A single year – Vancity Writer

In 2012, I went through the worst breakup of my life. I pledged to spend the whole next year single, go on adventures, and write about them. These are those stories.

Chapter One: Even When It’s Not (The Marine)

“I want something else to get me through this semi-charmed kind of life.” – Stephan Jenkins, 1997.

It was around 2 in the morning on June 9th, 2012. I was lying in the arms of a 24 year old marine sergeant from Pittsburgh, in his bedroom on a military base in Oahu, listening intently to the sound of our heartbeats slowing back down.
Imagine a guy with a painfully earnest smile, rippling arms, Jake Gyllenhaal eyes, and eyebrows with enough character they could star in their own TV show. I didn’t stand a chance.

“Man. Girls’ fingernails. It’s the little things you forget. Or, you remember, I guess” he said, almost to himself, as I gently raked my fingers up and down his forearms in absentminded, instinctual movements.
This was the moment where everything would change for me. But I’ll get to that.

Ten days prior to this night, I’d booked a last-minute plane ticket to Hawaii and fled my hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia to find some kind of solace. I found The Marine.
What was I running from? In short, a stage four cervical pre-cancer diagnosis and the subsequent swift exit of the love of my life (“D”) who “didn’t want to lead me on” by staying with me through it.

I was 27 and I had only lived in one province my whole life. I had been on a plane exactly once as an adult, because I’d spent my college party years saving up to buy a condo. I had never really been in love — that is to say, I had loved many without ever being in that love. I was always on the outside, looking in on it, and hoping for the best. I could count the number of lovers I’d had on two hands. I’d never never kissed a girl, never had a threesome, never had a one night stand, never even had sex with someone I didn’t want to marry. I felt as though I hadn’t lived enough for someone old enough to get cervical pre-cancer. Suddenly, 27 felt very young and very old, all at once.
I was scared for my life and utterly heartbroken at the same time, and I didn’t know which emotion I should give priority to.
I needed to get through this, and I wasn’t sure how, but I figured getting drunk was probably a good start. So naturally, I met The Marine in a bar.

I was about halfway through my first margarita at the Honolulu Señor Frogs when someone behind me said “Excuse me?”, and I turned my head towards the owner of this raspy, feminine, Southern drawl. This was the most Tara Reid-looking girl to ever exist without actually being Tara Reid. If it wasn’t for the Alabama accent I would’ve asked for her autograph.
“Would you mind scooting over one so we can sit together?” asked Southern Tara Reid, gesturing to the guy on the stool beside me she was chatting up.

“Oh yeah, no problem!” I replied, marveling at the fact that I just heard someone under the age of 50 use the term “scooting”. Nonetheless, I scooted one stool to the right, and found myself next to some guy sitting by himself and making small talk with the bartender.
I took one cursory glance and quickly registered how cute he was. Tall. Lanky. Board shorts. T-shirt. Buzz cut. Big, sad eyes. Pack of cigarettes in front of him (well, no one’s perfect. I looked away and soon felt him staring back at me as I pretended to watch whatever sport was playing on the TV above the bar.
“Did you just get kicked out of your seat?” he asked, smiling and turning his entire body towards me.
I smiled back. “Yep. But this stool has a better view, anyways” I replied, flippantly, smirking before giving a quick point to the TV I’d been pretending to watch.
“Canada?” he asked, with a slow grin.
“Vancouver” I nodded, impressed. Was it my accent? My mannerisms? My pale skin? Had I said “Eh?” or “Aboot” already?
“Pittsburgh” he replied, confidently answering a question I did not ask. We shook hands and locked eyes for a really long time before our hands came apart.
A few margaritas later, I told him that I’d just gotten out of a two year relationship and was taking my first ever vacation on my own. He told me that he’d been in the marines since he was 18 and had never known anything other than being on his own. By 5 a.m. we both had looted a wealth of information about each other’s families, childhood memories, life aspirations, biggest wishes, and greatest fears. We talked for five hours. We talked as if this was an honest to goodness date that might actually turn into something, even though it wasn’t and it wouldn’t and we both knew that. It was curious and charming all at once.

We did not make love that night.

At about 6 a.m., when the bar had long been closed and we had long been wandering the quiet streets of Honolulu together, he walked me to my hotel. He held my hand the whole way, like it was grade 7 and we were boyfriend and girlfriend in that tentative, yet fearless way only 13 year olds can be. When we arrived, he asked me if I would meet him at the same time in Senor Frogs the following night. I agreed. He kissed me goodnight at the elevator door, did not ask to come up, and walked away.
He spent all morning and afternoon the next day texting me, and I spent all morning and afternoon trying to simultaneously calm the butterflies in my stomach and answer one question: “What was that?”.

At 8 p.m. that next night, I walked into the bar, and spotted him on the same stool, nursing a beer. I watched him for a few moments as he made small talk with the bartender, watched the basketball game on the TV screen, and took swigs from his bottle in a way that would let you know he was American if you didn’t know already.
I retreated back into my own head for a moment, and let one question rise to the top, above the rest: “Wait. Am I going to sleep with this guy?”.
He suddenly glanced in my direction, noticed me in front of the door, let a giant smile grow across his face, and waved the most endearing wave I had ever seen. It was the wave you give to someone you’ve known your whole life. A childhood friend you haven’t seen in a few years. A soul mate.
And then it happened. The moment where everything resets and takes a deep breath and feels right. I knew that this was someone I could be vulnerable with; someone I could trust, as much as you can trust someone you have only known for 24 hours, and as much as you can trust anyone in this life.
Fast forward eight hours and we were in his bed, with both of our defences irretrievably destroyed. I didn’t know why he was so comfortable with me. And I didn’t know why I was so comfortable with him. And I didn’t want to say anything about it, for fear the comfort would go away as mysteriously as it came. So I just bathed in it.
He was lonely. I was wounded. Somehow, we’d caught sight of each other as we both stood at different edges of the same proverbial plank. The plank of an uncertain near future. At least, that was what I was telling myself, because that was what I needed. Camaraderie.

“Aren’t you afraid of dying out there?” I asked him. But I wasn’t really asking him. I just wanted to hear the words out loud.
I hadn’t really told anyone back home about my cervical pre-cancer nightmare. I hadn’t told anyone because it did not feel real enough yet, and thus I had yet to zoom out on the big picture of it all. I was dipping my toe in with these words. “Afraid.” “Dying.”

“I’m scared every day” he answered, softly, and his voice was so sincere I had to catch my breath a little. “Every single day,” he re-iterated, matter-of-factly and without the shame of saying it that you might expect from a military man.
And right then, I felt understood. Because so was I. Every day. Lately, anyways. He was me, and I was him. For just a second there.
In a few weeks, he would be back in Iraq and I would be back in Canada. His survival was up in the air, and so was mine. He was soon to face his country’s enemies, who would be armed with bullets and guns and merciless resolve. I was soon to face my surgeon, my worst enemy and my savior all at once, who would be armed with a clipboard, empty eyes, and my final diagnosis. We were both scared for our lives. And in a way, that ended up being the thing that I needed: To feel a kinship with someone who didn’t know I was staring down the barrel of a biopsy, but could understand what it might feel like. I needed to feel like I wasn’t the only one who might not have a lot of time. I needed to somehow be ready for my moment of truth.
The Marine will likely never know the real reason I booked a last-minute flight to Hawaii in May of 2012. I’m sure he thought I was just recovering from the end of a two-year relationship, and there was nothing more to it than that. He will never know what I was running from. And he will never know the phone call I was waiting for, and trying not to think about as I laid in his arms.
He will never know how I looked into his eyes and saw the same calm panic that I’d been seeing in my own eyes for weeks, and how chasing the fear from his eyes a little with an evening of passion and multiple orgasms was the only thing that let me chase it from my own eyes a little too. He’ll never know how he saved me.
I’ll never tell him these things, because in a way I feel that he already knew he was healing me, in some small way. He just didn’t realize how. And I don’t think that was the important part.
I once heard a fictional tv show character say, “Most relationships are just two people, passing through life, enriching or aggravating each other’s lives briefly. Can’t two people who feel an attraction come together and create something wonderful? And then go back to their lives the next day, better for it, but never over-analyzing it or wanting it to be more than it was?”. I never would’ve thought the answer was yes.
I am enriched because of that night in Hawaii, thousands of miles away from the world I knew and the biopsy results I wasn’t ready to know yet, when a young American soldier made me feel loved, even when I wasn’t.
We didn’t love each other. We didn’t even know each other. But there was love there, somehow. Because love is everywhere, even when it’s not.

Chapter Two: Vodka Without a Chaser (The Russian)

“We don’t have a lot of love. What we’ve got is liberty.” – Dan Vacon, 2009.

“Have you ever had a friend with benefits before?”, I asked.
“No, have you?”, he asked back.
“Yeah, once. It didn’t really work out.” I replied.
“Is that what we are?” – he asked.
“It kind of looks that way, doesn’t it?” – I answered.

It was 11 in the evening on June 26th, 2012, and I was lying next to my friend, The Russian, in my bed, as we stood on the edge of the metaphorical friendship cliff and peered over at the uncharted waters of friendsex below us. We weren’t over the edge yet. We could still turn back. But did I want to?
But let me back up a little, to how we got here. About five weeks back.

It was 8 in the evening on May 18th, 2012, and I was sitting next to The Russian on the Skytrain.

In two weeks, I would be boarding a plane to Hawaii. In two weeks, my entire viewpoint on sex and relationships would be shattered and re-formed by The Marine. But I didn’t know that yet.
The Russian and I had run into each other on the Skytrain platform that evening, both with plans for the night that we weren’t too excited about. I had a rebound date with a British guy I’d met on a dating website. He had a house party in the boonies that he was expected at and needed to take two buses to get to. Neither of us really wanted to go. After 10 minutes of “Hey, I know you!” small talk on the Skytrain platform, we decided to simultaneously bail on each of our plans for the night and go to a pub downtown together instead. It was a strange thing for two acquaintance-level friends who had never hung out together on their own before to do.

Who was The Russian? I had met him about a year and a half ago at a friend’s birthday party. This was a guy so conventionally handsome and unabashedly charming that I put him in the “never sleep with this guy” box in my head within a few minutes of meeting him, because he seemed like trouble. He was unapologetically flirtatious with anything female that moved, and yet he didn’t seem to have the slightest idea what he actually wanted. In a girl. In a job. In life. Did he want everything? Did he want nothing? He was filled to the brim with overconfidence, and yet he was constantly looking over his shoulder for more reassurance. I couldn’t understand how someone with so much potential could sell themselves so short. I couldn’t figure out whether he was running like hell from something, or running like hell to something. And I could never quite shake the feeling that there might be a lot more to him.
On our way to the pub that night, our conversation took a few twists and turns and somehow brought us to:
“I mean, there are so many cool things that couples can do, but friends can’t, because couples have claimed them and they’re categorized as romantic!” I exclaimed, as only a woman recently burned by a failed two-year relationship could’ve.
“I know! Like, that thing that the bride and groom do at the wedding, where they drink out of their wine glasses with their arms intertwined. Why can’t friends do that? It looks like fun!” he replied.
“We should just start doing it at parties. We could totally take it back for the singles! We’ll call it…” I thought for a few seconds, before settling on “the buddy swig!”.
“I’m in!” he answered.
I really didn’t clue in to the fact that we were actually talking about sex until months later.
Later that night, we were respectably drunk for a Friday evening and sitting on the Skytrain again, this time on our way back to the suburbs from the pub. And, because I’d drunkenly asked, this guy was drunkenly telling me his whole life story.

Here’s the thing. The Russian had spent the last five years fighting a war. Unlike The Marine, he was waging this war with no army beside him or behind him, no flag waving gloriously behind him, and no uniform to grant him instant respect from anyone who caught sight of him. All his bullets were metaphorical. All the grenade blasts were silent. All his wounds were invisible. All his enemies carried clipboards and held phDs. All the land mines he was dodging were blood test results and medication side effects.
I was staring absentmindedly at my own reflection in the Skytrain car window as he chronicled his hepatitis diagnosis at age 22, the long five year wait for treatment, and — finally — the end of the struggle. At the beginning of May, while my medical crisis was only beginning, The Russian received a phone call from his doctor telling him that he was healthy again. He was receiving the call that I wasn’t expecting to receive for a while, but so longed for. Mine and The Marine’s wars might not have been over yet, but The Russian’s war finally was.
“I just feel like I missed out on so much over the last five years, and I have so much to catch up on…” he trailed off, and as he said it, I sort of heard it in my own voice at the same time. 27 still felt very young and very old, all at once. When I was 16 I started acquiring boyfriends and barricading myself inside back-to-back monogamous relationships, and I never really stopped to wonder what else was out there. Or what I really wanted. I had much to catch up on as well.
“I just miss… intimacy.” he said.
And suddenly, cervical pre-cancer didn’t seem all that bad. My illness meant biopsies, surgeries, and decreased fertility. His meant years and years of abstaining from relationships, alcohol, kissing, and sex. I wouldn’t have traded.
“That’s awful.” This was the only thing I could think to say, so I said it more than once while he talked.
I looked straight down at the floor for a long time, then up at him. I don’t remember what he said next, but as he said it, I looked into his eyes and I saw me. And I saw my brother, the strongest and bravest person I’ve ever known. And I saw The Marine. I hadn’t met The Marine yet – I would meet him in Hawaii about three weeks after this night. But, looking back, I know I saw him. Because I saw a soldier.
And right then, it happened. My heart busted open like the Grinch’s when it expanded and broke the measuring device.
It would be about five weeks before I let The Russian make love to me. Before I could be ready for that kind of relationship, I think I needed to meet The Marine. In a way, I think I felt the clock start ticking from that night on though, although I didn’t know at the time what it was ticking down to.

From the moment I returned home from Hawaii, I started to look at The Russian in a totally different way.
The Marine and I were both fighting a war, but his was a literal war and mine was not. The Russian was my compatriot – we were two fighters in the same battle. I had found a fellow soldier and wanted to share rations with him. Except our rations would be affection, something as vital to red-blooded humans in life as sustenance is to soldiers at war.
I wanted to sate him, the way The Marine sated me. Only this time, we would both be coming from the same place. Two broken souls, fighting for lost time and finding a little bit of solace in each other.
In a small way, I felt that my soul-shaking Island romance with The Marine was the universe’s peace offering for the ex-boyfriend who had left me the day I told him about my pre-cancer diagnosis. I wanted to be the universe’s peace offering to The Russian for something. Or I wanted to send a thank you out to the universe. I wasn’t really sure. I just wanted to have something to do with this karmic wheel. I wanted to make someone’s life a little better. I had gratitude to send out into the world. And I wanted my own distraction. I still needed to heal.

“Have you ever had a friend with benefits before?” – I asked. “No, have you?” he asked back.
“Yeah, once. It didn’t really work out.” I replied.
“Is that what we are?” – he asked.
“It kind of looks that way, doesn’t it?” – I answered.

It was 11 in the evening on June 26th, 2012. And for the second time ever, I opened the door to a friends with benefits relationship. Only this time, I wasn’t fooling myself as to what we were. And this time, I wasn’t in love with the friend (but I’ll get to The Actor later). I just wanted to feel something that was a little bit like love, and I wanted to give that something back in return.
The buddy swig. What could go wrong?

Chapter Three: The Orgasm (Russian Roulette)

“And I’m not gonna lie and say that I will take you out to dance
There’s just no chance
‘Cause I don’t even like the same music you do
I just wanna have my wicked way with you. – Ben Taylor, 2008.

I lost my wallet on the bus once.
I was 18, and my whole world was in that wallet. Cell phone, iPod, keys, ID, everything.
It was lost for an entire 4 minutes before a kind stranger handed it back to me from under the seat behind me, but the experience still left a deep impression on me. I am now 27 and to this day, when taking public transit, I check for my wallet about every 2 minutes. It’s a little compulsive, but I’ve been burned once.

This might be a poorly-constructed metaphor for my relationship with The Actor and every casual relationship I’ve attempted since, but it also happens to be true. I may never stop nervously checking that my wallet is still there.
As I tumbled down the rabbit hole with The Russian throughout the month of July, The Actor was all I could think about whenever I stopped to let my mind idle. We were 18 when we tried our hand at the concept of friends with benefits, and over the course of our three month tryst, we managed to successfully ruin two active relationships, one relationship that hadn’t even started yet, two friendships (not even counting our own), our reputations, and worst of all, our integrity.
I never tried to have casual sex again after that. Those three months killed any desire I used to have to write my own script in terms of relationships. It took us eight years to fully recover. Only in the summer of 2012 were we able to pull ourselves together and finally sit down for a few beers in a pub and talk like friends again. Those three months did a fucking number on us.
We were not supposed to get involved. I had briefly dated his older brother. He had dated my little sister, and grapevine speculation on our closeness while they were dating had ended that relationship and scorched my relationship with my sister at the time. We were two intense, narcissistic writers who were far too alike to be so close. A couple of eighteen year olds from hetero-normative white suburbia who were doomed from the moment they sat down in that awful diner and wrote out a list of “FWB Rules” on a piece of paper torn from a journal. We decided to get around the fact that our arrangement would be heavily judged by every single person we knew by keeping it secret. That really didn’t last very long, and soon we could add ostracization from our friends and family to the list of things we had in common.

Near the end of the summer, he met a cute girl and started dating her, so we took the benefits out of our friendship and tried to regress to the platonic friendship we’d had before (as per the agreement in our torn out journal page of FWB rules). Only it never really was platonic. We were never anything but lovers. Then we did the stupidest thing we possibly could’ve: We got drunk alone together on two mickeys of Fireball.
In the morning, he didn’t remember what had happened. A few days later, I told him. Why? Because I was foolish. Because I didn’t understand that sometimes lying by omission and shouldering 100% of the guilt for something can be the compassionate thing to do. Because I had accidentally fallen in love with him and thought that telling the truth was what love is.
He told her. They broke up. He and I stood amongst the ruins of everything we had brought down in flames with our lust, and hung our heads. Then we parted ways, and for eight years we grew apart, grew up, and individually grew away from the monsters we’d once been, only communicating with each other through our blogs. Until the summer of 2012.
But I’ll get to the rest of The Actor’s story later.

It was July 2012. As I stood at the edge of the same cliff with someone else, nine years later, I wondered… would I do better this time?
The Russian and I had been sleeping together for about a month. The first time was awkward, because the first time always is. The second time, and every time after that, was kind of unworldly amazing.
I was treading very lightly. I would drag myself out of a dead sleep at 4 am to flee his bed and walk home, because there is something about being the one to wake up first and glancing over at a sleeping boy that always stirs feelings of love within me — I’ve never understood why. By avoiding this I was dodging intimacy bullets. When he invited me to hang out, I would invite others to join us. Every other sentence ended with “buddy” or “friend”. Not falling in love was the game, and I was determined to win it this time.

The Russian’s text message roused me from a deep, cold-medication-fueled sleep on a home-sick-from-work Thursday in early July: “Good morning, beautiful! It is incredible outside! Blue skies, so warm. Are you feeling better today?“
Me: “Good morning! I know, summer finally showed up eh? Gorgeous :). Still feeling a little sick but I think I’ve almost kicked it.”
The Russian: “Oh no! Do you have NeoCitrin? I swear by that stuff when I’m sick.”

Me: “Nope, I have an arsenal of Tylenol Cold and Vick’s VapoRub though!”
The Russian: “I’d love to bring you some NeoCitrin when I get home from work if you want. That stuff will knock you out so you can sleep well tonight.”
Me: “Aww, thanks! I might get you sick though!”

The Russian: “I’ll risk it :).”

We went dancing. We went shopping. We went to see the new Batman movie. I fake-called-in-sick to work to drive him to a hospital appointment across town. He taught me how to ride his motorcycle. He took me to his work’s summer cruise. He bought me lingerie. I booty-called him over to my place after returning home from dates with other guys and we would laugh about how wrong they were for me. We snuck away to dark corners at house parties and quietly made love while our friends were none the wiser. It was great.

It was everything I wanted at that time: All the companionship and kindness of friendship, all the passion of lovemaking, and none of the drawbacks of a relationship. Well, not yet anyways.
I inherently knew it wouldn’t last for long. Casual sex always has a clearly implied expiry date that relationship sex just doesn’t have. What I didn’t know was when and why it would end. I assumed it would be my fault. It wasn’t. But I’ll get to that. For those two and a half months, I was an ostrich with my head in the sand.

It was 11 in the evening on July 23rd, 2012, when our arrangement would be – in my mind – put to the final test.

I felt the first shudder as The Russian slowly made love to me in my bed, and quickly felt the subsequent waves of warmth travelling over me like ripples in a pond, starting deep inside and travelling outwards to the rest of my body, over my torso, and finally to my limbs. My first reaction was pure panic.
The first signs of an orgasm are usually welcome additions to a romp in the sack. This one wasn’t. I had spent the last month thwarting every almost-orgasm I’d not had while with The Russian, for fear of the consequences. This one I couldn’t evade.
I wanted to turn back. Switch positions. But there was no time. The impending climax was mobile, like a roller coaster slowly ascending towards the top of the hill. Every moment was another click on the tracks, bringing it closer to the top of the hill, where there was nowhere to go but down.
“You okay?” he asked, telling me the concern was clearly showing on my face.
“Yeah”, I replied. Because I wasn’t, but I should’ve been. And maybe affirming that would make it happen. Would make this okay.

The reason I was so freaked out? Mostly, oxytocin and endorphins.

And what triggers the biggest release of bond-forming oxytocin and love-inducing endorphins? You guessed it: Orgasms.

For someone trying to add casual sex to a friendship without developing feelings, every neurochemical release was a potential land mine. Orgasms in particular would really be pushing my luck.

An orgasm was the last terrifying jump I would need to make in this experiment with The Russian, and I wasn’t ready to make it yet. But this one apparently wasn’t waiting for me to be ready.
“Oh!” escaped my mouth. And then I was there. It was far too late for any last-minute rational thought. I had leapt from the bridge, and could do nothing but hope that my bungee cord wouldn’t break.
Heartbeats slowed. Muscles relaxed. Body parts retreated.
“Wow, that’s the first time that’s happened with us.” he remarked as I assumed spooning position. “Yeah”, I replied, and kissed his chest.
I waited a few minutes, and then looked up into his eyes, terrified at what I would see when he locked eyes with me. Love? Lust? Were we in a different place? Or had we remained the same? Would history repeat itself? Would my world be destroyed again? Or had we gotten it right this time? Would we be okay?
I looked. He looked back.
And I saw my friend. The same friend. My fellow soldier, my swig buddy, and, somehow, no one else. I blinked a few times, just to be sure. But yes. We were still the same.
My wallet had not gone missing this time. It was right there with me.

