"Watch- if I concentrate hard enough I can will my blackberry from across the room into my hand."
I read Tuesday’s post and after being a bystander for months now was finally inspired to write in with my own tale of woe. Annie, I would heed the DABAs’ sage advice and here’s why:
It all started out so innocently. We worked at the same mid-size investment bank. “John” was a V.P. I was an analyst. It was the office “employee only” holiday party (you know where this is going). Long story short - John and I got wasted, we may or may not have sucked face in front of our co-workers, but we most def. went home together.
And so began my office affair back in December ‘07. It was a bull market affair to remember. He would call me into his office. I would enter with trepidation never sure if he was going to hand me an assignment or an article of clothing that I had hastily left behind. Initially it was mutually understood that we were both too busy for a conventional relationship. It was 2007, you know back when investment banks still did deals. The problem was that he was in a position of power relative to me ergo the sex was forbidden (Read: awesome). Therefore, as women are biologically hard wired to do in such situations, I fell for him.
Inspired by a recent Meg Ryan romantic comedy marathon, I decided to tell him “how I really felt.” I confessed my feelings. He said, he felt the same way. We decided to go for a real date. Even though we started “dating”, nothing really changed from the prior arrangement, except for the fact that I had put myself out there and he was more emotionally unavailable than ever. I got needy. He announced that our difference in age was an insurmountable obstacle and that we wanted different things.
I dated other people for a while before I eventually met “Tom.” Tom was my age and treated me like a princess so, as again women are biologically hard wired to do, I didn’t appreciate Tom in the least and found myself succumbing to booty calls from John. I realized the situation had spun out of control when at 5am on a Saturday I received a phone call from John. Tom and I were asleep at my apartment having blacked out at more civilized hour. John was just on his way home from a club and wanted me to come to his place. In retrospect this was the moment where I should have gotten some upper hand in the situation and told him to drop dead.
Me: “Tom wake up”
Tom: “Ughhhh”
Me: “Seriously get up, I have to go to work.”
Tom: “It’s Saturday.”
Me (almost telling the truth): “I know but my boss just called and I have to go to work.”
Tom: “I hate your job.”
Me: “Me too, I’m sooo sorry.”
Tom went back to sleep while I made quite a show of showering and getting dressed for the office.
Me: “Okay I’m ready, let’s go, I’m so sorry to make you get up this early but I don’t have a spare set of keys”
Tom (half awake): “It’s cool, do you always wear that much eyeliner to work?”
Me: “I try to bring a feminine touch to the office.”
I pulled Tom out of bed and dragged him out of my apartment into the street. I hailed a cab and shoved Tom into it. The shoving must have jarred him out of his sleepy state because he had an almost lucid moment.
Tom (as I’m about to slam the cab door in his face): “Wait, my apartment is near your office, why don’t we share a cab?”
Me: “uhhhhhhhhh, my leg’s itchy?”
It was the only non-answer I could come up with.
I slammed the door and waved good-bye to a groggy Tom struggling to find the nexus between me not wanting to share a cab and having an itchy leg.
I circled the block once and hailed another cab to take me to John’s Tribeca apartment.
This isn’t Penthouse letters so I’ll skip what went down at John’s apartment and get right to my rock bottom moment: I was laying in John’s bed contemplating whether when the post-sex euphoria wore off if I was going to feel pathetic. John was somewhere else in the apartment doing sit-ups and reading his blackberry in some sort of weird Patrick Bateman combination when my own blackberry decided it had enough. My blackberry was done with the lies, the cheating, and the empty unsatiated feeling. It just couldn’t take it anymore. An incoming text came through and my blackberry seized the opportunity to commit bb suicide by vibrating itself off the edge of the nightstand. Known to suffer from Genovese syndrome, I watched listlessly as it plummeted to the ground. My blackberry hit the ground with a gentle thud that finally sparked a reaction from me. I scooped it up and inspected the damage. Thank God it was just a cry for help. Aside from a few scratches, it had survived the fall unscathed. I examined the text message that had caused my poor little blackberry so much angst. It was from Tom. “Sorry 4 being out of it this morning. I’m so proud of how hard u work. Lemme know when ready 4 a break, will bring u lunch.”
The words of my high school band director were ringing through my head: “What am I doing here now and what can I do to make it better?” (Yeah, I just admitted to being in the marching band, I’m cool with it). What the F*ck was I doing there? What was I doing with some American Psycho wannabe? Why wasn’t I ordering brunch and watching TV with the guy who actually cared about my well-being? Why wasn’t I with the guy who apologized to me for not getting out of my apartment fast enough for me to go to work when in fact I was going to have sex with one of my bosses? This was wrong on so many levels.
I got dressed and got the hell out of John’s apartment. I spent the rest of the weekend looking for a new job. Thank God this was pre-recession. I found one relatively easily and was able to start in the next month. I stopped answering John’s booty calls. I broke up with Tom. He deserved better. I focused all my attention on kicking butt at my new job.
Months passed and the recession hit. I had heard that there were layoffs at my old bank. I decided to extend the friendship olive branch and called John to make sure he had survived the layoffs. He hadn’t, but he assured me it was for the best. He needed some time off, and, as seems to be a trend with laid off bankers and the women who loved them, he defected to South America for a few months.
I’ve learned from reading this blog that there are only two possible ways to make a relationship with an alpha male New York banker type work. You can be perpetually unattainable, which will appeal to the competitive side of him that wants to pursue or one of you has to move out of the city to bring some sanity into the relationship. The latter prevailed in my case.
John called me when he returned from his 3 month sojourn to South America. He asked if I wanted to get together. I suggested dinner thinking this would give me an opportunity to rub into his face the fact that I was still employed by offering to pay for dinner for the first time ever since we had met. We went to dinner. I ordered a vodka on the rocks. He ordered a green tea. He was tan, relaxed, up to date on eastern religion and philosophy. He was done with the uber competitive world of banking. He wanted to try to make things work with me. Family was what mattered. How could he not have realized this before…
I took stock of the new John. His schedule was normal, his outlook balanced, and my interest in him was now non-existent. In the words the great philosopher Chris Rock contemplating whether it is better to be married and bored or single and lonely, “ain’t no happiness nowhere.”
“Sally’s Story” as retold by the DABA Girls
