The real problem with living alone is not just the loneliness... it's also that you start pooping with the door open.
I'm a lost cause.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Four Bad Dates, Wherein I am a Whore Who Refuses to Have Sex
Once upon a time, five years ago, I was single. I was about 10 months of single, post-college boyfriend, feeling adult and free for the first time. I was half-way into my first year of law school was the split happened - or at least when it definitively happened, having happened and then un-happened a half dozen times before that, over a course of years. That had been a tumultous relationship, full of passion and first love and SO MUCH ANGER.
College boyfriend was a man who was charming and funny and wonderful - and rascist and selfish and greedy with the quickest temper ever known and horrible. During the time when we lived in different cities, he broke 4 phones in 6 months, all from getting angry with me during conversations and chucking his cell out the window. He also occassionally and unintentionally drank his own urine out of old Coke cans. That is a story for another time, but also a very, very good way to win a fight.
During this time, I was on a real high. The break-up had been an emotional jail-break, freeing me from a viscious cycle of love and misery. It also wonderfully coincided with the period in which I realized that law school was not nearly as difficult as lawyers pretended that it was. I decided to embrace the time period and date like it was my job. That is how, in a span of a few months, I had the four worst dates in the history of dating.
Date #1: Wherein I am a Whore
After a few lackluster ventures onto the dating scene in which nothing either remarkable or amusing happened, I ended up on a blind date with the college friend of a law school friend. She exclaimed that we were both political and funny and smart, that we both had a particular predliction for brunch (the best time of day to eat, although arguably not the sexiest date), and that she was pretty sure we would have beautiful babies. Or something like that. The only reason that she wasn't dating him was that her very Asian parents would have not done well with her dating a very Jewish boy. (She later ended up engaged to a very tall, white, Midwestern boy, which was just as off-putting to her folks, but love is love.)
True to our shared nature, we met for brunch at a very lovely West Village brunch place. The kind where everything is delicious and you feel compelled to order the Eggs Florentine (no matter how much you want french toast) and there is not nearly a high enough volume of carbs to satisfy me. But the perfect first-date brunch spot. We ordered mimosas, chatted, traded quips about our lovely shared friend.
We were onto the topic of college. He was an Economics major. I had an interdisciplinary social sciences major with a froofy name that covered up the surprising number of graduate classes I had actually taken. He played Alto Sax in the band. I was Vice President of my sorotity---- WHORE!
Suddenly, this seemingly sweetly nerdy boy was on his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs, upsetting mimosa glasses and perturbing our table neighbors. It took me longer than it should have to process what was happening: he shouted "whore" at the top of his lungs in the middle of a quiet brunch spot, and it sounded like it was directed at me.
"Excuse me, what are you doing?" (If a sorority teaches you only one thing, it is likely to be how to continue to make polite conversation with people who apall you, a wonderful skill learned in the hours and hours of rush.)
"Whore! You are a whore! You and your sorority whore friend, going out and being whores, mean whores. Whores who laugh at people and have whore sex with your whore friends. You're all whores."
It became painfully apparent that some very mean sorority girls had attended this boy's college and treated him unkindly. Still, the wheels of my brain were slowly turning and I was getting more and more embarrassed.
"Don't you have any manners? I didn't know anyone in the Greek system nearly as mean as you're being right now. If you'll excuse me..." I started to gather my things, attempting to make as graceful an exit as a whore possibly could.
"Wait, um, did you want to do this again? Also, um, how are we going to do the check?
I tried to muster all the grace I could, said no thank you, and put $30 on the table. I generally thought whores got paid better.
Date #2: Wherein I Do Not Have Sex
Shortly after this tragedy of a date, I conned myself into going out on another blind date. With another college friend of a law school friend. The law school friend didn't date this guy because they were both dudes.
This date ended up being mostly likely to be the most romantic first date I'd ever been on. He gave me a street corner to meet him on, and then whisked me into a cave-like wine bar with no sign, a secret known only to very cool Upper West Siders. It was entirely lit by candles, and we split a bottle of white wine, and talked and laughed and flirted.