Chapter Four: Communication is a Three-Way Street (The Girl)

“We’ve got nothing to prove
Your social guides give you swollen eyes
But what I’ve got can’t be bought so you can just
Call it what you want” – Mark Foster, 2011.

Is jealousy a switch inside your head that — if you really want to — you can turn on and off at will? Or is jealousy a reactionary response, like a sneeze, that will come back and explode one way or another?

The first time I ever felt attracted to another woman, it was a snowy January evening in 2012 and I was in Portland, Oregon on a business trip. She was gorgeous, completely nude, and she smelled like vanilla all over.
But that’s a story for another blog entry.

This one is about the second time I ever felt attracted to another woman. And it’s about juggling the jealousy grenade as I realized my feelings for her, my feelings for The Russian, and my feelings when they were both attracted to each other as well as me.
It was 1 in the morning on August 3rd, 2012, and I was late for the party. I had been invited to two events in one night, and had RSVP’d yes to both. A close friend’s birthday party in downtown Vancouver and a new acquaintance’s going away party in the suburbs of Port Moody. Close friends trump new acquaintances, but going away parties trump birthday parties. The optimistic social butterfly’s obvious solution? Leave the birthday party at 1 am and show up for the twilight stage of the going away party.
“I’m just leaving now! Is the party still going?” I texted The Russian from inside the pub.
The Russian: “Yup, come on down :)”. So I downed a Broken Down Golf Cart and called a cab.
15 minutes and a $20 cab ride later, I was outside the house. Knock knock. “Come IN!” yelled back a medley of drunken voices, and so I did.
I walked into the kitchen and as a sea of intoxicated voices greeted me I surveyed the damage. Anyone who wasn’t half-passed out already was at least sitting or lying on the floor in the living room or the kitchen, bottle or Solo cup of poison in hand. Unlike my first party of the night, this was a pretty hardcore party crowd. I had some catching up to do.
Then I saw The Russian. He was on the kitchen floor, so drunk his eyes were barely open and he had not noticed me yet. The Girl, a mutual acquaintance of ours who’d recently started hanging out with our group, was sitting behind him with her legs wrapped around him. She was caressing the back of his head. He was rubbing her feet.
The first millisecond: A punch of pure hurt, jealousy, and shame. It lasted only for a millasecond, but the feeling was distinct and strong. I felt betrayed. Wronged. Deceived. Scorned.
The second millisecond: A voice, barely missing a beat, echoed through my mind. “Just relax. This was the whole idea”, it said. And right then, I felt a switch flip. The jealousy switch? Maybe.
I took a deep breath, looked away from them, and excused myself to the bathroom in a drama-free fashion. “I’ll be right back!” I shouted to the room in the most chipper voice I could muster.
I had only just closed the bathroom door behind me when I heard a knock on it. The Russian?

I opened the door to find The Girl. She asked if she could come in for a second, and closed the door behind her when I said yes.
“I’m so glad you made it!” The Girl exclaimed, embracing me. This girl was gorgeous in that dark, dangerous kind of way that I could never hope to rival, and her cleavage was heart-stopping.
“Me too!” I replied, hugging her back and marveling at the cocktail of confusion bubbling inside of me. I had no clue how to feel at that moment.
She pulled away from our hug, put her hands gently on my shoulders, and looked me straight in the eyes. “Is it okay if I fuck [The Russian]?” she asked, warmly.
“Oh. Yeah! Of course!” the words escaped my mouth so quickly I don’t even think they’d had time to filter through my brain first. I was finding out what my verbal response would be at the same moment she was. It was purely reactionary. This was what I was supposed to say, and I just said it.
“Oh, great. Because I heard you guys weren’t together anymore, but I wasn’t sure…” she explained.
“Oh, no, we were never together” I replied. I thought the nature of our relationship had become well-known within our crowd over the summer, but grapevines make the truth blurry. “We’re just friends. And we sleep together. But we’re definitely allowed to sleep with other people, that’s totally cool.”
“Great! Wanna do tequila shots?” she asked.
And that was how I resigned myself to the idea that I could sleep with someone who could sleep with someone else. This idea was no surprise — from the first night I brought The Russian into my bedroom, non-exclusivity had always been implied and understood on both ends. But between June and August it had only been the two of us. The idea of sharing him with someone else was a crossroad I knew I’d hit at some point — I just didn’t know when and how it would happen. I now knew that someone who was important to me would likely soon be sharing his body with someone else, and I knew the return of the punch I’d felt a few minutes earlier was just a ticking time bomb. When the bomb would go off, I had no idea.

The next time I saw The Girl was four days later. It was 10 in the evening on August 7th, 2012, and we were at the local bar with the usual crew, and The Russian. It was her last night in town before she would be moving to another province, and the tension was building inside me because I wasn’t sure if they’d slept together yet. She hadn’t said anything, and neither had he, but I hadn’t seen him for a few days and hadn’t had a moment alone with him all night. Then when I excused myself to the bar’s bathroom, The Girl came with me.

“So I slept with The Russian last night” she opened, while tousling her radiant black hair in front of the mirror.
“Oh? How was it?” I asked, the same way you’d ask any girl friend who tells you this, while realizing this is a funny question to ask when you already know how the guy is in bed.
“Great! We were SO drunk though.” she laughed. “Are you going over to his place tonight?”
“Oh. I don’t know…” I really didn’t. Normally that would be implied during a night out with The Russian and our friends, but I had no idea what the code was when there were two of us, and I sort of felt obliged to give her first dibs because it was her last night in town (though in retrospect that’s kind of a ridiculous thing to think).
“Why don’t you go? It’s your last night in town!” I answered. And on the inside, I marvelled at the fact that the jealousy punch hadn’t hit me yet. Was it because she wasn’t really a threat since she was moving away the next day? Was it because that night in the kitchen at that house party, I had flipped the jealousy switch off and it had stayed off? I didn’t know. All I knew was that at this moment in time, I did not feel jealous at the thought of The Russian making love to The Girl instead of me that night. “Well, we could both go back to his place…” The Girl replied, and it was all I could do to stop my jaw from hitting the floor. That was an answer I wasn’t expecting.
“Oh!” I answered.
Oh.
And both go back to his place, we did.
I had expected to be so nervous that there was no chance I would come that night. But then I did. I had expected to be scared the entire time. But then I wasn’t. I had expected to feel a rush of negative emotions afterwards — I had expected to feel jealous, to feel slutty, to feel less special to him. I had expected to feel the dread of having opened a door that I’d never be able to close again. But then I didn’t. I didn’t feel any of those things at all.
We spent two hours in that bed, and I spent every minute of the first hour waiting for the other shoe to drop, and for the jealousy punch to hit me again. I watched him kissing her while she caressed me. I watched her go down on him while he caressed me. I watched him make love to her while he kissed me. And every now and again, I would retreat into my head for a moment and check on my own heart. Had it been broken yet? But every time I checked, I was even more okay.
The first big hurdle in my casual relationship with The Russian was the orgasm, and I had survived the first and all subsequent instances of it. Sharing him was the second big hurdle, and somehow I was surviving this too.
The more I realized that I was completely fine, the more I relaxed from my crash position and began to lay back into the moment. At that moment of realization, The Russian was on top of The Girl making love to her, and The Girl was really crushing it as multitasking. And once I had stopped my mind from racing for a minute, my brain was free to notice that I was about 10 seconds from experiencing my first orgasm induced by another woman. She didn’t smell like vanilla all over as the first woman I’d ever been attracted to did, but she was gorgeous and completely nude just like she was. And like that woman in Portland, she had turned me on at a level completely different than the one a man can bring me to. Not a higher level. Not a lesser level. Just a different one.
I was not afraid of this orgasm, as I had been of my first with The Russian. I was no longer burdened with fears of endorphin overdoses. And I did not have to tell her that I was close, or not to stop. She was right there, inside my head, reading my thoughts. We just waited for for me to get there. And then I did.
It was 3 in the morning on August 8th, 2012, and the three of us had just finished making love. And while we huddled together in his twin-sized bed, her wrapped in his left arm and me wrapped in his right arm, I quietly retreated into my own head for a moment and focused only on the slowing of my own breathing.
I had survived it, feeling more empowered than I had after my fling with The Marine, feeling more empowered than I had after I’d survived that first orgasm with The Russian, and feeling more empowered than I ever had in my life. I felt very separated from the life I’d been living prior to June 2012. I felt separated from D and from every man who came before him. The world I was living in now was so different from the world I once knew.
I felt strong. I had slept with two people at once, and I was not in love with either of them. I had done something that I had spent my whole life viewing as deviant solely because it was not generally accepted in society. And for the first time that summer, I was not constantly worrying about a) getting hurt and/or b) being judged.
I had been so terrified of opening a door that I’d never be able to close again. But I had, in fact, opened a door that I’d never be able to close again, and in doing that I had set myself free.

Chapter Five: The Swan Song and The Backslide (The Fish and The Cat)

“Tonight ain’t the night for sorrow
But you can hurt me tomorrow” – K’naan, 2012.

Every single relationship you have is going to end. Until one doesn’t.

The Guitarist and I lasted for the summer of 2004. I knew it was over when I stormed out and closed the door after finding him with her, stood there for about 30 seconds, and then slowly realized that he wasn’t coming after me. He wasn’t rushing out after me to apologize and beg for forgiveness. He was choosing her.
The Gambler and I lasted from 2006 to 2008. I knew it was over when he left an MSN chat window up on his computer that chronicled his sexual indiscretions over the course of our relationship. He was in the shower as I read the crushing words on the screen, and by the time he’d gotten out I’d packed up my things, closed his laptop, and left. I left our apartment. I left “us”. And I left any feeling I’d ever had for him, all at once, and never looked back.
D and I lasted from 2010 to 2012. I knew it was over when I told him my doctor had found abnormal cells in my pap test that could be cervical cancer and he launched into the break-up conversation by saying “I want to be there for you through this, but I felt like we were headed for a break up soon anyways and I don’t want to confuse you or lead you on.” I looked at the man I’d always seen as my white knight, and I realized he was not going to rescue me at all. That moment crushed my heart, crushed my soul, and crushed all the love I’d felt for him up until that point.
The Russian and I lasted for the summer of 2012. And I was pretty certain it was over at about 11 am on September 3rd, 2012.

When you’re running hard on a treadmill and you’re approaching your breaking point, a voice inside of you tells you to stop.
“This hurts!” “My lungs are burning!” “My legs are about to pop off!”
Dr. Freud would call this voice “the id”. Dr. Seuss would call this voice The Cat (from The Cat in the Hat). This voice is all about what you’re feeling. The id operates on the pleasure principle – it wants what it wants and not necessarily what is right or smart.
A runner must learn to ignore the id, or they will never build their endurance. They must trust that they stepped on that treadmill and started running to accomplish a goal, and that goal is still something worth achieving, despite the pain they feel now.
A runner must learn to listen to another voice.
“You can get through this!” “Ignore the pain!” “Just suck it up!”.
Dr. Freud would call this voice “the superego”. Dr. Seuss would call this voice The Fish (again, from The Cat in the Hat). This voice is all about what you’re thinking. This voice operates on the rationality principle – it wants what is right and logical, not necessarily what feels good and does not hurt you. Exercise hurts, but your superego tells you to do it anyway.
Runners teach themselves to ignore their id and listen only to their superego. They stop feeling and start thinking. This is how they get through those last ten minutes on the treadmill when they feel like their lungs are about to explode. They are freezing out their awareness of what they feel.
It was 11 am on September 3rd, 2012. The Russian and I were sitting on the grass in front of his apartment. I had brought him back the vanilla vodka he’d left at my house three weeks prior. He was clutching it like he was afraid someone was going to steal it and afraid he was going to accidentally break it, all at once.
“I’m sorry”, The Russian said.
“It’s okay”, I answered.
“No, it’s not”, The Russian replied.
“I know, that’s just something I say when people apologize to me”, I explained.
“Do you still want to do this?” he asked, waving his finger back and forth between us on the word “this”.

“This”? I took a moment to consider what that word might’ve meant. Sleep with him? Be his friend? Trust him with my body and my feelings after the way he drop-kicked my heart like that?
It didn’t really matter which one he meant. Ultimately, the answers were no, no, and no. My superego had the reins on this one.
I took another moment to decide on a way to put this gently. Before I could even form a full thought, an answer had involuntarily escaped my lips.
“It’s kind of weird now”, I said.
I considered this answer curiously, as if someone else had said it for me. Because it almost felt like someone else had. I thought to myself, well, that was a stupid way to put it, but at least I didn’t panic and say yes”.
I had already started to feel a knot forming in my stomach, because although I knew I had to close the door on this relationship, I still didn’t want to. I’d better leave now, before my id kicks in, I thought.
“Yeah, I’ve gotta run. I’ll see you around?” I said, reaching for my purse on the ground beside us. “See you” he replied, still clutching the vodka as if it could disappear at any moment.
And then I got up. And I left.
Mine and The Russian’s relationship began after I returned from Hawaii in June 2012.
In June, I was worried about falling in love with him as I had fallen in love with The Actor. But then I didn’t.
In July, I was worried about my dormant feelings for him changing when orgasms and their bond- forming oxytocin rushes entered the picture. But then they didn’t.
In August, I was worried about jealousy entering the picture when we entered our one-night triad with The Girl and I would need to share him for the first time. But then it didn’t.

In all that time, I never once worried about him intentionally hurting me. And why not?
Because he was a friend, I genuinely did not want a relationship with him, and I had not fallen in love with him. How much damage could he do?
I never once worried about him hurting me. But then, in late August of 2012, he did. And the morning when it became clear to me what he was doing was the morning I walked over to his apartment with that vanilla vodka, because I knew that this was when we needed to end. At least, that was the plan.
What did he do? The Russian attempted to sleep with my little sister.
If this seems like such a spectacularly stupid and hurtful thing for someone to do that you’re having trouble comprehending how someone could so blatantly disregard their lover’s boundaries and feelings like that, then we’re pretty much on the same page.
It was clear that I had to end things. But no matter how clear it was, I was still actively looking for loopholes in my own self-respect code of conduct, because I intrinsically still didn’t really want to. And although I had managed to cling to my pride and my inner superego on that bright, sunny September morning in front of his apartment, I wasn’t so sure how long my grip would last.
There’s a scene in a movie called Shopgirl where Claire Danes’ character, Mirabelle, comes to the realization that Steve Martin’s character, Ray, is never, ever going to feel about her the way she feels about him. The realization overwhelms her so much that she actually stops walking and sits down in reaction to an offhand comment he lets slip that makes this perfectly clear. She sits for a second or so.
Mirabelle: “Ray, why don’t you love me? Are you just biding your time with me?” Ray: “I thought you understood…”
Mirabelle next says to Ray, simply, “So. I can either hurt now, or hurt later”.
She thinks for a moment, and then says “Now, I guess”. And then she gets up. And she leaves.

Why did The Russian make me think of this scene from an indie chick flick? I didn’t love The Russian as Mirabelle loved Ray (or even at all, for that matter), but I did care about him enough as a friend that I would never intentionally hurt him. He clearly did not feel the same way about me. And when someone doesn’t care about you enough to not hurt you, continuing to make yourself vulnerable to them is a fool’s game.
Mirabelle is the embodiment of the superego in this scene. If she had listened to the id, she would have stayed with Ray to enjoy the pleasure while it lasted. She would have chased this impulse until the relationship became too painful for her to hang on to it any longer. But she didn’t do that. She used her brain.

There’s a scene in a movie called Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, where Kate Winslet’s character, Clementine, and Jim Carey’s character, Joel, come to the realization that their relationship is never, ever going to work out. They know this because they have already tried to be together. They do not remember the relationship because they both underwent futuristic procedures to erase their memories of each other, but after listening to the audio recordings of their pre-procedure interviews, they have both heard their own voices document how the relationship went so very south. They don’t remember the past, but they’ve been given a glimpse of the future.
Joel: “I can’t see anything that I don’t like about you.”
Clementine: “But you will! But you will! You will think of things. And I’ll get bored of you and feel trapped, because that’s what happens with me.”
Joel: *shrugs* “Okay.”
Clementine: *nods* “Okay.”
*they laugh*
Clementine: “Okay.”

Why did The Russian make me think of this scene from a sci-fi romance? I didn’t know how things would end the way Clementine did. I didn’t have an audio recording of my own voice telling me exactly how The Russian would hurt me. But I knew that he had hurt me once, and a wise person once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I didn’t need an audio recording to understand the weight of this idea when it came to The Russian. I, like Clementine, had been given a glimpse of the future and I now had to decide which path I wanted to take.
Clementine is a slave to her feelings at this moment, and she is completely aware of it. By the end of the movie, she and Joel know pretty much exactly how they are going to each get hurt by being together, but they choose to jump into the fire anyway.
Why? Because they know that for a little while, they will be very happy with each other. Because despite how dark that future is they decide to run towards it anyway so that they can recreate those lost memories, both good and bad. They could have considered the fact that things would not end well and made the decision to avoid the pain along with the pleasure of the experience. But they didn’t do that. They used their hearts.
Mirabelle and Ray’s relationship was doomed. Clementine and Joel’s relationship was doomed. Why did Mirabelle choose to hurt now, and Clementine choose to hurt later? And which one of them was better off for their decision? The movies end shortly after these moments, so we don’t know.
Is it really better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all?

It was about 2 am on September 9th, 2012, and The Russian and I had hastily escaped to my bathroom and closed the door, locking out the raging house party on the other side of it. I was sitting up on the bathroom counter with my legs wrapped around him, he was kissing me with the urgency of a death row inmate, and we were covered in glow-in-the-dark paint and getting it all over the place. We had not spoken in days. We had not made love for weeks.
My superego was screaming at me that this man had already hurt me and would do so again at the first opportunity. My id was screaming at me that this had been the best sex I’d ever had, and I just wanted to feel that again. The corners of my psyche were engaged in mortal combat, and I had no idea who would emerge victorious. Was I Clementine? Or was I Mirabelle?
“I really am sorry” he said, pulling away from my face for a moment to stroke my cheek, then kissing me again.
“We’re not having sex tonight” I told him, in between gasps for air, as the pleasure started to overwhelm me.
All right. I guess I’m Mirabelle. “Okay” he replied.
But when he said “Okay”, I heard it echo inside my head, in Clementine’s voice, and my willpower waned.
I pulled back from him a little bit, and looked into his eyes. He looked back into mine, as if he understood exactly what I was doing. I was looking for an answer, and this seemed like the best place to look. At first, all I saw was him… but now I saw two different versions of him in his eyes.
I still saw a soldier in his eyes, but I also saw a boy. I saw someone who was a little too naive and actually didn’t mean to hurt me, but I also saw someone who didn’t have enough sense in him to not do it again. I saw someone who wanted to give to others as much as he could, but who also wanted too much for himself. I saw a kind, warm soul, but I also saw a ticking time bomb.
In chapter two, I asked myself “…he didn’t seem to have the slightest idea what he actually wanted… Did he want everything? Did he want nothing?”.
I now knew that the answer was, undoubtedly, everything. He wanted everything and everyone, and he would do what he needed to get it. And, for the moment, I wanted everything too. I wanted the pleasure, and I wanted the pain. I wanted to jump into the fire and feel the ecstasy of the warmth before it burned me up.

I’d looked into his eyes for an answer, and now I had it. Clementine. The id. The Cat. Hurting later.
So I let The Russian make love to me, right there on my bathroom floor. And as party goers started to urgently knock on the door before eventually giving up and heading off to the second bathroom, time seemed to stop the same way it had when we’d made love for the very first time.
The first time we’d made love, I had entered a new chapter in my life, and I felt it happening very distinctly. And now, on this cold bathroom floor, I was entering a new one and feeling it just as clearly: A chapter of fearlessness.
I knew that I was going to get hurt. But this time, getting hurt didn’t scare me. I didn’t know when it would happen or how bad it would be, but it didn’t matter. I was going to re-enter this affair with a new fearlessness that I hadn’t had before.
Every single relationship you have is going to end. Until one doesn’t. The Russian and I did not end on September 3rd, 2012, after all. Nevertheless, I knew that we would eventually.
But you know what? The part between the beginning and the end is what we live for. So, “okay”.

Chapter Six: Under The Bridge (The Wanderer)

“I don’t ever wanna feel
Like I did that day
Take me to the place I love
Take me all the way” – Anthony Kiedis, 1992.

Bridge: A connecting, transitional, or intermediate route or phase between two adjacent elements.

It was about 8 in the evening on October 27th, 2012, when a 7.7 earthquake hit British Columbia’s northwestern coast and triggered tsunami warnings along the central BC coast, the coast of Alaska, and the Hawaiian islands. In the suburbs of Vancouver, about 700 kilometers south of the quake’s epicenter, we didn’t feel a thing.

It was about 9 in the evening that same night when I received a concerned text message from a boy I’ll call The Wanderer, who — from over the east coast of Canada in Kingston, Ontario — had seen some over-hyped news reports on his TV.
“Are you OK? I just read about the 7.7 quake that hit in Vancouver.” – The Wanderer.
I hadn’t texted him in months. I hadn’t thought about him in weeks. I had only met him twice. He had moved back to Ontario a few weeks after that. I hardly knew him at all.
Who was The Wanderer? Let’s rewind.
I met him under the East 1st Avenue bridge in Vancouver at about 1 in the morning on August 26th, 2012. It was a flash rave: the location was kept secret until a few hours before the start time, and as the clock struck midnight the DJs set up their tables under that towering bridge and the party materialized like magic. I had gone with a handful of friends, and by 1 am some of them had drunkenly stumbled home, some of them had camped out nearby to drink and smoke, and me… well, I could not tear myself away from the speakers that surrounded the DJs in the middle of the party.
His eyes met mine from across the crowded dance floor that had formed alongside a set of railroad tracks covered in discarded glow sticks and empty beer cans. He smiled. I smiled back without even thinking about it. I looked at him: He had a boy’s eyes and a man’s beard. His shaggy brown hair needed a haircut, but with the skater shirt he was wearing he kind of pulled the look off. The attraction was immediate.
Within a few seconds, he had crossed the dance floor and was standing in front of me. “Hi, my name’s [The Wanderer]. Want to dance?”
I was a little taken aback. There were no coy glances shot back and forth over the course of several songs. There was no inching closer and closer until he finally got up the courage to say something. It was so… instant. So straightforward. So fearless. So unlike anything I’d seen on a dance floor in a long, long time. This guy obviously wasn’t a local.
“Sure! I’m Olivia.” I replied, smiling. I’d just met this guy and he was puzzling me already.
Now here’s the thing. On my last night in Hawaii, I made a promise to myself that up until that point I had kept true to. But when I met The Wanderer under that bridge that night, I forgot about that promise for the rest of the night.
What was the promise? Let’s rewind again.

