Free You'll Grow Out of It by Jessi Klein Page A

would carry with me for the rest of my life. But sometimes you get a bargain.
    I spent the rest of the day icing Damon, who again responded with a series of increasingly panicky texts. Not responding to the texts of a man who has wronged you is truly one of the sweetest pleasures in life. In the evening I met up with my guy friend Eric and we drove to a delicious but slightly sad Mexican restaurant in Echo Park, where I told him everything that had happened. Eric agreed that what had occurred was not amazing, but ventured that maybe there was still hope. He had the heterosexual optimism of a man who has never dated another man.
    On my drive home, Damon’s texts continued to trickle in. He wanted to know if we could get lunch the next day. I thought about saying no. But I decided I wouldn’t “play games.” We’d get lunch, and I’d be open about how hurt I was, and I would explain that I wanted him to make a gesture. To be clear, Tracy had not recommended that last part. But I was worried that if I didn’t ask for this thing I wanted, I wouldn’t get it. And how else would he understand what I needed? How else would he come up with this idea? The notion that perhaps he should realize it on his own seemed too dicey even to consider.
    We went to lunch at the same place Tracy and I had dined, the restaurant at Fred Segal, a ridiculously LA place where skinny LA people eat overpriced salads before going to buy overpriced skinny jeans at the adjacent boutique. I ordered spaghetti. I think I am the only person who ever ordered pasta there. I would not be surprised if a memorial plaque was placed on my chair, thanking me for my service.
    Damon ordered a bottle of rosé that was put in a bucket of ice next to our table. Anytime you have a bottle of booze in ice next to your table it feels like everything must be simpatico because look at this fun bucket of ice! Life’s a party!
    Or at least, life was a party until I started explaining to him why what he’d done had made me feel bad. The explaining did not go particularly well. His resting face was generally “bemused/quizzical,” and as I spoke it only grew more so. We drove back to my house, where we sat on my patio, drinking more rosé, and continued the conversation. He wasn’t defensive exactly—it was more like he couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of himself as an agent of unpleasant feelings in anyone else. He got held up throughout his day on Friday, he said, and then traffic was bad. He’d promised Rowan he would stop by, and so he had to do that. Whatever negative effect his actions may have had on me, it was as if he couldn’t find the language necessary to discuss it.
    When I brought up the idea of a gesture, his look went from bemused to full shar-pei, his brow was so furrowed in confusion. It is remarkable to me now that I was so willing to try to dictate to this person the behavior I wanted him to mimic; when I think back on it, I cringe. And this wasn’t the only time it happened. When I moved back to New York, I remember sitting with him on my couch, after he’d chipped my heart in some other small way, and literally showing him a dog-eared page from Greg Behrendt’s classic tome, He’s Just Not That Into You . It posited that if a man you’re dating isn’t treating you like he loves you, it means he does not really love you, and you should leave. (It definitely did not suggest that you show him pages from your worn copy of a self-help book as a way of convincing him to stay.)
    But I digress.
    We are on the porch. I tell him about gestures. About how they indicate a depth of feeling when it comes to such notions as affection and apologies. And how it might be nice if he made one. He sipped more rosé and put his hand on my knee. I remember thinking that seemed like a good start. I forgave him, overlooking the fact that he hadn’t apologized. We ordered crappy takeout for dinner and laughed about our stomachaches when we tried to go to