Bascom Hill

 

The dreams have lessened but they haven't completely stopped.

 The setting is different every time, but the plot is the same: I'm trapped somewhere with him and his new partner, forced to listen to him talk about the amazing trips they've been on together while she (younger, more fit, and better-employed than I) smiles, silent and smug. I try to escape, but he blocks my path, still demanding my attention.

 It happened again last night, for the first time in months: He had a wedding band on his hand; silver this time. (It's been gold in other dreams.) Then he was chasing us both. She split off and ran in one direction, and I ran in another. He had to choose. He chased me for a moment, but I knew he would turn and go after her. To make sure he never chased me again, I jumped off the edge of a cliff into the ocean.

 The Facebook Memory had popped up on my feed earlier in the week: Five years ago, I was at Mt. Rushmore, bleary-eyed from a long road trip, but full of love and excitement for what I hoped was to come. I was determined that I had found The Real Thing, the love I had been waiting for, and I would do what was necessary for us to be together. One day, we would look back on this time, and it wouldn’t seem so crazy. It would seem romantic and epic.

 It still hurts to look at that photo. I feel gratitude, but also sadness and frustration. How stupid I was, how naïve. It was something a teenage girl should have done, not a grown woman pushing thirty.

But perhaps, behind that photo is a story that ought to be told, because of what I learned the hard way:

 I learned what it means to be love-bombed, a.k.a. being “Mosbey-d”. (More on that later.) I learned that even the most self-aware and cautious people can be taken in by narcissistic behavior.

 I learned that you can develop a chemical addiction to almost anything, or anyone. Or to the way they make you feel, even when they make you feel bad.

 I learned once again that you can love someone to the ends of the earth (or to the edge of the country, in this case), and they can love you back, in their own way – but that’s not enough to make it work. Determination and force of will is not always enough, either. If anything, you’ll only succeed in making yourself look obsessed.

 If he had never met me, he would probably be in about the same place as he is right now.  But meeting him changed the course of my entire life.

 

###

In the great state of Wisconsin is a city called Madison and a hill called Bascom, at the top of which is a statue. Not of Madison or Bascom, but Lincoln.

It was at the top of this hill called Bascom, in the heart of the monstrous University of Wisconsin campus, that I stood on a cold January evening in 2016, looking out across the city – taking in the lakes, the lights and the capitol rotunda -- asking myself what you might be asking now:

What the hell was I doing there?

I was attempting to rendezvous with someone I will only describe as a Boy. He’d communicate with me only sporadically, and had stood me up multiple times over the course of our acquaintance -- because that’s what boys do when they’re intimidated, or just not that into you.

But because I’d believed him when he said he wanted to see me again, I took a road trip to his city one weekend when some other friends in the area were hosting a party. I checked into a motel, texted him “Hey, I’m in town for a friend’s housewarming party, can I buy you a beer?”, and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

And that’s what I was doing, at the top of Bascom Hill. Waiting, and growing more and more frustrated as to why I couldn’t somehow just seize my life, take control of my circumstances, and make things happen the way I wanted them to. Instead, I was waiting. Waiting for another job offer (I’d been laid off again in December), waiting for this guy to text me, waiting for an invitation into (at the very least) his living room so I could quit wandering around like a homeless person . . . in a Mustang and a hand-me-down fur coat, like some sort of strange streetwalker.

“I’m such a stupid idiot,” I confessed to Mr. Lincoln.

I should’ve stayed in Chicago and saved the money. I’ll need it to pay bills if I don’t get another job soon.

Abe kept looking off to the northwest, severe-looking and silent. I jumped to defend myself.

It hasn’t been a complete waste! I took a tour of the state capitol building. I got a lot of writing done in that coffee shop earlier. I don’t have to be at work; this is the perfect time to have little adventures like this. And the pursuit of love is a noble endeavor, yes? You never know where it could lead.

I shivered and checked my phone again. No texts. No Facebook IMs, even though my previous communicades were marked “Delivered”  or “Read.”

Dammit. I hate this. I hate being that desperate, waiting girl.

So NUT UP and accept that he doesn’t want you. Quit being pathetic about it. You’re probably being too aggressive, and it’s weird. Why don’t you go to Josh and Crystal’s party instead? You know, someplace where you’re actually wanted.

