George And Amelia Pt. 1
This is Part 1 of a 2-part extended article. As always, thank you for reading Evolving Love.
I did not belong in New York City.
Frozen air slapped me across the face as I opened the Airbnb window and looked down at the snow-covered Manhattan street below. The crisp, white morning snow now resembled brown sludge from the heavy foot traffic of New Yorkers making their way to wherever they needed to be. I took a sip of the warm Amy’s vegetable soup I’d bought us earlier that morning from the bodega down the street, feeling its warm comfort as I looked down on the crowds.
It was December 2013, and we were two weeks into our recent move to New York City. The unknowns of work and where we might live felt both jarring and exciting. I looked back over my shoulder to Liam, whose concentrated face was still scanning Trulia and Craigslist for a more permanent rental apartment for us to move into.
“Brooklyn looks good. There are places in our budget near the Barclay’s Centre which has a big subway station below it. I think we should try and get a spot there.”
My only frame of reference for the Barclay’s Center occurred earlier that year on our first trip to New York. Watching Alicia Keys perform I felt vertigo overtake me in the nosebleed section. Goosebumps covered my body as the support act, Miguel, sang the song that was the soundtrack to us falling in love, Adorn You. Liam wrapped his arms around my waist, with the bass vibrating through my body and in that moment I wished desperately that Liam and I were living in NYC. Permanently. New York was intoxicating and I dreamed of moving away from Canberra and starting a new life together.
The day after singing Empire State of Mind at the top of our lungs, we found ourselves in a chance encounter in a bar in Williamsburg. Our arrival between lunch and dinner service had resulted in a quiet atmosphere in the dark bar, and quickly we became friendly with the Australian bartender. We shared with her our dreams of moving to New York one day, and she shared with us her dreams of making it on Broadway. Conversation turned to logistics as Liam, always an inquisitive one, asked her how she obtained her visa. It was this chance encounter where we learned of the J1 visa, available to recently graduated Australian university students. With this newly discovered pathway, our journey to living in America seemed possible.
After returning to Australia, and ten months since that Williamsburg conversation, we were back in Brooklyn with our one-year J1 visas. Liam and I secured a rental apartment on 5th Avenue and Baltic Street in Brooklyn, a short walk to the Barclays Center. It was a small studio apartment and we would soon discover that our landlord George was illegally sub-leasing it to us, skimming a profit on the low rent he was paying the real land-lord in a rent-controlled apartment.
Despite the questionable legality, the arrangement worked for us all. To our naive surprise after moving to New York, we did not realise how difficult it would be to rent with no rental or American credit history. So when George offered us the apartment, on the condition that we pay seven months rent upfront, we viewed it as a deal with the devil worth taking. Instantly the money we had saved disappeared, but at least we had a roof over our heads for the frozen Brooklyn winter.
Our visas only allowed us to work in hospitality or retail, jobs that did not “take opportunities away from Americans.” Thankfully for me I had spent many years working in restaurants in Canberra, so I began to search New York for what I assumed to be the holy grail of hospitality jobs - fancy hotels.
I had found out that wages were based on a percentage of a customer’s bill, so it made sense to me to aim for places where the food and drinks were expensive. The pricier the menu, the more I could earn. Hospitality also appealed due to the fast friendships forged from the “trauma bonds” of working the restaurant floor. Unpacking the night’s events with colleagues at various restaurant jobs had always been a bonding experience.
We gave ourselves a month to settle in, and in January, during a relentless snowstorm, I handed out my resume to every boutique and luxury hotel south of Houston Street. I was looking for work, but also for friendship and community.
After submitting my resume to over twenty different hotels in downtown Manhattan, I finally landed an on-the-spot interview at a boutique, five-star hotel in Soho. The American manager, John, mistook my Australian accent for British, and in an effort to please I let his mistake stand. John asked me to return in the morning for an interview with his manager, and I finally grew the courage to correct his continued mistaken quips about my accent. Up until this point, it was an easy lack of correction, but combined with our illegal sublet, I was beginning to feel like a risk-taker. Far away from home, New York granted me an anonymity I had never felt before.
A week later, dressed in a sleek black dress that rested just above my knees and pointed black heels, I was walking customers to their tables. There was a stream of famous actors, musicians, models. Victoria’s Secret models. New York Giants. Anne Hathaway. I would return home to Liam, who had just started a retail job at a local shoe store, with news of my latest celebrity sightings.
-
Seasons changed from winter to Spring, and we began to lay our roots. One spring afternoon in April I was walking into our apartment with both hands carrying a bag of laundry when I saw a man in his sixties, who I had never seen before, walk out the front door of our building.
