Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me
Page 12
Then the sadness. Prolonged, boring, mopey. Plotted countless acts of revenge. Odd how there’s no plural for the word revenge itself. I wanted revenges. And not of the “living well” variety, either. I longed for calamity. Locusts. Fire and brimstone. A pox on their house and cars that gave them endless mechanical problems. But mostly I felt bad for myself. Overly bad, like “I’ve been martyred on a cross of two people I had dared to trust” bad. I admit here and now, I started writing poetry as an outlet. Buried somewhere in a storage facility or a basement thick with spiderwebs and creaky ski boots is a yellowed legal pad with the words “The Night Table Years” scribbled on the first page. When I die, someone will find it, be momentarily excited, then read it, and then, I hope, burn it.
Years passed before I found myself in something even remotely resembling a serious relationship. Self-mythologically speaking, I’d say it was because it just took me that long to find someone I actually cared about. In reality, I was broken and disinterested. Also, that whole thing about L.A.’s hyper-Darwinian mating scene. Tough nut to crack.
Jill and I didn’t meet cute and we certainly didn’t break up neat. In fact, we never saw or spoke to each other again. But in the years that followed, I came to realize it most certainly wasn’t all her fault. In fact, it may be no more appropriate for her to ask for my forgiveness than it is for me to ask for hers. But I’m the one writing, so I get to do both. And, in the same way military cadets eventually thank their drillmasters for their cruel tutelage, I offer my gratitude. Everybody gets crushed. For the lucky ones it only happens once.
Lesson#19
You Can Encapsulate Feelings of Regret, Panic, and Desperation in a Two-and-a-Half-Minute Pop Song
by Adam Schlesinger, Professional Songwriter
As a professional songwriter, it is my job to vividly portray the minutest details of human relationships quickly and accurately. Complex emotions must be captured in a few simple couplets. How, you ask, can this be done? Well, first one must have something meaningful to write about. And then one must learn The Craft.
Of course, I would NEVER use my own life experiences as the basis for my own songs. My songs are 100 percent fiction. But by carefully observing others, I have developed a keen sense of human psychology. Also, I have mastered the use of rhyme, various poetic devices, and even “slang,” which I employ occasionally to give a lyric a “tossed-off” quality. The end result is that I am able to create strikingly realistic character voices in song; so realistic, in fact, they are often mistaken for me.
Annotated below are the lyrics to the song “Baby I’ve Changed” (once called “one of the greatest B-sides of the last four weeks” by the University of Cincinnati News-Record). And, though the voice of “me” in the song may often seem to actually be ME, remember that it is only a character . . . a carefully constructed illusion.
BABY1I’VE CHANGED2
She used to love me
But she don’t love me no more3
I stepped over the line too many times
And she stepped out the door4
But baby I’ve changed
Won’t you come back home5
’Cause I’ve changed my wicked ways6
And I’ll never throw your mail away7
And I won’t tell you that your hair looks gray8
And I’ll let you listen to Sugar Ray9
And I’ll say I love you every day10
’Cause it’s true
Baby I do
Now I hope and I pray11
I can turn this mess around12
And I search for a way to convince you to stay
And not just skip town13
’Cause baby I’ve changed
Won’t you come back home
’Cause I’ve changed my wicked ways
And I’ll put away my socks and shoes14
If the lights go out I’ll change the fuse15
And I’ll let you listen to the blues16
And I’ll say I love you just because it’s true
Baby I do
Baby I do17
1. “Baby” is a term of endearment often used in popular song. See also: Bread, “Baby I’m-a Want You”; The Miracles, “Ooh Baby Baby.”
2. For the careful reader, the title reveals this song is clearly a work of fiction. Because people don’t change.
3. When expressing heartfelt sentiments in lyric form, it is permissible to use incorrect grammar, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The slangy nature of the phrase “she don’t love me no more” implies that the narrator is too overcome by heartbreak to remember how to speak proper English.
4. Note the clever contrast of the metaphorical “step[ping] over the line” with the literal “step[ping] out the door.” Any song examining the end of a relationship should include a vivid description of the physical act of leaving. See also: Simon, Paul, “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” in which the character Jack is advised to “slip out the back,” while a certain Gus is counseled to “hop on the bus.” (The exact nature of the relationship between Jack and Gus is left undefined.)
5. The song’s crafty protagonist hints that “home” for his departed lover is the place they shared, and not, in fact, her sister’s couch in Westfield, N.J.
6. Alliteration is, according to Wikipedia, a poetic device which “contributes to the euphony of the passage, lending it a musical air” and may also “add a humorous effect.”
7. This does not imply that he had ever previously thrown her mail away. Tampering with or discarding someone else’s mail is a federal crime and is in no way endorsed by the songwriter or this book’s publisher.
8. When in a relationship, it is important to phrase physical observations about your partner in a positive manner. Instead of pointing out that some of her hair is gray, for example, our protagonist could have complimented her on the fact that most of her hair is not gray.
9. With this major concession, our narrator reveals the true depths of his commitment and the level of sacrifice he is willing to make in order to salvage the flagging relationship.
