Chapter 8: The Server

The Dating Chronicles: Adelaide edition

It wasn’t supposed to happen, but I made it. I forced myself into what I believed to be the centre however it was merely the periphery. I could have left it alone, tipping a figurative hat toward my desire as I stepped around it, but I didn’t. greed, lust, fantasy – deprivation had left me in a state of yearning, and so I took.

What is the difference between a hungry man, and a starving woman?
only one turns into a monster.

I can still remember the first time I saw him, is that strange to admit? I was twenty-three and working in a cocktail bar by the beach with seasonal patronage. Summers meant tightly packed bodies and repetitious airs of steam from the dishwasher and excessive shaking of tins over and again. Evenings would pass by at lightning speed – the only obvious marker of time moving was the sky’s substitution of the sun for the stars. They say blink and you’ll miss it, and we so often did. Making up for the feeling of having lost time, I’d often find myself loitering in the bar past closing with my colleagues, remnants of wine being passed between us as we expressed the same sentiment from the night before: “that was fucked”.
It was during one of these post-work midnight exchanges that I first encountered him. He worked in the restaurant downstairs with the chef as a server, but given my relatively new employment status, I hadn’t yet met him, let alone decidedly put him on my radar. What is it that Joan Didion said? Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it changes. When I think back to that moment, I fail to recall conversation between us as we sat amongst the small group in the closed bar. Instead, I remember his white linen shirt, how it looked slightly snug on his six-foot four frame. I remember his curly, loose tendrils, how he would occasionally push them back off of his face as he spoke. And I remember his smile – I remember driving home that night thinking about his crooked teeth and how I really didn’t mind them. That was the night that a small seed was planted, by way of the universe, or by way of myself – I still can’t really answer that. Had I not forced the hand, perhaps there would be no story at all, and without the story, perhaps there would be no cosmic lessons.

It didn’t take long for a friendship, or something relative to friendship to be instigated between us. Lunch breaks acted as a soft launch pad, but the midnight coups when he was present begun to act as an adhesive between us. I’d often find myself sat beside him or across from him on these evenings, as though there was something drawing me toward him that was impossible to resist. Maybe it was as simple as a lack of self-restraint, a foreboding crush that I couldn’t quite admit to myself out of a small fear that I would later be rejected. He was seven years my senior, twice my size in stature, and carried himself with an undeniable air of confidence. It was difficult not to be enamoured, but it felt safer to dance on the edges, pocketing the moments of shared glances and flirtatious jabs only to further inspect them later in the privacy of my room. Spreading the previous instants out in my head like a tiny mirage where my memories could offer evidence that he felt something too. Despite how it may seem, I’ve always found it difficult to take a leap of faith without the assurance of knowing that someone will meet me at the bottom. But faith isn’t contingent on assurance – I have almost always largely acted on proof.

