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Monday, February 8, 2010 at 8:00AM 
The Object of Their Affections
by ADA KAPLAN
I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about the fact that I love two men, and that two men love me. I’ve actually been thinking too much about this fact for the last two years. There are good weeks and bad weeks, and this was an eventful one. For one thing, they’re both in L.A. now, and my intention for the new year was to free myself at last of this complicated and heartbreaking binary, but everything I do seems to make things worse. One of these men was my boyfriend for many years, and then neither of them were, and then the other man was, and now neither of them are again. This is because my latest solution is to “be on my own.” So I suppose I am single, though I wonder whether it’s possible to feel less so.
Elisa Sighicelli, Santiago: Curtain Tryptich, 2000I have illusions, that I’m concentrating on my work, that I don’t need a man, that I am independent. I must uphold these illusions in order to believe in myself, as something other than the center of this enduring amorous sideshow. I call it a sideshow because it seems from the outside that’s how it must look, but to me, it’s my life. And I need my life to be about more than being the object of these affections, even if, truly, it isn’t.
I’m ashamed. Whatever women may think, it doesn’t feel good to listen to a man you love and respect beg or cry, or tell you to pick him because he brought a superior toy to your cats. What it does is make you despise yourself. It’s the fault of a weak and indecisive mind, possessed of delusions of intellect and ambition, but moored in that loathsome covenant of female want. How important, really, is it to feel beautiful? To be loved? Important enough to ravage the pride of two strong, kind men? They’ve chosen to remain in the situation, and I have never lied to either of them, but I implicate myself.
So far being alone has meant trying to explain why. It’s something about feeling responsible for the whole thing, and shouldering so much love, that I’ve forgotten how love should feel, when it isn’t jealous or concerned with others, or sad. There was a day around Christmastime, when I made my alone decision, that I felt my life regain a sense of levity. I actually jumped up and down in my childhood room. This only lasted a day.
Untitled (The Party Is Over)Being alone has meant buying an old lady roller cart so that I can wheel groceries into my apartment and a rubber gadget that allows me to open jars on my own. Being alone has meant failing at being alone, and convincing myself that I’m not at all interested in sex. This is mostly true, but there’s still a real part of me that cares. And if I cave and spend the night at the most recent boyfriend’s house, then I will pass the morning, which I intended to spend writing and working, because I am a serious independent woman whose priority is working and writing, as I did today, googling the 22-year-old girl who told him she wants to “bone down,” whom I've met briefly, only to be reminded by a fancy magazine that she is the daughter of a big producer, and prefers ballet flats to heels. He asks me what he should do about other women. I want to scream, but I say I can’t tell him what to do. Why? he says. They always ask me why. He only wants to be with me, he says, why can’t I just be with him. It’s a question I’ve heard from each side many times. The answer is because I love them both. And because I don’t have the heart, because I lack the strength, to choose, I have to say no.
After I spent the morning browsing hipster photo blogs, I cried. I looked at the manuscript of my book and wanted to burn the thing for being so futile and uninteresting. I imagined my life, and their lives, unfolding. They were married to beautiful women in ballet flats. They were carrying toddlers on their shoulders. I was glad for them, glad they were free of me, but also reminded of the scene in Legends of the Fall when Susannah sees Tristan with his happy family at the state fair, and goes home, sits down at her lovely vanity, chops her hair off, and shoots herself in the head.
I imagine myself married to one of these men, and seeing the other at the state fair with his happy family. It’s bad. Then I switch them, and it’s just as bad, Even if they can’t have me, I know they want me to live.
Ada Kaplan is a contributor to This Recording. This is her first appearance in these pages. She is a writer living in Los Angeles.
"Not Made For Love (Leo Zero remix)" - Metronomy (mp3)
"Not Made For Love (Astronomer remix)" - Metronomy (mp3)
"Not Made For Love (Alalai remix)" - Metronomy (mp3)
Reader Comments (9)
Where did you get that thing that opens the jars?