It was 8 in the evening on June 12th, 2012, and I was lying on Waikiki beach with my iPod, a notepad, and a glass of wine. It was my last night in Hawaii before I would fly back home. And it would’ve been D’s and my two-year first date anniversary that night. But we had broken up in April, and so this night was no longer a joyful milestone and was now an empty reminder of the date two years prior when an error in judgement was made.
But this was not what I was thinking about that night.
I was still basking in the afterglow of my island romance with The Marine. I’d had my first one night stand and left it feeling liberated, empowered, and amazingly, loved. But there was still one more thing that I wanted to accomplish on this trip that I had yet to do. I wanted to figure out a way to live my life differently than I had for the past decade.
If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, I had clearly been insane for the entirety of my formative dating years. It seemed like at the end of every relationship, I would be standing at the end of a long, winding road, looking at all of the potholes that ran across it, and wondering what the hell I was doing on it in the first place. I needed my life to be different this time. I didn’t feel that I should step back on Canadian soil until I’d figured out how to do that.
How did I do this? Like any first world 21st century digital girl in her twenties, I started with my iPhone.
I opened the Notes app, and in my wine-buzzed Hawaiian haze I created a new note titled [D]. I thought back to our first date, and started typing out every red flag that had appeared since the moment I first laid eyes on him and up until the night we broke up.
I chronicled every doubt that had crossed my mind and every heartbreakingly disappointing indication from him that he was not someone who was worth all the time I’d invested in him. I wrote down every warning sign that I’d seen over those two years and ignored by excusing it away by listening to my id. That note was pure superego all the way through, and when I was finished it was 2,554 words long.
This wasn’t the challenging part — seeing someone’s flaws when you’ve stopped having feelings for them is easy. This was a warm-up.
I then created a new note for each of the three men I’d been rebound-dating over the last month since D and I had broken up. And I started filling those notes with every uncertainty I had about these suitors, from slight hesitations to major potential incompatibilities. I didn’t have very much to write, as I’d only been on a couple dates with each of them, but I had decided that instead of entering these courtships with the blind optimism with which I usually approached my dating life, I was going to entering them with my eyes wide open and my hands at the ready to take notes if/when more red flags popped up as time went on.
Essentially, I wanted to live my life in a way that I would never again be standing at the end of a two-year relationship with 2,554 words in pure red flags staring back at me from my god damn smartphone. I wanted to manage my relationships in a way that things would never get that bad again; I had resolved to catch these warning signs at first glance and either repair them, accept them, or file them as deal-breakers and pull the rip-cord once the list of deal-breakers had gotten too long.
This was my promise. My Red Flags promise.
So over the summer of 2012, I ran through a gauntlet of men who were mostly perfectly nice but not quite right for me. Toronto David. Boy Jamieson. British Dan. The Old Crush. The Ukranian. The Other Brit. The Dancer. The Older Man. The Architect. Joe’s Apartment Jim.
I opened a new Red Flags note in my phone for each one, and as I returned home from dates with them I would ritualistically open my phone and started adding to the notes. I couldn’t ignore my superego when her words were staring me in the face whenever I opened the Notes app on my iPhone.
Once the list of doubts had grown too long, I pulled the rip-cord. A select two of these guys, who were far too awesome to simply cast aside, were friend-zoned. The rest were hastily left in the dust. Old me would’ve settled down with any one of them. New me had a different stratagem to adhere to.
This plan worked flawlessly for three months. I had done it. I had beat the system.
I had avoided the trap of ending up exhausted, trying desperately to ignore my superego until I would finally give up and listen to it after years of frustration. I had managed to stay single (and subsequently un-brokenhearted), a feat that I needed to achieve in order to 1) continue on my path of self-discovery, and 2) keep writing this year-long blog.
I was training myself to listen for the swan song and stop running when it played, so that I would be able to do this at any point in any relationship if I needed to. I felt as though I was gradually building a muscle that would help me clean-and-jerk all the potential a-holes I would meet in my life.
I did not create a Red Flags note for The Russian, because I was not dating him. This was the only man I’d become involved with whom I let be an exception to the Red Flags promise.
That is, until I met The Wanderer.
“Hi, my name’s [The Wanderer]. Want to dance?” “Sure! I’m Olivia.”
He was 27 too, and born almost exactly one month after I was. He grew up in Kingston, Ontario with his parents and two sisters. He did not believe in apple pie without ice cream on top of it (I did not share this opinion, but I wasn’t going to hold that against him).

He said things like “Wow, for cereal?” Instead of “Wow, for serious?” with a straight face. He did not plan to be at that flash rave that night: He had been walking down the street aimlessly that night, heard the thumping music reverberating from under the bridge, and had just wandered down to it and simply joined the party.
He had lived in Kingston his whole life and, only a couple months before the night I met him, had decided to pick up his life and move it to the other end of Canada. Why? “Just to try something new, for once.”
He hardly knew anyone in Vancouver. When he arrived, he wasn’t sure where he was going to live or what he was going to do for work. He soon found a construction gig and was invited to room with one of the few friends he had who lived here. However, he was uncertain as to how long he would be staying before he returned to his hometown.
I didn’t draft a Red Flags note for The Wanderer. Why not? Two reasons, really. One: He had only arrived in Vancouver 3 weeks prior and knew that he would be going back to Ontario relatively soon. Two: I had lived in the same province my whole life, and since I was a teenager I had fantasized about packing up my life and starting fresh in a new place where I barely knew anyone. This was a dream I’d had for most of my life but never had the balls to actually pull off, and this guy had done it. And he seemed to have done it so instantly. So straightforwardly. So fearlessly. It seemed that, in the same way he saw me across that dance floor and invited me to dance without a moment of hesitation, he had seen an opportunity to change his life and had done so with the same admirable bravery.
He had astounded me with his accomplishment, and I knew he wouldn’t be here to astound me for long. For these reasons, I didn’t open a Red Flags note for him.
That night, when the party finally drew to a close, The Wanderer insisted on walking me to my car, which was parked a short walk away. Because neither of us were really paying attention to where we were going and the conversation took us over entirely, we walked around in circles around the city for about two hours.
In those two hours, we talked about the places our lives had led us and where we wanted them to lead us next. We talked about movies. We talked about music. We talked about heartbreak and love. Because he was leaving for Ontario soon, I completely cast the Red Flags concept aside for the night and talked to him with the same fearlessness that I had embraced during my night with The Marine. We were safe. But mostly I was safe, with him.
And when we finally reached my car at about 7:30 in the morning, he put his number in my phone, gave me a long kiss goodnight, and went on his way. We chatted back and forth for about a week, and then — as predicted — he texted one morning to tell me he was moving back to Kingston in a couple weeks. I didn’t see him again after that. And I didn’t think much about him soon after he’d left.
At least, not until two months later at about 8 in the evening on October 27th, 2012, when a 7.7 earthquake hit British Columbia’s northwestern coast.

“Are you OK? I just read about the 7.7 quake that hit in Vancouver.” – The Wanderer.
“I’m okay! We didn’t feel anything in Vancouver actually. How are things on the East coast? I just heard about the tsunami warning in Ontario.” – O.
“It’s crazy windy. I heard the center of the storm is headed right for Kingston. This is the part where you comfort me by saying everything is going to be fine…” – The Wanderer.
“Everything is going to be fine :)” – O.
This continued for weeks, and unexpectedly exploded into paragraph-long back-and-forth texts about movies, music, and about heartbreak and love. We talked about our jobs and our families. And everything, really. Just like the first night I’d met him, I felt safe opening up to him because he was thousands of kilometers away. Just like the first night I’d met The Marine, I felt safe opening up to him because there was no subtext attached to it.
We were building a bridge. A bridge that did not go anywhere… it only stretched between us. There was no reason to build it. We had nowhere to get to. We were just building it to build it.
Then one day, The Wanderer dropped the bomb: He told me he would be moving back to Vancouver (perhaps for good but definitely for a while and probably as soon as January). Then he said, “Honestly, I really like you. I hope to put ice cream on your apple pie someday soon :)” he texted.
Suddenly, the bridge that we had built to stretch between the West coast and the East coast of the Great White North was real. Every brick we’d laid on that bridge suddenly meant something else. Every part of myself that I’d fearlessly laid out on that bridge, not thinking that any of it mattered or needed to be considered, was actually out there.
I hadn’t kept true to my Red Flags promise when it came to The Wanderer, because I didn’t think he counted. It eventually turned out that he actually did. I put myself out there as if I had the right to do so, and The Wanderer had called my bluff.
Where would this bridge eventually lead us, come January? Maybe nowhere. Maybe everywhere. I couldn’t know. But, in the same way we had stopped paying attention and ended up walking around Vancouver aimlessly for two hours, we had stopped paying attention and built something between us that would lead somewhere. And all that I did know was that, come the new year, I would find out where.

Chapter Seven: The Bar Bet (Three’s a Crowd)

“Let’s not forget about the seasons
Let’s not forget about the slow dance
‘Cause I wanna know your sweetness and love” – Craig Northey, 1993.

It all started with a bar bet over a game of pool.
It was 9 in the evening on August 26th, 2012, and I was standing across from The Actor on the other end of a pool table in a downtown Vancouver hipster bar. We were two pitchers of beer into the night, and I was tightrope-walking the fine line between tipsy and drunk. It was rather fitting, given the company I was in — walking fine lines always was our thing. But so was tripping over them, and so I decided this would be the last pitcher.

“Damn. I am terrible at this” I remarked. We were only a few turns into the game, but I’d already knocked the cue ball off the table and almost hit a patron at a nearby table — this didn’t look good. “Honestly, for some reason I do better at these sorts of things when something’s on the line” I added.
This was true. I had the remarkable ability to summon athletic skill previously unknown when I wanted to either impress someone new or win some sort of prize, cheap or otherwise. When I had nothing to prove, however, I had the aptitude of a chimpanzee.
“Let’s make a wager on it then” The Actor replied as he took his next shot.
Why not?
“I’m in. What are we betting on?” I answered.
“Hmm” he answered, and then said nothing for a few minutes. I took my shot and managed to knock the cue ball against all four sides of the table without hitting any other balls. Sigh. Well, at least it stayed on the table this time.
He walked around the table to where the cue ball had haphazardly ended up, lined up his shot, and then said, with his eyes still on the ball, “Whoever wins the game gets to have a threesome with the other and a third of their choosing”.
Before the words had time to hit me, he methodically took his shot, sinking two balls that ricocheted off each other. Then he finally looked up at me.
This was not actually an outrageously random thing for The Actor to have said. Ever since we met each other, we have only been able to speak in a language of Saying Exactly What We Mean. These were the kinds of things we said to each other for years, and hearing them again was a kind of nostalgia that warmed my soul like a hot lemon tea and brought me back to age 18 like the Doc Brown’s Delorean of dirty suggestions.
As I rambled on about already in chapter three, The Actor was my first ever attempt at combining friendship and sex. We were 18, we were eager to challenge the constraining social norms we’d grown up within, and we were far too optimistic for our own good about it. Thanks to some bad luck, bad timing, and really bad 18-year-old morals, it blew up in our faces in a magnificent sort of way.
A long, cold eight years passed where we would only see each other once or twice a year at old high school friends’ house parties and avoid each other’s gazes until we were drunk enough to start jabbering to each other. Then we wouldn’t speak again until months later at the next party. We never lost that ability to pick it up where we left off, though.

In the meantime, I had spent these long, cold eight years immersed in back-to-back monogamous relationships. Shortly after I embarked on my year of singledom, I had decided to try my luck at the dangerous game of friends with benefits once again with The Russian. And after exploring this terrain for a few months, The Actor happened to waltz back into my life. The timing was curious, and somehow fitting all at once.
So this was where I was at.

“Whoever wins the game gets to have a threesome with the other and a third of their choosing.”
Just as the words had time to hit me, he methodically took his shot, sinking two balls that ricocheted off each other. Then he finally looked up at me.
Before I really had time to consider what he had said, an answer flew out of my mouth: “Deal” I replied as I walked over to take my shot. It was more habit than anything else; this was how we talked to each other. And these were the things we did — at least, they used to be. Never lost the ability to pick it up where we left off? I’ll say.
Fast forward to about half an hour later in the night. I was standing across from The Actor on the other end of a pool table yet again, but this time he was lining up his last shot. It didn’t take long for us both to realize that he would be winning this game.
Snap. Clunk. And as the last of his balls clicked and clacked around the innards of the pool table, we both stood, motionless, feeling the weight of his win sink into us. His eyebrows furrowed as he stared off at the wall for a moment. I waited, knowing there was absolutely nothing either of us were going to say about the situation this time — it was just a matter of who was going to come up with something to change the subject first.
I don’t remember what he said next, but he said something. It might’ve been “Another pitcher?” or it might’ve been “Remember that time we did it in your apartment stairwell and that elderly couple with the dog walked in on us?”. But he said something to divert our attention from the fact that we had just sealed the deal on a threesome agreement. More than that, we had just sealed the deal to open up a relationship that we closed for a very long time and for very good reasons eight years ago. And although it probably wouldn’t turn into a regular casual sex arrangement like the one I had with The Russian, even just one romp in the sack was an intimidating endeavour, given our past.
The night ended, somehow. Six days passed, and nothing was said between The Actor and I.
Almost a week passed, it was nearing midnight on September 1st, 2012, and we were at Two Parrots in downtown Vancouver. There were about 20 of us, and we were absolutely hammered. The Russian was there. The Actor was there, and he’d brought his polyamorous girlfriend. She was positively stunning, with radiant strawberry hair and a painfully attractive figure, and after a few minutes of small talk it was clear she was genuinely kind and interesting as well.

The Actor and I hadn’t talked about our Bar Bet since that first night, but the idea that perhaps this was the threesome configuration he had in mind floated in and out of my thoughts throughout that evening of heavy drinking.
A little later in the night, I stepped outside the bar to take a phone call from my sister. As soon as I hung up, I received two text messages within 20 seconds of each other. One was from The Russian, and one was from The Actor.
“Leaving soon to catch the last night bus. You coming?” – The Russian. “3 way? We’re leaving now.” – The Actor.
This 3-way was spontaneous (as much as one that had been indirectly agreed upon six days earlier could be). I had only just met this girl. The three of us had not sat around for an afternoon discussing our needs, our wants, and our rules. It was rash, and as much as I wanted to honour my end of the bar bet, it alarmed me.
Now, my younger sister and I are cut from the same cloth in a whole lot of ways, but there are a lot of things one of us can do that the other can’t. She can get on a stage and perform stand-up. I can’t even talk in front of more than three people in a meeting at work without getting flushed. She can quit her job and fly to Thailand for three months, while not worrying about what will happen when she gets back. I am all too aware of my mortgage and car payments and all the things that keep me grounded in the same place, despite my yearning for that kind of adventure for myself.
She can meet someone in a bar and take them home that very night. She can sleep with someone on the first date. She can spontaneously pick a male friend and a female friend at a party, pull them both into a bedroom, and make magic happen. I cannot do any of these things.
Ever since I lost my virginity at age 15, sex has never stopped being a sacred thing to me. Time slows down. Skin vibrates with pleasure. Bodies melt into each other. Hearts open up to each other, becoming vulnerable and raw and reassuring. Love — whether romantic or friendship-based — positively glows. And souls look into each other, seeing and reflecting back the beauty in the other. It’s a big thing for me, and it has never stopped being this special, no matter who it’s with. I do not think this happens to everyone, as there are people out there (asexuals, prudes, and so on) who must feel completely different feelings in regards to sex than I do for them to not cherish it as I do. I’m convinced that the way sex feels for me, emotionally and otherwise, is somewhat of a gift from my genetics, and I never stop being appreciative of the way it lights my soul on fire.

After I had my cervical pre-cancer scare in April 2012 and was dumped by D half an hour after I told him about it, I hopped a plane to Hawaii with the full intention to give myself permission to have a one night stand if I met someone who I connected with. And even in that extreme situation, where in my mind I was on death row, I still needed to wait until I’d known The Marine for a full 24 hours and gone on two dates with him before I went home with him. I needed to wait until we’d wandered the streets of Honolulu for eight hours, chatting about our childhoods and our favourite songs. I needed him to walk me to my hotel, kiss me goodnight, and take me out dancing again the following night. That’s just me. I can’t sleep with someone without that all-powerful emotional connection, and I can’t form that kind of connection in a few hours, when it forms at all. What does that mean about me? Is that a blessing? Is that a burden? Beats me.
I had formed that emotional connection with The Actor all those years ago when we were kids, and it was always still there, lurking in the twinkle in his eyes whenever I would talk to him. Even when we wouldn’t see each other for a year and a half and then would bump into each other at a party, the twinkle from when I used to feel close to him was still there. And even though I no longer felt close to him, in a strange, automatic way the feeling was grandfathered forward to the present moment whenever I saw him. That twinkle was always there.
I had explored my first threesome with The Russian and The Girl three weeks earlier, and it was amazing. But I had gotten to know The Twinkle in both their eyes first. This threesome with The Actor would be different.
What is it that seperates me from the people who can sleep with someone without The Twinkle there? Why can my sister do without The Twinkle while I cannot? Is the need for that deep emotional connection something that can or should be outgrown as one sexually matures? Or is the need for that closeness a personality trait, like left or right-handedness, that is set for life and cannot be changed?
“Leaving soon to catch the last night bus. You coming?” – The Russian. “3 way? We’re leaving now.” – The Actor.
Saying yes to The Russian would mean making love with The Twinkle there that night. Saying yes to The Actor and his girlfriend would mean making love without it. His girlfriend was gorgeous (one of the most gorgeous women I’d ever seen in real life, in fact), but I didn’t know her.
So I was faced with the question: Can I become the person who can go home with someone the same night they meet them? Can I become someone who doesn’t need The Twinkle? And do I even want to become that someone? Is my need for it something special and virtuous about me that I should hold on to, or just another part of modern society’s old fashioned standards that I should be shrugging off? I had spent the last couple of months shunning society’s old standard that required me to find a new boyfriend and keep steering my ship towards marriage, babies, and monogamy. I had shunned all this and started sleeping with The Russian, a friend whom I knew I would never date. I had come this far — was sex without an emotional connection the next logical step?
What did I actually want? Who did I actually want to be? What was there to gain by settling for sex without The Twinkle? And how would I feel afterwards, after sex without it?
I know a whole lot about who I am as a girlfriend. What I don’t know, is who I am as a single person. Or who I want to be as a single person. Or who I could be as a single person. Did I have threesomes with old lovers and their poly girlfriends whom I’d just met? Did I sleep with people before I’d had a chance to see if I could form an emotional connection with them? Did I sleep with people solely for the physical sensation, and not for the emotional intimacy that comes along with it when there’s a friendship, a familiarity, and trust? This seemed like a good time to figure it out, as my regular friend with benefits, The Russian, and my old lover, The Actor, and his girlfriend sat in the same pub, no doubt with their eyes on their phones, waiting for the response that would tell them if they were getting lucky that night.
Suddenly, The Russian emerged from the side door of the pub and spotted me as his eyes scanned the area. “Hey! I was looking for you. Ready to go? There’s a package of NeoCitrin with your name on it back at my place.” he winked. This was an in joke, as I’d been sick a week earlier and dranken almost all of the NeoCitrin packages at his apartment.
I felt the warmth of an inside joke with a friend in the glow of the streetlights, and I knew my decision had been made for me. At least, for now. One day I might be ready to go without The Twinkle, but this wasn’t that day.
I breathed a deep sigh of relief that he probably mistook for simple drunkennes,. smiled at him, and replied “Yep. Let’s go.”
But before we walked off to find the bus stop, and before I would text The Actor to politely decline his proposition and say goodnight, I took one last look through the front window pane of the pub. I saw him and his girlfriend sitting at the table with all of our friends, laughing and drinking and talking.
I’ve never been one to back out of a bar bet, but this wasn’t our threesome. Some nights, you find out what kinds of relationships you’re capable of, and what relationships you aren’t. This was one of those nights. And so I went home with The Twinkle.

Chapter Eight: Out on a Limb (The Ukrainian)

“There’s a new kind of world that’s takin’ over
Ain’t no more second chances. There ain’t no turning back” – Leroy Miller, 1999.

This is a story about the first time I asked a boy out on a date.

I met the Ukrainian in the summer of 2003. We were 18, we were fresh out of high school, and we were only concerned with two things: Drinking and partying. The summer of 2012 was the most reckless one of my life, but the summer of 2003 was a close second.
Over the course of that summer, there were 5 of us who constantly partied together, whether we were in my house while my parents were out of town or down the street in the local park because there was no indoor option available. Mike’s Hard Lemonade and jean jackets. Cigarettes and coy glances. This was what that summer was about.