10. Mumbling “love you too” occasionally, as when ending a phone call, is here acknowledged to be insufficient as a verbal expression of true passion.
11. The subject of faith is often addressed indirectly in popular music, in order to appeal to religious audiences without alienating the more mainstream “hedonist sinner” market.
12. “Mess” here refers to the situation at hand, and not to the former lover herself.
13. “Skip town” is another slang term, defined by the Urban Dictionary as “to move to another city/neighborhood when your house/crib gets shot up by a rival gang.”
14. Although it is unlikely that the main reason she left was the sight of his shoes, he is presumably just trying to cover all his bases at this point.
15. In fact, they had circuit breakers, not fuses, but this did not rhyme.
16. “The blues” is a genre of music created by actors Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi and heard primarily in sports bars and at corporate events.
17. By repeating the phrase “I do” loudly as his final plea, the song’s narrator perhaps hopes to be overheard by a passing justice of the peace, who will then marry him to his ex on the spot before she has time to realize what’s happening.
Lesson#20
I’m Easy
by Paul Simms
Well, well, well. Just look at you, walking into this dreary bar and lighting the place up like the noonday sun at midnight, twirling a lock of your long auburn hair pensively as you search the room—for what? For a soul mate, perhaps?
(I know, I know—I hate that phrase, too. Maybe that will end up being one of those things we both hate.) Maybe a few weeks from now, lying in your bed on a Sunday morning, I’ll ask you, “What’s your least favorite word or phrase?,” and you’ll say, “‘Soul mate,’” and I’ll laugh till you say, “What? Tell me!,” and I’ll tell you how I knew that from the moment I first lai
d eyes on you, and then we’ll have sex again.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. You haven’t even noticed me yet. That’s okay, I can wait.
Maybe when your gaze settles on me, and we lock eyes in that mutual Hitchcockian tunnel-vision effect where the camera is, like, pushing in at the same time it zooms out, or however they do that, you’ll come sit down next to me and we’ll—
Now you’ve spotted the friends you came to meet. They look like good friends.
Maybe they’ll be my friends, too.
Our friends.
Your eyes just came to life like emeralds lit by subterranean torches, and as you move across the room toward your friends you shriek at them, “What the fuck is up, yo?,” in a voice so piercing that the entire bar goes silent for a moment, and I have to check my glasses to make sure the lenses didn’t crack. You continue to bellow your every utterance (including the lines “Jägermeister is the bomb, dawg!” and “Just ’cause I’m a white girl don’t mean I don’t got some serious junk in the trunk!” and “Random! Random! Random!”), and the bartender leans in and whispers something to his bar back, and they look at you and laugh.
You must be a regular here.
(Duration of crush: seventeen seconds.)
Oh my. What have we here? A rainy night in the city has cleared the sidewalks of all but the most intrepid pedestrians, and those who didn’t brave the elements have no idea what they’re missing.
Because there you are, gliding along on your bicycle, just a few feet ahead of me.
You’re obviously not one of those tedious hard-core cycling enthusiasts—no skintight black spandex for you. No, just a simple white T-shirt (soaked through to the skin, clinging to the small of your back) and a long blond ponytail, whipping back and forth like the tail of a cartoon pony, as those long legs of yours pump the pedals and you raise your face to the sky, letting the raindrops freckle your cheeks with sweet diamonds of moisture.
Dare I try to catch up to you? I’m on foot, carrying a bunch of shopping bags, but you’ve paused at a red light, and—what the heck? I don’t know what I’ll say to you, but even the clumsiest of introductions on these glistening nighttime streets will give us a romantic how-we-met anecdote that we’ll love telling for years to come.
Caught you! Here I am!
And there you are. I see now that you’re a dude. My mistake. It was the ponytail that threw me off.
(Duration of crush: thirty-three seconds.)
Another restaurant dinner with my boring girlfriend, another lecture about how I never really listen to whatever she’s yammering on about.
But how can I listen—how could anyone?—when across the room, alone at a table, reading the newspaper and nursing a glass of white wine, is a silent confection like you?
You, with your jet-black hair (like a latter-day Veronica from Archie) and your skin so pale that the bubble-gummy pinkness of your pouty lips seems almost obscene, especially when you scrunch them up the way you do every time you lick your forefinger and turn the page.
And I know you see me, too. Your first glance betrayed a glimmer of recognition—as if you knew me but couldn’t remember from where—followed by puzzlement, your eyes entreating me to silently remind you, which I couldn’t do at the time because my current girlfriend was staring across the table at me, apparently waiting for my answer to some kind of relationship question that I thought was rhetorical.
And so it goes. For an eternity, it seems—through the entire meal, until I watch you ask for the check, and pay it, and get up to walk out of the restaurant, and my life, forever.
But what’s this? You’re crossing the room toward me? So brazen—just as I knew you’d be. Are you going to surreptitiously slip me your number, written on a sugar packet, perhaps dropping it in my pocket as you fake-jostle me, like a spy handing off microfilm?