He was leaving to go skiing early the next morning, and I had a paper due, so we cut the flirting short, and we slipped outside to hail cabs. He held the door opened for me, and then we had the perfect romantic first kiss, the kind you feel in your knees, charged with electricity.
Then, he looked deep in my eyes and said, "Let's go back to my place and have sex."
<Insert the sound of a record scratching here.>
"Umm, you have to go skiing.... and pack... and also we just met. But thanks."
Then came the real shocker. (I know that you thought the shocker was the last thing that he said.)
"Well, I mean, I guess you should know that I'm not going to call you again unless you have sex with me. It doesn't have to take very long. I do have to pack."
My loss I suppose. I thanked him for the wine (and for showing me the awesome bar!), and got into the cab. I pulled the door closed very firmly. So much for being a whore.
To be continued...
College boyfriend was a man who was charming and funny and wonderful - and rascist and selfish and greedy with the quickest temper ever known and horrible. During the time when we lived in different cities, he broke 4 phones in 6 months, all from getting angry with me during conversations and chucking his cell out the window. He also occassionally and unintentionally drank his own urine out of old Coke cans. That is a story for another time, but also a very, very good way to win a fight.
During this time, I was on a real high. The break-up had been an emotional jail-break, freeing me from a viscious cycle of love and misery. It also wonderfully coincided with the period in which I realized that law school was not nearly as difficult as lawyers pretended that it was. I decided to embrace the time period and date like it was my job. That is how, in a span of a few months, I had the four worst dates in the history of dating.
Date #1: Wherein I am a Whore
After a few lackluster ventures onto the dating scene in which nothing either remarkable or amusing happened, I ended up on a blind date with the college friend of a law school friend. She exclaimed that we were both political and funny and smart, that we both had a particular predliction for brunch (the best time of day to eat, although arguably not the sexiest date), and that she was pretty sure we would have beautiful babies. Or something like that. The only reason that she wasn't dating him was that her very Asian parents would have not done well with her dating a very Jewish boy. (She later ended up engaged to a very tall, white, Midwestern boy, which was just as off-putting to her folks, but love is love.)
True to our shared nature, we met for brunch at a very lovely West Village brunch place. The kind where everything is delicious and you feel compelled to order the Eggs Florentine (no matter how much you want french toast) and there is not nearly a high enough volume of carbs to satisfy me. But the perfect first-date brunch spot. We ordered mimosas, chatted, traded quips about our lovely shared friend.
We were onto the topic of college. He was an Economics major. I had an interdisciplinary social sciences major with a froofy name that covered up the surprising number of graduate classes I had actually taken. He played Alto Sax in the band. I was Vice President of my sorotity---- WHORE!
Suddenly, this seemingly sweetly nerdy boy was on his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs, upsetting mimosa glasses and perturbing our table neighbors. It took me longer than it should have to process what was happening: he shouted "whore" at the top of his lungs in the middle of a quiet brunch spot, and it sounded like it was directed at me.
"Excuse me, what are you doing?" (If a sorority teaches you only one thing, it is likely to be how to continue to make polite conversation with people who apall you, a wonderful skill learned in the hours and hours of rush.)
"Whore! You are a whore! You and your sorority whore friend, going out and being whores, mean whores. Whores who laugh at people and have whore sex with your whore friends. You're all whores."
It became painfully apparent that some very mean sorority girls had attended this boy's college and treated him unkindly. Still, the wheels of my brain were slowly turning and I was getting more and more embarrassed.
"Don't you have any manners? I didn't know anyone in the Greek system nearly as mean as you're being right now. If you'll excuse me..." I started to gather my things, attempting to make as graceful an exit as a whore possibly could.
"Wait, um, did you want to do this again? Also, um, how are we going to do the check?
I tried to muster all the grace I could, said no thank you, and put $30 on the table. I generally thought whores got paid better.
Date #2: Wherein I Do Not Have Sex
Shortly after this tragedy of a date, I conned myself into going out on another blind date. With another college friend of a law school friend. The law school friend didn't date this guy because they were both dudes.
