But that’s not reality, see? If I see him again, I will sleep with him, and he will screw me literally and figuratively, and we’ll be even worse off than we are now, which is hard to imagine, but possible. Believe me.
So thank you to Juliana for helping me avoid another under-the-desk crying jag today! Juliana is an outspoken and happily married blonde of Swedish descent who wrote to give me her hard-won advice about dating. She is also the first reader of my blog to whom I did not give the URL. After writing back to her, I discovered that she’d found my site through the front page of Blogger, when it appeared for a whole sixty seconds after I’d refreshed it yesterday.
Not only did Juliana take the time to send me good, practical advice, she also posted a link to my blog on hers. So I did the same. Because I discovered, after a day exploring blogs (instead of doing the ridiculously boring work I was actually supposed to be doing), that that is what you do in the blogosphere. You link to your friends, and they link to you, and everyone becomes like one big happy family.
Meanwhile, no e-mail from BadNews Boy today. Are we surprised? No, we are not. Do we care? No, we do…NOT.
No, not at all. Really.
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You’re welcome! It’s always exciting to discover a blog as well written as yours. And stay away from BadNews Boy if you can. Remember, you are starting with a clean slate now. Try to go forward instead of back.
Juliana | Homepage | 8/28/05—9:45 A.M.
Chapter Four
Friday, August 30, 2002
9:03 AM Breakup Babe
My little sister is getting married this weekend in San Francisco. Everyone in my family, naturally, is worried about how I’m going to handle it. My mom keeps warning me: “I’m going to be stressed out; I’m going to miss your father and I need you to be there for me.” Subtext: Don’t have a breakdown, young lady, or you will forever cement your reputation as the unreliable, self-centered one of the family.
I performed poorly at the wedding shower. Not that I could be expected to do otherwise. By law, dumpees in their mid-thirties should not have to attend wedding showers. But the principle rule of my family is guilt. Do this for us or you will forever be branded The Bad Sister or The Bad Daughter. I’m already The Flake, The Airhead, The Bad Driver, The One Who Couldn’t Deal with Dad Being Sick, so I can’t afford to falter.
Thus, one and a half months after breaking up with Loser, I had flown down to the Bay Area suburbs to participate in that torture ritual known as the bridal shower.
First of all, what kind of a party can you have without men? Especially for those in attendance who are horny, desperate, or recently dumped, what kind of fun is it to have the concept of wedded bliss shoved in your face?
Please, at least allow (or hire!) a few good-looking males to come and circulate so we don’t have to die of boredom from all the cutesy stories about marriage and watching the bride-to-be open gift after gift of expensive lingerie. Hell, she’s not the one who needs all that booty; it’s us, the ones who are actually out there on the front lines fighting one another for the ever-dwindling pool of hot, emotionally available, gainfully employed men! And besides, Bridey has two salaries to draw from—let her buy her own f*cking lingerie!
So, not only should there be attractive men circulating, they should be showering us single girls with lacy Victoria’s Secret outfits, and offers to help us take them off later. Then, while the rest of the gals are playing games like “Bridal Bingo” or “How Well Do You Know the Bride?” (just two of the “kah-razy” competitions at Li’l Sis’s shower), all to win some girly prize like a lavender sachet for your underwear drawer that will lose its scent in exactly one week, the single girls will be off in the back f*cking the hot guys, being made to feel like warrior princesses rather than loser old maids. Everyone wins!
My sister’s shower, needless to say, did not follow this format. There was much sitting around, much playing of stupid games, much tittering about lingerie, much inane chatter, and absolutely no men. After about an hour and a half of displaying a fake smile, I disappeared into my old room, where I lay immobile in the dark for the next several hours, unable to cry, unable to do much of anything except lie there in a vegetative state.
I was, however, able to unleash a well-timed torrent of tears for my mother’s entrance into the room.
“Well, that was a great performance!” she said, storming in with her hands on her hips. I inherited my mom’s flashing smile, her big brown eyes, and her fair skin, now lined but still youthful for her age. Hopefully I will not inherit her middle-aged penchant for flowing red-and-gold tunics of the kind she had on now.
