The Gift-Giver
I stopped breathing in a crowded Latin cuisine restaurant while on a date with a woman I’d known for twenty-four hours. Following the arrival of our main course, she had asked, “Is there something you’ve done that you’re not proud of?” I told her about a rich woman I was involved with—she kept giving me gifts, and even though all the gift-giving made me anxious, even though I told her I had my own money, I accepted her offerings: an iPAD on our first meeting, a Mac Book Air on our second, and among other items, a 12-piece stainless steel cookware set. Maybe I took her gifts because on every birthday, my mother gave me a yellowed card from a stockpile of donated cards—she was the head of the rummage sale committee of two Jewish women’s organizations—with a twenty-dollar bill inside. And on my thirteenth birthday, my mother bought me an unclaimed custom fitted and drilled bowling ball with a stranger’s initials engraved into it.
I suppose a piece of me relished the iPAD and other gifts, just like a part of me soaked up the attention the gift-giver lavished upon me. She said she didn’t have motives; she was a generous person. She said I’d never have to feel alone again. She said my dead mother and her dead father orchestrated our meeting via OkCupid.
***
In the Latin cuisine restaurant, a piece of food lodged in my esophagus, so I gulped water to wash it down. But the water spewed up onto my almond-encrusted chicken, and I couldn’t breathe, and my date asked if I was okay, and I mouthed NO and she got up and did the Heimlich maneuver, but I still couldn’t breathe, and now all eyes focused on me, even the table of people across the way that just sang “Happy Birthday.” The waitress asked if I was all right. My date said I wasn’t. An older man, maybe a doctor, did the Heimlich maneuver, and I started talking. He said, “She’s okay, she’s talking,” and walked back to his table. Whatever was lodged in my esophagus was still there and it hurt, but I could breathe, one breath in, one breath out. My date asked if I wanted to use the powder room, if I needed time alone. I wanted to remain seated, to make sure people were around if I lost my breath again. And besides, who calls the bathroom “a powder room”? My date took charge and paid the bill. Ten minutes later we left the restaurant. I said I shouldn’t have talked about the woman who kept buying me gifts, it’s a sore subject, a time when I felt stuck, as if I had no choice, as if I couldn’t breathe.
***
The Latin root of inspiration is inspirare, meaning to blow into, to breathe upon. The root of spirare is spirit. The English uses of inspire give it the meaning “to influence, move, or guide through divine or supernatural agency or power.” One needs to have a clear passage for the spirit to enter, to move and guide us, as opposed to a blocked passageway, like I had at the Latin cuisine restaurant, or when I dated the woman who kept buying me presents. Thank goodness she lived a plane-ride away; during that period, any divine spirits were blocked, obstructed by a mass of worry, of guilt, of resentment, towards the gift-giver, towards myself for accepting her presents.
***
After messaging on OkCupid, the gift-giver and I talked on the phone. During the first minute of our conversation, my gut said no. Her nasal voice and thick Long Island accent reminded me of the fast-talking mean girls who pushed me around in grade school. And the gift-giver, in her online profile photo, looked like the leader of the mean girl pack, both tall and thin with long brown hair in a ponytail. In fifth grade, the pack leader asked if she could cut in front of me while I waited in line for the school bus. I said no. “You’re so snotty,” she said. “Maybe that’s why you have no friends.”
At least I had boundaries.
Although the gift-giver made me laugh, asked questions, listened to my answers and asked follow-up questions, I told her I didn’t want more than a friendship, the distance was too much, but we could be special friends. She said she’d love to be special friends. She asked where I wanted to travel. “Antarctica,” I said. She said, “I’ll take you there,” and I said, “You’d take a friend?” and she said, “I take my friends lots of places.” We talked daily. I liked talking to her. She always answered the phone. She talked me through problems I had with a colleague who put me down every chance he could. “Stay away from him,” she said. “Eventually he’ll pick on someone else.” And he did. She told me her father dropped dead of a heart attack when she was fourteen, right in front of her. She could barely speak about it, and I told her about my mother, killed in a car accident, over two decades before, when I was twenty-five. The gift-giver read my stories, begged me to send more.