Josh had a decent stash of moonshine, though he was apparently not breaking it out tonight. Crystal had invited some of her younger underaged cousins to hang out and see the new house, so they’d planned a party around the idea of brewing and trying all different kinds of teas.

A part of me wanted to keep exploring the campus, except that the other parts of me were getting very cold.

Go to the party, idiot. You can’t stay here anyway. Sure, you could continue walking around imagining what it would be like to be a teacher or a grad student, but you’re gonna get sick and your car’s gonna get ticketed. You may not have a clue where you’re going in life, but you don’t belong here.

###

The roses made me think of the castle gardens in the older versions of the “Beauty and the Beast” fairytale. So many colors – purple, blood red, peaches and cream, baby pink, yellow – and somehow still blooming in November, as if protected by magic.

Or just the mystical weather of the Pacific Northwest, and some well-paid university gardeners.

Again, I turned away from the administration building (they’re always at the top of a hill) and gazed down toward the lake. This time, Mt. Rainier looked back.

What the hell am I doing here.

I didn’t have the time to ponder. Class started at 6 and I had work to do before then. The quiet, cavernous reading room in the undergraduate library was waiting, complete with flying buttresses, ancient stained glass, and walls lined with oak bookshelves and leather-bound volumes. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect study space if I tried.

With any luck, I’d have a new career in a few months. And the man from Josh and Crystal’s party was picking me up after class. Things were looking up.

###

I put gas in my car, and then drove to Josh and Crystal’s house.

I could’ve used a drink and some challenging conversation to ground me in the present, take my thoughts off of The Boy. But mindful of the setting, I settled for an herbal tea and some chatter with a teenaged cousin about the benefits of community colleges over universities.

At one point, I looked over my shoulder and noticed a new arrival: a tall wiry guy with his back to me in a dark coat that was at least two sizes too big for him.

Broke college kid. Skinny. His older brother’s hand-me-down coat. Or he’s dropped a ton of weight.

 He was talking animatedly to Josh, albeit with his hands in his pockets  – an indicator that he hadn’t really gotten comfortable yet. I figured he was yet another teenage cousin.

I was turning back to my conversation, when it registered that the mop of hair on his head was heavily peppered with premature silver. And then I picked up on the phrase “doctoral program.”

 I turned back around. He had a nice smile.

Long after everyone else had gone to bed, Jack and I were still talking about… everything, it seemed. Why online dating was such a pain. The exponential changes in technology we would witness over our lifetimes. Batman. Ford Mustangs. High school reunions. Traveling to Paris, New Orleans. Broken hearts.

I got hungry, so he drove me to a 24-hour HyVee and bought me a pizza that we then struggled to bake back at Josh’s house.

“I kind of want to kiss you,” he said, as I peered at the old toaster oven.

I told him that was fine by me. We fell asleep watching a Netflix comedy special. He said I reminded him of Iliza Schlesinger. (It remains one of the best compliments I’ve ever received.)

I expected the magic would be gone in the morning, but he asked to spend more time with me, and that’s when things started to turn upside-down. For the next year and a half, it was like someone had their finger pressed down hard on the fast-forward button in my life. I say “someone,” but maybe it was me the whole time. And maybe I needed that change.

###

At 5 A.M. one morning in early 2017, I sat in my car outside Jack’s new apartment on a dark Seattle hillside, and stared at the Mustang logo on my airbag.

Jack and I had gone to bed angry the night before. He was awake when I’d dressed to leave, but he didn’t say anything to me; just rolled over and went back to sleep. I was regretting not saying anything myself.

But what could you say? What could you do to force him to feel the way he felt before?

Nothing. There’s nothing I can do.

I pounded on the steering wheel in rage, and let myself sob for a moment. Then I made for Portland.

Knock it off, drama queen.  You need to be at work by 9. And it’s not like the job is going splendidly anyway. You can’t afford to be late.

I knew trying to hold on to Jack would be like squeezing sand. The harder I tried to make it work, the faster he would disappear -- but I’d come too far for him; for us. Except he wasn’t seeing “Us” anymore. He saw his career finally taking off with Amazon; he saw himself finally living in a major city full of young, attractive urbanites who worked in tech, aerospace, medicine, marketing….

And I, living three hours away with friends in Oregon, with my minimum-wage day jobs and small-time artsy/acting gigs, was not fitting into the future he saw. He’d communicated as much the night before, not directly breaking up with me but suggesting that maybe things had moved too fast with us.