Unbidden, the tears came to my eyes. I realized, suddenly, how hard I’d been working these last two months to keep things together. I’d had to go to work every single day and perform in a new job—with Loser right down the hall! I’d had to move, always one of life’s most stressful events even when you wanted to do it! I’d been functioning at such a high level when all I wanted to do was break down. Or lie down. In a place that was not surrounded by memories of him. Like home. Where no one would betray me, no matter what.
“I’m sorry, but I th-thought home was the one p-p-lace I could just let myself go!” I cried, erupting into sobs. Our dog, Barney, nosed his way into the room, and put his big, blond head down heavily on my chest and gazed at me with liquid brown eyes, his eyebrows twitching in the way of golden retrievers, as though they’re puzzling to understand something. This made me cry harder.
Mymother, ultimately, forgave me. So did Li’l Sis, who even came to lie on the bed with me as she did when we were little and scared of something in the night. Back then, we looked almost identical except for the wavy golden brown locks that flowed, like Farrah Fawcett’s, down her back in contrast to my straight black pigtails. She later shot past me in height to become tall and statuesque, and she was casually yet fashionably attired in a way that befits a Silicon Valley success story. (The start-up she worked at had recently been bought by Yahoo! for loads of cash—a fact that usually inspired more pride in me than jealousy.) When she lay down next to me, she confessed that she had a headache and was glad the shower was over. “If I give you some of that lingerie, will it make you feel better?” she asked.
The wedding, however, is to be a different story; I need to be on: charming and friendly, supportive and helpful, and—most important—happy. I have serious doubts whether this is possible.
I’d gotten so addicted to writing my blog that I’d lugged my laptop to Sea-Tac Airport with me so I could use the free wireless access and write while waiting for my flight. (Writing while in the air was out of the question since one moment’s inattention on my part would cause the plane to plummet to earth. Perhaps the laptop would survive me if the plane crashed somewhere over the Cascades. They’d find my last Breakup Babe entry—the one that I never got to post—and publish it posthumously. Perhaps my blog would gain a cult following after my death!)
After the startling e-mail from Juliana, I started to wonder how many people might be reading my blog. I knew I had at least a small following because I’d installed a “hit counter,” a little tool that told me how many readers per day I had (twenty!), and which website had “referred” them (meaning where they’d found a link to Breakup Babe). And I couldn’t help checking the damn hit counter at least three times a day. Have my numbers gone up yet?
They were going up, but oh, so slowly. It was all thanks to Juliana, too. Regular readers of Juliana’s site clicked on her link to Breakup Babe. Then they put links to Breakup Babe on their sites. Now there were links to my site on at least five other blogs, including Suburban Sex Kitten, Knut’s Corner, and Tales of a Two-Bit Housewife. I dutifully linked back.
Delilah, aka the Suburban Sex Kitten, had the most interesting blog, since she wrote about her numerous torrid affairs with biker dudes and other bad boys. She’d written me an e-mail when she discovered my blog:
Dear Breakup Babe,
We are like the yin and the yang. The sense of heartbroken longing in your blog is refreshing in a strange way. Like what my blog would be like if I hadn’t hardened my heart a long time ago. Anyway, keep writing—your blog reminds me of the innocent soul that’s buried inside me somewhere….
—Delilah
It was, of course, a thrill to get this e-mail—only my second from a Breakup Babe fan—and I wrote back promptly, telling Delilah how much I “enjoyed” her blog as well. It was true, at least, that her enthusiastic, if unpoetic descriptions of sexual acts (“I’d been staring at the bulge in his pants all night long, wondering if it could possibly be as big as it seemed, and when he finally pulled it out—oh my fucking God!”) helped free my own inhibitions. If not quite yet, then down the road, when the boudoir began to figure more prominently in Breakup Babe.