“Hi there!” He said with a big smile as he held the door open for me.
“Thank you so much!” I replied. He looked at my laundry and then tilted his head in curiosity,
“Do you live here?”
“Yes.” I beamed.
“Which apartment?”
In horror I realised that he must be the owner of the building. I remembered George’s description of the landlord, a short, bald and moustached man with big bushy eyebrows. This was definitely him. George had also said that if a man of this description asked us questions about what we were doing in the building, that we were to say that we were friends of George who were visiting for a few months. We were never to let on our arrangement with George.
“4F.” I replied gingerly.
It was one thing to let someone believe that I was British, but it went against everything in my being to lie to someone’s face. I felt like a child who had been caught red-handed colouring their lounge room walls in red texter. The thought of lying to this lovely man who was holding the door open for me made me feel sick. Getting George in trouble also made me feel sick, but being kicked out of the apartment that we had just spent all of our savings on was also a disaster.
“Ah yes- you live with George? I’m Jerry.” He was beaming again. He had assumed that I was George’s new girlfriend. I didn’t correct him.
“I’m Abbey. Nice to meet you, Jerry!”
“Have a lovely day, Abbey. Say hi to George!”
Feeling like a criminal on the run, I hurried upstairs, short of breath from carrying my big bag of laundry. Bursting through the door in a panic, I startled Liam who was eating a sandwich and watching reruns of The Office on the tv.
“I just met the landlord.” I said with exasperation. “I didn’t flat out lie, but I didn’t correct him, which I guess is technically lying, and well, basically he has made the assumption that I’m George’s girlfriend and I live here- with him! His name is Jerry. He is lovely and I am a terrible person!”
Liam burst out laughing and beckoned me over to him.
“Babe come here, that is hilarious. It’s ok. But we should tell George in case the landlord brings it up in conversation. But don’t worry, it’s fine. Lucky George, with such a sexy Australian girlfriend.”
I noticed a shift in Liam’s eyes as his laughter softened. His eyes looked different, like he wanted to say something, but wasn’t sure if he should.
“What is it?”
“I dunno, it’s kind of funny that he thinks you are George’s girlfriend.”
“Funny? It is so awkward!” My heart rate began to slow as I took sips of Liam’s water.
“I don’t know. Is it weird that I find it a bit hot to think of you being with George?”
“With? What do you mean- with?”
“I don’t know. It is pretty hot to think about”. Liam’s face shifted into a more thoughtful expression.
What exactly was Liam saying? As he tenderly stroked strands of my long hair away from my face, he was now looking at me with an intense focus. My god, was he actually aroused by all of this? Was he turned on by the thought of me being with George? Surely not. We were engaged, our wedding was planned for next year in April. Wedding dress shopping had already started with Pinterest boards and group chats.
I wrestled with the idea that Liam could love me so deeply, and have these feelings of arousal alongside his love. My previous relationships had taught me that a real man protects his wife from all advances. Possession is the currency that is rewarded. It is my right as his partner to feel loved, adored and safe from the advances of all others.
Recalling the one relationship agreement Liam and I had made when we first started dating, I remembered our pact: never to hide a desire, longing, insecurity, or fear from each other, and always to listen with an open mind. I just hadn’t imagined those “open-minded” discussions would include hypotheticals about me being with other men.
Leaning in, I kissed Liam, feeling grateful for his comfort in sharing these feelings, even though I was still unsure of what any of it meant. And so, I began to lean into the fantasy in my mind as well. There was no harm in imagining. Nobody was being hurt; if anything, it could be a moment of novelty, seeing how far our desire might stretch within the safety of our imaginations.
My imagination then guided me into a world where I was with George. Picturing his face, I couldn’t deny that George was attractive. In fact, he was very good-looking. Tall, with dark brown hair, in his mid-thirties, perhaps ten years older than me. He was kind, funny, and curious about us and our life back home in Australia. But that didn’t mean I would risk my relationship with Liam by indulging an attraction to George. To do so would surely be wasted energy, energy that should be going to Liam, energy that should only be spent on us.
Still, I couldn’t deny that I had, in fact, been attracted to George. So, I closed my eyes and imagined that it was George I was sitting with, and not my fiancé. My breaths deepened as I realized that I, too, was aroused by the thought of being with him.
“It is actually kind of hot, now that I think about it.” I admitted, with a teasing smile, tentatively searching Liam’s face, looking for any sign of jealousy or discomfort in the subtleties of his expression. But they were nowhere to be found. In their place seemed to be another emotion, an emotion that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Next week I will be releasing Part 2… stay tuned…