A small handful of weeks passed, and we continued to develop our friendship in the comfort of our respective venues, often exchanging conversation in the company of our colleagues. We were seldom alone, but the lack of privacy did little to mitigate the feelings of tension that were developing. Gazes were held a fraction too long, thighs were brushed up against under tables in the dark, and wherever I moved in the bar, I could feel his eyes following me. It was these small seemingly inconsequential gestures that sent jolts of electricity through my body. I didn’t see the harm in my acts of appearing available to him, in leaning into the playful game of cat and mouse that we had knowingly and quietly begun participating in. It was not for an inferior lack of foresight, but because there was nothing that hinted toward her existence – until he turned up in the bar during lunch with an unfamiliar redhead by his side. He introduced her to me as his girlfriend and I shook her hand as if pretending she wasn’t real might make it suddenly true. Where had she appeared from, and why were there no whispers of her presence from the mouths of him or anybody else? I questioned our mutual colleagues in an effort to yield insight, but their half-formed impressions of his indifference toward the relationship offered little more than two certainties: their relationship was long-distance, and he appeared completely unattached.
A week later she had returned home to Melbourne and the former nature of our relationship quickly resumed. Our work venues feeling like insular playgrounds in that we were free to roam one another’s territories and indulge in behaviour we knew was inappropriate, but we hadn’t yet crossed a physical boundary. Until I had one too many post-work drinks and grew anxious at the prospect of my forty-five-minute commute home. I asked to stay at his and he offered to make me up a bed on his couch, but I never made it into the living room.
In the morning, I’d expected to wake in his bed in a sea of shame, reprimanding myself for willingly becoming what I’d always vowed to never be: the other woman. I wanted to want to wipe my hands clean, to reserve what dignity I had left, but I couldn’t let it alone. Too consumed by both my unrelenting crush, and a deluded mentality that whatever the cause of his unattached nature, I could fix it. We had coffee and eggs for breakfast, and it became alarmingly easy to blur the edges of her from my mind, to resolutely decide that she simply did not exist because he wouldn’t acknowledge their relationship.
I sought the council of those close to me for advice on how to proceed, waiting to be admonished, to be at the mercy of that which was swarming in my head that I was quickly supressing – to be told that I was behaving like a bad person! and more importantly, a bad woman! But no such thing occurred, instead a similar warning prevailed amongst my friends, with the diligent sentiment of ‘be careful Tori’ echoing time and time again. It grew difficult to chastise myself for confusing my personal ethics when with each person I divulged the truth to, nobody slapped me on the wrist. Why were my bad deeds continuing to go unpunished? Was I a masochist, or was I simply juvenile?
And so continued our torrid affair. We began to spend countless nights together, relinquishing ourselves to each other over again in consistent moments of weakness. It didn’t help that we worked closely together, that we lived approximately 900m away from one another (proximity has often acted as a form of smoke and mirrors for me when it comes to men). If he would call, I would answer. If I were to text, he would be at my house within minutes. Was it purely about sex? If you were a fly on the wall watching clothes snatched hungrily from bodies, it would be easy to assume, yes. And I think it was, at least in the beginning; ours was an intense sexual chemistry, one that I can admit I haven’t experienced since.

