5
It’s too early in the day to do math, but I find myself staring at yet another utility bill on Wednesday morning. I really don’t understand how a person whose worldly possessions include just six T-shirts, some skinny jeans and a pair of Dansko kitchen clogs can rack up such a high cost of living.
Every month since Benji moved in, a small part of me has died when I open the bills. My studio apartment is far from enormous. Yet lo and behold, the electric bill feels like it’s for a four-bedroom house with a pool. I’m not trying to point fingers, but as I look to my left, there’s a rack of lamb that’s sitting in a sous vide and will be for seventy-two hours straight. Seriously, if the health inspector could see the shit that Benji pulls from up here on the tenth floor, he would never be allowed to cook again.
Not far behind is the cable bill. While Benji was getting sober, he insisted he shouldn’t work. Like, at all. I didn’t doubt the process, but then he claimed he was so bored while I was at the office that he feared a relapse. Could you imagine the FoodFeed headline? Zane Relapses Due to Girlfriend’s Lack of Robust Cable Package. So I gave him the green light to set it up.
I’m sure there’s a way to scale back on the bill now that Benji attends regular NA meetings and has his pop-up work to distract him, but I just don’t have the energy to sit on hold with the cable company and negotiate what premium channels should stay and what DVR features need to go. So I pay the bill and accept it as part of the price you pay to keep your boyfriend on the right track.
It’s still odd to think how we achieved “couple” status in the first place, since the path there was about as rinky-dink as the food prep that goes on in this apartment.
Before we were living together, he accidentally left a hoodie at my place. So I put it on, kept it unzipped with no bra and sent him a little sext. Not my best moment, but tempering myself around him was (still is) damn near impossible and I thought I’d tease him a bit with a smoky eye and a little side boob. Clearly, he liked what he saw, because he saved the photo to his phone and blasted it out a week later directly from his Twitter account while on a bender. He captioned it: My girlfriend is hotter than yours. cc: @AllieSimon.
To set the record straight, I was his side chick at best. Not a title one is usually proud of, but a role that accurately described the state of our relationship at the time. You know, one of probably a few people you call for a sloppy bar make-out session, or a 5:00 a.m. cuddle-fest. I was just someone who answered his calls with a wave of butterflies instead of a pit in my stomach. The pit was reserved for a woman daring enough to be his actual girlfriend; someone willing to take Benji on full-time.
The following morning, his dedicated fans saw the shocking 2:00 a.m. tweet and as such, my phone buzzed with notification after notification. The combination of dings and glows woke me up before my alarm did. A lot of people were sending their congratulations, concurring that I was in fact “hot.” Others said he could do better. A few girls tweeted back, I thought I was your girlfriend, you dick. Or just a plain and simple Fuck you @AllieSimon.
Whether or not Benji was actually in the market for a girlfriend, this tweet heard ’round the Chicago food world was the moment it all went down for me, a no-namer suddenly thrust into a controversial limelight without any warning.
@FoodFeed: Hey @BJZane, congrats! Would love to do a blurb on you and @AllieSimon. Favorite this tweet if OK.
Moments later, Benji of course gave it a like, which gave FoodFeed permission to go even more public with what was just a private guilty pleasure to me at the time.
That pic was only 4 U, Benji, I texted him with the slightest bit of rage/embarrassment.
ppl should know, he promptly wrote back.
Know what? My bra size?
U R my gf
<3 How is this going 2 work?
IDK.
I had learned from previous exchanges with him that short, intense, rapid-fire texts were a telltale sign he was high.
Cocaine talking? I had to ask.
I’ll get clean 4 U. I told U.
I turned my screen to dark and clutched the phone to my pounding chest as I sat up in my bed. Is this really happening? Do I want it to be happening?
Before this public display, what we did was in the dark. It was a secret he and I kept, and we capped it at booze-fueled conversation and fiery hookups. Sure, Jazzy and Maya knew that I was dancing with the devil, but my parents—and certainly the entire city of Chicago—didn’t need to know I was spending a few nights a week rounding the bases with a ticking time bomb who would sniff white powder off the nightstand before going down on me.
