he was in front of me, we were strangers. We’d been apart from each other longer than we’d been together—by ten times. I suggested we get out of the pool and go back to our room. We had a lifetime of talking ahead of us.
    We had sex on the stiff king-size motel bed, and I felt a stronger connection to him and my life, but we didn’t exactly click like I remembered and romanticized. As I fell asleep, I tried to talk myself out of the profound loneliness that consumed my body. Surely, it must be just a side-effect of the time change.
    The next morning we started our drive up the West Coast. For a week, we behaved like any new couple would on a road trip: holding hands, arguing over directions, and making up for lost time by having lots of sex. Somewhere outside of San Francisco, Michael turned to me and said, “It really hurts when I pee.”
    I didn’t know exactly what that meant, and this was before Google, but I figured it might be STD-related. I started praying again, pleading with the higher powers to tell me why the hell they were doing this to me.
    As the days passed, Michael complained that the pain wasgetting worse. As for me, I didn’t have any symptoms, unless you count still not getting my period!
    My prayers turned to whisper-yelling.
    Just past Santa Rosa, we stopped at a Walgreen’s to see if they had a knowledgeable pharmacist who could prescribe a cream, a Magic 8 Ball—anything.
    Back in the parking lot, we sat silently in the beige bucket seats of Michael’s beat-up Volkswagen Jetta. He had some ointment in a bag, and I had a pack of gum and a pregnancy test stashed in my purse.
    At last, he popped the question.
    “I need to know. Were you with anyone else while in Australia?”
    I wanted to pass out. The truth would not set me free. The truth would mean I’d lose him forever, and I couldn’t let that happen. Why does he have to know about a useless one-night stand that even I don’t remember? It had zero bearing on our future.
    “No,” I responded confidently.
    “Good, good. Then it’s just some naturally occurring bacteria or something, and we’ll get it worked out.”
    But I wasn’t really good with “good.” What if he were seriously ill? What if he died or went blind because I withheld the truth?
    I knew I couldn’t say no and move on. I loved him. I didn’t want to hurt him. But there was no way I was telling him that I cheated. Anything but that. How could I protect him AND our relationship? How could I tell him that I didn’t mean it, that my decision maker was beyond drunk that night? That I was a dumb seventeen-year-old for a night? There had to be some way out of this.
    You may not agree with what I did next, and I don’t blame you, but it was the only thing I could come up with.
    “Wait,” I started, too feverish to continue.
    “What?” he asked impatiently.
    “I was raped.”
    As I said it, I looked down, not for effect, but because I couldn’t look in his eyes.
    I’m not proud of what I said, but I remember my twisted rationale: It absolved me of all responsibility. Plus, I figured he’d feel sorry for me.
    Softly,