This date ended up being mostly likely to be the most romantic first date I'd ever been on. He gave me a street corner to meet him on, and then whisked me into a cave-like wine bar with no sign, a secret known only to very cool Upper West Siders. It was entirely lit by candles, and we split a bottle of white wine, and talked and laughed and flirted.
He was leaving to go skiing early the next morning, and I had a paper due, so we cut the flirting short, and we slipped outside to hail cabs. He held the door opened for me, and then we had the perfect romantic first kiss, the kind you feel in your knees, charged with electricity.
Then, he looked deep in my eyes and said, "Let's go back to my place and have sex."
<Insert the sound of a record scratching here.>
"Umm, you have to go skiing.... and pack... and also we just met. But thanks."
Then came the real shocker. (I know that you thought the shocker was the last thing that he said.)
"Well, I mean, I guess you should know that I'm not going to call you again unless you have sex with me. It doesn't have to take very long. I do have to pack."
My loss I suppose. I thanked him for the wine (and for showing me the awesome bar!), and got into the cab. I pulled the door closed very firmly. So much for being a whore.
To be continued...
An Open Letter to My 30 Second Fiance
Dear Love,
I sent you away, but will you come home again? That is the question that hangs out there, between us, taunting me. It is unspoken, but it is there. When I ask it, if I ask it, what will you say?
Can I ask it?
Life without you is torture. Every day, someone sneaks into my bedroom and rips my heart out of my chest. Perhaps a cliche.
My life without you has been so unhappy that I fear I am not strong enough to keep living this way. This time apart has taught me that being with you is more important than being married, than buying a house, than planning for children, all the reasons that we are apart. But it leaves me with a more pressing question: if I feel that strongly about your importance in my life, how can I invite you home knowing that you don't feel the same and that this scenario may play out again in 6 months, a year, 2 years? My reaction to our separation has only confirmed to me how very much I do care about you, how I was right and pure and true in my desire to commit my life to you. The issue of our marriage is now both more important and less. I am wholly willing to give it up and wait - but at what expense?
I feel that there is no winning. Not for me, anyway.
And you. Our silence echoes. Are you as miserable as I? Or are you happy, ecstatic, liberated? Maybe this is the freedom that you have been yearning for. Maybe my misery without you is the greatest gift I could have given you. Maybe you have received clarity about what you want in life - be it me or something else.
I hope that you have. Because that clarity will be so important when, if I take that big, unspoken question out of the air and put it squarely on the table.
I love you,
Me.
I sent you away, but will you come home again? That is the question that hangs out there, between us, taunting me. It is unspoken, but it is there. When I ask it, if I ask it, what will you say?
Can I ask it?
Life without you is torture. Every day, someone sneaks into my bedroom and rips my heart out of my chest. Perhaps a cliche.
My life without you has been so unhappy that I fear I am not strong enough to keep living this way. This time apart has taught me that being with you is more important than being married, than buying a house, than planning for children, all the reasons that we are apart. But it leaves me with a more pressing question: if I feel that strongly about your importance in my life, how can I invite you home knowing that you don't feel the same and that this scenario may play out again in 6 months, a year, 2 years? My reaction to our separation has only confirmed to me how very much I do care about you, how I was right and pure and true in my desire to commit my life to you. The issue of our marriage is now both more important and less. I am wholly willing to give it up and wait - but at what expense?
I feel that there is no winning. Not for me, anyway.
And you. Our silence echoes. Are you as miserable as I? Or are you happy, ecstatic, liberated? Maybe this is the freedom that you have been yearning for. Maybe my misery without you is the greatest gift I could have given you. Maybe you have received clarity about what you want in life - be it me or something else.
I hope that you have. Because that clarity will be so important when, if I take that big, unspoken question out of the air and put it squarely on the table.
I love you,
Me.
Friday, March 23, 2012
My 30-Second Fiance
I was engaged for 30 seconds. For 30 seconds, on New Year’s Eve 2012, I was going to marry the man of my dreams.