When Benji came into my life, keeping my distance was both the first and last thing on my mind. Every time we’d finish having sex, my internal battle was always, do I gear up for round two? Or do I leave now while he’s toweling off in the bathroom and block his number for good? Before I could make up my mind, he’d come back into the room, lock his arms around me and ask me what I wanted for breakfast the next morning.
How do you put a lid on that? Any of that? Had I known how it all was going to shake out a few months later, maybe I would have pumped the brakes a bit. But with a guy like Benji, I learned there are none.
And now here I am four months later—figuring out our expenses on a hot and sticky late-August morning. In times like this, I wonder about the girls who assumed this role before. Did they have to pay a monthly entertainment tariff just to keep our mutual acquaintance from getting bored and looking for drugs?
Do you know who else I think about? The girls who’ll never be in my shoes—and how they are free of obligations like this, and so many others. A pang of envy hits me right in the gut. I remind myself Benji’s the prize, and it goes away.
Standing at the kitchen counter, I write out three checks, stamp the envelopes and tuck them into my purse. Even though he’s clean now, the entire internet and everyone I know tells me I should be paranoid about a possible relapse, the provocation of which can come from anywhere. Spare cash lying around, compounded by a bad day or, I don’t know, a teaspoon of baking soda spilled on the counter, can lead to disaster. So I’ve learned to worry that if I pay these bills online, Benji will figure out a way to reroute the money somewhere it doesn’t belong, which is why I’ll personally be delivering these checks to a mailbox before setting foot into my office this morning. No one tells you what it’s like to live with a drug addict, but the trick, apparently, is that you can never be too careful.
“You going to work?” he groggily asks from his side of the bed.
Perhaps it’s just early, but the question rubs me the wrong way. He makes it sound like I have a choice, like it’s feasible that I’m on my way to grab picture frames at World Market or something. It’s 7:45 in the morning. Where the hell else would I be going?
“Yup.”
“Love you,” he says, getting up to kiss me and pull me in for a tight hug. The smell of stale cigarettes lingers in the patchy start of a dark brown beard. He’s either out of razors and waiting for me to notice so I pick some up on my way home, or he’s sporting a new, burlier look. Whatever the case may be, I don’t mind it. I let the smell take me back to another place and time; namely, the bar where we first met and first made out.
The fluttering feeling in my gut comes back in force, the strangeness and danger and possibility of him swirling together in my heart and mind. In these moments, I experience a high of my own that makes so much of what I’m struggling with fall away. Debt might be high and resources low, but when he crushes me to his chest this way, it’s all good. A man who loves me is enveloping me in his arms. And I am all in. In retrospect, I have been from the moment we first met.
“Love you, too,” I say back, calm and sweet, though what I really want to say is, “Maybe I should stay home and fuck?” Then I think, why don’t we? Sex has always been the perfect equalizer for us. No matter how frustrated I can get by day-to-day life with Benji, in the bedroom it all melts away.
I glance over at the clock to see just what I’m working with. It’s enough time to unzip his pants and blow him. Oddly enough, giving him head does it for me as much as it turns him on. Seeing him utterly tantalized by something only I am capable of doing is probably how he feels when he’s putting the perfect sear on a piece of halibut as I wait for my plate at the table.
A few moans and groans later and the deed is done. I freshen up in the bathroom and hear him say, “Babe? Can I borrow twenty bucks to cab it to Randolph Street?”
Whatever tender moment I thought we’d just shared ends abruptly with the financial ask.
“How about I leave you my bus pass?” Bargain with me, pal. Please.
“I can’t exactly roll up to this meeting with Angela on a city bus. And I can’t risk being late because I had to take six different routes all over this fucking city. It’s impossible to get to the West Loop from here on public trans. You know that.”
He’s pitching it as if he’s interviewing for a job at the Board of Trade. I thought it was just coffee with some fan?
“Then text me when you want to go and I’ll order you an Uber. I have a credit.”