Maybe I gave the gift-giver too much credit for picking up the phone; after all, I begged my mother to listen to me, to look at my art, to see me. Lost in a world of shopping, watching television, and hoarding, my mother didn’t want to part with anything—the garage in my childhood home was piled high with old clothes and broken bicycles and rummage sale donations. All that crap, coated in dust and mildew, caused my lungs to tighten. I’ve since lived in spartan quarters, a minimal amount of stuff around me, the bulk of my earnings spent on travel.
The gift-giver made arrangements to stay at a fancy hotel in my small city, the hotel where Obama stayed. Two days before her visit, she sent flowers and asked if I was still only interested in a friendship. I tried to convince myself that even though she reminded me of the mean girls who taunted me, even though her nasal voice got on my nerves, I needed to stop judging her based on past prejudices. So what if I wasn’t even attracted to her photos? Perhaps I needed to try something different. “If it feels unusual,” my psychologist friend said, “don’t run. It might mean you’re breaking out of your old patterns.”
***
At the airport, the gift-giver hugged me for a minute too long and said, “It’s about time!” She touched my hand while I drove. I slowly pulled it away. Later that day, after walking my dog, the gift-giver wanted to take me to dinner, wherever I wanted to go. “Invite your friends,” she said. Two friends accompanied us to a fancy tapas restaurant and the bill came to $300. The gift-giver slapped her credit card on the table. My friends insisted on paying their share—they had their own money, but the gift-giver said, “It’s on me.”
The gift-giver said she could go back to the hotel, the hotel she’d already paid for, but if I wanted to keep hanging out, she’d be fine with that. I was a little drunk from two martinis and invited her back to my house and one thing led to the next and she held me and stayed over, and the next morning she told me how happy she was, how she was my family, how I’d never have to feel alone again, how we were soulmates. She insisted on taking me on a shopping spree, “anywhere you want to go.”
“You don’t have to buy me anything, “ I said. “I have my own money. Remember? I’m a college professor.”
“But I want to,” she said.
“It makes me feel uncomfortable,” I said. “Like there are strings attached.” Despite my protests, we went to REI. “I need to get boots,” I said.
“Get what you want,” she said. “I insist!”
“I don’t need your money,” I said. I didn’t find boots that fit, but I tried on an expensive fleece jacket and a hat, and the gift-giver grabbed them and threw her credit card down at the register.
The gift-giver said I should enjoy life. She wanted to have fun and watch movies and go on walks with my dog. She said she couldn’t wait to take me around the world. She asked if it was okay to stay another three days. I hesitated. She said, “Do you want me to stay or not?”
I told her yes, but I felt overwhelmed. "Maybe we should take a break," I said. She went to the gym at the fancy hotel. “Might as well,” she said, “get something for all the money I paid.”
A month after meeting in person, the gift-giver asked me to move to Chicago, where she ran her family’s foundation. She said she’d support me, so I could spend my time writing. I held my heart, now beating out of control, overcome with angst. She said I shouldn’t be afraid. I told her I liked teaching; I worked hard to get where I was in my career. “Besides,” I said, “you don’t even know me.”
“I’m sure,” she said, “you’re the one. I just know.”
Maybe I fit into the box she created for what she wanted in a partner, a confined box with a limited amount of breathing room, a coffin of sorts.
I told a friend about the gift-giver, how I didn’t know how to not accept her presents, just like I didn’t know how not to accept her attention. She said, “Give her my number! Giving gifts is one of the five love languages.” Based on the book by Gary Chapman, he writes, “Don’t mistake this love language for materialism. The receiver of gifts thrives on the love, thoughtfulness, and effort behind the gift…the perfect gift or gesture shows that you are known, are cared for, and you are prized above whatever was sacrificed to bring the gift to you.” Yet the iPAD and fleece jacket didn’t necessarily make me feel cared for or prized. They made me feel like a prostitute.
***
The gift-giver owned a giant house near Lake Michigan. She told me she felt a dark energy in her living room. I felt it too. I feared that room, the heaviness, especially at night. Before I arrived, three different paintings on her walls had crashed down in her house, all on separate nights, all at three am.
