worth staying for

by Ronit Plank

THAT LAST SUMMER BEFORE I LEFT for the West Coast, I felt like no one was in the City. Maybe there never were many people June through August, but it hit me harder that year because I was twenty-seven and old enough to know I was stuck. Fourteen months had passed since Derrick broke up with me, and I hadn’t been able to move on. We’d been together for a year before that—a year that I spent hoping he would fall in love with me, even though I couldn’t help but notice that after we talked about his college football days and how our acting classes had gone, often our conversations dwindled down to nothing. I never considered whether he was good for me. I was overjoyed he’d decided to date me. He was tall, with dark hair and soft brown eyes and looked like someone I should be with, but I filled in the spaces of what wasn’t there with what I wished would grow.

And then he ended it.

I spent the next fourteen months licking my wounds and praying he’d realize he’d made a mistake. Every day I straightened my hair and wore full make-up in case I ran into him on the way to an audition or acting class. I logged hundreds of miles through the City dreaming about how Derrick would tell me he wanted me back.

One Friday that June, I was walking uptown to my job telemarketing Dr. Atkins vitamin pills to low-carbers nationwide when I saw the Hampton Jitney bus parked across the street. The bus was polished and gleaming, with dark tinted windows, probably icy cool inside, and encircled by a line of young men and women luckier than me, fleeing (I imagined) for fancy enclaves eighty-five miles out of the City, leaving the rest of us to scurry around in the muggy streets I wanted so badly to escape.

The closest I’d gotten to the Hamptons was the Hampton Bays in high school after prom for a weekend away with two couples and my prom date. After the couples shut their bedroom doors that sandwiched us on either side of the living room, we lay on the foldout sofa looking up at the ceiling, small-talking our way through the sexual tension, neither of us making a move.

The men I passed lining up to board the Jitney were close-shaven, their leather overnight bags strapped onto their shoulders, the women thin, sleek-haired. I was certain they had more money and better breeding than me. They wore soft neutral colors and light lip gloss like they didn’t care about standing out, or maybe didn’t think they needed to. I worked hard to be noticed. Unless I was on my way to the all-women’s gym I’d joined across the street from Grand Central Station, I usually put on a full face of make-up, berry-red lipstick, and I wouldn’t dream of showing up anywhere professional with my real curls—they were unruly, frizzy, unfinished.

Everywhere I went, I carried an imitation Kate Spade purse I’d bought from a vendor on Canal Street, along with a tote bag stuffed full of the various props and costumes I needed for acting class—sweatpants, a cookie sheet, burnt French fries in Tupperware for a scene from Angels in America, heels and a fake fur for Golden Boy, a purse and little black dress for Boy’s Life, and so on—and I never dressed in conservative beige or cream. Most days, I opted for actress-black or the occasional jewel-toned top from Strawberry. That store saved me during my twenties. I scoured the racks of Rayon and Spandex, certain I could find a $23 bargain that would transform me into the woman I knew I could be—or the woman I could convince people I was. That was the season—a long season—when I thought if I could get my outsides right, the insides of me would feel better.

But I didn’t have faith that I could keep anyone interested in or close to me for long. I found it nearly impossible to believe anyone would find me worth staying for. My earliest understanding of relationships probably began not long after I turned five when my mother and father got a divorce. My father started over with his girlfriend and her two daughters, and my mother moved to India to follow a guru. From then on, when it came to love of nearly any kind, I second-guessed myself at every turn. That’s why I hadn’t had long-term relationships in college or high school and why I spent that entire weekend away with my prom date obsessing over why he wouldn’t kiss me on the foldout couch when I was too insecure to make a move myself.

For the last few weeks, I’d been dating Pete, who I’d met at the Irish bar on Third Ave. My roommates and I had never been there before, but they agreed to stop by one night to help cheer me up. I thought Pete was kind of cute, and when he asked me for my number, I felt wantable again, but I couldn’t really get a read on Pete when we spent time together. He was finishing up dental school and was wry, occasionally funny. We usually slept at his large Beekman condo, which belonged to his parents. From the living room window, I could see the Pepsi-Cola sign glowing red across the East River, and I could envision what it was like to be moneyed and established. But when we lay on his 800-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, I couldn’t tell who he was. Even when he brought me to a Jewel concert, and I leaned in close to him, he paid more attention to the music than me.

Before Pete, before Derrick, there were others whose names don’t matter. What was becoming clear was that I was bad at dating. Really bad. When I was hanging out with friends or doing an audition, I was on the loud side, sometimes brassy, and I arrived most places mid-sentence, but this type of bravado was preemptive—a tactic I held up like a shield to combat my nerves and fear of rejection. I seemed to be constantly chasing after men who couldn’t or wouldn’t give me the approval and affection I craved, and, if there was potential, I soon scared them off with the self-doubt that beat inside me like a pulse.

Pete and I had only been dating five weeks, but when I saw those well-heeled men and women boarding the Hampton Jitney that Friday, I decided he was going to invite me for a weekend away at his Hampton beach house with his family by August, and I’d get to spend time with his mother. He hadn’t mentioned anything about my meeting her, and I didn’t share this plan with him, but that was my goal, regardless of what I thought about him. We still didn’t have lots of conversation. When we were physical, it was predictable, perfunctory, but I found his strong-silent-type energy attractive, and he seemed okay with dating me, so I hung on. Instead of allowing myself to acknowledge that he didn’t have much to offer, that together we were about as dynamic as oatmeal, I did a psychological bait and switch and honed in on impressing his mother. Not too surprising considering I’d spent the parts of my childhood when my mom was in my life figuring out ways to make sure she liked me enough to stay.