“You’re so obsessed about money stuff sometimes,” he says. He’s correctly identified my hesitation to give him what he wants, so he’s going for the hard sell. “But when I have a very important business meeting that could take care of you and me for a really, really long time, I can’t get twenty bucks to make sure I’m there on time. I seriously don’t understand you, Allie. I really don’t.”
Here it goes. The temper tantrum. Sometimes dating Benji is like raising an unpredictable teenager. One minute, we’re best friends. The next, he’s pissed I won’t let him ride his bike by himself to the movies. It’s hard to play mom with a guy you really enjoy fucking—and trust me, there’s no fetish there. I’ve explored it.
Still, I wonder, how is he so good at making it seem like I’m the one who’s so goddamn—
“You’re just being selfish,” he says offhandedly. I want to castrate him with his own paring knife. I’m not an ATM machine, for crying out loud. I’m his girlfriend.
“Benji. I literally do not have any cash on me. You—we spent it all at Republic.” It’s the truth.
“Well, then, I’ll walk downstairs with you and we’ll stop at the bank on the corner. It’s not that hard. And we can even get Starbucks before you head in to work.”
A Starbucks date with your bae before work sounds so romantic and cheeky. The ironic thing here is that when he kisses me goodbye and sends me off to show up fifteen minutes late to work with a vanilla latte in hand, he really doesn’t have a clue what I do. He knows I tweet about cotton swabs but whether or not this is my dream job, how long I’ve been working there, who my coworkers are, what the watercooler drama is...those are all things that never come up. It’s almost painful how indifferent he is about the details of my career, but then I remember there probably isn’t room for two at the top. And right now, and most likely always, what Benji’s got cooking matters much more, and to many more, than my day-to-day.
“Fine, but let’s go. We need to hurry,” I concede.
On the elevator ride down, I think about what We can get Starbucks really means—that I’ll be buying for the both of us. But as a recovering addict, Benji’s two green-lit vices are cigarettes and caffeine—neither of which he seems to get enough of. At least three times a week, Benji wakes up in the middle of the night and brews a pot in my little kitchen. It’s like he’s a prisoner to the hankering. I almost feel bad for him. At least it’s better—and cheaper—than blow.
* * *
Hey @AllieSimon...you need to come pick your boy up lol, read the tweet from someone I eventually figured out was a coworker at his old restaurant. I wasn’t sure on what planet something like this warranted a “lol,” but the kid uploaded a picture of Benji curled up in the fetal position, passed out by a Dumpster. Good god, I thought.
This took place before Benji had announced to the world that we were an item, and it was my first clue that maybe our rendezvous wasn’t so secret after all. How this kitchen worker knew to tag me in a tweet like that was equal parts unsettling and flattering.
I ignored my phone the rest of the day, denying that this could actually be my responsibility (no, really...we’re just fucking. Call someone else!). But at around midnight, a text that woke me up became a text I couldn’t pass over.
Can I come over? Please? Need 2 C U.
He needed to see me. And regardless of the circumstances, I liked the way that sounded and said yes.
When he stumbled into my unit, shaking and pale, I immediately settled him onto my couch and wrapped him in a blanket. I asked him what the hell happened, but the details were fuzzy. I’m not sure if he was being vague to spare me, or because he couldn’t recall all the gory specifics.
“Are you high? Can you at least tell me that?” I begged for more information.
“No. I swear. But I did get high Monday. And Tuesday. And yesterday. And now I think I’m having withdrawals.”
FML.
“Okay, so, what do I do? Do you need water? Crackers? Tylenol?” I didn’t realize then that treating withdrawal and nursing a hangover are two very different things.
“No, none of those things. It’s just gonna suck for a few days. Can you rub my back?” he asked me amid his distress. I placed my hand on him and felt a bulge the size of my fist under his skin.
“What is that?” I asked, grimacing slightly. I didn’t want to freak him out, but I was assuming the worst. A blood clot maybe?
“When I do too many drugs, I get these knots in my back. I don’t really know, just, can you keep rubbing?”
Scared as I was sitting that close to an overdose, it brought me comfort to know this wasn’t the first time he’d experienced these bulbous mutations.
