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And if I talk about it in any negative way, I’m a privileged snob or ungrateful or everything else people think when rich or famous people complain to them. Rightly so. We usually have no leg to stand on.
“Huan is my boyfriend,” I blurt out.
A worrying frown. “Ex-boyfriend?”
I can’t have her call the cops. “Not quite.”
She pauses. “Oh. It’s… It’s not good if a boyfriend follows you around like this.”
“We’re in an open relationship and travelling together,” I continue, bumbling out whatever comes in my head, because Rachel will still coach me towards getting help unless I normalize Huan being around.
“Oh! That’s kind of cool! I’m on a dating app where you can filter for polyamory connections. I haven’t tried it yet, but I want to let go of the idea that love has to mean only one person.”
“Right,” I say, feeling like a massive fraud. “We’re codependent and doing the same touristy things on our trip together. So, he’ll be around tonight, if that’s cool?”
Will she buy it? And what am I doing spinning this story?
“It’ll be nice to see your dynamic. Because how is it like being with someone like him? He’s attractive, but you’re sharing him with other people? I’ve got so many questions!”
“It’s… kind of a first experience for us. We haven’t been open inpractice.”
“Is there a reason you don’t want to be with him monogamously? What pushed you to be open?”
I’m hanging off a cliff I put myself on, and I need to stop lying. “Mutual decision.”
“Tell me more.” Rachel laughs like she wants to shake me. “We’re strangers in a new city. Let’s be brutally honest with each other without judgement. Come on, I’m dying to know more.”
“Um. What exactly do you want to know?”
“Did you feel something was missing in your relationship? Why do you want to look elsewhere?” She’s so ready to learn that I feel nauseous.
“No,” I say, talking about a subject I have zero firsthand experience about, putting on a different sexual preference like clothes I can leave behind after. Shit. I’m the worst right now, but I can’t seem to stop.
“Huan… There’s nothing wrong with him.”
“Really?”
“Have you seen him?"
She laughs. “Point taken, but I've always told myself that stupidly gorgeous humans are full of all kinds of twisted pervertedness inside.”
I'm so conscious that he's behind this greeting wall. Can he hear me? Do I want him to hear me call him twisted and perverted? It's kind of mean, rather than regularly ruthless. “He is... not a pervert.”
Rachel makes a face.
“I mean, he's not a pervert in a bad way!”
Her eyes glimmer. “Is he a pervert in a great way?”
“I’ll tell you after a few drinks,” I concede. Maybe by then she'll have forgotten about my stalker, Huan.
“Okay, but”—Rachel tugs on my arm—“tell me aboutdatinghim.”
My mind grapples, swerves, and veers. “Being with him would be—no,islike—waking up in the dark.”
Rachel’s eyebrows squish together. Obviously, because I’m using the weirdest metaphor ever, but how do I explain? About fans and their arms sticking through the gates of our house. That he knows all the detours to take when we get followed out. How I was left standing in my bra and almost exposed one time a salesperson overheard my last name and tried to yank open the fitting room. The way he hauled the person out of their own store, and kept them out, until I was ready to leave…
Other memories coax the edge of my mind. There are way more than I thought there would be.
