It’s too early in the day to do math, but I find myself staring at yet another utility bill on Wednesday morning. I really don’t understand how a person whose worldly possessions include just six T-shirts, some skinny jeans and a pair of Dansko kitchen clogs can rack up such a high cost of living.
Every month since Benji moved in, a small part of me has died when I open the bills. My studio apartment is far from enormous. Yet lo and behold, the electric bill feels like it’s for a four-bedroom house with a pool. I’m not trying to point fingers, but as I look to my left, there’s a rack of lamb that’s sitting in a sous vide and will be for seventy-two hours straight. Seriously, if the health inspector could see the shit that Benji pulls from up here on the tenth floor, he would never be allowed to cook again.
Not far behind is the cable bill. While Benji was getting sober, he insisted he shouldn’t work. Like, at all. I didn’t doubt the process, but then he claimed he was so bored while I was at the office that he feared a relapse. Could you imagine the FoodFeed headline? Zane Relapses Due to Girlfriend’s Lack of Robust Cable Package. So I gave him the green light to set it up.
I’m sure there’s a way to scale back on the bill now that Benji attends regular NA meetings and has his pop-up work to distract him, but I just don’t have the energy to sit on hold with the cable company and negotiate what premium channels should stay and what DVR features need to go. So I pay the bill and accept it as part of the price you pay to keep your boyfriend on the right track.
It’s still odd to think how we achieved “couple” status in the first place, since the path there was about as rinky-dink as the food prep that goes on in this apartment.
Before we were living together, he accidentally left a hoodie at my place. So I put it on, kept it unzipped with no bra and sent him a little sext. Not my best moment, but tempering myself around him was (still is) damn near impossible and I thought I’d tease him a bit with a smoky eye and a little side boob. Clearly, he liked what he saw, because he saved the photo to his phone and blasted it out a week later directly from his Twitter account while on a bender. He captioned it: My girlfriend is hotter than yours. cc: @AllieSimon.
To set the record straight, I was his side chick at best. Not a title one is usually proud of, but a role that accurately described the state of our relationship at the time. You know, one of probably a few people you call for a sloppy bar make-out session, or a 5:00 a.m. cuddle-fest. I was just someone who answered his calls with a wave of butterflies instead of a pit in my stomach. The pit was reserved for a woman daring enough to be his actual girlfriend; someone willing to take Benji on full-time.
The following morning, his dedicated fans saw the shocking 2:00 a.m. tweet and as such, my phone buzzed with notification after notification. The combination of dings and glows woke me up before my alarm did. A lot of people were sending their congratulations, concurring that I was in fact “hot.” Others said he could do better. A few girls tweeted back, I thought I was your girlfriend, you dick. Or just a plain and simple Fuck you @AllieSimon.
Whether or not Benji was actually in the market for a girlfriend, this tweet heard ’round the Chicago food world was the moment it all went down for me, a no-namer suddenly thrust into a controversial limelight without any warning.
@FoodFeed: Hey @BJZane, congrats! Would love to do a blurb on you and @AllieSimon. Favorite this tweet if OK.
Moments later, Benji of course gave it a like, which gave FoodFeed permission to go even more public with what was just a private guilty pleasure to me at the time.
That pic was only 4 U, Benji, I texted him with the slightest bit of rage/embarrassment.
ppl should know, he promptly wrote back.
Know what? My bra size?
U R my gf
<3 How is this going 2 work?
IDK.
I had learned from previous exchanges with him that short, intense, rapid-fire texts were a telltale sign he was high.
Cocaine talking? I had to ask.
I’ll get clean 4 U. I told U.
I turned my screen to dark and clutched the phone to my pounding chest as I sat up in my bed. Is this really happening? Do I want it to be happening?
Before this public display, what we did was in the dark. It was a secret he and I kept, and we capped it at booze-fueled conversation and fiery hookups. Sure, Jazzy and Maya knew that I was dancing with the devil, but my parents—and certainly the entire city of Chicago—didn’t need to know I was spending a few nights a week rounding the bases with a ticking time bomb who would sniff white powder off the nightstand before going down on me.
When Benji came into my life, keeping my distance was both the first and last thing on my mind. Every time we’d finish having sex, my internal battle was always, do I gear up for round two? Or do I leave now while he’s toweling off in the bathroom and block his number for good? Before I could make up my mind, he’d come back into the room, lock his arms around me and ask me what I wanted for breakfast the next morning.
How do you put a lid on that? Any of that? Had I known how it all was going to shake out a few months later, maybe I would have pumped the brakes a bit. But with a guy like Benji, I learned there are none.
And now here I am four months later—figuring out our expenses on a hot and sticky late-August morning. In times like this, I wonder about the girls who assumed this role before. Did they have to pay a monthly entertainment tariff just to keep our mutual acquaintance from getting bored and looking for drugs?
Do you know who else I think about? The girls who’ll never be in my shoes—and how they are free of obligations like this, and so many others. A pang of envy hits me right in the gut. I remind myself Benji’s the prize, and it goes away.
Standing at the kitchen counter, I write out three checks, stamp the envelopes and tuck them into my purse. Even though he’s clean now, the entire internet and everyone I know tells me I should be paranoid about a possible relapse, the provocation of which can come from anywhere. Spare cash lying around, compounded by a bad day or, I don’t know, a teaspoon of baking soda spilled on the counter, can lead to disaster. So I’ve learned to worry that if I pay these bills online, Benji will figure out a way to reroute the money somewhere it doesn’t belong, which is why I’ll personally be delivering these checks to a mailbox before setting foot into my office this morning. No one tells you what it’s like to live with a drug addict, but the trick, apparently, is that you can never be too careful.
“You going to work?” he groggily asks from his side of the bed.
Perhaps it’s just early, but the question rubs me the wrong way. He makes it sound like I have a choice, like it’s feasible that I’m on my way to grab picture frames at World Market or something. It’s 7:45 in the morning. Where the hell else would I be going?
“Yup.”
“Love you,” he says, getting up to kiss me and pull me in for a tight hug. The smell of stale cigarettes lingers in the patchy start of a dark brown beard. He’s either out of razors and waiting for me to notice so I pick some up on my way home, or he’s sporting a new, burlier look. Whatever the case may be, I don’t mind it. I let the smell take me back to another place and time; namely, the bar where we first met and first made out.
The fluttering feeling in my gut comes back in force, the strangeness and danger and possibility of him swirling together in my heart and mind. In these moments, I experience a high of my own that makes so much of what I’m struggling with fall away. Debt might be high and resources low, but when he crushes me to his chest this way, it’s all good. A man who loves me is enveloping me in his arms. And I am all in. In retrospect, I have been from the moment we first met.
“Love you, too,” I say back, calm and sweet, though what I really want to say is, “Maybe I should stay home and fuck?” Then I think, why don’t we? Sex has always been the perfect equalizer for us. No matter how frustrated I can get by day-to-day