“I think I’m going to go,” he said a few seconds later.
“Right now? You just got here. I feel like you should lie down.”
“No, I mean to rehab.” Boom, there it was. The first time Benji admitted that his drug use had evolved into something far more out of control than just a casual sniff off a credit card in a bathroom stall. But why to me, I wondered? Who was I in his life that he could so suddenly come to me in the middle of the night with his desperation as visible as the toxic lump protruding from his back? He must have known I wouldn’t judge him, call him a loser and tell him to get the hell out. Even I hadn’t known I was capable of such compassion until the need for it was physically and inescapably in front of me.
“What about your restaurant? Don’t you have to go to work?”
“It’s over,” he said.
I didn’t know if he quit or got fired, but I figured I’d let the food blogs figure that one out.
“Okay. So when would you leave?”
“Tomorrow.”
“What? Why so soon?” A part of me selfishly couldn’t fathom our road coming to an abrupt dead end.
“This is going to get really bad, Allie. Soon. You aren’t going to be able to take care of this. I’ve already made the appointment. They’re expecting me to check in at 6:00 a.m.”
I took a big breath and looked at the time.
“Well, then, let’s get you back to your place to pack.”
“You can’t come over,” he said. “I can’t have you see what’s going to happen next. You’re too good for that. Trust me, okay? Please.”
At that point, I called him an Uber and walked him back down to my lobby. His eyes were the dopiest I had ever seen. From the withdrawal? Maybe. From the fact that both of us weren’t ready to accept this would be the last time we’d see each other for at least a month? Definitely.
I had planned to pull the plug many times before on things with Benji, but now it was all coming to a forced stop. I should have been grateful—this was my out. But instead, I was sad. I didn’t realize that at some point, I had fallen for this guy. And it wasn’t just about the mind-blowing sex or handmade pastas. I cared about him.
I also didn’t realize that once I shut the door of the car and watched it take off toward an all-quiet Lake Shore Drive, Benji was going to partake in one last hurrah before rehab.
A bottle of pills, a fifth of Jack and whatever else he could get his hands on fueled this particular bender. And this is when he tweeted out my photo. This is when he outed me as his girlfriend. This is when I decided that accepting my new identity was easier than dismantling a bomb.
The next day, I slogged through work, worried and sad and happy and confused. I tried to Google what rehab was really like, but feared IT would hack my history and I’d get canned for being a liability with a double life.
From what I had seen on Celebrity Rehab, going away for help was going to be the right thing for Benji. I grappled with the idea that once sober, Benji might not see me the same anymore. That whatever drug-induced infatuation he’d had with me would subside. It’d be like sleeping off a hangover and realizing that the 3:00 a.m. order of extra-large cheese fries from the Weiners Circle was a bad idea. And I was okay with that. I had to be okay with that. I told myself a complicated story about how difficult people don’t deserve love any less than the simpler ones. If we only allowed ourselves to care deeply about those who can reciprocate our affection the way we’ve grown accustomed to, did we have any business calling that “love” at all? Whatever hurt or emptiness I felt in Benji’s absence was in the service of something much greater, and I made peace with it.
And then I came home from work and found Benji—the very same!—sitting on the foot of my bed.
“No. No, no, no, no. You can’t be here,” I remember saying adamantly as I threw my keys down on the counter. “What are you even doing here? How did you get in? You have to go!” I felt like I was hiding a fugitive. This kid needed serious help, even he admitted that. Who let the monkey out of his cage?
“Babe, calm down,” he had said, placing both of his hands up like I was about to shoot. “I know what you’re thinking, but trust me: I got this. I’m going to start going to NA meetings every day, twice a day. I already have a sponsor. His name is Mark. I even picked up the books. See? See?” He held up the Narcotics Anonymous literature like church propaganda. “My first meeting is tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. I’ll be gone before you even leave for work. I’m serious this time.”
This time? How many other failed attempts were there? And how serious could he be if he hadn’t even given rehab a single day to kick in? Which made me wonder...
“Did you even go?” I asked.