At the gift-giver’s house, I couldn’t sleep, which wasn’t a big surprise. Insomnia hit after my mother died, my sleepless nights most likely a result of trapped grief, perhaps grief too afraid to leave because it wouldn’t know where to go. Now I took Ativan to sleep and forgot about my breath, barely inhaling and exhaling through the tiny passageways to my lungs, to my heart.
Three months after we met, the gift-giver took me to a five-star resort in Puerto Rico. At breakfast the first morning, she said she had made reservations at a five-star hotel in San Francisco for my spring break. I told her I didn’t need to stay at a fancy hotel. I asked if we could pick a hotel together. “I’d be happy to pay half,” I said. “I’m fine with the Holiday Inn.”
“Forget it. Just forget it,” she said. “You’re so selfish and ungrateful! I’ll invite another friend.” She wouldn’t look at me, got up and paid the bill. She said she needed to take a break.
“Please don’t go,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
She went shopping and left me in the hotel room, which now felt like a prison. I cried and whimpered and gasped and wanted to die. I texted the gift-giver: Please come back. I apologized over and over. I didn’t even know who I was.
An hour later, she came back with a bar of chocolate and a card: Thanks for coming to Puerto Rico with me!
Afterwards she mentioned an Alaska rowing trip she wanted to take me on. “I’m not a great rower,” I said. She said, “You’ll have plenty of time to get in shape before then.”
Maybe I was selfish and ungrateful like she had said. Besides, I’d never stayed at a luxury resort; the bulk of my paid lodging had been at cheap motels off the interstate. As a kid, my family took long car rides to tourist destinations like Old Sturbridge Village, where costumed actors reenacted 19th-century life, and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where we stopped off at an Amish salami factory. Despite our exhaustion from the car rides, my mother refused to spend money on a motel, so we slept in our turquoise station wagon at the side of the road. At thirteen, my parents took me on a package tour of Europe. It was free to take a kid along. The night we arrived in Amsterdam, instead of getting a hotel, my mother, father and I sat in a freezing rail station all night and I had to pee, but the bathroom was locked until morning and by the time the attendant opened the door, I almost knocked her down.
Now at the hotel, the gift-giver and I both took Ativan before going to sleep. Even with the Ativan, she stayed up all night playing Candy Crush and shopping online. I didn’t sleep well either, and in the morning, when the gift-giver asked if I wanted time to write, I said no. I wasn’t inspired to do anything but drink coffee and go back to sleep.
***
Every so often a student in my creative writing class arrives without their homework. “I wasn’t inspired,” they’d say. I’d ask if they’d come into a math class or an art history class and say the same thing. At times you have to clear the way for the spirit to move you, to invite the spirit in, to pat the seat next to you and say, come sit beside me. A well-known phrase in the writing world is: Writing is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. The Latin root of perspire means to blow or breathe constantly. As if feeding a fire, we could blow constantly and call the spirit in, and keep blowing until the fire ignites. And if my fire won’t light, I force myself to free-write without stopping. Eventually a kernel of an idea shows up and corridors open, making way for the spirit to enter and take over.
***
Five years after breaking up with the gift-giver, I took a workshop titled, “Connect with the Spirit World,” instructed by a famous psychic medium. The first day I sat across from a classmate, and we exchanged personal items. The instructor asked us to feel the energy from the item and tell our partner something about them. I held my partner’s engagement ring. She held my watch. I closed my eyes and a cheese wedge appeared. And wouldn’t go away. “All I see is a cheese wedge,” I said. She said, “I love cheese. All kinds of cheese. I even took a wedge of cheese with me from home and had a piece before breakfast.” She went on about her favorite cheeses. She closed her eyes and squeezed my watch. “You’re very organized,” she said, which is true. Because of my mother’s hoarding, clutter makes me nervous and organization makes me feel in control. I love to make lists: To-do lists, gratitude lists, friend lists.
To loosen us up, the instructor blared 90’s dance music, and I skipped and jumped. Two minutes into the song, I felt a sharp pain in my calf, as if a bullet ripped through it. I hobbled back to my seat, not sure what happened to my leg.
I asked a curly-haired woman if she’d partner with me for another exercise. We sat across from each other. One of us had to be the receiver, the other the psychic medium. “Tell your partner the name of a dead person,” the instructor said, “and the relationship you had with him or her.” I gave my partner information about my mother, and she closed her eyes and began to cry. “Your mother is so sorry,” she said. “She wishes she was more affectionate with you. This is why you’re having a hard time finding a stable relationship.” I nodded, cried, tried not to worry about my leg. “Your mother wants you to jump,” she said. “Do everything you want. Don’t hold back.”
