LIFE

I Was A Love-Slave In The Caribbean

Chasing after a boy who couldn’t be caught

The year after I graduated college, I went on a cruise to the Caribbean with four of my friends from school. I still lived on campus, hanging around because I was desperately in love with one of those friends, Hector, and was convinced I could finagle my way into a relationship with him if only I worked at it hard enough.

When the cruise ship docked in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, the five of us searched for something to do.

“Let’s do the sky lift,” Hector said.

“No, it’s too expensive,” said my friend Dan. “All it does is go up this hill.”

But Hector wanted to do the sky lift, so I chimed in, “We should do it. It looks fun.”

I lived in constant anxiety of saying something wrong. Not agreeing with him, I reasoned, would make him discard me.

I was just a yes-man, a slave to my love.

Our friend Robert, who was also on the cruise and in the university pep band with us, had once shouted at Hector on a bus in front of the whole band.

“Erie’s your slave! She’s your slave!” he screamed. He snatched a textbook out of Hector’s hands, ripped out a chunk of the pages, and stomped to the front of the bus to throw it in the trash.

I was too in love to be embarrassed, too proud of my place sitting by Hector’s side.

“We should split up,” said Dan, gazing up at the sky lift. “You guys need some alone time.”

He had acknowledged our “relationship”! I was triumphant.

Hector was so wrong for me. He didn’t read — didn’t even like books! — while I in my youthful hubris wanted to be one of the greatest authors who ever lived.

“What’s the point of that?” Hector said. “You won’t be as famous as you want until after you’re dead. And then you won’t even know. So why do you care?”

I tried to explain that it was about the striving, the lifetime spent swimming in words, the achievement of immortality through my books. I was afraid of death and the blankness of not existing anymore.

But Hector wouldn’t hear it. He wouldn’t let me finish a full sentence sometimes, and made no effort to understand me.

“Why would you want to go to grad school?” he said. “You’ll have more student debt.”

Never mind that I got into grad school fully funded, and paid off my undergrad student loans after just a couple years. The economics of seeking knowledge was beside the point.

I didn’t understand him, either. For Hector, the world was external. Life was about people, friends, motion. As an introvert, I craved quiet contemplation and sitting motionless while I dreamed.

But oh, the wonderful nearness of him! The smell of the body wash he used was so intoxicating that when he gave me a shirt he didn’t want anymore, I kept it in my drawer at home and kept smelling it.

My attraction to him overwhelmed me. On campus, I had to be with him every minute. If we didn’t have plans, I suffered. He obliged me with daily suppers with our friends, and almost-daily lunches at Subway with just the two of us.

He was handsome, charismatic, and kind to everyone — a little too kind to females. I couldn’t bear it when he flirted with other girls. My jealousy shamed me, but I couldn’t outrun it. I couldn’t detach my love from the worst parts of myself.

I loved being in love with him. And I hated it.

It pained me to always be on tenterhooks, never knowing where I stood with him. One minute he was all mine, the next he was hinting that we had no future. He tortured me.

Yet I couldn’t let go. I had to keep chasing.

To my great confusion, Hector would let me hug him and take pictures of the two of us together like we were a romantic couple. On the cruise, he led me alone to buffets, to the casino parlor, to bingo.

I didn’t want to lose money, but I gambled because he wanted me to. And in the grand scheme of things, I was gambling on him. I staked my future and my self-respect on our “relationship,” and I was losing.

His restlessness irked me. The real me, the one not obsessed with him, would have loved to sit on the deck reading with Rebecca and Robert while the ship was at sea.

But Hector couldn’t sit still for even five minutes. He’d rush off like a tornado and I blew along in his wake, a piece of debris picked up and swirling in the storm. We shot around doing every possible activity — the bocce ball, the hot tubs, the running around the deck and looking out at the sea.

After the St. Thomas sky lift, Hector and I came upon a rental stand for little yellow scooter cars, and got it in our heads that we should drive one around the island. I had to do the driving since Hector had left his driver’s license on the ship.

Just like my love for him, driving the scooter car was both terrifying and exhilarating.

We puttered along on the left side of the road in this tiny vehicle similar to a four-wheeler, sharing the highway with zooming cars and semi trucks. Potholes were always looming. Once, I hit a huge one head-on and almost overturned us.

“We could have died!” Hector screeched.

I shook with fear, but kept smiling, saying I had it all under control. To destroy his pleasant mood would be fatal. He’d stop taking selfies of us while we drove.

I craved those selfies. This togetherness was how things should be, how they would be if I did what he wanted, went where he wanted, said the things he wanted.

We found a beach on the other side of the island and went snorkeling. As we swam, hugging the scraggly rocks on the coast, I delighted in the rainbow coral and the lightning flashes of silver fish as they zipped to and fro below us.

Even more than the natural beauty, I exalted in the pure, blissful solitude shared with the person I desired most in the world. Although this trip was meant to be a cruise with friends, I had him all to myself.

Still, it wasn’t enough. I wanted a life with him. But he was from a hot place — Arizona — and didn’t want to move. I’m from Montana and value the coolness of spring and autumn.

On one of our island stops, we sat outside a tropical hut, drinking and snacking.

“I wish I had a house here,” Hector said.

For once, I forgot to agree with him. “I don’t think I could live here part-time,” I said. “It’s too hot. It’s not the sort of environment I’m used to.”

“Can’t you change what you’re used to?” he said.

And my heart leapt, thinking he meant he wanted to include me in his future plans, not knowing he had no intention of ever doing so.

When we returned our rented scooter car and met up with the others, it turned that they had had a great time. They had taken a taxi around the island to see the sights, then strolled through the historic port town and visited the oldest synagogue in the Caribbean.

I wished that I had gone to see the historic buildings, too. The real me who loved books and history and everything intellectual would have done so.

When we returned to campus, I continued to follow Hector like a sick puppy. I applied to Columbia University for grad school, thinking that New York City wasn’t that far from Philadelphia, where Hector would finish up his senior year. I could visit him often.

But that situation would have only brought me more uncertainty and pain. After I got into Columbia, I had the sense not to accept. I couldn’t keep pursuing Hector as I was, and I didn’t want to live in New York City, anyway. Instead, I went to graduate school in beautiful Scotland.

Hector and I never did get together. A couple years later, I found out why.

“I’m gay,” he told me via Facebook message. “I’ve known since I was twelve years old. Sorry for stringing you along. I wanted to appear straight, and you made it easy.”

He had known all along that I couldn’t have him, and had never told me. Despite my sympathy for his situation, I felt betrayed.

Three years later, I saw him at the wedding of one of our cruise friends. I fell into my old patterns, following him around when he urged me to shift activities every five minutes. I couldn’t bear it. I was still in love.

Once, I thought that Hector would always be in my life. Now we don’t text anymore. We have nothing in common, and I never knew what to say. It’s best this way. I’m free to be myself, without worrying about how he might want me to think and act.

I may still love him, but I’m no longer Hector’s slave.