He didn’t say yes or no. Instead just offered a flippant, “Rehab isn’t for me.”
I had heard that line before. On Intervention. Right before they rolled the updates that said the subject hadn’t been heard from in months and was last seen smoking crack under a bridge.
“But you said it was. Right here on this couch, like fifteen hours ago. What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know, a lot of shit. My phone got stolen last night, I ran out of cigarettes and I don’t have the money for it unless I go to that freebie clinic in the ghetto. I’m not doing that. Get stuck with some fuckin’ weirdo roomie. No way. I’d much rather do it on my own terms. I’m going to do this my way with Mark and the meetings.”
“What about the withdrawal? I thought you said it’s going to be bad?”
“It will be. But I’ll stay tough and fight through it and call Mark if I need anything. He helped me get a new phone today. It’s a fresh start, only your number and his are programmed in it.”
I’m pretty sure this was when I started crying. I was already in a state of complete emotional exhaustion and this, food pun unintended, just took the cake. Worse, I couldn’t tell if I was happy he was back or scared he’d never leave. All I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to be in this situation anymore. It was all too much.
“Oh, babe. Come on. You’re breaking my heart. What’s wrong? What can I do?” Benji had stopped me from pacing uncontrollably by holding me in the way only he could—the way that managed to hit the reset button no matter how haywire my system was going. My body warmed up like I had just downed a shot of vodka. I slowed my breathing and let myself fall into him. I felt swaddled like a baby—safe and warm. The swirl of insanity instantly simmered down and the relief set in; this was real.
And we were going to be okay.
Underneath his messy front, there was something—a lot of things, actually. There was a lost soul that needed direction. A man with a good heart and an insane amount of talent. Benji had the wisdom to know he needed help, but not where to find it or how to get it. And then there I was, this beacon of normalcy shining in the night, and he had clung to it. I was like the Carpathia coming to pull him out of icy waters. How could I have blamed him for that? For thinking his source of rescue came in a little five-foot-three package, was a good lay and had a kind heart?
Plus, when a person asks you to help save his life, you can’t exactly turn him away. Or at least I couldn’t.
“I just want this to work,” I muttered through an ugly cry. There were another six words that would have been just as easy to fire off—I just want you to leave—but they would have been a lie. No matter the circumstances, I needed to be within arm’s reach of this man.
“I do, too, babe. And it will. The coke stuff...it’s over. For good. And with you by my side, I know staying clean is possible. Regardless of everything that’s going on right now, I still feel like I’m the luckiest guy in the world. I’d take slipping up, losing my job, the Twitter shit storm I started last night—I’d take it all again because I know it brought me you. The greatest gift of my life. I really mean that.”
He wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and went on with the monologue.
“But you gotta promise me one thing. You gotta stick by me, let me show you I can do this. I’m not going to let this fall through my fingers. I’ve never had anything like this, like you. I’ve wanted this my whole life.”
I stared out beyond him through the windows of my apartment and shook my head—what was he going to tell the press about losing his job? What part would everyone think I played in sidelining their favorite chef?
“So remind me, what’s the plan, then?”
“I’m going to NA twice a day. You should try to go to some programs, too. Nar-Anon and Al-Anon are good. Stay away from CoDA, it’s bullshit.”
I’d had no clue what any of those things were, or how I would fit them into my schedule. But I soon found out these were just nicknames for meetings designed to make me feel less crazy. Like I wasn’t the only one in a relationship with someone who doubled as a nuclear button. My biggest problem would not be finding a meeting—they happen all day every day in big cities like Chicago—but rather how I would go about hiding my attendance from my friends and family.
“And I’ll do my coursework each night. Look—I’ve already started. I’ll work the program with Mark.”
“Who is Mark again?”
“My sponsor. He and his wife, Rita, actually want to meet you. They host a picnic every Saturday in the summer at North Avenue Beach. We can go this weekend.”
“Benji, I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
“Sorry, I know. I’m getting ahead of myself. When the time is right, we’ll do the picnic thing. And I’ll make some rad side dish, or you could bring your ironing-board grilled cheeses, and we’ll blow everyone’s mind. In the meantime, I’ll keep things between Mark and me. Okay? Sound good?”