As the weeks passed, I found myself worshipping the very ground that he walked on. The way he laid out the table for breakfast with quiet intention, the antique hanger in his room holding tomorrow’s white linen shirt, his effortless taste for refinement without overindulging – all of it drew me in because I understood that none of it was meant for me. My trained eye was looking for clues, a tell-tale sign of a character drenched in infidelity, a person I could poke holes in, but all I saw was a man: seven years my senior, twice my size in stature, with crooked teeth that I really didn’t mind.
Suddenly, I blinked, and I had missed it, the chance to stop it before it went too far, the moment where I came to my senses and leapt in backward strides away from him. Months had disappeared in the space we had created, and our dynamic had inherently shifted. I was in it – so far in, I was drowning in him, in us. Neck-deep in the mess, surpassing the precipice of casual and falling blindly into the place of no return. What began as a hungry, reckless error in both judgement and morality had twisted into something heavier, something real. As though he’d crawled under my skin and had decided to stay, to undo me.
We continued like this for some time. Late night finishes at work followed by quick phone calls and headlights in driveways. Living rooms and bedrooms that turned into private sanctuaries where she didn’t exist. Evenings trickled into the early hours of the morning and with each passing hour I would not think about her. I was there. On his couch, in his sheets, my hands finding his chest, my head searching for his shoulder. I was there. At the table for breakfast, my hands wrapped around his mug, my audible footsteps in his kitchen. As long as I was there, she did not exist.
After three months together, I’d stopped searching for signs. He didn’t love her – the question that had previously sat idle on my tongue finally emerged as a whisper one evening on the couch. Relief washed over my body. I didn’t ask when he would end it, despite his response I couldn’t find the courage. I clung to his answer as proof, of us, of our future, of a love within reach.
I don’t remember the exact timeline, maybe it was days, or weeks from that moment, but I remember the self-inflicted whiplash. The fantasy rug that I’d permitted myself to create being ripped out from underneath me. “She’s moving to Adelaide in three months” he said one morning after breakfast. I thought I was going to be sick.
“How? When? Why?” in my desperate need to understand I had found my source of courage I’d failed to summon earlier. “For work” he said – a lie. I gathered my belongings and drove home knowing that the distance would not last.
I didn’t immediately ask when he would end it. The question hung unspoken, but unnecessary. We both understood: her arrival marked the beginning of my disappearing. She would be there – borrowing hours from tomorrow in his living room, his bed, her footsteps echoing through his kitchen – whilst I sat 900m away, knowing he did not love her. If she was there, I did not exist.
It didn’t last long, avoiding the question I knew he couldn’t answer. And as the weeks continued to move at an uncomfortable speed, I began to take on a new shape with every meek “I don’t know” he uttered back at me.
I began losing sleep. A relentless rhetoric that ricocheted through my mind bouncing from, this isn’t fair, to, this is on me night after night. But there was no gun to my head, no weight of an ultimatum hanging heavily from my body. I knew leaving was an option, I just wouldn’t take it. My future was subject to the promise land that he’d never promised.
But time was of the essence; three months had dwindled to one and it felt like we were playing the adult version of tug of war with each other. The push and pull, the give and take, the dance couples do when they fail to find the words. We fought like one, fucked like one, made up like one. He would pour oil from a jar of goat cheese into the avocado I’d smashed, and I would say, “but I don’t like goat cheese”, and he would say “you can’t even taste it” and I would say, “yes I can, now I can’t eat this”. But when all was said and done, we weren’t a couple – we were two people suffocating in a mess at our own hands because we were terrified to be honest, to be alone. I would ice him out just as quickly as I would yearn for him, going days without speaking after more demands of when, only to slip back into him when he responded soon. But the clock was ticking and I was conjuring an image of a faceless woman with red hair and packing boxes. I hated him. I wanted to scream and spit and threaten him until I did. I hated myself. In the days leading up to her arrival I went to work early and pointed, sniffing him out like a hunting dog until I found him on a bench outside. “If you don’t tell her before she gets here, you better believe that I will. Do not make me this person, this is not who I am”. But I wouldn’t tell her. I was not after all, that kind of person.
After that moment we had mutually drawn a line in the sand between one another. I wanted nothing to do with him until I had proof of finality, whilst he was making a last-ditch effort at attempting to have any moral footing, as though our previous months together could be swiftly swept from his conscience in a matter of days.
The following week he drove to Melbourne to pick her up. They took the Great Ocean Road back to Adelaide. “It’s a beautiful drive”, he messaged me. I don’t know why he told me that. I remembered then, my sister telling me years prior about her own drive along the Great Ocean Road with her now husband, how they’d fucked up against the car and I wondered if he had done the same with her. I imagined him bending her over the bonnet, her red hair blowing wildly in the wind that I’d conjured in my tortured imagination.

The four days that it took for them to complete the trip saw me become completely untethered. Had he told her? Had they made it back? Would she see the move through if she knew? I couldn’t think about anything else. I picked my phone up as quickly and as frequently as I slammed it back down on my bed. Hiding it under my pillow as though if I pretended that I didn’t care, the universe would soon reward me with any version of a response. I felt like a child who leaves their bedroom only to run back in seconds later attempting to catch their favourite stuffed toy in a different position. I was growing small and unbecoming, and time had become tortuous and unmoving as I spiralled in my room waiting for a message that I wasn’t sure was going to appear.
Despite all doubt, it arrived two days later. It was the morning of his 30^th birthday. “It’s done” he said. “What happened?” I asked, I couldn’t help myself. “I couldn’t get hard for her. She knew something was wrong. I told her everything”. “I’m here whenever you need me” I responded as though I was nothing more than an innocent bystander.