I was certain Pete’s mother was elegant, well-bred, and thin, so I focused on my size, which was the only part of that equation I had a chance to attain before I went to their beach house. I cut my food intake in half, doubled my time at the gym, and daydreamed about the way Pete would look at me and what his mother would think of me. I didn’t consider what would make me happy. Keeping him interested in thin me was what mattered.

Pete and I saw each other twice a week that summer, mostly meeting at his place and occasionally at restaurants, where I delicately nibbled at food. He didn’t seem to realize I was shrinking, but the doorman at his building did. One morning, when I was leaving Pete’s place, he called me a cab, and as he held the door open for me, he said, “Hey, don’t get too skinny.” I was so surprised I almost thought I heard him wrong. After I made sense of his words, I smiled at him. “I won’t,” I said and got into the cab. I waved goodbye to him and wondered how this doorman had been able to tell, yet Pete hadn’t said anything. I still think about that doorman, this man with whom I only exchanged a few niceties that summer, and his acknowledgement of me and how he checked on me in that way. That was the first time I had felt seen in longer than I could remember.

As my cab sped down Second Avenue, the City waking up around me, I planned my next gym session, elated that I was getting closer to my goal. I would be ready for the beach when Pete invited me to his family’s house.

One night in mid-July, Pete asked me to join him for dinner at a pizza place he’d found. I straightened my hair for our date, using as much tension as I could muster between my brush and blow dryer to make it last until I got to the safety of the air-conditioned restaurant. I cabbed it to help keep the humidity at bay and walked into the restaurant smoothing the ends that were attempting to pop back up, beseeching my hair to stay glossy until the end of our meal. This wasn’t a pizza joint like from where I’d grown up in Flushing, or my parents’ Sheepshead Bay and Bronx neighborhoods: a counter, oven, and a few Formica tables and metal chairs. This was quiet and tucked away from the sidewalk and passersby with a patio bordered by a delicate pine fence draped with string lights.

I found him at a corner table on the patio where he sat reading the Wall Street Journal and sipping a beer. Sitting outside in July was bad news for my hair. I hugged him hello and mentally calculated how long I had before I lost the battle with my genetics and frizz began haloing my head. We ordered, and I asked him about his day and work. He answered in monosyllables, as usual, offering few details. A few months in, and I still didn’t know where his dental school was or what made him happy or what he imagined for his future. I told him about my ride over, how my audition had gone the day before, how many packages of Dr. Atkins vitamins I’d sold, and he nodded.

The pizza came and when I looked up from choosing a slice, I saw he'd picked up his newspaper and was reading again. I felt my eyebrows lift and my mouth drop open of its own accord. I sat facing him while he scanned the newsprint in front of him. Any moment, I thought, he would put the paper down to tell me about what it was he was searching for there on the page and share it with me. I wondered if the other couple on the patio or the family who had sat down could tell my date wasn’t talking to me. Seconds, then minutes, ticked by, and he kept reading, occasionally pausing to take a sip of beer. I picked up my slice and took a bite. Maybe he thought of us as an old married couple, that we were relaxed and familiar with each other and could sit in silence. I tried to convince myself of that but the longer he read, and the longer I sat watching him, the more I felt like I wasn’t there. This had never happened to me before. Where I was from, people talked to each other.

I chewed for a while, telling myself not to call it out. But usually, as soon as I convince myself not to say something, it’s halfway out of my mouth anyway.

“You know,” I said, “sometimes I feel like we don’t talk enough.”

He looked up from his Wall Street Journal and glanced at me. His eyes shifted and focused on the people walking on the street past the patio fence. He appeared to think for a beat. He looked at me and took a bite of pizza. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. Then he got back to reading the paper.

I wish I could tell you that was when I stood up, gathered my purse, and told him goodbye. That I walked out the back gate of the patio into the summer night where the humidity wrapped me in its dampness and sprang my straining curls from their detention. How I made my way home across lit-up avenues, my unruly locks framing my face, my skin damp yet also glowing from the effort, certain I was off to better things and better people. Confident I would love myself and not ever make do with scraps and what-ifs again. I wish I could tell you this is when I left.

But the pizza was really good, and I was really hungry. So I finished my slice and then had another. But I knew I was done with Pete. I realized I’d been waiting around for something that would never materialize, that he didn’t make me happy. I broke up with him a few weeks later. Despite my moping around for the better part of a year, I’d survived Derrick’s rejection and had now ended a dismal relationship without the fear I’d never have another chance at happiness. That was the summer I began to realize that no one’s approval was going to save me or show me how to love myself.

Soon I would pack a few suitcases and say goodbye to my family, my acting friends, high school friends, college friends, and roommates and fly across the country to start over. I would move to Los Angeles by myself and begin again. I’d find an apartment, a job, and I’d audition and act on stages and on sets. I’d never chase or date someone who didn’t appreciate me again.

Sometimes I can still see twenty-seven-year-old me walking through the City, shouldering a heavy tote bag full of props, hoping someone will choose me, searching their eyes, looking for the person who will help me start my life. Sometimes I can still sense her restlessness, her sadness, and I feel protective of her. I want to tell her that despite what she was missing and for so long didn’t understand, she found her way. I want to tell her she was lovable all along.

About the author:

Ronit’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The NYT, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, Salon, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK, about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation, was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won the Page Turner Award for Short Stories and the Eludia Award for Fiction. She’s Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, teaches memoir writing, and hosts the podcast Let’s Talk Memoir. Find her on Substack, on Instagram, and at ronitplank.com.