I didn’t know these Mark-and-Rita people from Adam or Eve, but something about their names, or the fact they hosted a weekly picnic, made me feel like Benji was in good hands. And just like that, I felt myself starting to turn. Slowly.
“And what about work? What about your apartment? Your rent?”
“Babe, look at me.” I wasn’t sure how much closer he could have gotten, but he nuzzled in a little more and held my shoulders tightly. I granted him blotchy, tearstained eye contact.
“That place I was living in...the landlords...they terminated my lease.”
“They what?”
Just when I thought I was calming down.
“It’s my fault. I was late on rent, they had trouble verifying my work and after last night...things got a little trashed.”
“So, where’s all your stuff? Where are you living now?”
“Well, all I really had was cooking stuff and Sebastian is holding on to it all for me.”
I pictured his apartment on the night he cooked for me; there really was no furniture over there. Just a mattress on the floor and some bar stools. That’s when I realized that in the corner of my studio was a black duffel bag. His life, whatever scraps of it he was able to pull together before being evicted, was most certainly zipped in there.
“You want to stay here.” It was a statement, not a question—let me make that clear. “And get sober.” Again, not a question.
“I’ll make you lunch every day, I’ll cook dinner for you every night. Your friends, too. I’ll keep the place clean for us. Run your errands. Do whatever you need for me to prove how bad I want this and how committed I am to our future. This is a good thing, Allie. For our relationship. I can get better at my own pace, figure out what to do for work and take care of you.”
I don’t know how Benji got into my apartment that day. My doorman must have recognized him from the night before and figured he was on the let-up list. As far as my unit being unlocked, I was tired that morning. Really fucking tired. It’s entirely possible I forgot to lock up. Point being, as I looked around, I noticed my place was immaculate. Bed made, TV stand dusted, towels in the bathroom folded. He’d picked up while waiting for me to come home.
It had seemed ironic to me that the trade-off for accommodating a drug addict was a series of proposed housekeeping services and a promise that I’d eat like a queen. But sometimes when you’re just that tired, worn down and desperate, the vision of a decent lunch and coming home to a clean bathroom is enough to make it all seem worth it.
“I’m not going to starting cooking tonight, though,” he said.
My heart fell through the floor. I couldn’t put up with another night of mayhem or another false promise.
“Because tonight, I’m going to order you a pizza. I’m going to get your favorite—butter crust with crispy pepperoni and extra sauce on the side. And we’re going to share it, eat the whole goddamn thing. And we’re going to watch a movie, The Lake House or P.S. I Love You...one of those girlie DVDs I keep seeing in your collection that I’m too embarrassed to admit I want to watch. You can pick. And then, we’re just going to hold each other and talk if we need to talk, be quiet if we need to be quiet, and at the end of the night, we’ll go to bed knowing it’s just you and me against the world, and that tomorrow is a fresh start and a new day.”
He never let me object. Not once did I poke a hole in his plan or tell him no or force him to at least pick up a part-time shift at CVS. Yet still, the relationship that every girl wants was right in front of my face. The one where you can throw on some sweats, get comfy on the couch and curl up with your boyfriend, a greasy pizza and a chick flick, and still feel like the prettiest princess in all the land. And best of all, I wasn’t begging him to be on the same page as me. That was all Benji. He was laying it all out there for me.
Twenty minutes and two slices in and I had felt the stress and tension ebb out of me. How I was going to tell my mom and dad, or Jazzy and Maya, that an ex-addict was now sharing my address was going to require politician-like spin. But I’d deal with that later. Because right then, we were on the right track. Benji was there for me to rest my head on. The FoodFeed comments section and the Twitter speculation were out of sight and out of mind at that moment.
Later on, his warm hands rubbed the small of my back under my favorite Mizzou hoodie.
“I love you,” he whispered to me.
“I love you, too,” I said, knowing with certainty that I was his fighting chance, not some dark, dingy rehab center on the far West Side of Chicago.