He’d said something similar when I moved out west in advance of him that previous spring -- only four months after we met. I’d landed a small but regular performance gig, and a cheap place to live, and I was determined not to give up on the relationship, like I had in my early twenties when my college sweetheart started planning his move to L.A. I’d be damned if I was going to get left behind this time, to spend another year (or five) wading through the cesspool of online dating and asking myself what could have been, if I’d just been more brave.

“Maybe we could just take things down a notch?” Jack had asked, that night in Seattle. “I still want you in my life. I just want to stay open to the possibility of meeting other people.”

I was gutted. I didn’t drive two thousand miles and leave all my friends in Chicago to be someone’s f*ckbuddy, or fallback option. He was it for me; I had no desire to ever date anyone else ever again. But now that Jack and I weren’t on the same page anymore, it didn’t look like true love. It just looked like I was pathetically obsessed with someone who was capital-O-I Over It.

How did it come to this? What the hell am I doing here?

###

I remember, with an eerie clarity, a moment during that first weekend together in Madison where the fast-forwarding stopped for just a moment and my whole world stood still. It’s incredibly clichéd-sounding until it happens to you.

Jack was showing me around the campus: where he went to class, where he worked, where he did his research. At his assigned cubicle inside a state-of-the-art computer science building, one odd tchotchke caught my eye: an old Super Nintendo game cartridge labeled “Captain Novolin.” It looked cheesy and terrible: A cartoon superhero with N emblazoned on his chest was facing off against an evil donut and a can of soda, all drawn with menacing faces.

“That’s pretty much all I had, growing up,” Jack said, lifting up the tail of this t-shirt to expose the small pump on his hip. “In terms of educational games. Diabetes is really hard to manage for kids. The game tries to make it fun, but the concept is still pretty dumb. I keep it around as a reminder that I want to design something better, for kids who were like me.” He gave me a small, sad smile.

There was a cannister light fixture high overhead, sunk into the vaulted ceiling, but shining down onto him like a small winter sun. Time slowed as the light shimmered off his mercury hair and into my eyes,  giving everything in my field of vision a soft, cool glow. He was backlit like an angel, or a prince.

Which, he was not. And I knew as much even then, but for a moment I felt certain, in my soul, that I was connecting with him on a deep level; that he was showing me the essence of himself: his past, his insecurities, his motivation. His intelligence, his empathy. His dreams.

I’d done a little homework when I played Shelby in a civic theater production of “Steel Magnolias,” but the details were eluding me. All I could remember at the moment was that there was no cure and the heroine died young. I felt like I was being thrown off a cliff in slow motion, hyper-aware of every second I spent falling, with nothing to be done about it. How could I care this much about the fate of someone I’d just met?

###

The phrase “to Mosbey” someone comes from the aughties sitcom “How I Met Your Mother.” Protagonist Ted Mosbey is a twenty-something who spends the series hurling himself at a collection of different women, determined to meet his future wife. Like a sad-eyed bloodhound bounding through underbrush, hell-bent on tracking game, he seldom takes a second glance behind him to consider the hearts that he’s broken. He’s forever playing victim; the “Nice Guy” who just wants to find love.

Ted was always intended to be a romantic hero and a sympathetic character, but recent criticism and deconstruction of the series is not as forgiving:

Ted “love-bombs”, or “Mosbeys,” his off-and-on love interest Robin in the first season by filling her apartment with roses and a string quartet, proclaiming his love for her when they’ve barely been out on one date. Though this appears to be the ultimate romantic gesture, Ted does it without any regard for Robin’s feelings, or for the potential consequences. His single-minded goal is to sweep Robin off her feet and make her his.

Individuals high in the traits of narcissism use “love-bombing” techniques to overwhelm their targets with affection and over-the-top romantic gestures -- all in the service of “obtaining” that person, and chasing the high of the resulting admiration and devotion. But once the goal is achieved and the high wears off, so does the narcissist’s interest in their target.

I always think of Heath Ledger’s Joker, and the quote from the film “The Dark Knight”: “I’m like a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do if I actually caught one!”