And The Ukrainian? I had a crush on him from the first moment I met him.
The Ukrainian and The Brit were best friends, and they were also the only two smokers among our small group. In all honesty I had crushes on them both, but my crush on the Ukrainian was much, much deeper because he was that much harder to draw out of his shell. The confident introvert.
That summer came and went, and while we flirted and inched closer and closer to each other with each party, he never made a move. So nothing ever happened. Because if he didn’t make a move, how could anything happen… right?
Something you should probably know about me is that I’ve always been the girl who plays hard to get. In the beginning stages of courtship, if a boy doesn’t call me first, we’re not talking that day. I don’t ask the guy out. I don’t pay for anything on the first or second dates. I don’t kiss until the third date. I take everything slow.
Why do I do these things?
I learned early on that my asshole detector doesn’t work so well: Instead of warding me away from the bad guys, my asshole detector will evidently narrow in on those guys and make me uncontrollably attracted to them.
When I was 19, I broke up with the perfectly nice boy I was dating to go out with The Guitarist, and a few months later he cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend at her welcome back party, while I was in the next room, struggling to socialize with his friends whom I didn’t know all that well yet.
When I was 20, I dumped The Fibber for The Gambler, and The Gambler ultimately cheated on me in a threesome with two Surrey girls he picked up in a dive bar. If that’s not bad enough, I had to find this out via an MSN message window he’d left open on his laptop where he was bragging about it to one of his friends.
When I was 24, I blew off one of the sweetest guys I’d ever met to go out with Napster, the 31 year old with the sleeve tattoos who worked at Boston Pizza. He ultimately dumped me to get back together with the ex-girlfriend he’d constantly assured me he wasn’t still in love with.
Why do I leave the nice guys in favour of the asshole types?
In all honesty, I think the guys who say the asshole things make me feel secure with their candor because the blunt truths they say assure me of the untruths I assume they do not say, so I can relax. I guess I want to know everything, and dating someone who says whatever they think without filtering anything hurtful gives me a small type of omnicience.
Why do I want to know everything? Because I don’t want to get hurt. But I do anyway. And when things get worse, I hope for them to change. But people don’t change, and I’m smart enough to know this.
So anyways, my asshole detector was deemed faulty pretty early on, and playing hard to get was the only battle strategy I had to fall back on. The rules I embraced were old fashioned, anti-feminist, and unnecessarily strict, but this tactic was my last line of defense between me and the jerks. It was a passive and foolproof way to filter out the douchebags. I created countless hoops in my mind for them to jump through, committed to them, and counted on them to deter the guys who didn’t really mean anything they said. Because really, what guy would wait two months to sleep with me if he wasn’t sincerely interested? At some point it’s just math.
So I never made the first move with a guy, because this was not in the battle plan of playing hard to get. And this plan worked: I was never callously tossed aside by any man who I made wait those two months. I was never disrespected by any man who I didn’t let kiss me on the first date. Correlation might not have equaled causation, but I was erring on the side of caution… and my old fashioned game playing.
So the summer ended, and the group of us entered the real world. We started getting full time jobs or going to school, and the summer of non-stop parties slowly faded into the past as we drifted apart from each other. And I didn’t see The Ukrainian for 9 years. Until about 8 in the evening on July 7th, 2012.
I was at the local pub with some friends, and walking towards the door that led to the front of the bar, when a stranger stopped to hold the door open for me.
“Thank you”, I smiled as I walked past.
“Olivia?” the stranger asked, uncertain, with dark, handsome eyes that were narrowing a little to identify me.
“Yes…” I answered, as my eyes scanned his face for a trace of recognition. How did I know this guy? Suddenly I saw it, and the whole summer came rushing back to me. It was The Brit.
“Oh my God, [The Brit]! How the hell are you?!” I exclaimed, as he laughed and immediately hugged me. “Took you a minute, eh?” he chuckled. “I’m here with [The Ukrainian]! Come say hi!”

As I followed him to the other end of the pub so we could find his friend, I realized that I hadn’t thought about The Ukrainian at all in years. God, I had such a crush on him, I remembered to myself. I wondered if he was still as cute as I remembered.
“[The Ukrainian]! Look who’s here!” The Brit shouted when we finally found him ordering a drink at the bar.
“Olivia!” he cried out, his eyes jumping with surprise. Yep. Still just as cute as I remember. “How the hell are you?!” The Ukrainian asked me, and I chuckled at the familiar wording. He hadn’t changed a bit — this was how he talked. And as he ordered me a Mike’s Hard Lemonade with a wink and a smile, I was astounded at how quickly I felt completely comfortable around him, as if not a day had passed since the last time we’d been drunk on a jungle gym in the suburbs of Vancouver together as teenagers, flirting and drinking and playing a summer-long game of attraction chicken that we both ultimately lost. The Brit soon excused himself so he could chase some pretty girls he’d spotted on the dance floor, and The Ukrainian and I were left to chat the rest of the night away.
We exchanged numbers and Facebook profile links, and I saw The Ukrainian exactly two more times that summer.
The first time was on September 8th, 2012. I invited him and The Brit to a party I was throwing at my apartment, and when they arrived I made a bee line to hang out with them. Later on that night, The Ukrainian and I managed to steal away to my balcony for a moment alone, and for what felt like hours I sent him the most clear signals I could muster up without breaking my code.
“You know, your hair looks amazing like that” The Ukrainian drunkenly slurred, leaning close to me but still not making any moves.
My passion finally got the best of me, and I broke my code. “So why aren’t you making any moves then?” I slurred back.
Within half a second, his lips were on mine, and the boy who I’d had such a crush on for so many years was finally kissing me. We quickly relocated to my room to escape the gawking partygoers, and spent the next 20 minutes making out on my bed, overtop of the covers. It was very high school, and that was so fitting it was perfect.
We only broke our liplock when The Brit interrupted us to tell The Ukrainian that their cab was waiting outside, and because they both had to work early the next morning, they both left. The Ukrainian kissed me goodnight, and for the rest of the night I glowed from the kind of excitement that only comes from a first kiss from a longtime crush.

Then I heard nothing from him for weeks. I assumed that it was just a drunken makeout session and it didn’t mean anything to him. Maybe he didn’t even remember. And I was in the middle of my adventures with The Russian and our experimentation of mixing friendship and sex, so my mind was not free to dwell on The Ukrainian any more than was necessary.
The next time I saw him was on October 13th, 2012, when I bumped into him and The Brit at a club in downtown Vancouver.
“Olivia!” The Ukrainian exclaimed, and he immediately embraced me and bought me a drink. After a few minutes of small talk with the two of them, The Ukrainian asked me to dance. We got closer and closer with each song the DJ spun, and after an hour or so The Ukrainian asked me to join him as he went for a smoke outside. So I did.
“So how’ve you been? I haven’t seen you since the party!” I asked him, with subtext that I’m sure was obvious.
“Oh, I’ve been great! How about you?” he answered in between drags of his cigarrette.
“I’ve been great too! I wasn’t sure if you remembered all of the party…” I coyly answered, firstly because it HAD crossed my mind that he didn’t remember our makeout session, and secondly because I wanted to bring it up.
“Oh, I remember it.” he replied, smiling with that naughty, Zach Morris smile that can just melt a girl’s heart. Then he stepped towards me, put his hand on the back of my neck, and went in for the kiss. Apparently he didn’t need me to spell it out for him this time.
After 10 minutes or so of passionate liplocking, we were interrupted by a barrage of text messages on my phone from my friends who were leaving soon and couldn’t find me.
“I’ve really got to go, my friends are going to kill me. But we should hang out sometime!” I said.
Damn it. I broke my code again! Why didn’t I wait for him to ask me out?! Maybe because he hadn’t done it the first time, and clearly he DID remember our first liaison. This was a red flag. But he hadn’t hesitated to initiate another makeout session once I brought the subject up. This was a green flag. I was confused, and I’d sent up a flare in retalliation.
“Definitely!” he answered, and his words dripped with sincerity, so I believed him. I kissed him goodnight. I found my friends. And I went home.
Then I heard nothing from him for weeks. And I wrote him off completely.

It was December 1st, 2012, and I was sitting in a pub with The Brit. We had been with The Ukrainian earlier in the night, in a hangout that was organized by The Brit so we could all catch up again, but The Ukrainian had to work at 5 am the next morning, so he had left earlier and The Brit and I were left to our drinks. The Ukrainian had been flirting with me all night, as he always did, and it puzzled me. When I had enough drinks in me, I brought this up to The Brit.
“Dude, I have to ask. I like [The Ukrainian], but I can’t read him. I’d assume he’s not into me by his failure to ask me out in all this time, but he’s initiated makeouts a couple times now. And he flirts a lot. Is he, like, only interested in drunken makeouts and nothing more?”
Then The Brit dropped the bomb on me. “Olivia, [The Ukrainian] has been talking about asking you out for months now, but he hasn’t been able to work up the balls to do it. I keep saying that I can tell you like him and he should just go for it, but the guy’s too shy. I think, if you want it to happen, you have to ask him.”
This statement had two immediate effects on me. First, it cleared up a whole lot of confusion about The Ukrainian’s mixed signals. And second, it ruled out the possibility of us ever dating. I had rules. I had a code. I had never asked a guy out and I wasn’t going to start now — if I compromised my system of always playing hard to get, what did I have to protect myself with?
The night ended. I said goodnight to The Brit and, as we walked from the pub in opposite directions to our respective homes, I started to let my mind wander.
I always told myself I would never have a one night stand. Then, in June 2012, I did and it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
I always told myself I would never have another friend with benefits after The Actor. Then, in June 2012, I began one with The Russian and it has been one of the most pleasant experiences of my life.
I always told myself I would never have a threesome. Then, in August 2012, I had one with The Russian and The Girl, and it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life.
After the last asshole who screwed me over, I always told myself that I would never take a guy back who had hurt me, because assholes don’t change. Then, in September 2012, I took The Russian back after he betrayed me, and he has spent the last few months making genuine amends for his stupidity.
I realized sometime during that long walk home that I had been breaking my own rules all over the place that summer, and these decisions had yielded nothing but positive results. Yes, I was taking risks, but I was also the happiest I’d been in a long time because of the way those risks had turned out.
I started to think that maybe I didn’t need all of my Playing Hard To Get rules. Maybe I had learned enough in my dating career that I could try trusting my instincts again instead of relying on that strict set of guidelines that – while effective – restricted me as much as the fellows I was interested in. Maybe I could learn to stop being so apprehensive, take a little leap, and have a little faith.

So I sent The Ukrainian a text.
“Hey, so I have these free passes to the Aquarium that I’ve been meaning to use for a while now. Wanna come with me next Sunday?”
14 minutes passed before I heard my phone buzz with a reply. “That sounds great. What time?” – The Ukrainian.
I sighed with relief. I sighed with the end of the floating question mark over a 9 year attraction that never had any kind of clear agenda. And I sighed with the reward of a long-overdue leap of faith.
On Sunday, December 9th, I would be going on a date with The Ukrainian. I didn’t know if anything would come of it. I didn’t know if the fact that I’d made the first move of asking him out meant I’d have to make every move for the duration of our courtship. I didn’t know if the flirty banter we’d always thrown back and forth with each other would run dry after we actually spent a whole day together. Even if none of these things were issues, I didn’t know if I’d actually be able to deal with the prospect of dating a smoker again.
But none of these things mattered yet. What mattered was that I broke the pattern I’ve had for years of always waiting for everything when it came to dating. I can’t toot my own horn too proudly because I was working with the safety net of The Brit telling me that The Ukrainian wanted to ask me out, but I still broke a pattern. An old fashioned, silly code of conduct that I had only adopted because of my lack of instincts as an adolescent.
It was time to stop relying on the security blanket that was my oath to myself to play hard to get. It was time to break down that barrier, put myself out there more honestly, and see what I was really made of.
Game on.

Chapter Nine: Frogs, Snails and Puppy Dog Tails (The First Love)

“I’m a curbside prophet
with my hand in my pocket
and I’m waiting for my rocket to come” – Jason Mraz, 2004.

Have you ever been listening to the radio when a song started playing that you used to be obsessed with but haven’t heard in years and years?
Your pulse quickens as the familiarity overtakes you. The emotions you used to associate with the song come rushing back to you as if not a moment had passed since the last time you sat down to listen to this song. You marvel at how much you remember about the song and how much you’ve forgotten about it. And the love you used to feel for the song is always still there, though usually it has changed form.

Sometimes, this happens and you make a mental note to add this song to your mp3 player when you get home, because you need to re-acquaint yourself with it. Sometimes you even add it to the playlist you listen to on your drive to work every morning, because you know that you need to bring this song back into your life in a big way.
But sometimes, you realize how far away you are from the person you used to be when you loved that song. You realize the song seemed cool through the lens of an adolescent, but with a little life experience you realize it’s kind of lame. And that the song just doesn’t fit into your life anymore, and never could again. And then you listen to the song until the end, appreciating it for what it used to mean to you, all the while knowing that this would probably be the last time you’d listen to it all the way through.
This little story starts on October 1st, 2012, and it starts with a drunk text.
“Olivia, I’m very drunk right now but I don’t care I’m going to say what I want to say anyway. I have missed you for years. Would you like to reconnect sometime?” – The First Love.
The text came through at about 2 am on October 1st, 2012, and I stared at it for a good 30 seconds with no idea how to respond.
It was fairly eloquent, for a drunk text. It was quite simply-worded, for a text message that was asking what this one was. It was pretty bold, for an invitation from someone who had no idea what my current situation was. Our acquaintanceship was one of the very few in my life that didn’t involve constant incidental monitoring on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, because he didn’t have any of those things. But he was brave enough to ask the question while having no idea what the answer would be, and that is something rare these days.

The First Love and I met in high school when we were 15. We dated for a year and a half, and for most of that time I thought he was the one in that silly, naive way that most of us think the first person we’re in a serious relationship with is the one. Why? Because we have no one else to compare them against, so they’re perfect by default.
I am referring to him as The First Love because 15-year-old-me thought it WAS love so the pseudonym feels appropriate, but in truth and in retrospect it wasn’t love at all.
Not only were we each other’s first loves, we were each other’s first lovers. After we’d been together for about a year, we took each other’s virginity on Valentine’s Day in 2001. By then we were 16 and we were in his room, on a mattress on the floor. His Dad was upstairs, but we didn’t care — it was Valentine’s Day, so to a couple of silly young lovers, it was automatically the perfect moment. I insisted on playing Alicia Keys’ “Songs in A Minor” album with track 5 on repeat throughout the night. He had purchased three boxes of condoms (12 to a box), just to be safe. He was sweet. He was affectionate. He was considerate. It was the beginning of my sexual life, and I couldn’t have asked for a nicer maiden voyage.

Things didn’t end terribly. When we neared the one and a half year mark, we started to fight for most of the time we were together, and even at the unripe age of 15 I knew this meant we were burning out. I ended things with him one night, and after we graduated high school we slowly faded from each other’s lives. After 2003, and after our graduation ceremony, I never saw him.
So it was about 2 in the morning on October 1st, 2012, and I was staring at this unexpected invitation from my first love, and trying to decide whether I did want to “reconnect sometime”.
There are some relationships that end and leave you wondering, “What if they were the one?”. My relationship with The First Love wasn’t one of them. I never thought about him at all after we broke up, because I always felt that our time together was well spent but not destined to last forever. But that in itself made me curious. Maybe there was something more there that my naive, inexperienced 16 year old self couldn’t see because she didn’t have any context for it? One dinner couldn’t hurt, right?
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to drink and text? 😉 Sure, what’s your schedule like? :)” – Olivia.

It was 8 in the evening on November 15th, 2012. I finally had a night free and so I was on my way to meet The First Love at a restaurant nearby my apartment. We had not texted much; only to say when and where we would meet for a meal. Anything could happen and I sort of liked the fact that I couldn’t get a read on the situation.
I turned a corner, and there he was. Even from 50 feet away, there was no doubt in my mind that the man standing amongst the crowd of street traffic in front of the restaurant was him. And a mere moment after I laid eyes on him, he seemed to sense my presence and turned around to see me.
He smiled. And I stifled a cringe.
He was wearing a tacky white fur coat that overtook his whole body and did not belong on him. His face had grown fuller and had been taken over by an unkempt beard. His chiseled physique had disappeared, and this was clear even under his winter clothing. His California boy tan had been replaced with an unhealthy pasty skin tone that indicated years of staying indoors. And even from that away, I could tell instantly that the carefree spirit I used to know was nowhere to be found. This was someone else entirely. It was as though he had been floating in the ocean for years and the tide had dragged him to land on the other side of the world and left him there to lose all sense of himself. The boy I’d once thought I loved had evolved into someone I would never take a second look at.

Dinner was painful.

“So where do you work now?” – I asked, after we settled into our booth and placed our drink orders with the hostess.
The First Love: “Well, I’m sort of retired now.”
Me: “Wow, congratulations! So what were you doing before?”
The First Love: “Well, I’ve been unemployed for a while now. I had a few jobs after high school, but I kept getting fired and I never really figured out what I wanted to do.”
Me: “Oh. So how did you manage to retire?”
The First Love: “Well, I moved back into my Dad’s house in Surrey. So now I live rent free and just go out drinking a lot.”

Oh jeez.

Then, as if on cue, he took off his big, white fur coat, and left me to stare at the shirt beneath in pure dumbstruckness at his sparkly, bedazzled Ed Hardy.

Oh, Jesus.

When the cheques arrived, he pulled a plastic Shoppers Drug Mart bag out of his pocket and placed it on the table.
“Oh, what did you buy at Shoppers?” I asked, assuming he’d been shopping before meeting me. I was out of conversation topics and on to random, meaningless questions.
The First Love: “Oh, nothing, I just keep my stuff in here.” he replied, as he opened the bag to reveal a set of keys, a few crumbled up bills, a debit card, a stick of chapstick, and a bus ticket. In a plastic, Shoppers Drug Mart bag that a grown man kept in his pocket instead of a wallet.

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Then suddenly, a wave of memories hit me. He had always kept his stuff in a plastic bag instead of a wallet, only when we were 16 it was kinda cute. He had always had no ambition or career goals, only when we were 16 it was kinda badass. He had always worn gaudy, tacky clothing, only when we were 16 Ed Hardy didn’t exist yet so he wasn’t quite as sparkly. His appearance had changed a little, as he had given up on maintaining his exterior by forgoing exercise and a razor, but his spirit actually hadn’t. He, in fact, had not been swept away by the tide and pulled to the other side of the world. He had always been in the same spot, it just looked different to me then.
My first love was never a carefree spirit. He was always just a passionless one, and I had mistaken that lack of passion for a kind of freedom that was never really there.

In chapter six, I wrote about the Red Flags promise I made to myself in Hawaii. I wanted to closely track every instinct and gut feeling I would come across, before I had been engulfed into a haze of love. Because once that happened, I would only see those red flags again after the relationship was over. It happened with D. It happened with The Gambler. It had happened with everybody, really. Except The First Love… because when we ended, I was so new to love that red flags were not even something I knew how to identify yet. Instead, 9 years after we’d broken up, I had been hit with a barrage of red flags, one after the other, in a little restaurant in the Vancouver suburbs at 8 pm on a Thursday. And if I could take anything away from this dinner, it was that I had not missed any great possibility for love over the last 9 years.

Fast forward to one month later.
On December 9th, 2012, I went on a date with The Ukrainian at the Vancouver Aquarium. And it was great. It was genuinely fun. It was the best date I’ve been on since D and I broke up in April. But the red flags still popped up throughout the 8 hours we spent together that day.
The Ukrainian dropped me off at my apartment at 10 pm that night, and once I got in the door I texted The Russian with one of our code eloquent phrases for “Can you come over and bang me?”. And he did.
As we laid in my bed afterwards, swimming in the afterglow of some mind-blowing sex, he at one point said “Oh, how was the date, by the way?”.
I breathed in and out, continued stroking the skin on the back of his neck, and considered my answer for a moment before launching into it.
“It was honestly the best date I’ve been on since [D] and I broke up, but I still have my doubts. He still smokes, so kissing him is like sucking on an ashtray. And I’ve dated smokers before. They never quit. I like the fact that he’s in the army but it’s sort of an unintellectual profession that I can’t relate to. And he doesn’t have any passions or hobbies outside of it – his life is the military. And he can’t really dress. And he’s always late. I’m always late – that’s my thing! And, honestly, he’s cute and witty and laid back, but a little dull, and that sort of ruins it. There’s no… fire. No passion.”
The Russian waited a second, perhaps to make sure that my rant was over, before commenting “You don’t think you’re being too picky?”.
I looked up at him. “[Russian], I’ve always just dated whoever I thought was cute and cool and done my best to ignore their flaws. Last month I had dinner with my first ever boyfriend from high school. He’s now 27, unemployed, lives rent-free in his Dad’s house in Surrey, and wears Ed Hardy and big white fur coats. Together. These are the kinds of choices I’ve made, historically. I obviously cannot be trusted to NOT be picky.”

The Russian laughed. “You’re a nutball” he retorted, amused, before kissing me on the forehead and pulling me closer to to lie on his chest.
Maybe I was being too picky. But my friends have referred to me as The Rebound Queen on more than one occasion, because when one relationship ends I’ve always jumped into another one within a couple weeks. And not just to date the person for a month and move on. They were back-to-back long-term relationships that I clung to until they blew up in my face. I really committed to the bit. It didn’t occur to me until this year that this was because when your only criteria is that someone be attractive and cool, a lot of people can foot the bill, but that doesn’t mean they’re right for you. I didn’t want to settle anymore.
In one year I’ve gone from The Rebound Queen to the Too Picky Singleton. And I am absolutely okay with that. Because the great things in life are always better when you work for them. And when you wait for them.

Chapter Ten: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice (The Experiment)

“It’s bricked up in my head, it’s shoved under my bed
And I question myself again: What is it about men?” – Amy Winehouse, 2003.

It was about 8 in the evening on December 8th, 2012, and I was on my way to a first date at The Railway Club on Dunsmuir. It was not only a first date, but it was my first date with a girl, and for the first time in my entire life I was really nervous before a date with someone.
The Bohemian was a 29 year old chef who lived in a modest condo with three roommates in North Vancouver. She was going to school to be a holistic nutritionist, and her favourite bands were Sublime, Green Day, Tragically Hip, Bob Marley, and Redeye Empire. I knew right away that we were going to get along.
How did I meet The Bohemian? Let’s back up a little.