I knew I could garner more hits by leaving more comments on other people’s blogs with a link to Breakup Babe. I was too impatient for that, though, mostly because the majority of blogs I came across were boring as hell. I wasn’t even inspired enough to read a whole entry, much less leave a comment just so someone would check out my site. Besides, I really needed to curb my growing addiction to hits. I’d been reading an essay in a book called Blogger Nation that advised bloggers to ignore the number of hits they got. “There will always be people who get exponentially more traffic to their site, for whatever reason—deserved or not,” said the essay. Another essay in the book confirmed this by informing me of the presence of “A-list bloggers.” A-list?! I didn’t like to think of what that made me. The A-listers got thousands of hits per day, and if they happened to link to you—thus anointing you with their A-list holy water—you, too, would get thousands of hits a day and join the Inner Circle.
Hmmph.
I’d checked out one such blog: Sean O’Reilly, one of the founders of JournalLand (a competitor to Blogger) had an A-list blog. But it was boring! Yes, I could concede his celebrity, of course. JournalLand founder, mover and shaker in the high-tech world. If anyone’s blog deserved lots of hits, it was his (not that he’d invented blogs, but he had helped make blogging available to the masses). He didn’t write about his personal life, but instead about the high-tech world, with bits of high-tech news and links to other sites on the Web. Snooze. Yet he got upwards of 10,000 hits a day!
But Blogger Nation was right. I just couldn’t worry about the popularity of other people’s blogs, or I would regress to a high schoolesque state of insecurity. I needed to do what made me feel best, and that was write.
On the highly dubious assumption that I survive my soon-departing flight to San Francisco, there are a few things working in my favor for this wedding.
One, the drugs. The drugs perform. Some days at work, with my door closed, I can almost forget that the man who lied to me, cheated on me, and broke my heart is working only a few feet away. And for each workday that I manage to get through without a nervous collapse, I offer up a prayer of thanks: Thank you, Lord, for inventing Celexa!
Two, the dress. After the first round of dress shopping, wherein everything I tried on made me look like Mrs. Potato Head, I found a clingy black silk dress adorned with a fringe of hot pink appliqué roses and finished off with a flamenco dancer’s hem. This dress looks like it was made for my body. And post-breakup, I have magically become a size 6. Size 6! I want to tell people. To point at myself! Did you know I’m a size 6 now?
Finally, a date.
A date, you say? You have a date for the wedding?? Is it BadNews Boy?!
WHO? Oh, that guy. The one who showed up two hours late for our second outing, where he then proceeded to flirt with GalPal #2’s cute cousin for the rest of the evening? Since he wasn’t even horny enough to exert the minimal effort required to get me into bed, that would be a big NO.
We are talking, instead, about my on-again, off-again, friend and lover Longtime Lover Boy (LTLB). He got a crush on me when we were fifteen and cooking partners in Home Ec, sweating over Beef Stroganoff (we got a B+ on it, cheated out of an “A” by a faulty salt shaker). Back then, I thought he was too “nerdy” (as if I were any paragon of high school hip myself)! But now he’s a gourmet chef, gorgeous actor, and talented comedian, and I would be his girlfriend in an instant if he asked. Hell, I would marry him.
“Welcome to Flight 1203, with nonstop service from Seattle to San Francisco. We’re about to begin preboarding…”
Shit. Why, oh, why did I have to fly so much? Why couldn’t my stupid family just move up to Seattle? They were going to drown in guilt for forcing me to come to this wedding when my plane went nose down into Mount Rainier!
I grabbed my backpack from under my seat. It rattled loudly, filled as it was with my meds. Time for a Xanax. Xanax was the third musketeer in my triumvirate of Happy Pills. Celexa kept me sane, Trazodone helped me sleep, and the Xanax was reserved for when I really was fucking freaked out. The toddler seated two seats away from me looked over in interest at my rattling backpack. I gave him an apologetic smile. No, baby, it’s not a toy for you! This is survival gear. I turned my attention back to my laptop; five more minutes to complete Breakup Babe’s final masterpiece.