Ok, sure, but if you're so important why is it that I've never heard of you before?
I don't know what to say, without everything sounding wrong, so, I'll just thank you for writing this.
I had a girl who preferred flats to heels because she danced ballet before she went to medical school. Only ballet flats were comfortable on her hammertoed feet. She left me one July day and took all my poetry with her.
And I went on. It was okay.
I fought polar bears along the Danube and became the head of an international cabal of character assassins. The cabal was destroyed after an intellectual property lawsuit by the Republican National Committee, which eliminated our ability to continue assassinating characters. That was when I took to the road and continued my hunt for the girl in flats. At least figuratively. I was really only hunting her in my head, with an occasional Dogpile search or 7.
I was pounding salt in the salt mines, wearing goggles and pouring sweat and banging away with my desultory hammer when a garden of inspiration bloomed white and fanged in my head and I knew the way I was going. Yes, it was almost psychic. I was going to Zzyzx Nevada and I was bringing polar bears with me.
I found my girl there. She was pirouetting on the horizon at dawn in a dust devil when I drove up in my big polar bear truck. She saw me and ran towards me, something I didn't expect from the poetry stealing lover who still saw fit to dance at dawn in the desert.
As she reached the step-up to the truck cab I pulled the little lever below the gear shift, the one that looked like a golf ball, and the doors swung open in the rear of the trailer. Out came the angry polar bears, a roiling ursine mass of hungry horror.
In the end the only thing left was one ballet flat, and the dust of Zzyzyx soon covered that.
I was no longer in the center of my own drama, no longer the head of the cabal, no longer a character assassin.
Now I live quietly and happily with a woman who is happy in heels.
So take what you will from my story and know this: everything, one day, will pass.
Through a polar bear's bowels, perhaps.
Is one of them a werewolf, and the other one's a vampire? I knew that was you, Bella.
Been there; torn between two lovers. Ya know what I did? I dated them both. At the same time. Yep, they both knew about each other. Outside of being in a relationship with me, we (luckily) were all good friends.
I will say...they were a pair of very special men. Eventually our arrangement felt relatively normal, and shame wasn't even a part of the picture. My love for them was completely natural to me, and they felt the same. The best part was when their friends knew, and accepted it without making a fuss. It was like being in a family...and it was the happiest time of my life.
It's not a lifestyle that's for everyone...but, it can work if you truly love them, and set realistic expectations for both them and yourself. Just sayin.
Empathy in droves.
I eventually made the choice, and honestly I'm not sure I'd recommend it. The boyfriend remains bitter, and the other is now a stranger, which is painful since we were very close friends before we were intimate. Society makes you think you ought to be so flattered, but my experience had flattery outweighed tenfold by guilt, pressure, and fear of making the wrong decision. I don't regret my decision, but I wish that making the decision had better results, and also that the choice itself would not have been so difficult.
I admire your choice to (atleast try) to be independent... And I hope that good things come from this.
I would guess that most people, even those in happy, solid relationships, would feel that clench watching a certain ex with their happy family at the state fair. Some loves never die.
Who are you, that you are loved by a man who knows the daughter of a big producer? I am married, and my husband doesn't know any famous people or children of famous people. You must live a rarefied life, that you find yourself traveling in circles that allow you to be romantically linked with people like this. I've never gotten the chance to read about my competition in a magazine.
You should choose. My recommendation is that you choose the other guy, NOT the one with whom the ballet flats girl wants to "bone down." (who SAYS that?) The further away from hipster photo blogs you get, the closer you'll be to a life where working and writing are the priority, even if a man is also there.
You will feel guilty for a while, maybe forever. But we all have things in our life like this. At times you'll experience a piercing sensation through your heart, but you will anyway. Might as well also have someone who can open jars and appear at state fairs with your kids. As for the idea that it is "unfair" to him because you also love guy #2? If you choose this guy, and drop the other guy, and lose touch, and keep him in your life only as a memory and something to write about, you're even.