I opened an account on OKCupid at the beginning of the summer. This wasn’t exactly my first time on a dating website; that’s a whole other story. In June of 2010, I signed up for my first online dating account. I was two weeks out of my last relationship, and it seemed like time to get back in the saddle.
D was the first guy to message me, the first and only guy I agreed to go out on a date with, and after a couple weeks he was the guy I had agreed to exclusively date. And so I shut my account down without ever meeting anyone else.
Two years later, it became clear from the way our relationship ended that I had chosen someone with whom I had a pretty weak connection. Or at least, someone who had a pretty weak connection with me.
So maybe I should’ve kept that account up for a little longer.
Now it was 2012, and I was doing things differently. Instead of actively seeking out a potential life mate, I was trying my best to take every message from every hopeful applicant with a grain of salt and a raised, skeptical eyebrow. Instead of rooting for every suitor, I was playing the part of the pitcher, the catcher, and the first baseman: ready to strike out anyone who stepped up to the plate. I was judging every boy with my one-year singlehood pledge in mind. “Is this guy THAT amazing? Would he be worth breaking the deal for?
This was how I went about searching for that stronger connection. If I could justify abandoning this endeavour for any one guy after reading his profile and exchanging a few messages, then I would go on a date with him. If I couldn’t meet that criteria, I stopped returning his messages.
This was the strategy that helped me stay single over the summer and through autumn. And this was how, for the first time in my life, I kept an online dating profile up for more than just a few weeks, so that this time I wouldn’t settle for the first dude to contact me.
How did I keep from becoming lonely and affection-starved for all those months? Well, that was where The Russian came in. He was the place where I went to find the attraction, companionship, and intimacy that I was too apprehensive to pursue with anyone with whom that closeness might evolve into something that I didn’t want at that point.
Then in August, when The Russian and I brought The Girl into his bed, I was left astounded by how comfortable I felt rolling around in bed with her, and how easily she was able to summon an orgasm from me. It was that orgasm that brought up the inevitable question:

What about women?
I’ve always considered myself to be straight, and I’ve never really given too much thought to it. This has sometimes caused me to feel left out and downright uninteresting by contrast, as in a progressive, metropolitan city like Vancouver a straight person is often found to be the boring majority in any room. But hey, what can you do, right?
It wasn’t until that orgasm with The Girl that I found myself opening the door to the idea of women as romantic partners. My mind had always told me that I was only attracted to men, but I thought it might be time that I stop over-thinking things and listen to my body instead.
So one day I changed my sexuality from “Straight” to “Bisexual” on that dating website with an air of bold independence, and after receiving messages from girls I wasn’t particularly interested in for a few weeks, one day I received one from a girl who was absolutely adorable. Enter The Bohemian.
She was wearing a Canucks hat in her profile picture, she had a thing for British English spelling standards, and she regularly listened to the Savage Love podcast. I was sold.
It was about 8 in the evening on December 8th, 2012, and I was on my way to a first date at The Railway Club on Dunsmuir. And I was sweating bullets.
Here was what tripped me up: When it came to trying to envision what women want in a woman, I was absolutely flabbergasted. I had no fucking clue what to wear. Something feminine? Something masculine? Something cute? Something strong?
The questions continued as I made my way to the date.
Should I offer to buy her a drink when we sit down, wait to see if she buys me a drink, or do we go dutch since neither of us are men? When I get up to go to the bathroom, do I invite her to come along as I would invite any other female friend, or do I treat her like a man and keep bathroom trips private because we are on a date? If she pulls out a lip gloss, am I allowed to ask her where she got it or if I can try it, as I would any other female friend, or do I act like a man and consider that part of her arsenal and pretend not to notice it?
I was a mess.
By the time I got to Railway Club, I think I had run through every possible scenario that could unfold, and I had no brain power left to continue obsessing with. So I just opened the door, walked up the flight of stairs, and saw her standing up at the top.

She was wearing a long, cute, hippie dress that somehow instantly made me feel at ease with my choice in outfit (jeans and a casually dressy black top from Jacob that seemed to complement her outfit well). She was smiling as she walked towards me. And she was already holding two tickets in her hand that she had bought for us. It was like she’d read my mind.
“So where did you grow up?” The Bohemian asked me, as she sipped on her rum and coke at our table by the window of the club.
“Oh, well I grew up in Abbotsford, and my parents moved us to Port Moody when I was 16. I moved out on my own at 18 and bounced from Port Moody to Coquitlam to Burnaby.” I answered, while playing with my hair nervously.
“Making your way to Vancouver, 1 kilometer at a time?” she retorted with a sly smile. “Exactly!” I exclaimed, and we shared a chuckle.
“So where did you grow up?” I asked her back.
What followed was the type of conversation that usually happens on dates, and this woman was nothing but delightful to talk to, but as the night stretched on I found myself panning out from the moment to take the temperature of my feelings towards her. And I found that, however engaging she was to talk to, there was a void in the evening that was keeping me from feeling sexually attracted to her.
“What is it?” I thought to myself, while listening to her tell one of her adorable stories about her crazy roommates. “What’s missing?”
And then I realized what wasn’t there. I realized what I was craving.
The broadness of a set of shoulders. The deepness of a masculine, raspy voice. The flurry of excitement that comes from a chivalrous, protective gesture like a hand on the small of your back while you walk to your seat. The raw appeal of a five o’clock shadow. The brightness I seem to only be able to see behind a man’s eyes. And the gloriousness and power of the manhood you both know is there, behind the confines of his clothing.
So that was that. On December 8th, 2012, I re-affirmed my sexuality, made a new Facebook friend, and set foot back on my quest for that deeper connection.
Batter up.

Chapter Eleven: The Trail of Breadcrumbs (The Musician)

“If you don’t know where you’re going
Any road will take you there” – George Harrison, 2003.

So here’s the thing. When I go on a first date with a boy, there is a particular phrase that he needs to say at least once during the first date for me to go on a second date with him.
It doesn’t matter when he says it. It doesn’t matter how many times he says it. It doesn’t matter exactly how he words it. But he needs to say it, in some kind of fashion.

This is something that I did not even realize until recently. After a summer and autumn of singledom and countless dates with suitors who I didn’t quite feel a spark with (and wouldn’t let myself settle for), I heard the phrase — for the first time in six months — on December 26th, 2012. And when I heard the phrase, I suddenly remembered how important it was and how it was the thing that had been missing from my dating life for those last six months.
Let’s call it The Breadcrumb Phrase.
It was 8 in the evening on December 26th, 2012, and I was on a first date in a cozy little bar on Main street with a boy I met on the Internet. We’ll call him The Musician. And we were only a few minutes into the date when — at the end of a long series of interjections and side stories on both our parts — he said it.
“…And THAT is why I don’t believe in life on other planets. … Wow… How did we get there?” And that was it.
“How did we get there?”
The Breadcrumb Phrase. It is that thing you say when you and the other person are so excited to talk to each other that you keep getting reminded of related stories and branching off of the original conversation to add them, until there are so many individual branches jutting out in different directions you get lost trying to backtrack to what you were initially trying to say 10 minutes ago when you started talking.
It is that thing you say when you’re trying to find your way back to the beginning of the conversation, like following a trail of breadcrumbs back from an adventure in a foreign place.
It is “How did we get here?”, “Wait, what were we talking about?”, or any other version of this kind of question.
More often than not it happens after a fit of laughter, and absolutely always it is a great sign on a first date. Maybe THE most important sign. That is, for me, at least. Because to me, conversing like it’s a sport that you’re training to compete for in the Olympics is that all-important X-factor in a potential significant other. And when you’re both dropping Breadcrumb Phrases left and right, that just means you’re doing it right.
Let’s back up a little, to how we got to the Breadcrumb Phrase.
I met The Musician on an online dating site, where I’ve had an account since the middle of the summer.

It wasn’t exactly my first time on an online dating site. I met D in June 2010 on an online dating site, when I was two weeks out of my last relationship.
D was the first guy to message me, the first guy who I agreed to go out on a date with, and soon we were exclusively dating and I shut my dating site account down before dating anyone else. Two years later, it became clear that I had chosen someone who I had a pretty weak connection with. Or at least, I’d chosen someone who had a pretty weak connection to me, because at the first sign of a medical crisis on my end, he bailed on me. So maybe I could’ve used a more thorough selection process while in the dating scene, you know?
Nowadays, I was learning from my mistakes and doing things differently. Instead of actively seeking out a potential life mate, I was judging these possible suitors with The Single Deal in mind and thinking “Do I really wanna keep dating this guy? Is he worth breaking The Deal for? Is he worth having to explain to J that I can’t write the blog anymore?”.
This time, I was waiting for something really great to happen before I would settle on someone. I didn’t know that the Breadcrumbs Phrase would be that great thing, because I wasn’t even really consciously aware of it yet. I just knew that this time, I was looking for a stronger connection; a connection that could justify abandoning the blog, if it came to that. When I had that criteria in mind, it was easy to keep myself from settling for those who weren’t good enough.
“Is this guy awesome enough to quit the blog for? No? Then next!” I would say to myself, guy after guy, all summer and autumn of 2012.
My goal was to not settle for someone who wasn’t amazingly awesome. My commitment to The Single Deal kept me from throwing my singledom away on someone less than that amount of awesome. My ongoing medical adventures kept me from feeling comfortable getting into any serious relationships, until I had a clearer picture of my future anyways. My relationship with The Russian kept me from buckling under the temptation to acquire a boyfriend so I could give in to my sexual needs. With that trifecta of defense mechanisms, I had built walls around my heart that would take a lot of work to break down.
This formula worked for 6 whole months. Until December 26th, 2012. So, The Musician.
The Musician was a 25 year old sous chef from Yugoslavia who had lived in Vancouver since he was 2. His screen name was a pun that played off his real first name and a type of dinosaur and it made me chuckle out loud every time he sent me a message. He grew up on Main street with his parents and one younger sister, and moved out to an apartment on Commercial drive after high school. He plays guitar for two local, semi-successful indie rock bands.

He has a tattoo on his arm of an image that is an inside joke for all those who know Alanis Morisette lyrics well enough. He reads The Georgia Straight. He loves the bands I love that other people usually don’t. He has dark, smoldering eyes and a quick wit. When I asked him if he’d rather lose his sight or his hearing, he replied with the only right answer (if you ask me): Sight. And a few minutes into our first date, it became clear that he was fluent in Breadcrumbs Phrases. Very fluent.
“…And that’s what Christmas is all about: Realizing the truth about your childhood pets and helping your parents avoid becoming hoarders. …What was I saying before?” – The Musician.
“…I never would’ve thought that a portrait of me made entirely of my own hair was something I needed in life, but now I realize that I need it! …Um, what were we talking about?” – The Musician.
“…So it’s settled: We need to invent an app for that and name it “WAKE UP, MOTHERFUCKER”. I’ll have my people call your people. …Wow, how did we get there?” – The Musician.
There are few people who I’ll meet and end up talking to as though we’ve known each other our whole lives. I’ll sit down next to them, say hello, and then we’ll just launch into a conversation that flows as if it has a life of its own. Because it kinda does; in a way, we’re just along for the ride. At this point in person-to-person chemistry, conversation isn’t something you need to put any work into; it’s practically entertainment for the two people conversing. We just light a match, hold it to the fireworks, and sit back and watch the show.
This isn’t something that happens every day. At least, not for me. It’s something and stands right up and shakes your soul when you find it. And I had, indeed, found it.
So what now? My soul had been shaken and there was no ignoring it. I had been considering this scenario since we launched the blog, but I honestly did not think it would happen until I was ready for it and open to it and looking to find it. It happened anyway.
What was I going to tell The Russian? Even though we labelled everything we did under the guise of “Friendship”, we both knew we had built a relationship anyways, and one that I would really, really miss. The thought of it made my heart unmistakeably ache, and I found myself rolling a tear as I walked home from my first date with The Musician, because I knew what the date meant for The Russian and it was starting to sink in. We had built a medley of intimacy, friendship, and routine that would need to be dismantled, and that wouldn’t be easy. But choosing a casual relationship over a real one wouldn’t be healthy.

What was I going to tell The Wanderer? We’d only had one date before he moved to Toronto in September. Since then, we’d been texting on and off on a daily basis, and the subject matter had slowly been getting deeper and deeper. I was really starting to like him. Then in late October, he dropped the bomb that he would be moving back to Vancouver in January, partly so that we could resume this courtship we never got to fully explore. And January was coming up pretty quickly. I didn’t know what we could be… there’d been no time to find out. I didn’t know what I could be missing. But I didn’t have much to base a leap of faith on either.
What was I going to tell The Ukrainian? It had been almost two weeks since our first date at The Aquarium, and he had texted me a couple days afterwards to tell me that he would be on the field at the army base in Chilliwack for the next few weeks. It was far too soon to know if anything was there, if anything would be there, or if in fact there was nothing there at all. But it doesn’t seem like the smartest plan to wait for someone who was so apprehensive about me that our first date happened eight years after we met and I had to be the one to ask him after his best friend assured me that The Ukrainian would be too shy to do it. Would this be an ongoing issue in our potential courtship, or was this just an initial hurdle? Was it worth the risk to wait for him and find out?
But most importantly… I still had 6 months of the Single Deal left to complete. When I initially made this pact, I really meant it. If I bailed on that after one really great first date with a cute guitar player, what was I going to tell myself?

Chapter Twelve: The Roads Already Travelled (Surviving the Apocalypse)

“You’re asking me ‘Will my love grow?’.
I don’t know. I don’t know.” – George Harrison, 1969.

I used to believe in fate. But I don’t anymore. Nowadays, I believe that every day you make millions of little decisions and maybe a few big decisions, and the little ones affect the course of your life as much as the big ones do. And everything is a game of chance.
Like, say someone decides to go to Blenz for coffee one day instead of their usual Starbucks run, and they end up meeting the love of their life in the lineup when they strike up a conversation after noticing they’re both carrying the same novel under their arms. They exchange numbers. They date for a few years. They get married. They start a family. And they live happily ever after. That’s great. But I don’t call that fate.
I don’t think the two were destined to meet. I don’t think it was all part of a bigger plan. I think that someone made a tiny little decision between two coffee shops, and they could’ve very easily never met that day if they’d made a different choice, and they would’ve gone their whole lives without ever knowing the other existed. And in that case they probably would’ve met someone else at some point who might be just as good for them as the Blenz guy. The number of tiny choices and huge mistakes and unnoticed near-misses that we probably encounter over the course of our days is kind of overwhelming. It’s not really about the big decisions you make. It’s about how lucky you get with the little ones.

On May 25th, 2012, I fainted.

I felt it coming. I had started to think about what had just happened, and my head had started spinning in defense. I knew there was no fighting it, and my only thought was that I wanted to get to the chair beside me and sit down before it happened. I didn’t quite make it, and my head hit the floor.
As the nurses shook me awake, I felt as though I had been asleep for days, having an amazing, intricate dream. “Have I actually been asleep for days?” I thought to myself. “No… I’m pretty sure I’m lying on a floor. I’d probably be in a hospital bed or something if I’d been passed out for longer than a few minutes”, I decided, my eyes still closed and the world still dark.
The dream felt so real that I didn’t want to be woken up. I wanted to slip back into wherever I was before. So I tried to remember what I was dreaming about, in hopes that I could get back to it.
Pieces of the dream came back to me in flashes.
I remembered dreaming that my doctor called me with some abnormal test results that might be cervical cancer. I remembered dreaming that I told D about it. I remembered dreaming that D broke up with me before I even knew if it was cancer or not, and I had no one holding my hand while I laid on a hospital table in a strange city. It was an awful dream.
“Olivia, can you open your eyes for me?”, the nurse said. And then I did.
And then I was back. For a moment, my mind felt like a blank slate, and as the flashes of the dream I’d had started to fade, I wasn’t sure what to fill the slate with just yet. All I felt was the blankness of my slate and the terrible memory of the nightmare I’d had.
I looked up and saw three nurses kneeling over me. And in all of two seconds, I suddenly remembered that none of those things were a dream after all.
I’d hit my head when I fainted after the biopsy, and I was just remembering bits of life. Bits of life that in a way I hadn’t wrapped my head around yet, so they didn’t feel real. And for those 30 seconds that I laid passed out on a hospital room floor, they weren’t real.
For about 30 seconds there, they were just a dream.

It was 9 in the morning on December 21st, 2012. And I was in the same hospital, in the same waiting room, and in the same green hospital chair. It had been seven months since my first biopsy and that surreal fainting spell. But it felt like years. My post-surgery second biopsy came all too soon and took far too long, all at once.
As I sat in that familiar green hospital chair, waiting for the nurse to call my name and summon me for biopsy #2, I started to think about little decisions. I still had a second date scheduled with The Musician and a big decision to make, so the little decisions I’d already made were easier to think about for now.
If I hadn’t, in the summer of 2004, left a party to write a quick blog entry because I felt inspired, I wouldn’t have run into my sister’s boyfriend in the upstairs bedroom and ended up creating a spark that we would regretfully rekindle after they’d broken up.
If I hadn’t, in the fall of 2006, switched departments at work and met The Gambler, I never would’ve left my boyfriend, The Politician, for him. I never would’ve learned what it felt like to feel my own trust completely violated as The Gambler sat across from me, two years later, and confessed to having cheated on me months earlier.

If I hadn’t, in the fall of 2009, gone to the same play twice on a whim, I never would’ve found myself head over heels for Napster, the first man to really steal my heart and the first man to really break it.
If I hadn’t, in the spring of 2012, gone for that pap test because D convinced me that the extra painful menstrual cramps I was suddenly experiencing could be serious, I wouldn’t have ultimately found out about the pre-cancer cells. Not yet, anyways. Life would’ve just went on. I wouldn’t have gone to Hawaii. I wouldn’t have known The Marine or The Russian. I wouldn’t have taken a vow to stay single and write a blog every second Thursday about it.
If that last little decision hadn’t happened, would D and I still be together now? Would we be living together by this point? Would I be blissfully unaware of his lack of real commitment to me in the face of a real life crisis? Would I have found out later when the pre-cancer cells had developed into cancer? And would that be the end of me?
Sometimes the little decisions kill you. But sometimes the little decisions actually save you.
“Olivia?” the voiced boomed over the loud speaker. It was time.
40 minutes later, and it was over. I was back in my green hospital chair, sitting in my hospital gown, and waiting for my surgeon to come through the doors and tell me the results of the second biopsy. Had the pre-cancer cells returned? Had they evolved into cancer? Would it be surgery again, or chemo this time? That was the question.
Then my phone beeped.
“Hey, how are you feeling? Thinking about you! p.s. I just realized it’s December 21st and today is your surgery day. Watch out for zombie doctors!” – The Russian.
I smiled at the distraction. December 21st, 2012 had been the subject of widespread doomsday conspiracies that year about the end of the world.
“Haha. When they called me with the surgery date, I literally thought ‘Awesome! A hospital is the perfect place to be when the apocalypse strikes: It’s enclosed and secure, stocked with tons of food, and half the people here can heal any injury I get while fighting the zombies!'” – Olivia.
He answered 10 seconds later.
“Lol! What if the zombie apocalypse starts in the hospital and you become infected because hospitals are confusing and you can’t find the exit fast enough?” – The Russian.
“I’d go straight to your apartment and infect you first for making me do burpees at the gym this week. Beware of zombie Olivia!” – Olivia.
“I’m shaking in my booties, haha.” – The Russian.
“Yeah whatever, I know you’re curled up in the fetal position over there, trembling at the thought of zombie Olivia” – Olivia.
“It’s like you’re watching me cower in terror! How did you know??” – The Russian.

“Because zombies can read minds ;).” – Olivia.
“Let me get this straight. While your mind is rotting you start gaining the power of telepathy?” – The Russian.
I knew that at 9 am he would’ve been totally bogged down at work, as always. I knew that he was deliberately distracting me so that I wouldn’t be a wreck while I was waiting for my results. And I knew that it was working.
“I’m as surprised as you are, but yeah, apparently. How else do you explain the fact that I knew you were whimpering in the fetal position? This zombie thing might not be so bad after all. What other super powers do you think I’ll get?” – Olivia.

“Olivia?” the voiced boomed over the loud speaker. It was time.
Soon I was sitting on the other side of my doctor’s desk, watching him leaf through papers and waiting anxiously for him to say something.
Then he did.
“It looks like there are no more abnormal cells. You’re pre-cancer free.” he stated. He said it like he was telling me the temperature, but to my ears he was telling me that I’d survived a zombie apocalypse and I’d be just fine.

You make millions of little decisions every day, but there are a lot of things you can’t control. Like biopsy results. And like the people you fall for while you’re waiting for them. But some things you can.
As the doctor shuffled through more paperwork to go over more details, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I pulled it out of my pocket just far enough to see that it was from The Russian again.
I finally felt like I had control of my life again. And I was finally ready to make some big decisions.

Chapter Thirteen: The Big Leap (Check-Raise and All-In)

“Remember those walls I built?
Well baby they’re tumbling down
And they didn’t even put up a fight
They didn’t even make a sound” – Beyonce, 2009.

Here’s why I think dating is annoying.

When you sit down to play a game of Texas Hold’em poker, the dealer will give you two cards. Based on your perceived value of these cards, you then decide whether you want to keep those cards or discard them and hope that your next hand will be better.
The next hand might be better than the last one indeed, or it might be worse. You could be one round away from the best hand you’ve ever had, or the hand you’re currently holding could already be the best hand you’ll ever get, and you just don’t know it yet. It’s a game of chance. You’ll never really know where the hands you were dealt ranked until the game is over, so you just guess and follow your instincts and hope for the best.
And when you find a really good hand, you know. Or at least, you hope that you’ll know. And you bet on it. In poker, you bet with chips. In dating, you gamble with your future. Your time. Your happiness.
It was 8 in the evening on January 11th, 2013, and I was on a second date with The Musician.
Under normal circumstances, this was the perfect second date. The air was humming with the chemistry flying back and forth between us. Every sentence was punctuated with smiles and laughter and eye contact that vibrated through me like electricity. This guy was almost too cute for me to not feel self-conscious around, but just humble and down to earth enough to be endearing. And every smile that we flashed each other plunged me deeper and deeper into a feeling of guilt. It didn’t make any sense, but this felt like cheating, and I couldn’t keep thoughts of The Russian from my mind. Under normal circumstances, this probably would’ve ranked in the top 5 best dates of my life. But with the pangs of guilt dragging down my every step, I couldn’t really enjoy it for what it was.
In a way, I’d been secretly hoping for an awkward second date; I’d silently been rooting for a date that would prove our chemistry wasn’t all that strong after all. Why? Because the amazing first date meant that I decision would have to be made. If the second date was less magical, the decision wouldn’t be so difficult.
This date with The Musician wasn’t making anything easy.
By midnight, our date had wound down to an end and he was walking me to the stop where I could catch my bus back to the suburbs.
“This has been such a blast. I think next time we should do something in your ‘hood, like go to that comedy club you were talking about.” The Musician said, before pulling me into a warm goodbye embrace, smiling and telling me “Take care now”, and walking away as I stepped onto the bus that would whisk me away and bring me home.
I looked back once, from the back window of the bus, to see him pull out his iPod and put in his earphones. I wondered what he was listening to. I wondered if this guy would really be that amazing, deep down, once the dating facade has worn off. The new and shiny always looks better than the old and worn, because you haven’t seen its flaws yet. I’d known The Musician for only a few weeks. I’d known The Russian for months and months. I wondered if he had flaws that were different from The Russian’s, or mostly the same. And I wondered if I would ever give myself the chance to find out.
I knew that this was my breaking point. I had to pick a path before anything went any further with him. I just didn’t know which path was the right one to take.

