BreakupBabe

by Rebecca Agiewich

  Fuck.

  All my energy drained out of me. Three cups of coffee, gone. Good feelings inspired by creativity, gone. Otherwise pleasant weekend spent with friends, gone. I looked in vain for the cute barista, but he had not deigned to appear today. The couples surrounded and overwhelmed me. Next time I would go to a different coffee shop.

  Out on the street, it had started to rain harder. Of course I didn’t have an umbrella with me. As usual, my laptop case was stuffed with too many things—books, copy of the Seattle Weekly, glasses, wallet—to wedge one in. I wanted to sit on the sidewalk and weep. At least, I thought, getting wetter and more bedraggled by the second, this weather suited my emotional state. An Everly Brothers song popped into my head, “Crying in the Rain.” My mom and I always sang it in the car when no one else was there.

  Hell, I was nothing but a rock-and-roll cliché. A manic-depressive one at that: one minute the table-dancing heroine of a Gloria Gaynor song, the next a down-and-out weather-dependent crybaby. But at least being a cliché meant I wasn’t the only person ever to have felt this rotten.

  It started to pour. I put the Seattle Weekly over my head, but it was instantly soaked. So I walked the rest of the way home in the storm bareheaded, trying to make the best of it. This storm is going to wash away all my hopes for Sexy Boy, I told myself. Meanwhile, I tried not to care that the hair which I’d so painstakingly blow-dried that morning was now plastered to my head.

  POST A COMMENT

  Aw, BB, things will get better, don’t worry! If it’s any comfort, you’re one of my very favorite reads.

  CandyCane | Homepage | 9/23/02—11:02 A.M.

  Perhaps you should consider getting involved with some charity organization, do some volunteer work, or try a new hobby (besides boys)—to get yourself out of your apartment and take your mind off yourself!

  Anonymous | 9/23/02—3:00 P.M.

  Chapter Nine

  I spent the next few days dragging my ass around the office in a stupor of self-pity. Without a crush, I had no Hope, and without Hope, it was exponentially harder to be an editor of programming documentation. So instead of working, I checked my e-mail, wrote my blog, and worked myself into a paranoid frenzy about Loser and Theresa—the deputy vice president of our unit.

  When I walked past Theresa in the hall on Monday morning, she looked distinctly nervous. Attired in a typically tasteless outfit (visible bra lines, white tights, tassled suede boots), she looked down with great interest at the pen in her hand. Her springy red ringlets, reminiscent of Little Orphan Annie, covered her eyes. She said “Hi” to my kneecaps, and then squirmed over to the other side of the hallway, though her colossal ass took up much of the room between us.

  Not that she owed me much of a greeting; I was a mere underling, after all, but she did know who I was, and—up until this particular Monday—had always given me her dazzling trademark grin, the one that said “I’m young and rich. How about you?” Her demeanor on this grim Monday morning, therefore, disturbed me deeply.

  Since the breakup, I’d made a conscious effort not to think about the two of them. I had no doubt Loser wanted to fuck her. Just before we’d broken up, I’d seen them flirting at the morale boosters. Standing in a corner together while he cracked his stupid jokes and she flashed that self-satisfied grin. I tried to tell myself that he was just sucking up. After all, she was his boss’s boss. It behooved him to kiss her ass. Still, my heart cracked a little more with each second they spent together. I knew this man too well to miss the signs: that dopey smile, the googly eyes, the overanimated demeanor that had once been the symptoms of his early infatuation with me.

  Just because he wanted her, though, didn’t mean he was going to get her. Still, I couldn’t help but be paranoid. And I couldn’t blog about it, which only made things worse. While I lacked the foresight not to blog about Loser, I had the single ounce of common sense needed not to blog about ridiculous fantasies of my ex seducing my V.P. (his V.P. too!) away from her six-packed, buns-of-steel boyfriend.