My heart beats like underwater thunder in my ears, until you tap my girlfriend on the shoulder, and she sees you and says, “Hey!,” and you say, “I thought that was you!,” and I realize that you are one of my girlfriend’s college roommates.
After you leave, my girlfriend tells me a hilarious story about how one time in college some guy broke up with you, so you found some photos of him nude with the word Patriarchy written on his chest in Magic Marker which you took for an art class, and you sent them to his parents and then posted them on your blog, where you apparently like to write incredibly detailed confessionals about the asshole guys you always end up dating, and also, while you don’t use the guys’ real names, everyone knows that the guy you immortalized as Pencil Dick is actually a guy I used to work with.
(Duration of crush: forty-five minutes.)
So silly does my impatience now seem, stuck as I am in the Starbucks line during the morning rush. But that was before I noticed you in line ahead of me.
And now that I’ve seen you—with your gossamer hair still damp from the shower, with your well-moisturized ankles strapped and buckled into high heels that make you wobble and sway like a young colt just finding her stride, with your scent of lilacs and Dial, and, most of all, with your infectious sense of calmness and serenity, which makes me wish that the world itself would stop spinning, so that gravity would cease and we two could float into the sky and kiss in the clouds, giddy with love and vertigo—
Now you’re at the register, and the dreaded moment when we part without meeting rushes toward me like a slow-motion car crash in a dream.
You’ve been at the register without saying anything for, like, fifteen seconds now, still scanning the menu board with those almond-shaped eyes that would make Nefertiti herself weep with envy.
Seriously, you’ve been to a Starbucks before, right? I mean, it seems like there are a lot of choices, but most people find a drink they like and stick with it. And order it quickly.
But maybe I’ve caught you on a day when you’ve decided to make a fresh start. To make a fresh start, to try a new drink, to walk a different way to work, to finally dump that boyfriend who doesn’t appreciate you.
Okay, even if that were the case you could have picked out your new drink while you were waiting in line, right? I mean, come on.
Well, you’ve won me back, my future Mrs. Me—by turning to me and mouthing, “Sorry,” after you finally noticed me tapping my foot, looking at my watch, and exhaling loudly. Sensitivity like that can be neither learned nor taught, and it’s a rare thing indeed. The rarest of all possible—
Jesus Christ, you’ve ordered your drink and paid; do I really have to stand here for another forty-five seconds while you repack your purse, the contents of which you’ve spilled out on the counter like you’re setting up a fucking yard sale or something?
That’s right, the bills go in the billfold, the coins go in the little coin purse, the billfold and the coin purse go back in the pocketbook—no, in a side pocket of the pocketbook, which seems to have a clasp whose design incorporates some proprietary technology that you haven’t yet mastered.
I think I hate you now.
(Duration of crush: five minutes.)
Lessons#21 to 36
Things More Majestic and Terrible Than You Could Ever Imagine
by Todd Hanson
We are told the healthiest way to think about life’s seemingly near-continual parade of tragedy, pain, and humiliation is to view each of these defeats as a learning experience—“Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger,” as the saying goes. Technically, that’s not true—multiple sclerosis, an inoperable disability, or a nonfatal debilitating injury that results in permanent brain damage are just a few of the examples I could name—but let’s just pretend it’s true for the sake of argument.
IF getting dumped is a learning experience, it is fair to say I’ve not only earned several PhDs, but also put in an impressive amount of postdoctoral work as well. So, alas, there is no way I could explain everything I’ve learned, not in the space provided here nor even in the remaining years I have on this planet.
Of th
ese truths I have learned, some were so fantastic I never would have thought them possible if I hadn’t experienced them myself. Others, so soul-searingly awful they beggar description. Still more fall into a Nietzsche-esque “Beyond Good and Evil” category that defies classification altogether.
What follows, therefore, are three unbelievably abbreviated lists—a highlight reel; a mere overview, if you will, of a vast, unwanted body of knowledge.
Things Positive
1. That high school girlfriend you dated so long your young, naïve self is desperate to break up with her, but has such a hold on you you can’t seem to get away no matter what you do? Don’t worry—you won’t be stuck with her forever after all.
2. The average Midwestern liberal-arts campus has, it so happens, at least one budding young radical feminist who, despite her vocal opposition to patriarchal hegemony, diatribes against “the male gaze,” and propensity for declaring herself a lesbian every couple of months, is nonetheless so mind-blowingly sexy that every single guy on campus wants desperately to get into her pants. When you meet this girl, you will assume you have absolutely no chance of ever doing so. Good news: you’re wrong!
3. Sex with two heavily tattooed punk-rock drummer chicks whose breasts bounce hypnotically as they hammer away onstage is pretty much as amazing as you’d imagined. I cannot emphasize this point enough.
4. Fantasy celebrity women you’ve seen on TV—the kind who are in relationships with major movie stars and live in mansions in the Hollywood Hills—are, it’s fair to assume, permanently relegated in your brain to the “That’ll Never Happen” category. In fact, going out with one is so outside your range of expectations, you probably wouldn’t believe it was happening even if you were in the middle of actually doing so. But guess what? Wrong again!