It was 11 in the evening on January 19th, 2013, and it was the night of my birthday party. I sat perched at my living room table with a plate of ice cream cake in one hand, a glass of wine in the other, and an apartment chock full of friends. When I got up and walked to the kitchen to refill my drink, I caught a glimpse of The Russian leaning against the wall in the hallway. His hand was cradling a glass of vodka and coke and his face was drawn down into a frown and a melancholy blank stare. Immediately, my heart started to ache, and without even thinking about it I put down my cake and wine and made my way across the room.
“What’s wrong, man friend?” I asked him with a smile.
He looked up at me, his blank stare momentarily broken, and attempted a smile back. “I… I don’t know” he answered with a shrug.
I waited.
“What’s the deal with you and that guy who just left?” he asked me. I had to think for a minute.
“That guy” was an old boyfriend of mine who I’d dated briefly in high school and always kept in touch with, sending the occasional text or Facebook message every few months or so for the last several years. We didn’t have anything left between us besides a mutual platonic fondness for each other, but I hadn’t seen him for a couple years because our schedules were both pretty crazy. So, when he showed up at my birthday party and I saw him for the first time in a good two years I spent a long time catching up with him. And when he left, I walked him to my building’s elevator and gave him a warm hug goodbye.
“Him? We used to go out in high school, and we’re good friends now.” I answered with a shrug.
“You were talking to him for a long time, and you even walked him to the elevator when he left. I haven’t seen you do that for anyone before at your parties.” he mumbled.
“Yeah, well I haven’t seen him for a couple years, we had a lot of catching up to do.” I asked, confused.
“I know I shouldn’t be feeling this, but I’m having this reaction of… jealousy and territoriality.” he explained, like he was explaining the emotions of a character in a movie whom he didn’t understand.
“Why?” I asked. It was a stupid question, but it felt like the only thing to say there.
“That’s the thing, I don’t know why. And I don’t know what it means.” he answered, defeated.

We both knew what it meant, but now we were in a dance to see who would say it first. The fact that he was describing his emotions so openly was throwing me for a loop. All of the sudden I felt that we were in a speeding car and it was time to either take the wheel or tuck and roll out the door.
“I met someone.” I blurted out. It was one of the few times in my life where I’ve actually blurted out something without feeling it go through my brain at all first. I knew somehow that I had to say it, but still I hadn’t meant to right then. It just came out.
“You what?” he asked, bewildered.
“I met someone” I said again. “And I really like him. We should stop this now so I can explore that for a while.”
As soon as I said it, I felt tears welling up in my eyes. This took me by surprise as much as the sentence I’d blurted out did, so I tried to wipe them away as discreetly as possible. But it was no use. He noticed.
“Don’t cry”, he said, wiping the tears away from my eyes gently. “You’re going to make me cry.” Then, as if reading my mind, he pulled me into an embrace.
We stood there, frozen in emotion for what felt like hours but was probably actually only five minutes or so.
Finally, he said something.
“I feel like if we go back to being friends now, we may be missing out on something that could really be something.” he said, cautiously.
“What are you saying?” I asked my second stupid question of the night.
“That I want to go out with you.” he answered, pulling back from our embrace and looking right into my eyes.

People like to believe there are a lot of shortcuts out there. And I used to be one of them. Shortcuts for getting in shape. Shortcuts for making money. Shortcuts for finding the right one.
People go on crazy crash diets, take diet pills, and eat nothing but grapefruit for days. But really, it’s just about a healthy diet and exercise.

People think they can make a quick buck flipping houses, clipping coupons, or selling Avon door-to-door. But really, it’s just about hard work and discipline.
I thought there were a lot of tricks to finding the right one. Tricks to avoiding any heartache on that pursuit. And those tricks ranged from Oxycontin, to The Cat in the Hat, to The Red Flags Promise, to The Twinkle, to The Breadcrumbs Phrase. I chronicled them in this blog like they were scripture.
But really, it’s just about two people breaking down the charade, and finally saying something honest. And I think the time when that’s most likely to happen is the time when you least expect it. And in this case, the person with whom it happened was the person I least expected it to come from.

For the second time that night, a response just escaped my mouth before I could even think about it.
“Okay” I said back.
From June until December of 2012, while I waited for the medical war I was waging to finally be over, I had taken asylum with The Russian in the bomb shelter we called casual sex. Once the war was over, I was free to see him as a person instead of just a fellow soldier. And once I did that, I realized that in our time in the foxhole together he had somehow become something else to me, and me to him.
And that thing that we had become? I had a feeling it was going to be something great.

Chapter Fourteen: Fortes Fortuna Adiuvat (Folding Pocket Tens)

“So gather up your jackets, and move it to the exits. I hope you have found a friend.” – Dan Wilson, 1998.

It was 8 in the morning on February 23rd, 2013, and I was lying in my bed, wide awake. I had been awake for hours. In fact, I may not have technically fallen asleep that night. It sure didn’t feel like it.
I turned to the side to look over at The Russian, sleeping beside me. I had one feeling running through me, and it was dread. I was dreading the moment when he would wake up. Because we had broken up the night before, but it didn’t feel real yet. When he woke up, I knew that it would. So I laid in bed, wide awake and staring at the ceiling (and occasionally over at him) and acknowledged every minute that passed, as each one was one of the last minutes where I would feel like we were still part of something special. Soon, those moments would be long gone.
But let’s back up a bit.

The first entry I ever wrote for this blog was about events that took place on June 9th, 2012. The second entry I ever wrote for this blog was about June 26th, 2012.
There was a little thing that happened between those blog entries that I never felt the need to write about. So I didn’t. But right now, 8 months later, it feels awfully relevant to the story of last Friday night. So I will tell that story first. Then I’ll tell the story of last Friday night.
It was 7 in the morning on June 13th, 2012, and I was standing at baggage claim in Vancouver International airport, waiting for one big suitcase and one little one. And I was dreading the moment when they would arrive, because once they did, I would have to leave the airport. And once I did that, it would mean I was really back home. Back home, in the land of ex-boyfriends and impending biopsy results and hard, cold surreality.
I was god damn freezing in that airport. Wearing short shorts and a wife beater on the flight home may have been a mistake, but Jesus, I’m Canadian and it was June. I didn’t realize that after two weeks in Hawaii, the 15° Celsius temperature in Vancouver would feel like the icy chill that hits you right before it starts snowing.
Any way you slice it, from the temperature to the surrealism, I wasn’t ready to be back in Vancouver. I checked my phone as I waited. One text from The Marine. One text from The Russian.
“Miss it yet?” – The Marine.
“Welcome back! Drinks tonight?” – The Russian.
I glowed at the reassurance of The Marine’s sweet, agenda-less message. At this point it had been 4 days since we’d slept together, and he’d sent me text messages on each day that had passed since. We both knew we’d likely never see each other again, and yet he sent them anyway. It made me glow with the warmth of his ongoing sincerity and kindness.
Now, there would be no blossoming romance here. I knew this when I met him, I knew this when I slept with him, and I knew this with every thoughtful post-coital text message he sent me. This affair would not turn into anything. It would not evolve into a long-distance courtship of Facebook chats and expensive long-distance text messages that we would eventually call a relationship. No one would eventually move to Vancouver, or Hawaii, or Pittsburgh and play house and get married and have children.
This was not what we were, and this was not what I wished we were, and I knew that before I’d let him take me home that night in Hawaii. In fact, it might have been why I’d let him take me home that night in Hawaii. Not because he wasn’t my type (he was), and not because I wasn’t attracted to him (I was), but because that’s just not what our tryst meant, to me. It meant something specific that couldn’t be replicated, or translated, or extended into another type of relationship. It meant something that was more important and needed than a romantic relationship. Because that was the kind of relationship I needed right then: a different kind.
The story of the Marine and me is not a love story. But there is a little bit of love in it. There was some sort of magic that happened that night, in his military dorm room in Oahu. A small, unassuming magic that seeped into my soul and wordlessly assured me that I was not alone.
It assured me that love had a lot of forms, and this was one of them: Kindness. No strings. Just pure kindness. That was all we were to each other, and that was perfect. It meant something. And it didn’t mean romantic, relationship love, or even a friendship really, but it meant a quiet, invisible-to-the-naked-eye love that I could still feel inside my heart, but that we would never do anything with. Maybe I was the only one who felt that microscopic shudder of love, but that was okay.
It was as though someone had given me a patch of fabric that was so beautiful it took my breath away to look at it. The colours were deep and the texture was enrapturing, but it was only a square inch of fabric. I could never use it to sew a dress, a skirt, or even a handkerchief. It was too small to be changed into anything else, but it was still beautiful, so I would keep it with me in my pocket, always. Not to build with. Not to use. Not to show anyone. Just to keep. Just to be close to. Just to feel.
Maybe he kept it in his pocket too. And maybe we were honouring the memory of it with chit-chatty text messages, because they didn’t stop until several months after my return from that Hawaiian escape. But eventually they did stop, and all that remained and resonated of my Island romance was the afterglow. An afterglow that I will always carry with me in my pocket. Just to keep. Just to be close to. Just to feel.
“Miss it yet?” – The Marine.
“Welcome back! Drinks tonight?” – The Russian.
I answered The Marine’s message with a smile on my face. “Terribly! It’s freezing here :). How are things in paradise?”.
My answer to The Russian, however, I wasn’t so sure about.
Go out for drinks with The Russian? One of the biggest players I’d ever met? What was the point of that? He was only interested in one thing. I started to type out some excuse about having to work late that night, when suddenly my fingers paused on the keys of my iPhone. Suddenly, I was lost in thought.
The thing that I had brought back with me from Hawaii was the idea that love is everywhere. Even when it’s not. And even when it’s something else… like the magic that can happen in a military dorm room between two wounded strangers, or the kindness that can happen from a long-distance text message long after the tryst has ended.
At that moment, I decided that if there was so much more to a rendezvous with a young American marine I had met in a bar in Oahu than I ever could’ve imagined, there could be more to the young Russian playboy who I’d always written off as nothing more than a flirt.
I thought about May 18th, 2012, the night that I ran into The Russian randomly and ended up spending the night out with him. That was the night The Russian told me his life story on the Skytrain. The night we invented the term “Buddy Swig”. The night my heart busted open like the Grinch’s when it expanded and broke the measuring device. There was some magic there. Some kindness. And in light of my post- Hawaii afterglow, I decided to take the little bit of magic and kindness that I’d felt that night, and to run with it. And man, did I ever run with it.
“Sure, what time?” I typed in the reply box, and hit send.

I put my phone away, looked back at the baggage claim carousal, and saw my luggage. It was time to go home.

The Russian and I started sleeping together in June. We played with the boundaries of love and friendship and intimacy. We explored each other’s bodies for half a year while calling each other “friends”. We went through ups and downs. He fucked things up, we fought, I broke things off and then we got back together. And then one night in December, rather unexpectedly but then again rather not unexpectedly, he asked me to go out with him. And I said yes.
To say that The Russian turned out to be so much more than I ever expected is an understatement.
But then what happened?
It was close to midnight on February 22nd, 2013. The Russian and I were sitting on the hard seats in my building’s lobby, side by side and staring straight ahead. We had just returned from a house party, and we had driven the whole way home in silence. It was time to break up, and I knew I had to be the one to start it.
We had been dating officially for two months now, but it never started to feel… natural. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for the thing we were doing to start feeling like a relationship, but it never really did. It always felt like two friends with benefits playing house with winks in their eyes.

Then, that night, we were drinking at a big house party in Port Moody when one of our friend’s girlfriends pulled him aside to drunkenly interrogate him in the kitchen, the way drunk girls do. “You two are so cute together! Do you love her?” was the question that rang out from the kitchen.
The silence of a long pause was all I needed to hear as I sat in the living room, surrounded by my oblivious friends, whilst pouring myself a new rum and coke and doing all I could to hold my emotions inside me.
That night in early January when The Russian asked me to be more than his friend with benefits, my instincts told me one thing: If someone really felt strongly enough about you that there could be real love there, they wouldn’t have taken six months to figure it out. They wouldn’t have slept with you and called you a friend with benefits for so long without acting on their emotions. They would’ve known sooner. And if they did know but were apprehensive to act on it for that long, then they’re too emotionally stunted for a relationship. This is a bad idea.
I ignored this instinct, wrapped it up tight in a little shoebox, and stored it in the attic of my mind. And look where that had gotten me.
So I had a choice here: I could ignore what I had just heard from the kitchen of the house party the way I’d ignored my other instincts, or I could look straight at it.
When I was with The Guitarist over the summer of 2004, my instincts were constantly telling me that I liked this guy way more than he liked me and I was probably going to get hurt. But I ignored my instincts until the day I found out he’d cheated on me with his ex-girlfriend. And was dumping me to get back together with her.
When I was with The Gambler from 2006 to 2008, my instincts were constantly telling me that we weren’t really right for each other. But I ignored my instincts until the day I read an MSN chat window he’d left up on his computer where he detailed not only his sexual indiscretions over the course of our relationship but how much he didn’t care that he’d cheated on me because he didn’t think we’d last forever anyways.
When I was with D from 2010 to 2012, my instincts were constantly telling me he didn’t really love me and never would. But I ignored my instincts until the day I told him I had pre-cancer and he took the next exit out.
They say that fortune favours the brave. If this is true, it explains a lot.

Of course, I’ve had some great relationships as well that didn’t end badly. These were just the three cases where the relationship was wrong for both us, but I wasn’t brave enough to move on from it until something disastrous happened. If I had been, I sure could’ve saved myself some years of redundancy.
Now, as The Russian and I sat in silence in my building’s lobby, it was time for me to make a choice.
“Listen, [The Russian]. Let’s not pretend to be something we’re not. This isn’t really working.” I said.
I continued to speak, with a gentle kindness in my voice that I made sure was always there. I spoke with an appreciation of the friendship we’d built between us and the happiness we’d shared in the time we’d known each other. But most of all, I spoke with the bravery that I was never able to muster whilst in those other dead-end relationships.
A few hours went by after that, as he let me speak my piece and did not stop me from breaking up with him, which I took to mean he’d felt the emptiness in our relationship too, but also had not been brave enough to bring it up yet. And soon the deed was done.
What did this bravery mean to me? It meant my time is worth more than the comfort of avoiding change by staying in a relationship that isn’t right. It meant that there is nothing to gain by being in a relationship just for the sake of being in a relationship. It meant that I deserve someone who loves me, who knows that they love me, and who will say that they love me when asked by a drunk mutual friend at a party.
Love is everywhere. Even when it’s not. And mine and The Russian’s love-that-is-not was now its own patch of fabric that I would keep in my pocket forever. Just to keep. Just to be close to. Just to feel.
And… if my relationship with The Russian is really meant to be, he’ll find his way back to me. But nevermore are the days where I will sit stagnant and wait for the wondrousness I seek to happen on its own. Nevermore are the days where I will ignore the red flags until all too many years have gone by and all too many tears have been spilled. The greatest thing I can do for myself is to commit myself to boldness, until the day comes where someone gives me no reason to doubt them.
Fortune favours the brave. And it’s time for me to make my own luck.

Chapter Fifteen: Perfect on Paper (The Italian)

“Put a chair against the door

And turn the lights down low

Write a letter to yourself
No one will ever know
Tell them all about the girl
Who just refused to fall” – Jann Arden, 1994.

When I was 18, I met the perfect guy.
He was handsome. He was kind. He was straightforward. He held a lucrative position at a software company and raked in more dough that anyone I knew in our age bracket. He was more fun to talk to than anyone I’d ever met in my life. And he knew how to make me laugh until tears were streaming down my face and my cheeks hurt.

We went out for dinner and a drive around Stanley Park, and the evening was perfect. But somewhere between the Chinese food and the inner-city traffic, I realized that something about him was blocking me from swooning the way I’d expected to that night. I didn’t really know what it was then… though I do now.
It was something about the way he offhandedly made a comment about how much his friends would like me. It was something about the way he made a suggestion for plans for the next weekend, as if it was assumed that we’d be hanging out. It was something about the way he made me feel like we were already in a relationship.
This guy was entirely available. If a relationship with this guy was a car, it was a car pulled up to the curb outside my house, with the engine running and the door swung open. The radio was already on and turned to my favourite station. This car was ready to go somewhere. Somewhere real. I was only 18, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t what I wanted yet.
Here’s the thing about me and relationships. I’ve never understood how intelligent people could possibly marry their first boyfriend/girlfriend.
My Mom got married when she was 18, to the first boyfriend she’d ever had. This guy turned out to be a cheater who, in her words, “stole her twenties”.
My sister got married when she was in her early twenties, to the first boyfriend she’d ever had, who turned out to be a delinquent alcoholic who, according to my Mom, sucked her bank account dry for nearly a decade.
The way they’ll tell it, the years they spent in those relationships were the most miserable of their lives. It wasn’t until much later in their lives, after they’d spent some time exploring the dating world, that they found someone who made them truly happy.
I grew up hearing these stories, and even as an adolescent the lesson was not lost on me: When it comes to finding a soul mate, it’s important to comparison shop.
I was determined not to fall in love in my teenage years and marry my first boyfriend as my mother and sister had before me, because to me it made as much sense as choosing your favourite painter when you’ve only seen one artist’s work. How do you know when you’re happy if you’ve never known anything else?
So it was fairly early on that I became drawn to the imperfect guys. The guys who were emotionally unavailable. The guys who weren’t ready for a serious relationship. The guys who didn’t scare me with their simplicity, because they were the definition of complicated. These were the guys I kept dating over the long-term, until we would finally burn out because we weren’t meant to stay aflame anyways. And the more imperfect they were, the longer we usually lasted.

I was looking for the car with a frozen-shut door that I’d have to hot wire because the keys were gone. I was looking for the car that I kinda knew wasn’t really going to go anywhere.
It was only last week when I realized that I had been doing this. I always knew that that I kept meeting these “perfect guys” and kept leaving them because “something was missing”. I didn’t really realize until now that the thing that was missing was the challenge which assured me the relationship almost certainly wasn’t going anywhere… but the challenge which still left the slim possibility out there so it didn’t feel fruitless.
It was 8 in the evening on February 28th, 2013, and I was sitting across the table from another perfect guy. The Italian. Another guy who talked about introducing me to his friends on the first date. Another guy who made plans with me halfway through the date, instead of waiting for three days afterwards and texting me. Another guy who was a car pulled up to the curb outside my house with the engine running and the door swung open. It was my cue to run. We finished our dinner, he walked me to my bus stop, he sweetly kissed me goodnight, and I said goodnight with a fairly certain intention to never see him again.
The following day, The Italian sent me several text messages, asking how my day was and sending cute anecdotes about his day. This guy wasn’t playing any games. This guy was not hard to get at all. This guy was not a challenge. He was another perfect guy, and his car was ready to go. I answered the messages politely and half-heartedly, while in the back of the head I drafted the Dear John text message that I would send the next week.
It was about 4 in the afternoon on March 3rd, 2013, and I was sitting in the passenger seat of my car as it flew down the highway. The Russian was sitting beside me in the driver’s seat, and we were on our way home from a weekend cabin trip with our friends in the Okanagan. Our transition from dating back to friends had been pretty seamless, and it was like nothing had changed at all.
As we crossed over an invisible border, cell reception returned to my phone for the first time in three days and it lit up with new text messages. Three were from The Italian.
“Ugh. I HATE when a guy sends multiple text messages in a row when you haven’t responded to the first one.” I remarked out loud, as I scrolled through them on my phone.
“Why?” The Russian asked, genuinely confused.
“Because… well, because it’s kinda needy.” I answered candidly. The Russian was quiet for a moment.
“Why wouldn’t you want someone who needs you?” he asked.

And that was when it hit me. When I was 18, I met the perfect guy. And I kept meeting perfect guys, year after year, up until the present. And I was writing them off for no real reason… I was writing them off because they were offering me something real, and I didn’t want that. Not yet. Because when you have something real, the music stops and the game of musical chairs is over. And then, if you’ve made the wrong choice… if you didn’t research and comparison shop enough and you fucked up with your choice… you’re stuck with it.
Maybe it was the altitude of our road trip through the British Columbia interior, or maybe it was the honest tone of The Russian’s question, but it all became clear to me right then. I had been so concerned with falling in love too early that I’d decided signs of commitment were red flags and emotional unavailability was desirable. I’d been doing it for so long that I’d forgotten why I was doing it in the first place, and I’d fooled myself into believing that breaking things off with someone because they showed signs of neediness was a valid thing to do.
I looked over at The Russian, and looking at his face only made this revelation more clear. In truth, choosing The Russian over The Musician back in January had been the pinnacle of this defense mechanism. There was never a doubt in my mind that my relationship with The Russian wasn’t going anywhere, but I chose him anyway, instead of exploring something more real with The Musician, as I really kinda should’ve.
I started to think that maybe enough was enough.
“I guess maybe I do want that…” I answered The Russian’s question, and then looked back down at my phone.
It was time for a change.

Chapter Sixteen: Climbing Fences (Moving On)

“Then time will tell just who fell
And who’s been left behind
When you go your way and I go mine” – Bob Dylan, 1966.

