When Men Need Mothers

I met Brett through a wet, drunken kiss at a party where he leaned in without apology or explanation.  Then I met his giant head in my hands the night I asked him to be my euchre partner at a bar tournament.  We lost and ended up entangled on my couch.  I hadn’t realized how giant he was before then – his head, his hands, his voice, his feet.

            He drags his giant feet when he walks like he didn’t get enough sleep.  I know when he arrives at the coffee shop in our college library without looking up from my book.  This allows me to ignore him, or at least pretend to ignore him as he talks to everyone he can find except me.  I don’t mind though, because I can finally focus for a moment.  I know where he is and I don’t have to look up from my book to see his six foot stature, dressed in a light colored button up with his brown, leather brief case hanging off his shoulder and a cigarette tucked behind his ear.  He dressed to be approachable, not sexy or mysterious.  I would work in the coffee shop as he found someone to smoke his cigarette with because my mind could rest when he was around.

            Brett and I connected through our alcohol consumption over the summer.  He is best at playing to the cinematic – slightly romantic, mostly horny – party boy.  My competitive nature fueled his here-to-have-a-good-time attitude when it came to drinking.  I could beat him at drinking games like beer pong and flip cup, pick out a playlist on my phone to dance on a table to, and shotgun beers to my hearts content. 

            This connection and our competition with each other transformed over time, which fueled our light romance.  We raced to complete the Monday New York Times crossword puzzles, compared the number of votes for our spots in the student organization we both participate in  (I recently won by a landslide), and we would even argue about which friends would take our side in a fight.  It was childish, our relationship.  The two of us would compete over anything, but it was fun and I wanted it to keep going.

            Our campus was small enough that I could keep track of him without texting him.  We would go to the same parties and events.  When we would get drunk, sometimes I would let him kiss me up against a car or a basement wall and sometimes I’d let him come home with me to sleep in my big soft, off campus bed as opposed to his twin bed in the dorms. 

            He showed up at a campus party at my house halfway though the fall.  He was already very drunk at this point and wasn’t in any state to play drinking games with me.  When he cornered me in the narrow hallway on the first floor he kissed me and asked to go upstairs.  It seemed like he needed a bed more than anything else.  I put him in bed with the intention to spend another hour downstairs and to climb in bed with him later.  Without him at the flip cup table my team won easily.  Even without the competition I still had carefree fun because I knew where he was.  I felt like we were a play family.  I could return to him when I got sleepy.  He was up stairs waiting for me. 

            When people started to leave my house and the party was slowing down, I snuck upstairs.  He was out cold.  I had to push him over to climb in bed.  It’s my bed make room, I thought as I pulled the comforter away from him and closed my eyes.  Just as I was drifting off thinking about my play family and our possible future I heard the squirting of the keg tap.  No, I felt it.  No, Brett was peeing in my bed.  It hit my arm and I sprang out of bed, shocked.  I grabbed a change of cloths and ran down the stairs and into the bathroom.  When the bar of soap helped me reclaim my skin I crept into my housemates room on the first floor.  I lay in her bed and tried to stop thinking about Brett wrapped in my urine soaked comforter, still sound asleep.  I was directly beneath Brett and the piss, one floor below.  It seemed like I was habitually under Brett, under his control, under this spell his cast on me to take care of him.  He was powerful, moving me physically and emotionally, even if I still won our flip cup games.  Now one floor beneath him, I began to ask myself the same questions I would continue to ask for months: Am I the woman that allows a man to urinate on me?

            He left in the morning before I saw him.  As I stripped my bed, down comforter, Tempur-Pedic pillow, mattress pad, I was disgusted and embarrassed.  My first concern was reclaiming my most comfortable belongings as I did with my skin the night before.  A close second concern was Brett’s potential humiliation.  He didn’t pee in my bed on purpose.

            Later in the school year, Brett would drunkenly tell my friend Sasha, that I remind him of his mother.  Brett would sleep with another one of my friends and tell me, “It’s not like I was thinking about you when I did it.”  I would take him to Hobby Lobby, a craft store to buy art supplies for a creative portion to one of my many job applications but also to have a serious conversation about the importance of apologies, reconciliation and forgiveness in relationships.  He would tell me that he loves me three times in one night and I would tell him that I only had sex with him that one time because he told me he wanted to be exclusive.

            Looking back I realized that the urine incident was when I suddenly became Brett’s mother, protecting his pride, defending the fault in his decision and laundering his urine soaked sheets.  I was attracted to his childlike, carefree nature but I was also cleaning up after it.  I never confronted Brett about the urine because I didn’t want to decide what role I would ultimately play in his life.  If I was understanding about the pee, I would claim my perpetual motherhood.  If I teased him, I would be confined to childhood.

            Brett is not the first romance in my life where I have been faced with these options: the child or the mother.  From my limited experience with serious relationships, my understanding is that the modern women is forced to act as both of these characters to a varying degree in order to keep up with the modern man, one resisting responsibilities.  It is assumed that a woman will navigate the carefree/caregiver personality solo and the back and forth between the two roles is innate rather than learned.  I didn’t confront Brett about the urine, which made me feel like a “little bitch,” as a close, male friend once called me.  Although I might be the female dog, Brett was the male.  He peed on my like a dog pees on public property to claim me as his own, making me navigate between his friend, his lover, his mother and his fire hydrant.