It’s a bizarre concept, to comfort a man you’re denying to yourself that you love as he processes the tumult of his actions involving another woman. But over the months he had become my closest friend and confidante, and so that’s what I did. I offered space where I felt it should have been given, and myself in the moments where I suspected the contrary. I was willingly operating as a human feeding board – sex, support, conversation – take what you want as you please. Waiting again with bated breath for him to tell me everything I’d been waiting to hear; I choose you, I see you, I love you. But my optimism was characteristically flawed, and instead he told me he couldn’t be in a relationship (yet).
It became another round of tug of war, of pushing and pulling, of trying to stay away from each other and failing miserably at it. I’d been operating as his faux girlfriend for six months and it was easy then, at twenty-three, to convince myself that I could sacrifice more of my time for the prospect of a future that I was perpetually uncertain of. And so, I leant once more into the breakfasts and long mornings, the charged energy that never dissipated, the conversations that stretched into the early hours. Because I believed that we could make it.
Several more months passed like this. Together, but apart. Intrinsically linked but with an undeniable degree of separation that was his commitment to me. It wasn’t a secret, it never was. Our lives were tethered by means of lust, weak attempts at romance, and the hospitality industry. Our colleagues would look at me with pity and tell me I deserved more, and I would say nothing, because how could they possibly understand? That despite everything I was falling for him, that ours was a connection that I hadn’t come close to since I was nineteen. He sees me, I wanted to wail at them as I shook their shoulders until they recognised in me the severity of my longing. I disregarded their concerns and continued to hedge my bets on time; believing that it would be the aid that would facilitate our union, that it was all merely a test of patience, of faith, of perseverance. Just a fraction longer I would repeatedly tell myself as I made the two-minute commute to his house from my own. Until an intuitive knowing forced my hand.
I remember it in fragments. The pit in my stomach that I couldn’t locate a source for, the subsequent and internal questioning of what he’d said, and how he’d said it without having any legitimate reason to be suspicious. Was something amiss, or had I finally hit the impending constraint of my patience? My gut was sounding the familiar alarm bells, and in his bathroom, I finally listened. “Are you okay in there?” he called out to me from the living room, my eyes glued to his phone sitting on the basin playing music. “Yep. All good, be out in a minute” I responded, my heart drumming in my chest, my gaze unmoving. I knew before I really knew, before I had tangible proof, because my body told me so. Because just days before at work, I’d witnessed a shared glance that I recognised, but had just as quickly put it to bed. Denial is a fickle thing, but the body never lies. I understood in that moment that our demise was inches away from my hand, I could feel it. Torn between loyalties I hesitated – what story would be told of me in my act of unfurling the truth, could I be further villainised, and in whose eyes? What is a betrayal of trust to him, to his privacy, if it means a truth that I would never have been privy to at the throat of his own? In my mind it wasn’t a matter of taking a risk, it was a matter of self-preservation. I lurched at his phone before unlocking it and reached for the name of a woman he worked with in his messages. “When can I come over?” she had asked two nights prior. The same night he had told me he needed a night to himself. “Whenever you want” he’d responded. I saw red, everywhere. My hands shook as the heat quickly rose in my cheeks. I was a half-woman, half-beast entity as I emerged from the bathroom slamming the door open in my man hunt. I didn’t scream initially. Instead, I taunted, viciously questioning him, his phone still gripped in my hand as I backed him into his bedroom on the other side of the house. One question for every march forward. I felt like I was made of steel – I wanted to crush him, to reprimand him, to watch his six-foot four stature weaken and shrink at the hands of his own undoing. I stood screaming every version of HOW COULD YOU? at him from the opposite side of the bed until the words reverberated off of the walls and smacked me in the chest. I had nothing left in me – he had taken it all.
Was I standing in the same place that she had? Did she scream too? My bad deeds hadn’t gone unpunished, my punitive measures were standing right in front of me.

I stopped speaking to him, and instead found any opportunity to slander his name to anybody that would listen. I felt weak and deflated where I wanted to feel rage. But more than that, I wanted the last nine months of my life back, to turn back the clock, to locate a version of myself in a time warp that I couldn’t reach and tell myself, please, please, please don’t do it. Work wasn’t an escape either. It felt like a form of mild torture knowing that he was just metres away from me, that I couldn’t speak to him, that I couldn’t undo what he had done. I wanted to hate him, to act in childish ways to spite him, but a love undeclared and a love lost does not equate to a love suddenly gone.

Despite the proximity, I was resolute – I would never speak to him again. In my mind our territories were mapped, and I trusted that our mutual shame would refrain us from crossing into one another’s for any reason. I had nothing left to give, and I surmised that he had nothing left to take from me.