  “It’s NOT going to happen!” said my coworker Arthur, when I’d confessed my fears about Loser and Theresa to him two weeks ago. “Just take a deep breath and let that idea GO,” he’d said, extending his arms in front of him in a meditation pose. Arthur was a fifty-five-year-old gay former Deadhead who lived in a “co-housing” project in Snohomish (where, he hinted, people shared more than just the chores and cooking). Despite our differences, he was my one friend in the group because he was actually sociable. My first day on the job, he was the only person who introduced himself and asked me to lunch. When The Great Unpleasantness struck, I told him about it because I so desperately needed a confidant at work. He was a good listener and easily interruptable. His door was always open, the music of the Grateful Dead wafting out.

  Arthur taught yoga and meditation classes at the commune, but at this stage in his life, except for the Grateful Dead T-shirts he often wore, he was very clean-cut, with short graying hair and John Lennon glasses. His eyes were very blue as he looked at me from behind those glasses, his arms still extended. “You’re just being paranoid.”

  That had been my mantra ever since. “I’m just being paranoid. I’m just being paranoid.” It had worked just fine, up until Monday, when, for the first time, Theresa did her squirrelly act. By Wednesday afternoon, I’d gotten almost nothing done at work. I was obsessively checking and rechecking all my e-mail accounts for personal messages, and instant messaging with GalPal #3, who spent several hours each afternoon at a University of Washington lab, tabulating results for an important study on E. coli that was on the verge of making her famous and saving a bunch of lives. Despite (or maybe because of) her high-pressure work, Jane was always up for mindless messaging:

  Rachel says: I have to write my “status report” today. What am I supposed to say? Here’s what I’ve achieved this week: (1) went on a date with the man of my dreams, (2) plunged into a fit of despair because he never called, (3) had paranoid fantasies about my ex fucking my vice president, and (4) realized that I will die old and alone in a nursing home.

  Jane says: That’s a pretty impressive list.

  Rachel says: You think?

  Jane says: Well, it’s a lot to achieve in one week!

  But apparently my brain chemistry was now wired such that I could not mope around for more than forty-eight hours without taking *ACTION.*

  Wednesday, September 25, 2002

  4:56 PM Breakup Babe

  This has not been one of my finest weeks. Not only have I been rejected by my one and only hope for the future, Sexy Boy, but there are some other unmentionable things going on around here that are probably just a result of my fevered imagination. I wish I could tell you about them anyway, but I *#!@$ can’t! Just take my word for it; they’re not good.

  Up until yesterday, then, I was naught but a useless blob. Attempting, but failing, to do my tedious job, reverting to post-breakup weepy behavior. I was slumped over my desk in the afternoon, pointlessly checking my e-mail yet again for something, anything that might offer Hope, when General Celexa put in an appearance.

  “Get your ass up!” he barked. “What is this crap?” He poked me with the butt of the machine gun he wore slung around his neck. “I can’t do my job if you don’t!” He looked around my office. At the walls where I’d hung one colorful poster when I first moved in but otherwise hadn’t touched. At the coffee stains on my desk, and the unwashed cup with the crust of two-day-old hot chocolate in it. At the stack of as yet unedited documents on my desk that were supposed to be done by Thursday.

  “Why don’t you get that lazy ass of yours up and go for a run? You used to be a triathlete! A mountain climber! What are you now? A SISSY, that’s what! Three miles. NOW!”

  General C.’s bossiness had paid off. Exercise cleared my mind and, by the next day, I was halfway out of my SB-induced slump. Not only that, I had a plan of action! Last night, fueled by cheap Merlot, I’d spent two hours posting an online personal ad on Nerv
y.com. When I went to bed, it was with the drunken certainty that I’d wake up in the morning to responses piled like Christmas presents in my in-box.

  But, when I did wake up, I felt hungover and weary. As my computer booted up, I gazed out my living room window at 17th Avenue, a tree-lined oasis between hip Capitol Hill and the seedier Central District. On the southern horizon, Mount Rainier was bright and clear, but a giant cloud hovered directly over the summit. I remembered lonely nights in GalPal #3’s spare bedroom, perusing the online personals until after midnight, feeling a rush of excitement with every promising-looking photo, then a wave of nausea as I realized, “He’s not Loser.” Was I really ready for this?

