In 2024, about 18 months after my fiance Jamie passed away, I decided I was lonely and horny and so put myself out there on the apps. I’d placed Jamie’s ashes on the TV cabinet in the living room, so he was smack bang in the middle of his two favourite places: his spot on the couch and his coffee machine. It also meant he was in the centre of the house, which made dating hard.
I had a guy over for a hook-up one night and he kept fixating on the urn. “So … He’s dead?”
“I hope so,” I said. “Otherwise the urn was a mistake.”
“Wow,” he said, not getting the joke. “You’re so brave. I don’t know how you do it.”
Nothing kills a boner faster than someone thinking you’re brave. When someone thinks you’re “brave”, you stop being flesh and pulsing blood and hot salty saliva and start being something coolly observed. Being a “brave widow” makes you desirable in theory. Not practice.
When the urn didn’t ward off potential suitors, my cat Freyja – or Miss Freyja, as Jamie called her – did. She appointed herself my fluffy protector in Jamie’s absence. Each night, she camouflaged herself on the charcoal-grey carpet outside my bedroom and kept watch while I slept. Two emerald eyes scanning for threats.
When I did have a visitor, she sprung into immediate, hostile action. She yowled and hissed when a semi-closeted doctor, who had came over for a blowjob, tried to pick her up. One guy didn’t see her flattened into the carpet and accidentally kicked her across the room. She responded by clawing his shin.
After that, I figured that what I experienced with Jamie was so real and pure and true that I’d used up all the love I was allocated in my lifetime. Or that maybe Freyja was secretly homophobic and only put up with me because I was the one who fed her.
I’d spent months in self-imposed celibacy, when a guy named Billy, with gorgeous green eyes and a crooked smile, messaged me. He asked about my day and I sent him a picture of a painting I’d hung up. He asked to see it in person. I said yes. When he arrived, he spotted Freyja, and before he even said hello to me, he crouched down to her level and said: “Hello Miss!”
As if some muscle memory kicked in, she waddled over to Billy and flopped on her back, presenting her belly for patting while she purred. “Oh Miss Freyja!” he said, when I told him her name. When he was done, he kissed me.
He didn’t mention the urn until hours later – and when I told him the story of me and Jamie, he said, “Sounds like a great guy.”
Freyja wove between our feet and vibrated her tail when he kissed me goodbye. As he drove away, Freyja waited by the door and let out a melancholic meow. Don’t go. I agreed.
Late one night we walked past a club having a 90s party. Madonna’s Ray of Light, Jamie’s favourite song, blared out on to the street. Billy turned to me smiling, his pointy canine tooth glinting in the moonlight, and said: “Jamie’s here, isn’t that nice?” and then he squeezed my hand. I felt flutters all through my body and fell head over heels in love in a way I never thought I would again.
It takes a special person, like Billy, to look at the shoes of a past lover and not try to fill them; to leave them be and plant their own next to the ones left behind. To carry something as heavy and slippery as a loss that doesn’t belong to him. To see that the pair of Jamie’s glasses I keep next to my bed are dusty, and clean them as if it’s nothing at all, even though for me it feels like the most generous thing you could do for another person.
Billy is funny, patient and kind. He’s smarter and more handsome than he realises. I find it hard to think of things in terms of “forever” now, because I know how quickly things can be taken away. But I look at Billy, and think I’d be happy doing this day by day, for a long time – with Miss Freyja by our side and Jamie watching over us all.
-
Anthony Nocera is the writer of the Log Boy, which runs from 1-10 October at Adelaide College of the Arts, Main Theatre. Presented by State Theatre Company South Australia.
