Involuntary Sacrifice

The Hanged Man appeared in my tarot spread:

“A voluntary sacrifice is required in order to gain something of greater value.”

Though suspended by the ankle with his legs forming a triangle, the Hanged Man looks serene.

The card appeared beside the Empress, sign of fertility and potential fulfilled, and beneath the Lovers, which indicates “a relationship or love affair but with some kind of trial or choice involved.”

I wasn’t a practiced tarot reader, but it was the most curious of pastimes I’d acquired in Quarantine. I found the deck in the desk of my childhood bedroom, and the guidebook, “The Complete Book of Tarot,” by Juliet Sharman-Burke, surprised me on the shelf. Somehow, I took to the cards. They comforted me when nights in Brooklyn with Simon – and life as I knew it – felt eerily far away.

~

He’d only just broken up with someone and wasn’t “ready for something.” Yet the first time we made out, he slipped his hand inside the pocket of my Athleta leggings, and we pretended we would move to LA together. “What kind of dog should we get?” “What kind of Car?” I don’t remember what I said, but I wanted a door-less black Jeep. We’d live in Silver Lake, or Los Feliz.

We met ten days before March 1st, 2020. Ten days before I was meant to hop on a plane to rehearse a play in Florida. Fifteen days before he would fly to Pittsburgh to do the same. In those last, oblivious weeks of February, we drank too much coffee at the bakery across the street, went to “Escape the Room” with his friends and spent almost every day before we left, together.

When I got to Naples, where I’d never been, I learned many things: I learned that the landscape looked just like Lauren Groff described it. I learned that the food was terrible but the decoration fresh and retro at the diner next to my house. I learned that when face-to-face with an aggressive alligator, I was supposed to run in a Zig Zag. I also learned that Simon missed me.

“Missing ya too,” I said. I immediately regretted the abbreviation and told him so.

“Don’t we love protecting ourselves,” he typed back.


A week into rehearsals, things started to rumble. If we’d paid closer attention to China, to experts, to the Spanish influenza, or to just about anything, I’m sure they would have rumbled sooner. But instead, as we donned plastic crowns and swords and rehearsal skirts, sipping Starbucks in the ten minutes before “go!” we whispered about Italy and death tolls and the likelihood of postponement. My cast mate and I developed a signal — we’d yell “Cape!” if we saw the other one touching her face. This caused more than a few misunderstandings. 


At this point, Simon and I weren’t speaking as much because I told him I needed “space.” If he wasn’t prepared for a relationship, then I wasn’t prepared to be talking as much as we were. My heartstrings were already throbbing.

“I feel conflicted about our talk,” he typed the next day. “I just like you.”

I like you too, I said, and I honestly think the warmth of this exchange carried me through months of isolation.

By the time Broadway went dark, we were still rehearsing. I remember going to see our fellow cast’s production of “The Lady Demands Satisfaction,” a Victorian farce, as late as March 13th, and we all kept looking over our shoulders. The audience was a sea of silver hair and Lacoste polos; one cough or sneeze sent anxiety rippling.

The usher made her pre-show curtain speech: “Up next on our stages: The Lion in Winter by James Goldman. Two legendary lovers fight a battle of wits over the throne of England. Get your tickets today.”

We were out of sync with the world now, half-heartedly advertising a show we all knew we wouldn’t perform. We waved innocently at the patrons.

Throughout it all, though, I couldn’t help suppressing a perverse excitement because I’d always wanted to live through something. I felt like the world was going through a massive Snow Day, and we were glued to the television set. The air was poised to blizzard and I was up past my bedtime, waiting to see which districts were closed.

Amidst the frenzy, I was talking with Simon again. I didn’t want to spend a snow day alone. Selfishly, I fantasized about being back in New York a whole month earlier than expected; if everything shut down and the world cocooned itself, I could climb on top of him and pretend some more about Los Angeles. We could build a fire.

