The ex-factor

And when you said I could not stay with you

That’s not the way you would have wanted it to be.

Convince yourself that everything is all right,

‘Cause it already is. — For Nancy by Pete Yorn

I press my cheek against the Plexiglass window and try to make out the clouds in the pitch-black sky. The icy winter air seeps into my skin, silently declaring the first days of December. A flight attendant announces our final descent towards Detroit and I can feel the cold rush all the way from my face to my insides and wrap itself around my heart. That’s why I’m landing in Detroit, then driving out to the middle of East-Jesus-Nowhere Ohio, to resolve a matter of the heart.

I take a deep breath and snap on my seatbelt buckle with the enthusiasm of an inmate hearing “Dead man walking!” as he trudges to his cell. The plane quickly approaches the runway and I can make out the snow. I know it’s probably day-old slush but it looks so pristine from up here, quite like the fresh-fallen snow on that Alpine morning, four years ago.

That was the last time I saw him. He was getting on a train to Zurich so he could fly home to America after coming to Switzerland to spend two weeks with me. I stood there in the bone-chilling cold, thankful that my tears were too frozen to fall from my eyes. It’s been four years since that farewell and now that we’re finally in the same country, I’m flying to see him on the premise that we can be friends. I haven’t even landed yet and I ask myself if this is where I want to be.

After an extensive period of not speaking to each other, we started e-mailing again. Three months into our correspondence, we decided to play the catch-up game in person. I feel the fists of doubt pounding in protest against the pit of my stomach and wonder if I’ve made a terrible mistake. I am going to spend three whole days with someone who once was an inalienable part of my life and to whom I gave a significant chunk of my heart. After everything that’s happened and all the time we’ve spent apart, is it truly possible for us to be friends? I ask myself, when it comes to exes, are relationships ever really over?

Once My Lover, Now My Friend

I was warned that attempting to place an ex in the friend zone would result in both parties becoming “as friendly as England and Germany between World Wars I and II,” according to a friend of mine in his early-40s, partner and chief creative director at a notable advertising agency. A married friend of mine and mother of six, also in her early-forties was in total agreement. “I think it’s important for people to move on from the past and change for the better,” she said, “So unless you have children together, there’s really no point in staying friends with your ex.”

“He just wants to sleep with you,” said one of my closest guy friends when I asked for his two cents on my situation. This friend of mine had recently broken up with his girlfriend of two years. When I asked if he wanted to stay friends with her, he replied, “Oh, we’re good friends right now.” He asserted this by adding they were planning on taking a trip out of town, probably to the beach. When I asked if that was a good idea, my friend replied, “Yeah, it’ll be fun. I’m actually just trying to sleep with her.”

“Mutual ground can make friendship possible with an ex,” my Canadian friend told me. “Either you both lose all interest in romance and learn to value each other as friends, or you both have a remaining curiosity for what could have been and don’t want to let go of that possibility.”

“You can be friends with an ex if you give it time,” my gay best friend told me when I called him in New York, desperate for some positive advice. “After all, a relationship is a friendship with someone who knows you on a completely different and unique level.” It was his birthday that day and I was shocked to discover that all our friends in Manhattan had bailed on him to attend to prior engagements. He ended up spending his birthday with his ex.

Chasing the Ghost of a Good Thing

All this advice runs through my head like a bullet train on a circular track as I disembark from the plane. I amble towards the arrivals lounge and he’s standing there, waiting for me. We hug like two people who have never hurt each other before. We talk like old friends throughout the hour-long drive from Detroit to Perrysburg. Much has happened since we last saw each other. We try to turn the last four years of our lives into comprehensible conversation, but nevertheless I’m absolutely exhausted when we arrive at his apartment.

I pull my pajamas and toiletry kit out of my trolley bag to get ready for bed. His is, by far, the cleanest bathroom I have ever seen in a guy’s apartment. I turn on the faucet and let the hot water run till it starts to steam. The mirror begins to fog up and I wipe it with one of the freshly laundered towels he’s set aside for me. I don’t recognize the face staring back at me. She looks like someone I used to be.

I switch the lights off, hop into bed and try to bury myself as deep as I possibly can beneath the sheets. I know the heat’s on but the room feels glacial. After the longest 20 minutes of my life, he crawls into bed. He’s so close I can hear him breathing, but the tension from all the things we never said makes it feel like we’re on two separate planets.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, finally breaking the silence. I try to turn and look at him but I can’t. Instead, I flip over on my back and direct my eyes to the ceiling, as if staring at it hard enough, in that pitch-black bedroom of awkwardness, will teleport me somewhere else. Anywhere but here.

“I can’t sleep with you,” I finally say, and turn to look him in the eyes. They look like they’re gray. I remember them being blue. “We have a history,” I tell him. “A pretty rocky one. Why do you want to go back there?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I know we said we’d be friends, and after everything that’s happened I told myself I would never feel anything like that for you again. I have no idea why… but I still like you. More than just a friend.”

The dull pounding in my stomach now reverberates through my entire body and I try desperately to weave an elaborate excuse in my head as to why we can’t transition out of the friend zone and back to being lovers. I could tell him I have a terminal illness. Or that I’m gay now. Maybe he’ll believe me if I tell him I’m actually engaged to the heir of a shipping empire. I think through a long list of lies for what seems like an eternity and I realize that none of them will do. I have to be honest about my feelings, a trait that probably would have kept us together longer, if I’d had it back then. Perhaps telling the truth now, no matter how painful, will give this half-hearted, post-break-up relationship a shot at becoming an actual friendship — what we originally intended.

“I can’t be more than friends with you,” I tell him, choosing my words deliberately. “I’m not emotionally ready to be in a romantic relationship. If we sleep together now, that’s what this will become. And we both know nothing good can come from that. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this stuff.”

I try to turn away, but he puts his arm around me. “Yes, you are cut out for this stuff,” he tells me. “I have faith that you’ll find someone who makes you happy. Maybe not me, but I know that person’s out there for you.”

I let him hold me close, in that clumsy embrace. His arm feels awkward wrapped around me like that, but I finally feel warm for the first time in 24 hours. We lie there together, braving the winter air that lingers in his apartment. Where do we go from here? I really don’t know. I close my eyes and despite that persistent knot in my stomach, sleep comes easily. I welcome it with the warmth and drift off, taking comfort in the fact that, like that wretched snow outside, whatever it is between my ex and I will melt away, eventually.

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Wisdom and wisecracks are always welcome at whippersnappergirl@hotmail.com.