Two weeks passed, and I missed him as fiercely as I resented him. My evenings once more spent inspecting my memories of us with a fine-tooth comb, only to come up short. My mirages offering little more than grievances, hurt, regret. We hadn’t spoken. It was the longest silence between us since we’d met.
Then, late one night at work, my phone buzzed with a message from my roommate: someone was in the house. The panic in her words was immediate. I showed the message to my manager – he knew her – and without hesitation, he told me to go and check on things.
When I arrived home, I couldn’t find her anywhere, despite my repetitive laps of rooms in the house and the backyard, despite my calling out her name over and again. I began to feel unsettled, unsafe. Until suddenly she appeared standing before the front door in total silence, a smirk stretched across her face. “Hey!” I called out, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, are you okay?” She didn’t respond. “Lucy?.. Lucyyyy? Are you good?”. “They’re here for you” she told me, “they want you”. Absolutely-fucking-not-no-way. She threw her head back and cackled and I felt like I was in a waking nightmare. Don’t show fear, I told myself as I made small strides towards her. “Hey” I offered, “maybe let’s step out of the house for a moment, yeah?” She said nothing, but kept her eyes locked on mine as I broached the distance between us toward the front door. “Okayyy” I said weakly as I opened the door and stepped on the other side of it, “come on, let’s get out of here”. She cackled again before slamming the door in my face and locking it. I took a few small steps back in disbelief before beginning to run to his house. It was fear as much it was instinct. I was petrified, and in that moment, I needed him. I called and after two rings, he picked up.
By the time I’d arrived out of breath, he had already backed his car onto the road. “What is going on?” he asked. “I really don’t know, but I just really need your help with this right now”.
When we arrived at my house the front door opened with ease, and we looked at each other with uncertainty not knowing what we were walking into. I stood behind him like a scared child – was she going to jump out with a knife? would I find her hanging from the ceiling waiting to pounce, exorcist style? There was a sense of calm that I found in his presence, but I hated that I recognised the comfort in having him there beside me.
We found her in the kitchen, her stature identical to what I’d witnessed before she locked me out. Cold, unmoving, and terrifying. The same smirk that I’d witnessed moments before still spread across her face. It took the both of us, and countless attempts, but eventually we persuaded her to leave the premises. Where after several alarming statements surrounding who and what entity apparently wanted me, she seemed to return to herself. “I’m not staying in this demon house tonight. Can we stay at yours?” she asked him out the front of our house. I looked at him, to her, and then to the ground. I didn’t particularly want to be with either of them, I still couldn’t fathom what had just occurred, but I certainly wasn’t going to stay in the house that had apparently possessed my roommate. “Yeah, of course, that’s fine” he responded before looking at me as if to say, “are you ok with that?”. I couldn’t meet his eye.
Despite the unnerving circumstances, there was a level of security and familiarity in having him in my home again, in having him by my side. Fear had erased my composure as a forthright woman who had cursed him just weeks prior. I didn’t trust myself around him, but nonetheless, I got into his car.
It played out before me exactly as I knew it would. Lucy took the couch, he didn’t have a spare bed, and before I knew it, I was leaning into him beyond a figurative sense of the meaning. I could’ve refrained, playing the scenes and pain over again in my body, in my mind, but it was another moment of weakness, as it had been so many occasions before. He had grown to feel like a part of me, as though we were tethered. I’d considered myself as having a forgiving disposition, but in all honesty, I’d found a home in him despite the circumstances – I wasn’t ready to let him go.

Three more months passed. In that time, he vowed to have nothing to do with the other woman at his workplace. Claiming that he was revolted by her, and I accepted this as a form of repentance. As though she were a reminder of his misdeeds, his wrongdoings, his failing to respect my personhood. He sent me songs, made himself increasingly available to me, gifted me a book on chronic pain, helped my move into my new house, stopped pouring goat cheese oil into the smashed avocado and rubbed my back as I threw up in bed during endo flares. Despite all of the faults, and all of the flaws, we had finally landed in the promised land. The fantasy that was perpetually just out of reach for me was suddenly in the palm of my hands. He was there. It was real. I thought it was what I wanted, that it looked exactly as I had imagined. But there was an irrefutable undercurrent to all of our shared experiences. Had I forgiven him? I certainly hadn’t forgotten.