It was 9 in the evening on March 14th, 2013, and The Italian and I were making out on his bed.
We had just come back from a night of dinner on Granville street, watching the Canucks game at a pub on Davie street, and walking back to his apartment to watch a few episodes of Californication; he had never seen it before, and I explained that for me to continue dating him this needed to be remedied.
Now, over the 8 months that The Russian and I had been sleeping together, I had gone on a lot of dates, but none of them had gotten this far. This was the first time in a long time that I was making out with anyone other than The Russian, and it felt strange.
A small part of me wonders whether any of those guys I’d gone on dates with might have been boyfriend material, but my mind was too preoccupied with The Russian to notice. Even though I never saw The Russian as anything more than a friend with benefits for the majority of our extended tryst, he still took up a lot of space in my head for the better part of a year. Maybe now that The Russian and I had spent 6 months sleeping together, 2 months dating, and finally broken up and called an end to our whole convoluted endeavour, I was free to really notice other boys in a way I wasn’t able to before. Maybe.
But either way, noticing someone new still felt strange.
There was no part of me that wanted to date The Russian again; our story was over. But 8 months is a long time to get used to someone’s body; to get into habits; to live in your own little world with one other person that is so comfortable that it feels odd to leave it. I was familiar with this feeling. I had spent time with it at the end of every major relationship I’d been in throughout my life. But somehow, it felt stronger and more distinct than ever before this time.
As I ran my fingers over The Italian’s beefy, football-player arms, I found myself yearning to feel The Russian’s more slender, muscular biceps. As I ran my fingers through The Italian’s buzz cut, I found myself missing The Russian’s shaggier hair. And as I felt the weight of The Italian laying on top of me while we kissed with our clothes on, I found myself missing The Russian, because he already knew that I liked to be on top.
We did not have sex that night. Nevertheless, I knew that we would soon. And so, on March 16th, 2013, The Russian and I slept together one last time. You know, for the road. And on the morning of St. Patrick’s Day, we began a new chapter in our relationship as platonic friends.
When I wrote chapter five, I knew this moment would come. I wrote about Clementine vs. Mirabelle. The id vs. the superego. The Cat in the Hat vs. The Fish. Hurting later, or hurting now. These two distinctive concepts exist in your brain too, as the limbic system and the neo-cortex.
The limbic system is that part of your brain that works to keep you alive and reproducing. It does this by managing your emotions, impulses, desires, and drives so that you will a) avoid pain, and b) repeat what is pleasurable. The limbic system is where you fall in and out of love, and just like the id, it wants what it wants and not necessarily what is practical or smart.
The neo-cortex is the captain of spatial reasoning. Just like the superego, it wants what is right and logical, not necessarily what feels good and does not hurt you.
The neo-cortex is that voice telling you not to fall for the asshole who’ll never commit to you, and the limbic system is the douche bag who interrupts him and tells you to go for it anyway because it feels great.
The biggest joke here is that the limbic system and the neo-cortex sections of your brain are right beside each other. If they were cartoon characters, they would almost certainly be two side by side grumpy old men, constantly shouting in each other’s faces and getting into furious slap fights, because they want completely opposite things.
The term “limbic” comes from the Latin “limbus”, for “border” or “edge”. It is called this because the limbic system forms the inner border of the cortex, but I’ve always found it a fitting name also because love (and all things like it) seems to have a lot to do with borders. We have to climb over big, tall fence-like borders to get to the love on the other side. And we have to climb over those same big, tall borders to get out of that love.
And usually, at some point you find yourself sitting on the border, not on one side of it or the other, just trying to keep your balance for a moment. You’re not trying to stay there forever. You’re just not ready to leave yet.
When I wrote chapter five, I knew this moment would come. And on September 9th, 2012, I chose to hurt later instead of to hurt then. That choice had caught up with me, and now I had to feel the pain of not having The Russian in my life the way I wanted him to be.
And once the pain had faded to a manageable level, I would be free to fall off the border of The Russian and me, and fall into something else.
It was nearing midnight that evening as I walked from The Italian’s posh downtown apartment to the Skytrain station and began my journey home. I heard my phone vibrate in my pocket and pulled it out to read a text message. It was from The Wanderer.
This wasn’t an unexpected text message. We’d been texting back and forth casually since he moved to Ontario in September. In November, he dropped the bomb that we would be moving back to Vancouver in the new year, but he hadn’t mentioned anything about it since then.
“Guess who got a job in Alberta and is moving there next week? I think it’s about time we go out for that slice of pie :).”

Chapter Seventeen: Next Province Over (The Broken Promise)

“Why give up before we try
Feel the lows before the highs
Clip our wings before we fly away
I can’t say I came prepared
I’m suspended in the air
Won’t you come be in the sky with me?” – Alicia Keys, 2010.

It was about 10 in the evening on April 9th, 2013, when The Wanderer sent me a Facebook message.

“Hey you” – The Wanderer
“Hey stranger” – Olivia.
“Can I call you?” – The Wanderer

“Sure” – Olivia
Why was he calling me? To tell me that he’d gotten an apartment in Vancouver so that he could take road trips from Alberta to BC on his weeks off work and have somewhere to crash. And to ask me out on a belated second date in May when he would be coming into town for the first week off work he would spend in my city.
I met The Wanderer on August 25th, 2012.
He asked me to dance under the Burrard street bridge during a flash rave my friends had dragged me to. We spent the whole night dancing, then left the party to keep talking while we walked circles around the streets of Vancouver, and at about 7 in the morning he put his number in my phone and kissed me goodnight.
The next weekend, he took me out to an improv show on Commercial Drive for a first date that was perfect. He told me of all the places he’d travelled to and lived, and how he’d just arrived in Vancouver three weeks prior without knowing where he’d be working or living when he got here. I stood in awe of the bravery with which he approached his own life. A bravery that I’d never had. When he was 23, he was waiting tables in Costa Rica. When I was 23, I was buying an apartment in the suburban town I’d lived in practically my whole life. The cliche “opposites attract” had never rung more true.
A week later, he texted me to say that he was leaving. He had unexpectedly been offered a job back in his hometown of Kingston and would be leaving the next morning. This was how he lived his life: He picked up and left when he needed to. We texted back and forth about how nice it had been to meet one another. And then he was gone.
He never really stopped texting though. I didn’t hear anything at first, but then the texts started to trickle in, and soon not a week would go by where I wouldn’t receive at least a check-in message from him with updates on his life in Ontario and asking me what was going on with mine in BC. He never quite dropped off the radar.
Then, on March 14th, 2013…
“Guess who got a job in Alberta and is moving there next week? I think it’s about time we go out for that slice of pie :).”

In Chapter Five, I wrote about treadmills. I wrote about how being in the wrong relationship is like running on a treadmill: You can hear a voice inside of you telling you to stop because it hurts, but you learn to ignore the voice in order to reach a goal.
In relationships, as the years start to pass you by you can get to a certain point where you’ve been with the person so long that when red flags start popping up, you shift into treadmill mode. Why? Because you simply just want to keep running.
When you’ve been with someone for two years and they change the subject when you bring up the idea of moving in together one day, your Feeling voice is telling you loud and clear that this person is wasting your time, but your Thinking voice is making excuses for them, because being in stable relationships for a long time is normal, celebrated, and — hell — expected of us in our society. And when you choose someone and spend years building your life around them and introducing them to your family and taking photos, you don’t want to listen to your Feeling voice when it tells you it’s not going to work out and you’ve wasted all that time. You don’t want to believe you made the wrong choice. Because if you can’t go by your own judgement, what can you go by? And listening to that voice means pain, loneliness, and unhappiness in the short term. So you shut that voice out.
You stop feeling, and start focusing on the goal. The Hollywood-movie, fairy tale, abstract goal we’ve been brainwashed to revere: the happy ending. We turn off the id and listen only to the superego. We ignore The Cat and our desires to increase pleasure and decrease pain, and we listen only to The Fish and our idea of what’s appropriate and acceptable in society. We ignore the warning signs, the pain, the discomfort, and the asshole comments they make because they are just obstacles standing between us and our objective: a happy relationship.
You’re in treadmill mode. And, usually, so are they.
When you are finally too tired to keep running towards a goal that you know isn’t really there, you’ll get off it (if they don’t get off theirs first). And once you do, and the dust has settled, you’ll look back at all those red flags and feel really, really stupid that it took you so long to stop running away from them.
Like most romantic-minded serial monogamists, I’ve spent most of my dating life in long-term relationships, at one point or another unwittingly following the treadmill strategy. And always eventually feeling really, really stupid that it always took me so long to stop running away from those red flags.
In June of 2012, on the shore of a Hawaiian island, I made a vow to myself to never ignore a red flag again. I didn’t want to turn into Seinfeld — “She had man hands!” “She eats her peas one at a time!” “She’s too good!” — but I didn’t want to dismiss dozens of legitimate red flags for years until the relationship finally puttered out again either. I needed a happy medium.

I had held up my end of the bargain on that vow so far, from every not-quite-right suitor I’d dated from June until December, to mine and The Russian’s doomed relationship that came crashing down in February. When a red flag popped up, I acted quickly and ended things with a decisive bravery that was very new to me. And it had served me well — I hadn’t gotten hurt since I made that vow.
The Wanderer’s red flag had become clear fairly early on: He was a drifter. The very thing that I envied about him — his ability to move from place to place with no overwhelming emotional attachment to wordly posessions and no dependency on having his friends and family around him — was the thing that made a relationship with him a very bad idea. Sure, he got an apartment in Vancouver to stay in when he was in town. Sure, he wanted to take me out on a date. Sure, the guy I’d only hung out with twice last August had never stopped thinking about me in all that time. But that one red flag, guys.
I didn’t know how long he’d be working in Alberta and paying rent on an apartment in Vancouver to sporadically crash in. I might very well fall for this guy, only to have him accept a job in Italy next month and take off again. What if he asked me to go with him? I have a mortgage and a career and an amazing group of friends in Vancouver that I don’t think I could ever muster up the balls to leave on a whim the way he leaves his life behind every time he moves.
“All right, so what kind of pie are we getting on our date?” – O.
“We should get several different kinds! Apple, blueberry, apple rhubarb…” – The Wanderer.
“Good call on the apple rhubarb. Rhubarb on its own sucks — what IS that stuff anyway?” – O.
“I don’t know, some kind of fruit? And I know, rhubarb by itself is gross. Do you like tomatoes?” – The Wanderer.
“No, I hate them!” – O.
“Me too! They’re too moist!” – The Wanderer.
“Exactly! What about olives?” – O.
“Gross! Why do people eat them?! Anchovies?” – The Wanderer.
“Disgusting. Pepperoni?” – O.
“Only on Hawaiian pizza. That’s the only kind of pizza I can eat by the way; Hawaiian.” – The Wanderer.
“Oh my God, me too! Or at the very least, the pizza HAS to have pineapples on it. What about onions?” – O.
“I like onions!” – The Wanderer.
“Oh. Well, no one’s perfect.” – O.
As we collapsed into a fit of laughter, my eyes darted over to the clock and I realized that we’d been on the phone for 3 hours and it was 1am. I had to wake up for work in 4 hours, and he had a flight to Vegas in the morning. And I couldn’t care less.
It was 1 in the morning on April 10th, 2013, when I decided to waive my Red Flags Promise.
Just this once.

Chapter Eighteen: Arrivederci (Three Flags, You’re Out)

“White lies in her blue eyes
Goodbye is on the way” – Roget Pontbriand, 1972.

Dating.
That great Riddle of the Sphinx that none of us can really avoid. That great Rubik’s Cube of trying to see through the smoke and mirrors in order to figure out the inner workings of a perfect stranger. That great challenge of sitting down to put together pieces of a puzzle that may or may not actually fit together — you won’t know until you’ve spent hours optimistically searching for pieces that match each other, only to almost always eventually realize that not enough of them do.
When you’re deciding between job offers from different companies, you’re dealing with certainties. You can research the company’s history. You can ask virtually any question you want. You can compare the salaries, benefits, hours, and workloads being offered to you, and make your decision based on these solid facts that will almost certainly stay constant after you’ve accepted the job and started working there. The company probably won’t hide anything from you; they’ll tell you exactly what you’ll get from them if you accept the job, and exactly what they’ll expect from you in return.
It would be great if dating was more like this. You could ask job-interviewy questions like: “What are your short and long term goals in this relationship?”, “What are the benefits like?”, “What extra duties will I be expected to perform?”, and “Is there room for advancement?”.
But with dating, you can only glean. You can’t see all the cards; only a few. You get to meet the most agreeable, presentable, cookie-cutter version of the person, and then you just wait to see what falls away and what sticks. In the meantime you can only use the fragments of information you have to make educated guesses as to whether to hang around or bail out now, and you can only hope to cut your losses before you’ve invested too much. Your suitor might not turn out to be as good as you think they are, and you won’t know until it proves itself untrue. It might take hours. It might take weeks. It might take months.
With The Italian, it took 9 weeks and 5 days.
It was 7 in the evening on April 6th, 2013, and The Italian and I were at Rogers Arena for the Canucks vs. Flames game. By this point we had been dating for over two months, and things were going well. Dinner dates, movie nights, and the occasional extended phone call conversation. Everything looked great on paper. The very night before, I had invited him to meet my friends for the first time, and they all loved him.
I hadn’t slept with him yet because I still had some nagging feeling in the back of my mind that made me not so sure about him and told me to hold off, but hitting it off with my friends might’ve been just the nudge I needed to take the leap and see what happens. So as we sat there during the first period, I told myself that I would most likely, maybe, sleep with him that night.
Then, just when I started to let my guard down a little and was least expecting a red flag to pop up out of nowhere, one did.
Red Flag #1. It was sometime during that first period when…
“So your big vacation in Europe is coming up pretty soon eh? You excited?” – The Italian. “Yeah, I can’t wait! Do you have any vacations planned for this year?” – O.

“Yeah, actually I’m going to Asia for a couple weeks this December. Do you want to come with me?” – The Italian.
I took a moment to digest what he had just said. Did a guy I’d only been on 7 dates with and hadn’t even slept with yet just ask me to go on vacation with him? And in December, which was 8 months away?
I waited for a moment, to see if he would add “…you know, if we’re still going out by then”, or anything to make this question less socially inappropriate. He didn’t. He just looked back at me, waiting for an answer to his sincere question.
I thought quickly before answering, “Oh, I’d love to, but I think three weeks in Europe is going to clean out my bank account of vacation funds for the rest of the year at least”.
I tried to turn my attention back to the hockey game, but all I could think about was his bizarre question. Red Flag #2. It was sometime during the second period when…
“…I mean, what can I say, I’m a proud Italian, through and through.” – The Italian.
I playfully retorted, “Yeah, so says the guy who didn’t know the difference between penne and rigatoni!”.
“Hey now, little lady. If I wanted comeback, I’d pump your stomach!” – The Italian responded, as if he had just made the funniest pun in the world.
A good, long 30 seconds passed, where all I could do was stare at him, and then move my eyes to the seat in front of me. It was the first time in my life where anyone had said something so awkward to me that it had left me speechless and unable to at least make a joke out of. Did a guy I’d only been on 7 dates with and hadn’t even slept with yet just make a joke about pumping cum out of my stomach?
I checked the time on my phone. It would be about an hour before this hockey game would be over. I let the awkward pause grow for miles, and left the inappropriate joke hang in the air until second intermission, when I finally broke the silence by telling him I was going to the washroom and I’d be right back.
Red Flag #3. It was sometime during the third period when…
“I hate going to a movie theatre for a first date, it’s the worst plan ever. You spend 2 hours together but only talk about about 10 minutes before and after the movie. It’s so stupid!” – The Italian.
That’s funny, I thought to myself. On our first date, we had planned to go to the movie theatre. And it was his idea to see a movie.

I replied in a tone that was half-teasing, and half-annoyed, “…You hate that? I mean, I kinda agree with you, but our first date was to go see ‘Warm Bodies’, and it was your idea…”.
“Oh! Yeah…” The Italian replied, with a sheepish look on his face that told me I had just caught him in a lie. I didn’t know what the lie was, just that there clearly was one. I dated a compulsive liar for a year once. I knew that look.
“Well, remember how when you showed up at the movie theatre, I told you the website must’ve gotten the movie times wrong because the movie had started already and the next one wasn’t until 10?” – The Italian.
“Yeah…”
“So we decided to go for drinks across the street instead?” – The Italian.
Uh huh…”
“I kind of just told you the wrong time on purpose, so that we would end up just getting drinks somewhere instead, and then we could really talk.” – The Italian.
I literally gave my head a shake, perhaps as a subconscious impulse to shake some sense out of the words entering my brain.
“…But why did you suggest going to a movie in the first place then? Why didn’t you just say drinks?”, I asked.
“Well, you said you liked zombie movies, so it just seemed like a good ice breaker to suggest that for a date. I just didn’t actually want to do it.” – The Italian.
It’s funny, how quickly you can sometimes watch another person unravel their exterior and show your the person they actually are. And no matter how good you can feel you’ve gotten at gleaning people’s personalities, there are still demons that camouflage themselves carefully and jump out at you when they think it’s safe.
This is why we date. This is why we need the Riddle of the Sphinx. The Rubik’s Cube. The puzzle pieces. No one is who they say they are. When The X-Files coined the tagline “Trust No One”, I feel like they also coined the motto of the dating scene.
It wasn’t The Italian’s fault that he kept his less desirable qualities from the person he was dating until he felt it was safe to act more like himself. We all hide our flaws; it’s human nature.
It was too soon to ask the girl you’re dating to go on vacation with you. A crude, tasteless joke is not appropriate during courtship. And being manipulative for no reason is really not a good sign. And if you are going to be a little manipulative in a harmless way (such as for the sake of improving a first date), that might actually not be such a bad thing on its own, but have enough sense to never admit it to the girl!
Three flags, you’re out.

Chapter Nineteen: Under the Bridge and Onto the Roof (The Night We Stopped Wandering)

“I don’t count my change
it’s always gone at the end of the day
And I don’t count my sins
cause I don’t want to count on anything” – Jeremy Fisher, 2004.

It was about 2 in the morning on May 9th, 2013, and I was lying under a blanket on a rooftop in New Westminster, with a beer in my hand and The Wanderer beside me.
He had lost a sock in the climb up to the top of the roof, so I kept his foot warm with mine. We huddled under the blanket for warmth as we counted the stars in the sky and talked about how well you can really know someone you hardly know at all. And then he said it.
“You know what? This is the best date I’ve ever been on.”

It was then that I knew I would not sleep with The Wanderer that night.
But let’s rewind.
It was about 3 in the afternoon on May 8th, 2013. It had been about three weeks since I’d broken things off with The Italian, after he’d proven himself to be somewhat of a crude, needy, and manipulative type of fellow. He hadn’t done much wrong, but red flags are time machines, and I didn’t like where his red flags were headed.
I’d broken things off with several boys over the last year while I embarked on this Single Deal, but this was the first time I’d felt lonely afterwards. The Russian was no longer in my life the way he used to be. He was no longer the constant in my life while I navigated through the dating world, and though we saw each other every other day, it wasn’t the same. I felt really single for the first time in a year. And maybe that was what I needed. Maybe The Russian was a crutch I shouldn’t have been leaning on. Maybe.
I met The Wanderer back in August of 2012. I had known since that October that he would be coming back to the west coast of Canada in the new year. I had known since March that he’d gotten a job in Calgary, secured a second apartment in Vancouver, and was planning to come see me when he had a free week to make the drive over. And I had known since April that this free week would be the second week of May. It was about 3 in the afternoon on May 8th, 2013, when he called me.
“Hey, I just got into town. How are you?” – The Wanderer.
“I’m great! How are you? How was the drive?” – O.
“Oh, you know. Da, da, da… haha. Want to come over tonight?” – The Wanderer.
“Yeah. I’m off work in an hour, so I can be there in two.” – O.
“I’ll text you the address for my new place?” – The Wanderer.
“Sounds good.” – O.
“See you soon!” – The Wanderer.
“See you!” – O.
It didn’t seem to matter, but it’s worth noting that I didn’t know what this was. Our phone and text conversations over the last 8 months had been too substantial for this to be a booty call. But the circumstances made this too fleeting to be a date — he was only here for a few days. He had put too much planning into this for it to not be considered a semi-serious affair. But the invitation had been too casual and intimate for me to expect too much of it.
All I knew for sure was that I was still heartbroken over The Russian, and had been for three months now. And the last time I was heartbroken over someone, I’d hopped a plane to Hawaii and slept with a young marine sergeant I met in a Señor Frog’s. Now, instead of a plane to Hawaii, I was taking a bus to New Westminster to meet a young Canadian construction worker. But that young marine sergeant had saved me somehow, because when I returned to Canada I was not heartbroken any longer. It was the first time that sex had ever served as an anesthetic for me. If there was ever a time for it to work like that again (or at least prove a strong placebo), this would be it.
Knock, knock
Within a few seconds, he opened the door.
“You’re here! Come in! Want a beer?” – The Wanderer asked, as he ran to the fridge.
“Sure!” I answered cheerfully as I took off my coat and walked in.
He returned with two English Bay Pale Ales, handed one to me, and we made our way over to his couch. And for the next two hours, we babbled like excited schoolkids about everything and nothing at all.
“Do you mind if we relocate to the balcony so I can have a smoke?” – The Wanderer. Smoking is a red flag, but at this point I wasn’t counting them.
“Sure.” – O.
The Wanderer and I have this thing. And the thing is that when we’re in the same room, we’re in a bubble. No, more than that. We’re on a cloud.
The first night we met, we spent two hours on the cloud, talking and walking in circles around downtown Vancouver when we were supposed to be walking to my car. It was 7 am when we finally parted ways, but neither of us cared. We had so much to say to each other. And on this cloud, it didn’t matter that we’d only just met. It didn’t matter that he wanders the globe while I faithfully patrol Vancouver. It didn’t matter that he smokes. Or that he drinks too much. Or that I was (and am) still in love with someone else I’ve yet to get over.
We were standing on his balcony while he slowly smoked his cigarette and tried not to blow the smoke in my direction, when I looked up above us and noticed that the shingles that extended in front of the balcony connected around to the roof of the building and looked pretty climbable.
“Have you ever climbed up to the roof from here?” I asked, pointing to where the shingles connected. “No…” he answered, looking to where I was pointing. Then he put down his beer, turned around, and disappeared into the apartment.
After 10 seconds, he returned without his shoes and with a white, fluffy blanket in his arms. “Let’s go” he smiled, picking his beer back up.
I put down my beer and took off my shoes.
It was about 2 in the morning on May 9th, 2013, and I was lying under a blanket on a rooftop in New Westminster, with a beer in my hand and The Wanderer beside me.
“You know what? This is the best date I’ve ever been on.” – The Wanderer. It was then that I knew I would not sleep with The Wanderer that night.

Yes, we were floating on the cloud. The magical cloud that makes time and space and red flags cease to matter. But this cloud was bigger than The Russian. Bigger than my heartbreak and my need for anesthetic. This cloud was separate from everything else in my life, and I wasn’t going to be the one to ruin it by tainting it with overlapping emotions. Sex would, in a way, define our relationship, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet. I wanted to sleep with him, but I wasn’t going to that night.
“Yeah, actually, me too.” – O.
“Do you think you would ever take a road trip out to Calgary sometime?” – The Wanderer. I thought about it for a second.
“Yeah, I would.” – O. And I really would.
There was something I wrote in Chapter Six, and that something popped in my head while I laid on that roof:
“We were building a bridge. A bridge that did not go anywhere… it only stretched between us. There was no reason to build it. We had nowhere to get to. We were just building it to build it.
Where would this bridge eventually lead us? Maybe nowhere. Maybe everywhere. I couldn’t know. But, in the same way we had stopped paying attention and ended up walking around Vancouver aimlessly for two hours, we had stopped paying attention and built something between us that would lead somewhere. And all that I did know was that, come the new year, I would find out where.” O, Chapter Six: Under The Bridge (The Wanderer).
It was about 2 in the morning on May 9th, 2013, and I finally knew where our bridge lead to. But the thing was, we still weren’t finished building it yet.

Chapter Twenty: Pocket Full of Faith (The One) (Part One)

“Drying up in conversation,
You will be the one who cannot talk
All your insides fall to pieces
You just sit there wishing you could still make love” – Thom Yorke, 1995.

In July of 2013, I met The One. But before I tell you that story, I have to tell you this one:
When I was 15 years old, my older brother married the woman of his dreams, and one of the loveliest people I’ve ever had the honour of knowing. She was the kind of woman you only meet once in a lifetime, and there was something about her so special that, even now, thirteen years later, I still can’t figure out how to explain it.
My brother would often say that on the night he first met her at a friend’s Halloween party she was dressed like a witch, but all he saw was an Angel — so for this blog, that’s what I’ll call her.

