Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me (16 page)

Finances

My wife at her worst:

Buys a lot of, in my opinion, overpriced skin care products.

My stripper ex-girlfriend at her best:

CHIVAS: So, you’re going to start work in a movie next week?

ME: Yeah. It should be fun.

CHIVAS: I need to borrow some money.

ME: What for? You okay?

CHIVAS: My landlord is a Nazi Hitler.

ME: What’s wrong?

CHIVAS: He’s all like, “You haven’t paid rent in five months, and if you don’t cough up the money, I’m going to be a total Hitler and padlock your apartment.”

ME: Why haven’t you paid your rent?

CHIVAS: WHAT ARE YOU, MY DAD?

[
bark bark bark bark bark bark
]

Your Chance to be a Hero

My wife at her worst:

Sometimes sleeps until noon, depressed about a writing project that’s stalled, and needs reassurance about her skills.

My stripper ex-girlfriend at her best:

CHIVAS: Where the
fuck
are you?

ME: I’m, uh, at work. It’s Tuesday and I’m at work like I always am.

CHIVAS: The police in El Segundo are goddamn Nazi Hitlers.

ME: Oh.

CHIVAS: I need bail money.

ME: Holy shit, what happened?

CHIVAS: They let these old ladies with Alzheimer’s disease drive school buses in El Segundo.

ME: Oh shit.

CHIVAS: And this bitch blocks the intersection suddenly, like out of nowhere, and now the front of my car is mulched and CAN YOU FUCKING GET DOWN HERE?!

SHERIFF IN BACKGROUND: Language.

CHIVAS: Oh, bite my clit you Naz–

Phone is hung up for her.

Extended Family

My wife’s family, at their worst:

Typical kookiness and social awkwardness, alleviated by genuine charm, love, and understanding.

My stripper ex-girlfriend’s family, at their best:

ME: You feeling okay?

CHIVAS: Yeah, sweetie.

ME: It’s just that . . . I want you to know I’m here for you, and especially afterward, if things are uncomfortable. We can talk.

CHIVAS: What’re you talking about?

ME: You know, what he did to you.

CHIVAS: And what
exactly
did he do to me?

ME: You said he molested you.

Chivas’ father and his new girlfriend, who’s younger than Chivas and looks almost exactly like Chivas, enter the Sizzler where we’re meeting for dinner.

CHIVAS: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? WHEN THE FUCK DID I SAY THAT?

ME: Last n—

CHIVAS’ DAD: What’re you hollerin’ about, doodlebug?

CHIVAS: He says I told him you fucked me!

CHIVAS’ DAD: That was a nightmare you had! We agreed! [
To me
] Who the fuck are
you
?

CHIVAS: Who’s
this
bitch?

CHIVAS’ DAD’S GIRLFRIEND: Cowgirl with a bomb-ass pussy, that’s who.

Chivas throws pepper mill at no one.

What it’s All About, in the End

My wife at her worst:

Has taught me the past is dead, the future is uncertain, and all we can truly know, or come close to knowing, is the present.

My stripper ex-girlfriend at her best:

If you go down on a girl, or leave her a note saying you miss her, or don’t pay her rent, you’re a faggot.

It only took two months of me dating a stripper to appreciate what a miracle my wife is. And I didn’t meet my wife until three years after my stripper girlfriend’s final, typo-heavy text message saying she was flying to “arJenteena” with a “music band.” “Watch out for all the Nazi Hitlers!” I furiously texted back. Alas, she was gone.

I’d like to think she’s still out there, perhaps not in arJenteena, but somewhere else, Bolivia for example, giving some other poor fool a lesson he will never forget, and mentioning casually, in her own off-handed way, that her dad may or may not have molested her.

Lesson#42

Sometimes You Find a Lost Love, Sometimes You Don’t

by Bob Kerrey

In January 1961 at the beginning of my final semester of high school I put a photograph of a woman I loved in my wallet for the first and last time in my life. She had just won a skating competition. Head back, hair cut short, and smiling. She was beautiful but something about her captured me beyond her raw beauty. Nothing quite matched the spark, which arose between me and my girl, skating across the ice. The only problem was I had cut the photograph from
The Lincoln Journal
sports page. I had fallen in love with a total stranger. A very pretty one at that.

There wasn’t much detail in the story accompanying the photo other than she was sixteen, a year younger than me. A month later she was featured on the front page of
Sports Illustrated
as the most promising U.S. female skater. Inside I learned that her older sister and both her parents were skaters and that her father had died when she was seven. I learned she was planning on attending college in the fall. Later, I learned—as I prepared to write about this lost love—that she and her mother had purchased several copies of
Sports Illustrated
right before boarding a plane bound for Brussels where she was to compete in the World Championships.

As it turns out, a wallet is the
least
safe place to put valuables. I didn’t hold on to the photograph long. That summer my wallet fell into the warm water of a sandpit lake along the Platte River. The physical image was gone but the memory of her face has stayed with me to this day.