September brought with it my 24^th birthday, and to mark the occasion I had arranged for a lavish lunch at Oggi. The people that I loved the most were spread out before me on a table that reached from one end of the room to the other. I was in my element. Spreading myself thin between the sea of people, chair hopping as I indulged in conversation and various plates of pasta.
“Can I talk to you?” he whispered to me an hour into the afternoon. “Yeah, of course” I said, “what’s up?”. “Um, I can’t pay for my lunch today” he said. “I’m so sorry, do you mind covering me? I know it’s your birthday, but I promise I’ll take you out for breakfast and make it up to you”. “Yep” I responded curtly, “fine”. I was seething. Not just because his financial circumstances were affecting me on my birthday, but because of what it represented. On a day that was supposed to feel full, generous, and easy, he had not only rocked up empty handed, but had also asked me to pay for his food and copious cocktails. I found myself again, stepping in, smoothing over, holding things up – while he simply asked and assumed. I returned to the remainder of my guests with a forced smile and picked up my wine, hoping that it would dull the edge of the moment. It didn’t.

The following week, he took me out to breakfast as promised. Picking me up with an enormous arrangement of hand-picked natives, proudly telling me how he’d foraged them himself. It was an act that he had mentioned in passing during our time together – a romantic gesture that I’d quietly clung to. But in the moment, it landed hollow, stripped of the meaning I’d previously believed it would carry.
It was a nice morning together, but the aforementioned undercurrent was cutting through the air like a knife. As though we were playing pretend. As though everything that I had seemingly forgiven was manifesting in a passive rage toward him. We finished our breakfast, asked for the bill, and when he’d offered up his card, our waitress returned to the table shortly afterward to let us know that it had been declined. He looked at me like a small, embarrassed boy. “I’m so sorry” he started, “I promise I’ll get you back for lunch and for today”. “Mmm, all good” I responded, passing my card over to the waitress. Happy birthday to me, I guess.
I went to the bathroom before we left, the weight of my body dramatically leaning into the basin as I exhaled before meeting my eyes in the mirror. What are you doing? I asked myself before entering the carpark to meet him.
He tried in vain, to make conversation that was a formidable distance from what we’d just experienced, to where he was pretending that we were. I couldn’t do it. I saw my future with him, with a person I could now poke holes in, a person who I remembered had betrayed me, a person who seemingly could not stand on their own two feet and suddenly I didn’t want it. “Can you please pull the car over?” I asked him. “Yeah, sure, what’s going on?” he asked. “I can’t do this. You, me, us, I can’t do it.” I said. “But…I love you” he responded. The words I had been waiting for months to hear. It was too late. “No. You don’t” I said, “can you please take me home?”. We drove the remaining thirty minutes in silence. I don’t remember getting out of the car. I don’t remember leaving him.

There’s a power in being seen, really seen. Power in the way that veils disintegrate, walls collapse, voices carry with confidence in knowing that they are heard, and a particular breed of personhood evolves – a person of authenticity that comes to the surface when you are with them. When I spoke, he listened, he lifted corners, looked underneath, asking, where did that come from? I never shied away from showing him the parts that nobody had dared to look at, lest acknowledge in years. I would beckon him in that year, as if to say, come closer, if you lean in you will learn, do you hear that, do you see that? I came undone around him. All mess and no mask. I didn’t want to give that up, the experience of coming apart gently at the seams in front of a person who accepted every facet of me. A person who at the same time, was slowly unravelling themselves before me as though we had given each other permission to release, to breathe, to be. Though I would never admit it to myself until writing this, I loved him. I loved who I could become around him. That I was never deemed faulty, too much, too wanting despite everything. That I could be what others might’ve deemed excessive, too loud, too emotional, too wounded. We didn’t carry the same hurt, but I know we recognised it in each other. There was a certain freedom in that knowing, where we sustained a private world that abstained from judgement because of it. All mess and no mask. Friends asked me why I wouldn’t leave him. Seven years ago, I didn’t have the words. I do now.

How do you convince others, in failing to produce reason that a person was worth the risk? Sometimes you can’t. I left a path of destruction in my wake for somebody that chose me too late.