Soon after Angel and my brother were married, she fell pregnant with their first child. And during a routine ultrasound to check on the baby, she was given the worst news a pregnant newlywed in love can be given:
Cancer. One year to live. Maybe two with chemotherapy.
This single event shook our entire family unit to the core. She was only 28, and this didn’t seem possible to any of us.
My Mom and Dad promptly sold our house in Abbotsford and bought a house closer to Vancouver so my brother and Angel could move in with us and there would be an abundance of in-house babysitters to take care of their newborn baby while Angel underwent chemo.
And as we spent the next few years fighting to keep her, she spent them taking care of the rest of us. And take care of us she did, until the day four years after her diagnosis when she finally slipped away, leaving us with two things: the memories of her beauty, bravery, and grace that we’ll hold on to forever, and her beautiful young daughter who grew up to promptly embody all the beauty, bravery, and grace her mother left behind.
My fondest memory of Angel took place in the summer of 2004. Her last summer. By then I was 19, and I was going through my first real big heartbreak.
The back story: I started dating The Guitarist in April of 2004, and by the time summer came around I knew I was falling for him in a big, bad way. But as the summer arrived, so did his ex-girlfriend, who had moved to Montreal for university the year before and was back in town to visit for the summer.
He had told me they’d broken up the year before when she moved away and they were just friends now. Apparently this wasn’t quite the case, as the day her plane landed back in Vancouver he suddenly stopped returning my calls. And like the naive school girl I was, I chalked this up to coincidence for the first four days – that was, until I ran into the two of them at a mutual friend’s house party, and he pretended not to know me.
After a few days of pathetically trying to rationalize this in my head, I half-reluctantly broke up with him and avoided our friends’ parties for the rest of the year.
Angel and I were sitting at her kitchen table a few days after the Greek tragedy that was that big breakup. When I finished telling her what had happened, she quickly disappeared to the other room and returned with a Kleenex box and a jumbo Toblerone bar. “We’ll need the big break up chocolate bar”, she said as she pulled me into a bear hug. That was the kind of woman she was.

When half of that Toblerone bar was gone and we were surrounded by a nest of tear-filled tissues, I asked her, “[Angel], how did you know that it was true love with my brother?”.
Angel was only about 10 years older than me but she seemed to always have the answers about everything else, and I thought that maybe, if she could tell me the secret for knowing when love is real, I’d be able to never feel like this again. It was a silly, naive thing to think I could solve all of love’s mysteries that easily, but I had faith that the secret could be that easy to attain – maybe all you had to do was ask for it.
She looked away for a moment to think about it. And then she smiled a smile so big you’d think she had just gazed upon some beautiful work of art in a museum that only she could see. You never for a minute would have thought she had any illness plaguing her, let alone cancer, when you saw that peaceful smile.
She turned back to me. “Because he never caused me to doubt his feelings for me” she said, matter-of-factly.
Later that day, when I was getting ready to go home, she took a stone from the little collection of gems she kept in her room, and placed it in my hand. Then she wrapped my fingers around the stone and squeezed my hand tight. “It’s a rose quartz”, she said. And that was all she said.
A few days later, I looked up its meaning: “Rose quartz. A translucent pink variety of quartz. Also known as: Love stone. Heals the heart”.
Later that year, Angel lost her battle with cancer and left this world. And the day she did, I started carrying that rose quartz in my left pocket every single day, so that it was always close to my heart.
I don’t really believe in the healing properties of certain gems, but I believe in her, and she believed in them. And I like to think that she chose this stone to give to me so that later in life, when she was gone and my heart again needed healing, the rose quartz might provide some of the comfort that she wouldn’t be there to give.
So I kept carrying it. And when I was upset or heartbroken or confused I would reach in my pocket, squeeze it the way she squeezed my hand when she gave it to me, and think of those words. “Because he never caused me to doubt his feelings for me.”
Those words were so simple. So logical. So perfect. And for a while they became the thing I was looking for. Almost a mantra.
But I never found it. For nine years, I never found that thing, or anything remotely close to the faith that Angel spoke of, and so the idea became less and less real to me over the years. I never had that faith; that complete absence of doubt that shone out from her smile as she answered the desperate question that had been plaguing my broken teenaged heart. I always felt uncertain about every boy I’d let myself love. Soon I began to feel like I was reaching for something that would never be there.
And about nine years later, on April 13th, 2012, I received that cataclysmic call from my gynecologist office; that call telling me that they’d found abnormal cells in my test results and we’d need to schedule a biopsy to confirm whether they were cancer or pre-cancer cells.
The next day, I told D about it. That night, we broke up. And that was the night I stopped carrying the rose quartz in my left pocket.
Sure, I had kind of known for a while that we were going to break up eventually anyways. He rarely made me feel anything but doubt about his feelings for me. Sure, it was mostly just bad timing. But the weight of the situation was not lost on me: Angel’s cancer cells were in her cervix and so were mine. Angel was 28 when her cancer cells were discovered and so was I. But Angel had the love of her life by her side and a brightness in her eyes that shone out brilliantly when she talked about him. And that was all I’d ever been looking for. But I, apparently, had not learned a thing since that summer day in 2004 when I’d been pouring my heart out to her in hopes of some kind of epiphany, because I had no one by my side as I fought this battle.
Over the year following that fateful phone call from my doctor, I kept hoping that D would call me to ask about the results of my biopsy, or how my surgery had gone, or how I was doing. I knew we were never going to get back together, but I just kept wishing for him to show me any sign of support, just as a friend, and shine a little light on the dank, depressing shell of a life that I was temporarily living. I waited and waited for him to call and make things a little better. I was sure that he would, and I just had to give him time.
He never did.
The magnitude of apathy from the man I used to think I loved hit me like a slap in the face, and it seemed that I’d wasted two years of my life with someone whose connection to me was so weak he didn’t even care whether I lived or died after we broke up. He didn’t want to involve himself in my life, even as a supportive friend, as I fought the most terrifying fight of my life. That fact made me feel more alone than I ever had in my life.
Thankfully, I would find out a month later in May that the abnormal cells were stage 4 pre-cancer and not cancer. I still had some fighting to do, but I would probably be okay.
But stage 4 is the last stage of pre-cancer, which means those abnormal cells were only one step away from being stage 1 cancer. And what if they had been? What if I had waited longer to get checked out and they had progressed one stage further?
I thought about my adolescence and young adulthood and realized I had spent the best years of my life jumping from relationship to relationship like I was hopping along lily pads in a pond, scared to fall in the water. And I was so committed to the idea that being in a relationship was the answer to everything that with every new boyfriend who entered my life I lost a little bit of myself and in turn absorbed traits of the other person, because that was what I thought being in love was.
The Fibber was obsessed with techno, so over the years we were together I started adding Deadmau5 and Tiesto songs to my iPod, even though I dubstep is one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.
The Gambler worked night shifts, so over the two years we were together I started working night shifts too to make it easier for us to spend time together. As a result I spent those two years missing my friends’ birthday parties and every girls’ Saturday night out if I couldn’t get the night off work. That schedule was the worst, but my own happiness wasn’t important enough to me for it to matter at the time.
D loved hockey, so over the two years we were together I spent every game night at his place in front of the TV. If that wasn’t bad enough, I went the extra mile and actually memorized every Vancouver Canucks player’s name and corresponding jersey number. And I hate hockey.
And when I really think about it, these guys never absorbed anything that I was passionate about. They didn’t start getting into all the little things I love: my blogs, linguistics, 90’s rock bands, flash mobs, music bingo, karaoke, hiking, road trips, improv shows, Chuck Klosterman books, Joss Whedon TV shows, and Kevin Smith movies. Nothing. I can’t think of a single thing that any of them have ever embraced for the sake of my happiness. I love drive-in movies, and D only went with me to one once in the two years we were together, and it was only because I begged him. I loved the entire experience. Until he complained about it the whole drive home.
And worst of all, during every relationship I was in I’d drifted away from my friends and spent most of my time hanging out with my boyfriend’s friends and family. Because that was what I thought being in love was: Selflessly making the other person’s life better without expecting them to do the same for you, and pretending not to notice when they didn’t.
Then after every break up, I’d return to my life empty handed and worse for the wear, and sheepishly reconnect with my friends as if I’d been studying abroad for a couple years and had just returned home.
I wasn’t living my life for me. And what if those abnormal cells had been cancer? I’m sure I would’ve looked back thought “What have I been doing spending all my energy running around after those idiots who treated me terribly?”.
And as this thought plagued my mind for most of May 2012, I couldn’t help but dwell on the realization that I had been living my life for other people since I’d been old enough to date. I’d been searching for someone whose life I could enrich instead of searching for someone who would reciprocate when I did.
So that was my big wake up call.

In June of 2012, I started this writing project about staying single for a whole year. Why? Because I never wanted to feel that alone again. I was pretty sure that being with D made me feel more alone than a year of being single ever could, so I committed myself to being alone precisely so that I would not feel alone in that way ever again.
I wanted to keep the flawed suitors that surrounded me at a distance so that I could draw closer to the things that were important to me: my friends, my family, and my career. I wanted to go hiking more. I wanted to learn another language. I wanted to throw more parties. I wanted to travel. I wanted to become a better writer. I wanted to take a self-defence class. I wanted to learn how to cook something other than spaghetti. I wanted to have adventures. I wanted to do a lot of things that I hadn’t done while in relationships throughout my young adult life.
I wanted to work on enriching my life in a way other than working on my romantic relationship, which has always been my main focus since I started dating in high school. I wanted… I just wanted something else in my life. Something real. So that if the worst case scenario ever happened and those cancer cells caught up with me at some point, I would feel like I lived at least part of my life just for me. At least the last few years of it, you know? So that I wouldn’t feel so empty handed.
The night D and I broke up was the night I stopped carrying the rose quartz in my pocket and stopped questing for true love. I put the stone in a jewellery box on my bedroom dresser, and left it there. And for the next year, that little gemstone was the last thing on my mind.
That was, until July. Because in July of 2013, I met The One. And then everything changed.

To be continued…

Chapter Twenty: Pocket Full of Faith (The One) (Part Two)

“And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly
from the aeroplane over the sea

But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see

Love to be
in the arms of all I’m keeping here with me” – Jeff Mangum, 1998

I’m afraid of flying. Like, really afraid of flying. I have been for years.
Have you ever been writing a big exam, and looked up at the clock only to realize that you should be way farther along in the test than you are? Have you ever then looked back down at the test in a panic, thinking: “Fuck. It can’t be that time yet! I have so much more to do!”
This is how I feel every time I’m in a plane that’s about to take off.
The worst case scenario flashes in front of my eyes without fail and all I can think about is the fact that IF this plane goes down, I still have an overwhelming amount of things left to do before it’s my turn to take the big dirt nap. What I have always dreaded is the idea of being interrupted when I still have so much planned, and the feeling of regretting all that I have not done yet.
So when the plane is about to take off or about to land and most people are looking out their windows excitedly, I’m looking down at the floor in a stealthy, silent panic. For those five minutes of in-between — when the plane is about to launch into flight or about to thump into a landing — my heart is beating out of my chest.
And once we’re up in the air or down on the ground, I’m okay. The panic subsides. And then I make a promise to myself that I never keep: I promise myself that by the time I’m in a plane again, I will have done more of those important things I hadn’t started yet. I promise myself that this will be less scary next time, because I’ll have done more of the things that I’m so scared I’ll miss out on because I keep putting them off.
But I never do. I never keep that promise.
And then the next time I’m in a plane it’s even more stressful. Because it feels like running late for work, and then realizing you took the wrong exit and have made yourself even more late.
I have a life to live, and I’m fucking late for it.
It was nearing midnight on July 2nd, 2013, and I was lying in the arms of a 28 year old Polish blackjack dealer from Orillia, in a beachfront hotel room in Gdańsk, Poland.
I’ll call him The Polak.
As he held me tightly in the crook of his broad, football player shoulder and gently stroked my hair over my ear, we stared listlessly out the window at our picture perfect view of the Baltic sea. And we talked as though the words were globs of paint we were dabbing experimentally on a giant white canvas with our fingers.

“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” I asked him, as he laid beside me and lightly traced the lines of my collarbone with his fingers.
He thought for a moment, and then answered “There was this big thunderstorm in Orillia a few summers back. Wind warnings, flood warnings; the whole thing. No one was leaving their house except to get groceries and water. And I decided to go kayaking that day anyways.”
My eyes widened a little. “What happened?”
“Well, I obviously drowned and died.” he replied, and maintained his deadpan expression until I laughed and soft-punched him in the chest.
“No, I almost did though”, he laughed. “My kayak got pulled into a whirlpool under a waterfall, and there was nothing I could do but wait to see whether or not the water would pull me back around in time. After about a minute, it did.”
“Wow. Scary.” I said.
“Yup. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” he asked.
I turned my head a little to look into his eyes and answered, “Well actually… probably this”. He smiled.
Here’s the story of what “this” was:
I had met The Polak four days earlier, on June 28th, at the rehearsal dinner for my friend’s wedding in Warsaw, Poland. This wedding was the reason for my whole euro trip, and I had planned two weeks of adventures in London and Dublin around it. Now I was ready for whatever shenanigans Warsaw could throw at me.
I was drawn to him as soon as I met him. He was tall, muscular, and had the eyes of a bandit but the most innocent smile I’d ever seen. He took me out dancing that night after the rehearsal dinner, we talked all night once the clubs had closed down, and for the first time in my life I went home with someone the first night I’d met them. This was something I’d always wanted to do at least once. I always thought it was kind of romantic in a strange, non-intuitive kind of way. But I never had because the idea scared me. Even The Marine and I spent two days together before I slept with him, and that was when I thought I had cancer and might not live to see the next year. If you can’t be a little promiscuous in that scenario, I don’t know if there’s any scenario in which you could be.
I had always been the girl who only slept with boyfriends, and only after making them wait about a month. I was kind of afraid of what it would mean if I stopped being that girl.

Then I took The Polak back to my hotel room that night. And it turned out that not being that girl felt just fine.
After the wedding the following day, I took him back to my hotel room again. And when we woke up the next morning, we started talking about the fact that I hadn’t decided how I was going to spend my last week in Europe yet.
“I haven’t even booked any flights yet, and I only have this room until noon today so I’ll have to decide pretty quickly” I told him, laughing.
“When I was growing up in Poland, my parents took my sister and I to Gdańsk once for the summer. It’s a little town on the Baltic coast in northern Poland about a 6-hour train ride from here. I’ve always wanted to get back there. That’s where you should go.” he said, with such certainty you’d think he was telling me the answer to a math question.
The words “Want to go with me?” entered my mind, and then I quickly dismissed them.
But then I thought, well, fuck it.
“Want to go with me?” I said out loud, and my heart rate quickened a little.
He looked at me, smiled, and answered “Yeah”. And then he pulled out his phone to look up train times.
An hour later, the two of us were running down the streets of Warsaw as fast as we could go with the 20 pounds of luggage we were each dragging behind us. We had 10 minutes to get to the train station, buy our tickets, and catch the only train that would take us to Gdańsk that day.
At 11:55 am, we burst through the station doors and stumbled to the ticket machines. He bought both our tickets, stuffed them in his pocket, and we sprinted to the platform where the train was already starting up its engines.
I leapt up the steps onto the train, and reached back so he could hand me each of our suitcases. As the departure bell suddenly sounded he bounded up the steps and slipped through the doors as they slammed shut. We had made it.
And as the train pulled out of the station, we just stood there looking at each other. I will admit that this was partly because we were both pretty winded, but it was also because we got caught in that moment and just stood there for a good 30 seconds smiling at each other, and exchanging a look that distinctly said “We really just fucking did that”.

And now here we were, four days later, 400 kilometres north of where we’d first met, and talking like we’d known each other for years.
“This is the craziest thing you’ve done eh?” he said.
“Yep. Well, spontaneously getting my first tattoo in Dublin last week might be a close second…” I replied, smiling.
He reached over and gently ran his fingers over the three words that had been tattooed on my left rib cage in black Jane Austen font type. “Why did you get the tattoo? I don’t think you told me.”
“It’s kind of a long story, but basically it’s a little reminder of something that happened to me last year.” I answered.
“I like it” he said, and then gently kissed my cheek.
It was our last night together. The next morning, I would be saying goodbye to The Polak and flying back to London to catch my last flight home to Vancouver. As the minutes passed on that warm July evening in Gdańsk and we held each other in a half-asleep quietness, I laid in his arms and basked in the peacefulness of our remaining time together. And then, in the moments before I fell asleep, I thought about the day I’d gotten the tattoo.
It was around noon on June 26th, 2013, and it was the one year anniversary of my pre-cancer surgery day. One year earlier, I had been lying on an operating table in a hospital in Vancouver as my surgeon removed pre-cancer cells. Now, I was lying on my side on a table in Dublin, Ireland, as my tattoo artist marked my rib cage with black handwriting to commemorate that frightening day.
Between the biopsies and surgeries that punctuated my 2012, I kept reminding myself of how brave Angel had been throughout her four-year battle with cancer. And every time I started to feel the panic bubbling up inside me, I would think to myself: Stop. Just be brave. And that thought was what got me through the rest of the year.
In a way the tattoo was a way to always be telling myself to stay brave. And I’d gotten it on my left side as a little wink to Angel, and the rose quartz that I’d carried in my left pocket for almost 10 years. It was my way of keeping myself accountable for my own courage and of keeping her close to my heart without needing pockets.
In June of 2012, I lost the faith that I’d been carrying around for Angel for as long as I could remember. The faith that I would end up happy. And for the next year, I did a lot of things that terrified me. I pledged alongside J to remain single for one year, and I committed myself to the idea of living my life only for me, at least for that one year. And both of those things were concepts I’d always found frightening, because they required a sort of independence I didn’t think I had in me.

Then over the next summer, autumn, winter, and spring, my life became enriched in ways I didn’t even realize it could be. When I let my friends, my work, my writing, and my sense of self take centre stage for the first time, I became content with everything about my life, and my faith came back to me in spades. And that faith had grown stronger in a way I never would’ve expected.
These were the thoughts that danced happily through my mind during my last night with The Polak in that little hotel room in Gdańsk, before sleep took me over.
On July 6th, 2013, I was sitting in a window seat on an airplane in London Gatwick airport, waiting to be taken home to Vancouver after an amazing three-week vacation in London, Dublin, Warsaw, and Gdańsk. I had said goodbye to The Polak. I had said goodbye to Europe. And as the words “Please fasten your seat belts and prepare for takeoff” rang out through the loudspeaker in a posh British accent, I shifted in my seat to face away from the window and got ready to look down at the floor in a hidden panic.
But then I had a thought that leapt into my mind from out of nowhere:
Am I still afraid?
Last summer, I spontaneously flew to Hawaii for a week by myself after D and I had broken up. I went surfing, para sailing, snorkeling, and ATVing, even though all of those things terrified me. I kissed cute boys. I went home with one of them. I danced entire nights away with no one to answer to but myself.
When I returned home to Vancouver, I didn’t slow down for a second. I bought my first backless dress. I learned to ride a motorcycle. I went to all the concerts I wanted to see, even when I had no one to go with. Sometimes I even skipped Friday night parties to stay home and work on my novels, which was something I’d always stopped myself from doing because I felt I’d be missing out on something. I rode the mechanical bulls in country bars. I planned epic camping trips, crazy road trips, and amazing hiking adventures with my best friends. I did things you only do when you’re a single girl in your 20s. I had a three way with The Russian and The Girl. I changed my sexuality on OKCupid to “bisexual” and dated girls for a while. I explored my sexuality in a way I never had before.
I chose the Halloween costume that I wanted that year instead of one that went with a boyfriend’s costume, because I had no one to coordinate with. I threw a ton of theme parties without a boyfriend to discourage me because he thought theme parties were lame. I stayed out all night almost every weekend instead of being the girl who left the party at 9:00pm to watch Boardwalk Empire with her boyfriend in bed. I strayed so far from who I used to be that when I thought back to my life before the summer of 2012, I hardly recognized myself.

And I still made mistakes. I still fell a little in love with people I shouldn’t have fallen a little in love with. But I didn’t mind it one bit, because it was on my own terms.
I did the things I wanted to do with the people I wanted to do them with. I built a little life that was just for me. And I didn’t regret a god damn thing. I lived the best year of my life with my ass on the edge of my seat every second of the way. I barely slept for that entire year because I was always doing something amazing, and it felt fantastic.
And I’d spent a whole week in Gdańsk — a town I’d never heard of before in my life — in the blissful haze of a summer romance with a wonderful man who I’m so glad to have gotten the chance to get to know.
I realized now that if I hadn’t been brave enough to have said “Want to come with me?” in that moment, I might not have ever seen him again.
I realized that I hadn’t really gotten this tattoo to remind myself to be brave. I’d gotten it to remind myself that I WAS brave.
And that meant so much more.
There are a lot of things I’ve always wanted to do before I died: Go to Europe. Visit the town in Scotland where my grandfather was born. Save someone’s life. Get a spontaneous tattoo. Meet someone at a wedding and run away with them. Sleep with someone I’ve known less than 24 hours. Buy a ticket for a train to somewhere I’ve never been, minutes before its departure, and just jump on it. Show up in a foreign land and get a room in a hotel without even booking the room ahead of time. Spend a week in a city where I don’t speak the language. Tell someone I am going to miss them instead of saying it over and over again in my head and being too scared to ever say it out loud.
Between June 15th and July 6th, 2013, I did all of these things. And that was only three weeks of the epic single girl adventure that had started in June 2012 and was still going now.
And so as that plane took off from London Gatwick airport, I watched intently out the window as we picked up speed and glided into the air. I never once felt the urge to look at the floor. And when we were airborne I breathed a long sigh of peacefulness, happiness, and satisfaction with the world. Why? Because if that plane had gone down and exploded into magnificent fire balls and my journey had ended right there, I would’ve died feeling damn proud of the last year of my life and how I’d spent it.
I finally was the woman I’d always wanted to be. The woman Angel knew I could be when she placed that rose quartz in my hand and — whether she meant to or not — taught me that I have the power to heal my own heart by being brave enough to rely on myself.

And in becoming this new woman, I had also met the person who I wanted to be with for the rest of my life, which was completely unexpected but pretty nifty in and of itself.

I had met The One: Someone strong-willed, kind, independent, and courageous. Someone who wasn’t always like that, but she was now.

And she was me.