In those early weeks back in the Midwest, I could feel myself being chased. I was definitely getting attached to Jack quickly, so I made an effort to pull on the reins a bit. But he hurriedly proclaimed that he wasn’t seeing anyone else, nor did he want to. Sure, we’d just met, but he didn’t want to "share" me.

“But if you’re not on the same page here, please just say something now,” he pleaded, holding my hands across a candlelit table at a cocktail bar. “I don’t want to waste my time and energy. But this is it, hon. This is the Real Thing.”

I quickly re-assured him of my feelings. I was thrilled that he seemed to share in them, and even more thrilled that, unlike so many other guys, he was ready to commit and make things official.

And then he showed up at my part-time job at the end of my shift on Valentine’s Day. He drove three hours through a snowstorm with a teddy bear and roses, determined to deliver them to me himself. He covered his face and pretended to be a delivery man, but eventually I recognized the piercing blue eyes. We walked together through the silent, magical, snow-covered streets to eat at a Bavarian restaurant in Logan Square. A German family was gathered there for a family reunion, and invited us to dance with them.

Jack was interviewing with Amazon and Microsoft in Seattle; I was preparing to audition for grad school and MFA-Acting programs. But then one night he said, “If I get this job with Microsoft, and you’ve still only got that part-time job at the gym that you don’t really care about… then I might just bring you out west with me.”

His statement is burned in my brain, because it irreversibly tipped the scale. He saw a future for us, and wanted to make it happen. So I decided I would do my part to work toward that future. I was going to seize my life, take control of my circumstances, and make things happen the way I wanted them to. No more waiting, like I had on Bascom Hill.

###

2017 currently holds the distinction of being the worst year of my life. If you lived, worked or otherwise dealt with me during that time, I apologize.

 Everyone close to me was reeling from the aftermath of the 2016 election. We felt betrayed by, and unsafe around friends, family members, neighbors who’d helped elect the monster who was about to be inaugurated.

 I spent dozens of hours and thousands of dollars on a technical writing certification program at the University of Washington: a three hour long class every Wednesday night for nine months.  I finished it, but the training was so broad that it didn’t really give me a clear path forward. Or any job leads.  

 I got caught in a three-car pileup on my way to class one night, and my beautiful Mustang was totaled.

 Back home in Portland, I lost my day job because, according to them, I “just wasn’t getting it.”

 When I called Jack to tell him, he ended our relationship for the second time. Of course, I was welcome for overnight visits in his apartment when I came up to Seattle for class, but he absolutely could not see a future with someone so chronically under-employed.  

 Grasping at straws, I took one of the most stressful, hopeless jobs I’ve ever had, attempting to manage a restaurant at a rundown, bankrupt country club in suburban Portland.

 And that was all before August, when I threw in my meager chips and made the move up to Seattle, to take a job working as a staff member/occasional performer at a dinner theater. I loved the company, but my wages barely covered my cost of living. Plus, in trying to save money on rent, I accidentally moved in with a paranoid-delusional heroin addict.

 The rest of the year was spent going into debt trying to escape my living situation, scrambling for footing at my new job, and stupidly fooling around with Jack. Which was my own fault, and I told myself as much while I was doing it.

 For another year and a half, Jack would sail in and out of my life as it pleased him. And I let him, while telling myself that this was normal for friends/acquaintances such as us: Single thirty-somethings who were trying to live separate lives, but who wanted to stay in touch and not burn bridges. But eventually (and I’m embarrassed at how long this took), I started to see patterns:

 Jack had a habit of only calling or texting when he was drunk, or when he was on the outs with his latest girlfriend.

 He would invite me to hang out for a simple walk around the park, or a quick drink “just to catch up,” but inevitably he would start being flirty, if not outright romantic, then would suggest a movie or additional drinks back at his place. The more I tried to keep things platonic, the more he saw it as a challenge; as a fun cat-and-mouse game.

 His behavior did indeed resemble that of a fussy housecat: if I was affectionate for any extended period of time, he would bristle and start squirming to get away from me. If I completely ignored him, it was only a matter of time before he slunk back and demanded my attention.

 But Jack seldom, if ever, asked about my work, my hobbies, my family or my friends. He wanted to tell me all about his dates and partners, but would quietly seethe if I talked about mine, if not belittle them outright.

 He resented my steadily-growing group of artist friends, and mocked them as pretentious and overly-sensitive people who didn’t live in the real world.