  “Maybe,” said Sensible Girl, her voice calm, clear, authoritative, “you need to take some time to be alone.” I turned to look at her, not at all startled by her sudden intrusion this time. She leaned in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room, a cup of coffee in hand. She looked wide awake and was dressed surprisingly well for fall in an all-Gap outfit of cream-colored turtleneck and olive corduroy pants.

  So, as I stood there by the window, I tried to envision “taking time to be alone.” Solitary walks on the Olympic Peninsula, working late into the night on a book that would launch me to literary superstardom, forgoing s*x for yoga.

  Then Needy Girl’s voice shattered my reverie. “Oh, come on,” she said. “This is no big deal. You’re just doing this for fun! To mix things up a little.” I looked over at her, standing by the computer in a short black negligee, last night’s makeup smeared under her eyes. I could smell her rose perfume. “Come on, just see what’s up there!” she wheedled. She gestured at the monitor with her head. “Don’t you want an attractive man to hang out with this weekend? Don’t you want someone to KISS? Don’t you at least want some prospects?”

  I thought about the upcoming weekend and how I had no cute boys to hang out with. About how SB hadn’t called and probably never would. About how I had hadn’t kissed anyone in a month, and had no hope of anyone to kiss, much less get married to and have children with. I had to do something, didn’t I? So I did it. I walked over to my computer, and without even sitting down, I logged on to Nervy.com, clicked My Messages, and—

  What?

  Even Needy Girl was stunned into silence.

  Well.

  I certainly hadn’t expected that kind of response. In front of me on the screen were zero messages.

  Zero.

  Not a single male out there had been desperate enough to contact me, the unlovable. The untouchable. The controlling bitch who drove men away.

  I leaned down and pressed the power button on my computer for the requisite eight seconds until it shuddered off. Then it was just me, alone again in my apartment, with the sound of children’s shouts—children that I would never have—filtering in from the school down the street.

  Alone, that is, except for my demons Loneliness and Boredom flanking me on either side. Often, the two of them threatened and mocked me, but today they were eerily silent. Each one had a clammy hand pressed down on my shoulder, as if daring me to get up and push them aside.

  I did push them aside, though, or rather General C. did. He charged into the apartment in his camouflage, knocked Loneliness and Boredom over, and then dragged me out of there before the two of them could chain me permanently to my bed. He allowed me to throw on clothes, then pushed me down the stairs, onto the street, and into my ’87 Honda Civic with these parting words: “You have a job to do. Now, do it. I’ll take care of those candy asses.”

  So I did it. I drove to work, hustled into my office, and slammed the door behind me. Mentally, I prepared for another day sans hope. Once I caught my breath, once the caffeine from my soon-to-beimbibed first cup of coffee wore off, I would be in for it. Not even General C. would be able to keep those two at bay today.

  He made a valiant effort. For a few hours, I managed to stay upright and dry-eyed, though unable to do any actual work. Instead, I reorganized all my e-mail folders, banishing any remaining e-mails from Loser to a deeply buried folder called “Other,” along with e-mail from the stupid guys I’d spent time with since The Great Unpleasantness began. Maybe I’d mine these for material someday, when I finally wrote my masterpiece, in which every single guy who’d ever dumped me over the years would be eviscerated by my deadly wit.

  But even that thought didn’t cheer me up. It just made me feel more like the bitter, vengeful spinster I was. I couldn’t even turn to GalPal #1 in this crisis, because I was too mortified to tell her about my devastating unpopularity.

  By three o’clock, despite a double nonfat split-shot mocha (no whip) and a trip to Empire’s cushy gym, The Sports Club, I was ready to go fetal under the desk. It did cross my mind once or twice, as I pumped my leaden limbs on the elliptical trainer, that maybe my expectations had been a bit high. After all, the guys I knew who did the online personals went weeks without ever getting responses from women. But I quickly dismissed this thought. I was a girl. Girls got flooded with responses! That’s what everyone said!

  Every girl, that is, except me.

  When I returned from the gym feeling more hopeless than I had before, I knew I was doomed. Even the dark clouds that now threatened to dump down rain did nothing to improve my mood. Tears dribbled out of my eyes as I sat down at my desk. Loneliness and Boredom, looking nearly identical, stood in the doorway.