I thought of her when Darrel, one of my best friends, recently called to tell me about finding his lost love. Impressive, since Darrel is eighty-seven years old. His first wife died shortly after they celebrated their fifty-fifth wedding anniversary. His second divorced him after three years because he didn’t act his age; he likes to swim in Puget Sound with the otters early every morning. (What is the proper age for early-morning swims with otters anway?)

The divorce depressed him and he began seeing a shrink “for the second time,” he told me. Before long he was feeling better except that he was dating women who were in their thirties. I should say “because” he was dating women in their thirties. The shrink asked him about his past love life and Darrel told him about falling in love with his nurse when he was in the hospital for gallbladder surgery during the summer of 1963.

“That was when I went to a shrink for the first time. I asked him how much it would cost to talk me out of this [affair]. I did not want to destroy my family. I never saw her again.”

For a man in love there are no more terrible words than those. I’ve uttered them too. In 1963 I called my girlfriend at the beginning of my third year in college. Her mother answered the phone and told me Sherry would not be coming back to school. “She’s not Sherry Morse any longer; she’s Sherry Poole. She got married this summer.” I never saw her again. I would hope, if that were to happen now, I would at least get an e-mail.

Darrel’s luck was better than mine, however. His second shrink suggested he try to get in touch with his long-lost nurse. He tracked down her address from a friend. She didn’t answer him right away. Months later she told him her story. She had gone to college and had become president of a nursing college. She had been married but her husband had recently died. Their correspondence led to a meeting. Their meeting led to a decision to marry. (Have I mentioned Darrel was luckier than me?)

He was calling to tell me the good news. When I told him I had gone online to purchase a document certifying that I was a reverend so I could officiate the wedding of another friend, he asked if I would officiate his. So, this fall I will preside over the vows of the man who has, in turn, married me twice and baptized all three of my children. Technically, I still owe him a few.

Darrel and I became friends in 1973. The year we met was the year I started in business. It was the year I got engaged. It was the year a peace agreement was reached in Paris that allowed our prisoners of war to return home from Vietnam. We had a lot to talk about. We talked about the war and the poets who knew it best. I remember sharing Cummings’ poem about “Olaf,” a conscientious objector who while being destroyed kept repeating this perfection: “There is some shit I will not eat.” It is a declaratory phrase I regret I learned too late.

We talked about love but did not trust ourselves to talk about our losses. These were too entwined with the dark and lonely places we shared with no one. Even the girl whose picture I removed from the newspaper remained a secret. My lost love and I never corresponded. We never met. The plane that took off from New York never landed in Brussels. It crashed killing all on board including my love, Laurence Owen, and the entire U.S. female skating team. I can still see her smiling face, sharp eyes, arched back, and confident spirit moving across the ice.

Lesson#43

Don’t Enter a Karaoke Contest Near Smith College; You Will Lose to Lesbians

by Jason Nash

When a man starts getting fine pussy, there’s a boost to his ego unrivaled by anything else in life. Unlike getting a good job—which, when all is said and done, is still work—dating someone hot makes you feel intoxicated. Blessed. Like winning the lottery or even better, finding a massive discrepancy in your checking account. You don’t know why you’re getting all that money, but you keep your mouth shut and hope no one notices.

Karyn was the kind of beautiful I wasn’t used to. Sort of alien looking, like a girl you’d see in a Prada ad, affecting a vacant stare while standing between two Wiemaraners. I always dreamed of dating a hot girl, but when I did, she didn’t look anything like Karyn. Thanks to my mom’s work in the cosmetics industry in the 1980s, my ideal woman has always been Samantha Fox, circa “Naughty Girls (Need Love Too).”

And Karyn was more than just unique looking. She was smart and said so very little, that when she did speak you would hang on her every word. She was impenetrable to trends, put absolutely no thought into her wardrobe, and was the first person I knew who admitted having horrible taste in music.

I saw her at the student union and I remember thinking, could I get this girl? Me? The guy who was a fat fuck in high school? The guy who was tormented for being the only Jewish kid and had the nickname “Wej”? (That’s “Jew” spelled backwards.) The guy who ruined Thanksgiving dinner once when he put too much toilet paper in the bowl, leaving his aunt and uncle’s shoes surfacing in an inch of shit water while they ate? That guy?

But things were going well for me in college. I had lost weight, had great friends, and scored an internship at
Saturday Night Live
. Most of all, I finally found my identity: the funny guy. The life of the party. And I loved it.

I approached Karyn at a bar. She was into me immediately, probably because I came highly recommended from a friend. I drove her home and we made out. It was goddamn heaven.

The final piece to my perfect college existence was there. A hot girlfriend. The only problem was, and I didn’t realize it until years later, Karyn thought I was a fucking douche bag.

In fact, she may have
only
dated me because everybody else thought I was cool. To her I was a Britney Spears record, something of appeal but little substance that you look down at in line and go, “Why am I buying this?”

And the worst part was, I was a douche bag. I thought I was so cool back then. My jokes were terrible. I’d put a cigarette in my belly button and draw eyes and nose on my chest as a gag. Was I in fucking Mumenshantz? I tried so hard to get into the coolest bars on campus. I even dropped names about famous people I had met at
SNL
. Who could blame her for hating me?

