Chapter 6
EIGHTEEN DAYS WENT BY. FOR the vast majority of them, I had no contact with ThinkTank. But every so often we texted. Sometimes we "talked" on the forum.
Sadly, we didn’t flirt anymore, not since that first time. There was no mention of pictures being exchanged, of sexting, of fucking. I had to accept that my abandoning of the convo that night kind of put the kibosh on that.
In fact our relationship became a lot like the sweet, exploratory friendship I’d first told myself I wanted.
But that was fine.
I learned we did have stuff in common. We both came from families of overachievers. In my case, I rebelled by refusing to do anything my doctor parents said—case in point, learning to swim. Tank (he told me to call him Tank, the name most of his close buddies used) told me that was foolish and urged me to learn. I had the nagging feeling he was right, but...get in a pool and float? Surely it defied physics.
In his case, his folks urged him to excel at sports.
Tank admitted he loved athletics, but I gathered from the vague things he said that his sporting career never went anywhere and eventually he realized there was more to life than doing what was expected of him.
Another thing we had in common: we both knew people with cancer. His sister had breast cancer. Luckily it was estrogen-specific and she was now in remission. I told him about my uncle’s wife being diagnosed with thyroid cancer last year. It was treatable, but still a scary wake-up call. It was after that that I’d started appreciating the people around me more.
I let him know in my awkward way that he, Tank, had been one of the people I’d started to value, leading me to reach out to him.
Now I know who to thank, he’d said, which was incredibly sweet, and I beamed for hours after that.
There was a lot we didn’t have in common, too. Tank lived in his own luxury condo, and judging by where he shopped, he was disgustingly well off. I forgave him for having it so easy. I didn’t know where all his money came from, but it wasn’t like he was a dick about it or made me feel low-class for slumming it with chow mein.
He also dated a lot. I didn’t get the sense he was hooking up with anyone during those eighteen days...but from the way he talked about the lifestyle of his friends, he was not a stranger to frequent hookups. I got the distinct impression he was in an unusual dry spell. I wondered whether it had anything to do with me but was too afraid to ask.
Mostly we just had fun and joked around.
Oh, and he said he wanted to learn how to draw by hand. That marked the one time he broached the subject of meeting again. He said he wanted to meet up so I could show him techniques for controlling the pencil. Apparently he had terrific gross motor control but poor fine motor skills.
I pretended I hadn’t noticed his hint about meeting up. Meeting in person was still a bad idea as far as I was concerned. He did not need to know 1) how badly I was in lust with him and 2) I was not exaggerating about those 20 pounds.
But I did put a video together showing him how to draw on an easel using only his gross motor muscle groups. I made sure only my hand and arm were in the picture.
But I forgot he hadn’t heard my voice before.
He wrote back his thanks and tacked on:
Your voice sounds like honey, like you just woke up purring.
I waited, I blushed, but he didn’t say anything else. And he didn’t suggest calling.
Which was another reason I didn’t think there was any point in meeting. I didn’t think he really wanted to meet me. Surely otherwise he’d have called me.
I made it pretty clear that calling would be okay. One time he said, All this texting is killing my big hands and I said, Why not use a speech transcriber and he said I’m at a party and I said, oh I’ll let you go back to it and he said no it’s my nieces’ birthday. Hour five. I’m in hell. And when I asked him why he didn’t just leave the party he said I’m helping chaperone but damn little girls are loud as howler monkeys. That’s when I said it, recklessly: You could always step outside and call me. Save your hands and ears.
I think I made it pretty obvious.
Tank wrote back a smiling emoji, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge my hint.
Apparently he had no urge to talk to me on the phone.
Clearly.
So...friends. Online friends. Online friends indefinitely.
Great. I was okay with that. If I wanted a guy to lust after, I always had Rafail Slutsky.
The big news in that direction was that my hero completely surprised me. It happened yesterday. He replied—he actually replied—to my tweet from long ago! I could not believe it. This morning, I texted all my friends about our amazing, one-of-a-kind exchange.
Slutsky’s message said:
@CecilySketchily, just saw this. You’re right, things looked clearer the next morning. Now they’re murky again. What do you suggest? Keep waiting or choose a path?
@SwimmerSlutsky, take a chance, change things up, I typed. I was thinking about my New Year’s Resolution and the chance I’d taken recently and how I’d met Tank and how glad I was that I’d done something different for a change.
@CecilySketchily do you practice what you preach?
@SwimmerSlutsky, absolutely! Good luck with whatever it is! I’m a big fan, BTW!!!!! :D
I wondered if there were any way to embalm Slutsky’s tweets, preserve them forever. I told everyone what he’d said to me, including Tank. Everyone squeed, except Tank.
What’s so special about it? he asked.
This was today when I was at work, and I didn’t see his text until I was walking out the door.
You obviously don’t get what it is to be a fan, I texted him scornfully. A minor deity has acknowledged my existence. I made a mark on his life. On SLUTSKY’S LIFE!!!!
And that’s worth what exactly? Do you plan to fuck him? Or just keep wasting your talent drawing him while you dick around on the sidelines?
It was like he’d slammed a door in my face. My scorn had been playful. His was so bitter. It didn’t seem like him. My enthusiasm dimmed.
I guess it’s worth nothing, I texted. Nothing at all. I just had my lifelong dream come true, to be noticed by my fave celeb. Right so I’m going to go home now and eat five gallons of ice cream.
I turned my phone off. By the time I got home, I was not just depressed, but angry.
I was depressed because he was wrong.
Maybe I had been using a lot of my talent on Rafail Slutsky. But not wasting it. I was a better artist now because of all my sketches on BodyDraw.
And I had goals. I wasn’t planning to work in the frame shop forever. I was working on an animation series of my own. I was going to market it to animation studios and gaming companies. I was also working with a friend to develop animation-making software for kids.
But I was angry because he was also right.
I was using Rafail Slutsky, in his capacity as an icon. I was using him as a man to worship from the sidelines instead of getting myself a real man. I’d avoided real relationships for a long time, opting to stay huddled in my turtle shell all alone. Crushing on the athlete was safe; I knew it would never amount to anything.
This situation hadn’t bothered me until I’d met Tank. With Tank I was starting to want something real.
So maybe I was sabotaging myself. I wasn’t sure. But what really hurt wasn’t what Tank had said; it was the way he’d said it.
You were a real ass to me, Tank, I texted.
I did see he’d already texted me again, but avoided reading it until I'd sent mine off. I thought it might be an apology.
Then I looked.
If being noticed by a stranger is your lifelong dream, Cecily, then I feel sorry for you.
I burst into tears.