30 seconds was the exact amount of time it took my boyfriend of four-and-a-half years to go from saying, “Yes, let’s get married,” to have a complete and total panic attack. Tears, shivering, snot, hyperventilation. The total melt-down of a formerly stoic adult person. It’s hard to pin-point exactly what was so terrifying about the idea of spending a life in partnership with me, but, sufficed to say, it’s not exactly the proposal a girl dreams of. It became very clear after those 30 seconds that I was, in fact, not going to be married. At least not to this guy.
***
This is the story of finding my way back. Fresh out of a four-and-a-half year relationship that was, on the whole, pretty darn dreamy. Except for the part where apparently I was dreaming in thinking that he felt about me the way I did about him.
I probably should have known that he wasn’t going to be able to commit way back when, about a year into our relationship, he broke up with me for 6 weeks because I was allergic to cats. He just wasn’t sure if he could live a life in which he couldn’t have a cat, but it seemed likely that he could be perfectly happy living a life without me. 6 weeks seemed to teach him that wasn’t such a sure bet, but I suppose it wasn’t quite enough.
The two months immediately following my 30-second engagement were, to say the least, horrible. Me staying at my parents. Him moving out of our home. The very awkward time that I hopped out of the shower, wet and naked, to find some soap, only for him to pop back in to get something he left behind and neither of us knew how to handle him seeing me naked for the millionth, but also last, time. Remembering what it is like to live by myself. (Answer: simultaneously liberating and lonely.) Wondering where my friends were when I needed them most. Waiting in the cold, dark, rain for the bus after yoga class late on a Wednesday night, wishing that I could call him to pick me up like I had so many times before.
The truth of it is that the hardest part has been the feelings of betrayal and confusion, of not understanding how he could not want to spend his life with me when our times together had been so blissful, so full of laughter and love and support. Were all my memories false? Or was he simply the biggest idiot alive to walk out on us? I have spent a long time alone in a canyon of sorrow.
But there is only one way out of a canyon (aside from Medivac), and that is this: you put one foot in front of the other. You keep going. You only let yourself break down and cry in the shower for 30 seconds at a time. You date. And so this story begins...
30 seconds was the exact amount of time it took my boyfriend of four-and-a-half years to go from saying, “Yes, let’s get married,” to have a complete and total panic attack. Tears, shivering, snot, hyperventilation. The total melt-down of a formerly stoic adult person. It’s hard to pin-point exactly what was so terrifying about the idea of spending a life in partnership with me, but, sufficed to say, it’s not exactly the proposal a girl dreams of. It became very clear after those 30 seconds that I was, in fact, not going to be married. At least not to this guy.
***
This is the story of finding my way back. Fresh out of a four-and-a-half year relationship that was, on the whole, pretty darn dreamy. Except for the part where apparently I was dreaming in thinking that he felt about me the way I did about him.
I probably should have known that he wasn’t going to be able to commit way back when, about a year into our relationship, he broke up with me for 6 weeks because I was allergic to cats. He just wasn’t sure if he could live a life in which he couldn’t have a cat, but it seemed likely that he could be perfectly happy living a life without me. 6 weeks seemed to teach him that wasn’t such a sure bet, but I suppose it wasn’t quite enough.
The two months immediately following my 30-second engagement were, to say the least, horrible. Me staying at my parents. Him moving out of our home. The very awkward time that I hopped out of the shower, wet and naked, to find some soap, only for him to pop back in to get something he left behind and neither of us knew how to handle him seeing me naked for the millionth, but also last, time. Remembering what it is like to live by myself. (Answer: simultaneously liberating and lonely.) Wondering where my friends were when I needed them most. Waiting in the cold, dark, rain for the bus after yoga class late on a Wednesday night, wishing that I could call him to pick me up like I had so many times before.
The truth of it is that the hardest part has been the feelings of betrayal and confusion, of not understanding how he could not want to spend his life with me when our times together had been so blissful, so full of laughter and love and support. Were all my memories false? Or was he simply the biggest idiot alive to walk out on us? I have spent a long time alone in a canyon of sorrow.
But there is only one way out of a canyon (aside from Medivac), and that is this: you put one foot in front of the other. You keep going. You only let yourself break down and cry in the shower for 30 seconds at a time. You date. And so this story begins...
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