That’s not to say I didn’t try to make her like me—even love me. Early on in our relationship I had an important realization: “Oh right, she hasn’t seen me dance yet! Once Karyn sees what a good dancer I am, she’ll give herself over to me completely.”

I hatched a plan. I’d throw a party at my house, fully believing that once she saw my dancing ability things would turn around. Now, a word about my dancing. It is what I call “mock good.” In that, no, it’s not good, but I’m so serious about it I’ve convinced myself that it is good, and others seem to be charmed by that.

When the music came on I started moving and everyone began laughing and having fun. Everyone but Karyn, who just stood there, like a bored, unimpressed ice sculpture.

“Wait, no, you’re not getting it,” I wanted to say. “See, I’m being ironic. Notice me and appreciate the spectacle I’m making!”

I ran to her, trying to make it better but only doing more damage.

This, of course, is the curse of the insecure male. It’s not our glasses or balding head. It’s the fact that when the hot girl gets in our proximity, we simply can’t just be. Our methods of survival are the very things that will drive her away.

It’s like when you’re at a fancy hotel pool and a bunch of girls take their tops off and it’s no big deal. Well, I’m always the guy running to everyone else, pointing and yelling, “Did you see the topless girls? There are topless girls by the pool!” That’s not what a guy with a hot girlfriend does.

The end came when I asked Karyn to come cheer me and a friend on in the finals of a regional karaoke contest. I would be singing “Say, Say, Say” and doing my best Michael Jackson impersonation.

“I don’t think so,” she sad. “That’s your thing.”

What the fuck did that mean? “That’s your thing.”

Karyn had this way of answering questions that would leave me unsure how she felt. “That’s your thing.” Like you’re above my stupid college bar competition? Or like, you’re jealous of my time in the spotlight? I mean, shit, girl, I wear a fucking sparkly glove during the song! Isn’t that something you’d want to see?

Karyn never showed and we ended up loosing to two lesbians who sang “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” The stage slid out underneath me during the best part of the song: where I come in with a lift of the leg and shake of the shin singing, “All alone I sit home by the phone! Waiting for you, baby!” It didn’t matter really. The contest was a mile from Smith College. We never had a chance against those lesbians.

As we rode to the movies the next day, I was furious. I took a deep breath and finally said it.

“I don’t get it. You don’t think I’m funny. I mean, everyone thinks I’m funny but you.”

“I know,” she said, with no emotion in her voice.

We lasted a few months after that, mostly because I was living in New York. I drove back to college to see her, hoping she would be impressed by the fact that I had moved to the city. She wasn’t.

Our sex started to go downhill, as she began not moving during the act. This made me unable to get hard, and then she blamed me for my lack of prowess. I was too much of a novice to tell her that half of this was her fault. I apologized repeatedly and convinced myself she had to have been molested at some point. Have I mentioned I was douche bag?

A few weeks later she dumped me. It annihilated me. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t like me. I had things going on. I mean, I cleaned David Spade’s apartment! I thought about her every day for almost two years, and prayed she’d return. She did an amazing job of giving me nothing, never calling back and just letting me die, slow, cold, and painfully.

When I started writing this piece, I hired a private investigator in hopes of getting back in touch with her.

“Gonna be tough,” said Detective Dave. “Single women in their late twenties, very transient group. Nothing holding them down.”

I’m not chasing Sasquatch, asshole. Just put her name or social security number or something into the computer and tell me where she is. Three weeks later, Dave sent me an e-mail with a subject heading, “Well, We Did It!”

Dear Jason,

I made contact today with Karyn Gadd!

She called me to ask what this was about and I told her you wanted to talk to her for a short story. I told her that you had no ill feelings about the breakup and that you did not want to hurt her in anyway.

I DID give her your phone number, so CASE CLOSED.

Sincerely,
Dave Dineen, PI

Hey, Dave, maybe she would call me back if he didn’t open with, “Hey, this guy’s not going to rape and murder you, so why don’t you give him a jangle.”

And that was it. I was out $250 and she never called. Perfect really. The girl who never gave me anything, doesn’t give it to me one final time. But what did I hope to hear? That I was obnoxious? That I was cheesy? That she started dating me because she thought I was cool, but quickly learned I wasn’t?

Karyn made me realize my greatest fear: that someone would see through my tricks. My own personal David Copperfield bullshit I’ve honed to make other people think I’m special. And that’s what she did, stripped me of anything valuable I had to offer.

More than her beauty, the thing I wanted most from Karyn was her calmness. Her ability to sit still, stare, and feel numb. I married someone equally as neurotic as I am and I love her and we make a very entertaining couple, but there is chaos everywhere we go. I slay dragons every day, or more to the point, I run from them, but I keep moving. Waiting, hoping one day I can rest and breathe easy. My wife is like Karyn in some ways. Smart, pretty, a tough audience. She hates when I need to be the center of attention. The difference is, I don’t listen to her. I walk around every day positive I’m a good dancer.