  I started to slither down toward the floor even before they reached me. Like a drowning man taking one last, pointless, reflexive breath, I checked my e-mail before disappearing under the desk.

  And there, like a bright orange life preserver tossed to me on a stormy sea, was a message from Sexy Boy, asking me to go flying with him on Saturday!

  E-mail Breakup Babe | Comments 4

  Though I’d made it a practice not to blog at work, I nonetheless felt compelled to blog about the most recent developments five minutes after they occurred. The general unspoken rule at Empire was “Do a good job, get your work done, and we don’t care how much you fuck around.”

  Of course, there were the ultraparanoid people like Arthur—made so, perhaps, by too much pot smoking in his former life—who made a point of never sending a single personal e-mail from work or, God forbid, visiting a nonwork-related Web site. Most of us, however, reaped the benefits of this relaxed corporate culture. I often arrived after ten. A few coworkers regularly came in at noon or later.

  The Rod himself was known for keeping strange hours. It was rumored that he sometimes came to work after hitting the bars (GuyPal #1 had once spotted him at the meat market to end all meat markets, Axis), and was often found the next day sleeping on the couch in his giant office with its picture window facing the Cascades.

  Therefore, after breaking my own rule earlier in the week by blogging at work, I didn’t feel quite so bad when I did it again. I had to entertain myself one way or another in between sessions in the editing straitjacket. As long as I didn’t divulge company secrets or write nasty things about my coworkers, I figured I was okay.

  Besides, I was starting to feel as if, when I didn’t blog about something that happened in my romantic life, it hadn’t really happened. A codependent relationship had blossomed between my readers and me. I compulsively checked the comments on my blog several times a day, feeling a thrill of anticipation with every new comment and a wave of emptiness if there were none. My hits were creeping up, too. I was up to thirty a day now.

  After posting the latest on my blog, I decided the day was a wash and spent the rest of Thursday afternoon using Empire resources to engage in detailed e-mail and Instant Messaging analysis with my friends about the meaning of Sexy Boy’s “turnaround” and an exhaustive survey of my wardrobe.

  Forward to: Sylvia Bern

  From: Rachel

  Date: 9/26/2002

  Subject: What do you think of this?

  S.

  I got this email from Sexy Boy yesterday. What do you think about his “cold” excuse? And
is this a date or what? (Also, is it a very bad idea to go flying with a stoner?)

  Dear Miss Rachel,

  What are you doing Saturday? I’m planning a fun little flight to San Juan Island for the day. Would you like to go? (Sorry I didn’t get in touch this weekend; I was laid up with a pretty bad cold.)

  J.

  To: Rachel

  From: Sylvia Bern

  Date: 9/26/2002

  Subject: What do you think of this?

  HMM. It’s hard to tell what his intentions are. I think the “cold” excuse is lame, frankly, but you’ll have to see if it happens again. Just be careful of him! I like him, but I don’t think he knows what he wants. The pot smoking concerns me too.

  As for the flying part, you’re on your own. I, personally, would never get in one of those little planes, and I can’t believe you would either with your fear of flying! If he’s a professional pilot, I’m sure he’s safe enough, though.

  Rachel says: What does one wear for a date in a small plane?

  Lucy says: How about those striped, bell-bottom cords you just bought from Anthropologie and a tight black turtleneck?

  Rachel says: That’s an idea. I guess a miniskirt is out—very little skin protection should the plane crash.

  Lucy says: Hey, Brian has a sheepskin aviator’s cap—you know, from the forties—you should wear that too!

  Rachel says: What, and make my hair go completely flat? I think not. Besides, it’s not an open-cockpit plane! I HOPE.

  By Thursday evening, Loneliness and Boredom had long since been banished from my office by the recurrence of Hope-a-noma. I hadn’t gotten any editing done, of course, but at least I’d been in my office typing away when my boss, Lyle, stopped in for a quick chat that evening. As we discussed a minor editing issue, I was quite perky, radiating enthusiasm from every pore. Today I even appreciated the reverse fashion sense it took for him to wear a thigh-length white shirt that looked like a lab coat, with “Empire Blast-Off 2001” sewn onto the back in rainbow-colored script. Ah yes, work was so much easier when I had Hope!