The next day, the gyms were closed, and so I ran breathless beneath the hot, Florida sun. It seemed I was waiting for a stop sign to appear, or at least a flashing yellow light – some invitation to join the world in its deceleration. I still drank beer with my cast mates and played Corn-hole outside, but I also read them the articles my dad sent me like, “Why Young People Need to Stop Going Out to the Bars.” My father told me I needed to come home.

Maybe I’ll fly to Boston, Simon texted.

He was joking about meeting me, of course, but it felt nice to hear.

When we gathered for rehearsal that Sunday, our director asked us to meet her on the patio.

“This is the end of the road, my friends,” she said, and she looked like she was going to cry.

My snow-day brain was already spinning: could I road trip with castmates up north? Use gloves at the gas station? But I knew I was only masking my fear of flying with my fear of Covid, so I booked a plane ticket for the next morning and spent the night on the beach.

When I was settled at home in Boston, Simon and I had FaceTime sex. Through the screen, it felt empty and forced. He’d wanted to hang up quickly after he came, even though I’d showered and combed my hair. We were both in our childhood bedrooms. I sensed our connection would ebb into the void of isolation, and I didn’t want to stick around to find out.

A part of me really believed that our intimacy would sneak up on us and that his readiness would surprise him. A quieter part knew this was wishful thinking and that if you listen carefully, people tell you everything you need to hear. But there is pain in holding back when all you want is to do is free fall, and this whiplash was familiar. A few days later, my throat constricted, I heard myself asking for “space” again. We’d reassess in New York.

At 29, you see, I’d never been in a long-term relationship. This sometimes made me feel defective. On better days, adventurous and sexy. I’d had trysts with men who made me drool, said “I love you” and meant it, but never had long-term, heart-healing, earth-shattering Love. Maybe in high school I did, but people say that doesn’t “count,” and I don’t remember when that changed.

So, as I found myself in the town I’d grown up in with months on end to probe my psyche, I spent hours walking in the woods by my house thinking about availability and vulnerability and who exactly one chooses to “free fall” with. I even taught myself how to read tarot cards. Mostly, I tried to get as far away as possible from the kind of thinking that Simon could complete me, or that, with his many ex- girlfriends, he knew something about Love I was missing.

Over the next few months, I found the rhythm of my solitude. This was largely due to reading Rilke, who reminded me that “patience is everything!” and that “Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come.” Nestled in the quiet of Newton, Massachusetts, I sipped prosecco in the evenings with my mother, watched mediocre British mysteries with my father, and moved more slowly than I ever had in my life. For the all the tumult of the world, and in direct proportion to my privilege, I was happy.

When we were both back in New York, two things remained the same: Simon still made me laugh, and, still, he was not ready. That felt inevitable at this point, but it was also okay.

When I drew The Hanged Man in my tarot spread, I had hoped with all my might that the “voluntary sacrifice” would be our time apart. Not touching, not talking, but moving towards each other with some remote and unspoken intimacy. I didn’t anticipate the sacrifice would be not having him at all.

And yet, I did have him: for “Vapid Sex,” as we called it – the night we’d slept together in Brooklyn before we were ready, but with some kind of benign and inexplicable urgency.

I had him for croissants and too much coffee at the French bakery across the street, and the time he tugged on my bright yellow parka and told me I looked like a ski vacation – or maybe that I belonged on one.

I had the riddles I told him (which most people never listened to) and the bizarre Australian accent he’d adopt when nervous.
 And the texts he’d send from airplanes, which I did not know you could do.

But mostly I had him, because I had someone to talk to when the world was falling apart. Someone to wish me a safe flight and, after losing my job and career prospects and flying halfway across the country, someone to ask me if I made it.

“A voluntary sacrifice is required in order to gain something of greater value.”

It didn’t feel voluntary, but those were the things I was giving up.

“…to gain something of greater value.”

I’ve moved to LA on my own now, and I’m working on that part.