The girl with the double life

This is my 100th post.

I know you. I know you’re reading this and thinking, Where is the poignant narrative of epic beauty? Where is the party at Burger King? Where is the Cookie Puss ice cream cake? Friends, it turns out that all I could come up with was this - a post about secrets. A post about a girl with a double life.

Let’s start this post at a little French restaurant in Soho, where Nicole, my girlhood friend, and I are having dinner. We are drinking wine, eating steak, and talking about Fauxhawk.

“You have to tell him,” she says.

This is the sage advice I am afraid of – what I dread hearing most. The delightful Barbara, who is also very sage, is in agreement, but separately. “It’s just a matter of time before he finds out,” she says one night. “And when he does, he may not be happy about it.”

They are talking about my dirty little secret. They are talking about the blog. And they are talking about Fauxhawk, who - like most people in my life – is unaware of its existence.

Let’s go back for a moment to February. Fauxhawk and I have broken up for the third and last time. I am slogging through a job I find uncreative and unfulfilling. I am baffled and heartbroken, writing forlorn messages on Craigslist’s Missed Connections in a pathetic attempt to cure myself by sending all of my thwarted love and passion into the ethers. To my surprise, complete strangers take an interest and respond. I’m sorry, they say. This happened to me too. Everything will be okay. I am struck by this idea of an invisible community of sympathetic friends. For months, the idea percolates. I hem; I haw. Finally, Elly gives me the push and I start this little online diary.



The poor souls who have stuck with me since the beginning have followed the various twists and turns my life has taken since June:

- A brief and restorative relationship with the dear (and now pissed off at me) Kiwi.
- A trip to Ethiopia, where I met Blue Eyes, whose sense of possibility inspired me.
- A strange communication from Dermonster, who broke my heart in New York, London, Geneva, and everywhere in between.
- The reemergence of Fauxhawk after four months of silence, and all the turmoil and confusion that followed.

I’ve blathered on about commitment, individuality, autonomy and compromise – written posts about the pleasure and the trepidation that come from the contemplation of two lives aligning. Forever.

Leaving aside a few rare moments of gravity, this is – and always has been - a silly blog of no consequence. I like it that way. It’s a steadfast companion, an emotional outlet, a receptacle for love and passion and idiocy. It introduces me to interesting people who inspire and impress and challenge me. It takes me on exotic journeys. It makes me laugh. If it gave me backrubs and dealt with the recycling, I’d be a lot happier, but I love it unconditionally. I love it the way a mother loves a child with a huge, honking schnoz or a giant hairy nevus.

The only problem is that Fauxhawk doesn’t know I’m having a clandestine affair with a blog. This fact weighs on me and divides me in two. I want Fauxhawk to know the important parts of me. I want to be authentic with Fauxhawk and my parents and everyone else in my life who matters. I want everyone I love to see the place where I am truly myself. But if Fauxhawk reads this blog – if (GASP) – my family reads this blog - it will never be the same. It will never be the place I go to when I need to sort things out. It will be a different blog entirely.

I ask my shrink for advice. (Yes, I have a shrink. That surprises you, right? I knew it would). She looks at me, in her brilliant, insightful person way, and says, “Why do you have to tell him?”

I blink. Because he’ll find out. Because he might be hurt by what I’ve written - and possibly pissed - that I didn’t tell him first.

“Would you share your diary with him?”
I don’t keep a diary. Too paranoid that someone will find it.
“Would you feel okay about the blog if you knew he’d never find it?”
Mostly.

She asks me to explain. I tell her about the guilt, about the double life, about the desire to be myself with everyone in my life.

“If he had a blog, would you read it if you found it?”
I might, and I think it would only do harm to know his private thoughts.
“And does a relationship involve sharing all parts of your self? Is it okay to keep some things private?”
Okay to keep some things private, I say robotically.
“And does having something of your own mean that you are keeping secrets? Or leading a double life?”

I’m not sure. “Secret” has become a dirty, divisive word. It undermines the idea that couples must exist in an environment of full disclosure in which they share every thought, every desire. I was once tormented by a man’s need for full disclosure, and as a result, I am not its advocate. I’m not talking about lying - I’m talking about the prudence of keeping some of the half-baked/irrational/disloyal/hateful/wistful/ambivalent thoughts on the down-low until things get sorted. I’m talking about merging lives while preserving something that is purely one’s own. And not feeling guilty about it. But if this blog is where I am truly myself, how will anyone – including Fauxhawk - truly know me if I keep it a secret?

I am undecided. Come out from the shadows, dear readers, and tell me your thoughts. And participate in the new morality poll to your right.


Paintings by Jennifer Davis