We hooked up for the first time right after college; I got my hopes up, then he pulled away. It happened again. Then, yet again. The first couple of times it pissed me off. Then I tried to stop wanting more from him and accepted things for what they were: Friends Plus.
Besides, he lives in Los Angeles and has no desire to move. I would never live in L.A. either, except under pain of death and maybe not even then, since it would be equivalent to death but with traffic jams. LTLB, though, is perennially single and usually good for a little romance when I most need it.
Ever since the breakup, I’ve been fantasizing about him, hoping he would come to the wedding with me, hoping this would be one of our on-again times, because, Lord knows, I need some action.
And can I help it if maybe I want a little more, too? Is there a possibility—even a remote one—that LTLB will come to his senses and decide to try this relationship thing? Swayed, perhaps, by the romance of my sister’s wedding? We could have a long-distance marriage; I know it would work!
Because, you know, it would be really nice to just get this all over with. To not have to go through the whole dating routine again. The roller coaster! The wondering, waiting, worrying—will he call, should I have s*x with him, where is this going, what does this mean? Oh my God, the thought makes me so tired.
“We will now begin general boarding of Flight 1203, with nonstop service from Seattle to San Francisco…”
Now I’m off to board my flight. My only consolation, since I know, of course, that my plane will crash, is that, if it does, Loser will probably feel horrible. In fact, it might be his undoing! And that’s something we can all get behind.
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I hope your plane doesn’t crash, but if it does, can I have that new red couch of yours from the Bon Marche?
Tired of My Furniture | 8/30/02—11:04 A.M.
Hope you get the Friends Plus action! Try to make sure your ex “accidentally” finds out about it too.
Delilah | Homepage | 8/30/02—5:02 P.M.
Chapter Five
Wednesday, September 4, 2002
9:41 AM Breakup Babe
Shit, I thought. Why didn’t I take a Xanax?
The wedding day was sunny and perfect—too perfect almost, as if we’d jumped into a wedding from Brides magazine. As I teetered in my spike heels toward the gazebo where Li’l Sis was about to get married, I cursed myself for not realizing that the ceremony itself might be an occasion for total breakdown. We’d been so busy with preparations in the last two days, there had been no time to panic.
But now that I was alone for a few moments in the rose-scented sunshine at the Mirassou Winery, with the murmur of guests nearby and the drone of an airplane above, anxiety coiled like a
snake in my gut. My heart was pounding like a jackhammer. Could I really do this?
As I entered the gazebo, the world suddenly felt skewed and surreal. Li’l Sis about to get married. Me, 34 and alone. Dumped.
The anxiety demon saw his chance. He jumped out from behind a rosebush and grabbed me with clammy hands. He wore an ill-fitting sports jacket with a hideous purple tie. “Hey, R.,” he yelped. “This is weird! You are going crazy! Run! Hide!”
When I saw LTLB sitting down in the front left row, I was reassured just a little. And the Celexa, even without the reinforcement of
Xanax, was in there fighting a tough battle. “It’s okay. Just keep walking!” yelled General Celexa as he pounced on Anxiety and tore him off my back. “If you wanna freak out, do it later. Like after the wedding, when everyone has seen you in your dress. I am not going to let you mess this up for Li’l Sis!”
With one burly arm around the demon’s scrawny neck, General C. raised the binoculars to his eyes and looked meaningfully off into the distance. I didn’t move. “Now, get going!” he barked, keeping the binoculars glued to his eyes.
Postwedding, I was back at Victrola on a bright, sunny morning before work. I’d dragged myself here at 8:30 A.M. with my laptop to write about the wedding in all its bittersweet glory. A few of the early-morning regulars were there—like the five-foot-tall guy with a shaved head and a lightning bolt tattooed on his scalp, who eyed me over the top of his Wall Street Journal as I walked in.
I gave him a disdainful look (“Don’t try to flirt with someone before they’ve had their morning coffee, midget!”), then got in the line, which, as usual, was almost out the door. I’d gotten back to Seattle the night before last, and had just started to get back to “normal”—not that I really knew what that was anymore.
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