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In fact, he had enough empathy to try to communicate with me while I was crying hysterically in the backseat by playing the song Careless Whisper at least three times among the rest of the songs. Maybe that was the song that people chose to cry to after breakups in the eighties, but I’ve only ever seen it played in videos aboutmaking funof the eighties.
He tried to talk to me a little, asking what the problem was. Ironically, I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought I was a sex trafficking victim based on the grandeur of Matteo’s mansion and my distressed state. I hope he doesn’t call the cops on Matteo, at least not yet.
When I finally arrived home, I ran straight for a bottle of wine that I had been keeping for a special occasion. I had been pressured to buy it at a public market when I visited my friend this past winter, and I spent far too much on it to justify the cost to myself at the time. However, now feels like the best time to drink it just for the sake of irony.
I’d been saving this bottle for something monumental, like my first really popular article or the engagement of one of my friends. I never imagined that I would be cracking it open furiously in the dark like a golem oversome guy.
That’s who I was before all this. I was always the level-headed, no nonsense type who would rather focus on studying in college than find a man to be with. I saw the ways that all of my friends got fucked over, every new man a completely new shade of horrible that would eventually span the entire color spectrum. I watched my closest, dearest friends get cheated on, lied to, ignored, and made fun of by their boyfriends, and I decided it wasn’t for me.
At least not then.
I pictured my future partner as a sweet, artistic person who would cook for me on the weekends and take care of me when I was sick. He would be someone who could appreciate me for the whole of who I am and not just as a mechanism for his own goals. He’s someone I could bring to dinner parties without having to worry about him getting into a fight with someone. Just a level-headed, quiet, bookish type.
But yet again! Here I am!
How did I let Matteo get past my defenses so easily? Was it just because I wanted to fuck him so badly?
I’ve had hookups and brief relationships, but none of them broke through the ceiling of indifference that I’d had to sex for most of my life. Every man I’d been with was a version of the man I wanted, except without the charm, personality, or sex appeal. They would buy me flowers or a heart necklace for Valentine’s day, but none of them could tell me my favorite color, movie, or animal.
The sex was boring. Sometimes, they would occasionally hit my g-spot and I would moan genuinely, but it never resulted in the earth-shattering orgasms that Matteo was able to give me with hardly any effort.
It’s the way he seemed sopracticedat it. He wasn’t struggling to find the right spots, and he knew exactly how fast to finger me. He didn’t add too much pressure, and I was able to cum within minutes because of how attentive he was. I’m pretty sure that the fastest I had ever made myself cum before Matteo was twenty minutes when I bought a vibrator for the first time. Matteo was able to give me a better orgasm than a toy with the express purpose of doing so.
So I’m angry about losing that.
Sex used to be such a small part of my mental baggage, and now it takes up so much space that I can’t focus on anything else unless I’ve masturbated recently. It’s such an embarrassing problem to have, and I didn’t have it before Matteo was here.
But I have to stand up for myself. I can’t let men toss me around emotionally because they’re good at sex. That’s the way that all my friends got fucked over in college by their shitty boyfriends – they might have been bad partners, but they were amazing in bed. I know this because I stayed over in their apartments a lot on the nights when we would go out together, and I’d hear the moans, breaths, and yelps coming from their rooms as their boyfriends would ride them to hell and back.
It made me so fucking jealous that they could get railed like that while I had to go home to Andrew, my doughy, agreeable boyfriend who would stick his fingers into me for three minutes and dig at the walls like he was trying to scratch an itch. He was terrible at sex, but also terrible at taking criticism, and I felt responsible for his mental health in the event that I broke up with him.
Now that I’ve experienced Matteo, I get it. I get all of it.
I understand why it seemed like there was an alien force controlling them, refusing to take my sound advice about the state of their relationships. I get how hard it was for them to lose the lifeline that they had to feeling whole and beautiful in their bodies, even if it was only for an hour at a time. I hadn’t had their experience yet, and I felt a degree of contempt for them.
But now it all makes sense.
I pour myself a glass of the wine, smelling it before I take a deep gulp. It tastes like permanent markers, which is exactly how I’ve always thought red wine tasted. Why did I buy this? It was like a hundred dollars!
When I realize how much I hate the wine, I begin to cry.
I feel lower than I ever have in my life and my wine tastes like shit! This isn’t fair!
That’s when I realize something that should have been far more obvious to me – no matter how bad your day is going, the universe doesn’t owe you a consolation prize.
Nobody owes me a solution to this problem. I just have to sit in my apartment and endure these feelings. I’m going to drink this whole bottle of wine out of spite just for the irony, just because it’s terrible and so is everything else.
After I’ve endured three glasses of this retched wine, I decide to be creative and take to my computer. Matteo has a well-known media presence, which is the whole reason that any of this came to be. It’s not difficult to find pictures of him in various states, from previous arrests to photos taken at rooftop bars.
One photo features him after a bad hangover, which he proclaims on his Instagram is the result of one of the myriad rooftop bar experiences. I know that Matteo used to do cocaine, and maybe he still does, but I can see it in his eyes in some pictures. His expression is wild and unhinged, always grabbing some girl’s ass and shouting nonsense with his business partners.
Since I’ve recently acquired a high-quality printer, I decide to do some art therapy of my own making.
I print every picture of Matteo where he looks happiest, particularly where he’s posing with paid women at some kind of bougie event. They all look so fake, both him and the girls. It’s apparent that nobody actually wants to be there. Nobody is having fun, but it’s strategic tolooklike you’re having fun.
Every picture comes out crystal clear on photo paper, and I’m positive that later I’ll be angry at my drunk self for wasting it. It’s such a petty way to channel my pain, but there’s nothing else that I can do. I’ve neglected friendships for Matteo, which makes me an unlikely candidate to be invited out to the bars. I’d hate to go by myself and get picked up by a lower-quality version of Matteo.
The worst part is that I know I would fall for it.
