Group by Christie Tate

Author:Christie Tate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

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After Italy, I started working the long hours of a first-year associate at a big law firm, never leaving the office at night before seven. Suddenly I had a secretary, an expense account, and an office with a window overlooking the Chicago River. During my sixth week of work, I pulled my first all-nighter. My main task as a young lawyer was to review financial documents ten hours a day for a client whose beverages I grew up drinking. Skadden also sent me to the client’s headquarters to interview the bigwigs who set up their sales strategy so we could defend them to the SEC. After a long day of back-to-back meetings with the all-male-except-me team and a long dinner, I would collapse on a hotel bed and call Jeremy, who was home playing his NetHack.

“You’re doing great. I’m so proud of you,” Jeremy would say.

While I was off learning how to be a Skadden lawyer, Jeremy slipped into a depression. He gained weight, stopped shaving, skipped AA meetings, and sat at his computer playing his game most of the hours he wasn’t at work. Mr. Bourgeois puked up a hairball that languished in the middle of his living room for a week. The bathtub grew furry with hair and scum. When I spent the night over there, I held my pee as long as I could. I could almost make it eighteen hours. And we were always at his place these days. I understood he was unable to expend the energy to come all the way to my house.

In my spare time, I tried to pull him out of it by buying him groceries and suggesting he hit a meeting or call his sponsor. In group, I begged Dr. Rosen to help him. “Can’t you see he’s depressed?” Dr. Rosen’s answer was always the same: “What are you feeling?”

The feedback from both of my groups was unanimous: “Concentrate on your new career.”

“Focus on your new Skadden life. Maybe your tastes will change,” Dr. Rosen said. It sounded like an offhand comment. My tastes?

I craved action. My boyfriend was not going to mentally deteriorate, or God forbid, relapse on alcohol, on my watch. I bought him a new comforter—a masculine plaid—took a bottle of bleach to the bathroom, and pulled globs of God knows what out of the drain. I scrapped cat puke out of the rug. I stocked his fridge with fresh fruit and lean proteins, his pantry with low-sugar cereals.

In my frenzy, I remained deaf to the one need he had expressed—to be left alone. Today, I have compassion for him and the illness that robbed him of joy and energy. I also have compassion for myself as his ex-girlfriend who thought she could cure his malaise with new linens and fresh pineapple. At the time, all I could manage was scrambling harder to “fix” him by fashioning him into the man I wanted him to be.

One night during this dark period, under the stiffness of Jeremy’s new plaid comforter, I shimmied down to give him a blow job.

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