“I did just jump,” I said, massaging my leg. “I think I tore a calf muscle!”
I asked my partner if she had experience doing this kind of thing. She gave me her shiny card: Violetta, Psychic Medium.
For the remainder of the workshop, I couldn’t walk. Along with a big woman with a broken toe, I waited for a golf-cart to shuttle me around. Before I jumped, my calf muscle felt like a rubberband that could snap at any moment. But I let myself get carried away by the dance music and ignored my injury, just like I ignored my gut when it came to the gift-giver. She’s not for you! my gut screamed. I tried to override it with reasoning, contrary to what the famous psychic medium told us: “Thoughts only get in the way of your gut and intuition. Let the spirit in without judgment and thought.”
Perhaps, because of my mother’s lack of affection, I didn’t feel worthy of receiving it, so I blocked off my heart, fearful of getting hurt, and instead, invited partners into my life like the woman who kept buying me presents. Maybe the gift-giver, I had thought, could fill the void left by my mother, who threw crumbs of affection, mostly when I drove her to shopping malls, since she never learned to drive. My mother didn’t seem interested in what I did, even when, as a teenager, I rode my banana-seat bicycle on a busy five-lane highway.
***
The gift-giver’s present to my dog—a real cow bone, caused my dog’s tooth to crack, which she had to get pulled. The vet told me dogs shouldn’t be biting on anything harder than their teeth, and a cow bone is harder. The night of her surgery, my dog was zonked, but the next day she ate well and ran around like her usual self. On the phone, the gift-giver insisted I stay with my dog and not go out to dinner with a friend. “But my dog is fine,” I said. She said, “This is indicative of how you’d treat a partner. You’d just leave them alone after a major surgery.”
***
At the Latin cuisine restaurant, I thought I viewed the last scene of life, before the curtains closed, and even though my date helped to save my life, I only wanted a friendship, similar to what I said at first to the woman who kept buying me presents. Towards the end of our relationship, the gift-giver mentioned she wanted to take me on a lesbian cruise for my birthday. I told her I wasn’t sure about the cruise. I told her I get seasick. What I wouldn’t tell her: I didn’t want to be stuck with her in a tiny cabin while she played Candy Crush. I didn’t give a damn if Billie Jean King was scheduled to appear on the cruise.
By the time the cruise embarked, I had broken up with the gift-giver. My body was a tangled mass of nerves. Anxiety wrapped me in a shroud and almost strangled me; it’s no coincidence that the word anxiety derives from the Latin word meaning, “to cause pain, choke.” When I drove away for the last time, nine months after meeting her, not only did the road open up, but so did my breath.
In the “Connect with the Spirit World” workshop, the instructor said we needed to forgive others before we could forgive ourselves—the only way to fully open our hearts. I had already forgiven my mother. But now I had to forgive the woman who kept buying me gifts. This was her love language, perhaps the only language she knew.
***
After I almost died in the Latin cuisine restaurant, I walked out into the sun and sat on a bench with my date. I hugged her, thanked her for saving my life, for taking charge. She said, “Next time you’re on a date, maybe you should only order soup.” On a street corner nearby, a young boy strummed his guitar while singing a Johnny Cash song. I began to cry but wasn’t sure why. Maybe I was grateful for the music pulsing through my body, or for the opportunity to jump, wholeheartedly, back into my life. Or maybe I was grateful for the gift of breath—unhindered, free from the weight of fancy dinners, Apple products and five star hotels.
Lori Horvitz’ personal essays have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies including Epiphany, The Laurel Review, Redivider, Hobart, Chattahoochee Review, The Guardian, South Dakota Review, Entropy, and Hotel Amerika. She has been awarded writer-in-residence fellowships from Yaddo, Cottages at Hedgebrook, VCCA, Ragdale, Blue Mountain Center, and Brush Creek. Professor of English at UNC Asheville, Horvitz is the author of the memoir-essay collection, The Girls of Usually (Truman State UP).