 When I worked in restaurants and health clubs, Jack would act disappointed or bored with me because I wasn’t doing something I was passionate about. When I had my job working five nights a week in live professional theater, Jack derided it and said it wasn’t practical. When I nailed down an entry-level job in an office, Jack thought it wasn’t ambitious enough of me.

 I wish I could say that there was a definitive, empowered, climactic moment when I said “Enough,” and told him to go to hell, blocked his number, and that was that.  

 What happened instead was many months of journaling, of seeing the patterns, and examining how addictive yet toxic Jack’s attention was. My drug of choice was the way he made me feel when he gabbed with me about cosplay, and quoted our favorite nerdy movies and lyrics by our favorite hair bands; his smile, the sound of his laughter, and the feeling that no one would ever understand me the way he did. The way he would tell me, completely earnestly, that he still thought there was a chance for us “someday.”

 Over time, I realized 1. If it was an addiction, then perhaps it could be beaten and 2. Jack had met and was about to move in with someone else: a tech-ho* to his tech-bro. He had no real intention of leaving her, no matter what he said to me about “someday.” So I started counting days “sober” – no calls with him, no texting, no looking at his social media. When the conversations did happen, they got shorter and more curt. The nightmares lessened. More consecutive sober days passed, and turned into weeks. Then into months.

 Then, the pandemic came and brought me a small gift alongside all its terror: A man can’t do much to flirt with you if he’s quarantined in a one-bedroom with his girlfriend, so as to avoid a virus that poses a higher risk for him, because of a health condition like, say, diabetes. Perhaps the video game he’ll design someday will feature graphics with a dark knight facing off against a coronavirus cell with an evil face.

*tech-ho is used to describe an empowered adult female who works in the tech industry, and is not intended as a commentary on someone’s sexual proclivities, morality, or inherent worth as a human. It’s also just used for the rhyme.

###

In the great state of Washington is a city called Olympia, and a hill called Puget, at the top of which is a rundown punk house called The Black Spot. It was here, three years after Jack left me, that I was finally able to fall in love with someone else.

Some weeks later, we sat together on his fire escape in the autumn of 2020, eating takeout. I took in the view of the Puget Sound, the sunset and the capitol rotunda, and listened to him talk about how he eventually wanted to be in a polyamorous/open relationship. He was fine with monogamy now, but once the pandemic ended, his favorite bars and meet-markets would reopen, and then things would need to change.

What the hell am I doing here?

I loved him, but if I knew anything, it was that love was most likely not going to be enough. Just like it hadn’t been enough for Jack.

More weeks passed, and the moment came when I had to say the same words to him that Jack had said to me. It felt like I was choking on them:

I love you, but.

I love you, but I don’t see a future with you.

I love you, but I don’t see how this is going to work out.

I love you, but our lifestyles and priorities are not as compatible as we thought.

I love you, but I can’t afford to invest any more into this.

I love you, but I’m not in love with you anymore.

However:

I did not say things like “Maybe someday there’s a chance for us, if you would only change your job, your diet, your exercise routine, your hobbies and your friends.”

I did not call or text him when I was drunk or lonely or bored.

I saw the exposed heart strings, and I refused to knowingly tug on them like a yo-yo, just so I could yank his heart back in to my hands. I remembered how it felt to be treated like a toy; like a momentary amusement until something better came along. I did not dig up the grave just so I could lie in it for a moment and rejuvenate like a vampire, making myself feel desirable again, before jumping up and moving on.

There are still things I should have done differently.

There are times when I need to stop playing the sad-eyed bloodhound myself, and look around at the hearts I have broken. I’m not always the beauty in my own little “Beauty and the Beast” narratives. Sometimes I’m the mean furry thing.

And five years ago, when Jack saw my Mustang packed up, ready to go out west, and I saw his icy blue eyes start to fill up with panic, maybe I should have turned around and gone back to Chicago. It’s my own doing that I’m here, now.

For the time lost to my “addiction,” I’ve blamed myself, and still do. I’ve blamed Jack, and sometimes I still do. But I also think that the man I met back in Madison is gone. The woman he met is gone too, and that may be for the best. I need to keep learning from her mistakes.

 The pursuit of love may be a noble endeavor, but you have to be careful. You never know where it could lead. And I’m sure Mr. Lincoln is still sitting at the top of Bascom Hill, looking off to the northwest.